Är sniglarna en enda enhet? Hur fattas beslut?

Heinlein tog en viss roll i boken. Han skisserade tre kommunikationsmedel, varav en är en version av en annan. Sniglarna kan kommunicera från värd till värd, antingen direkt eller långdistans. De kunde kommunicera från skepp till skepp eller skicka till bas, vilket också verkar vara värd-till-värd kommunikation. Och de kunde kommunicera via slug-to-slug konferens.

I kapitel åtta skriver han:

One of the disadvantages we worked under in serving our masters-or perhaps I should say one of the disadvantages our masters worked under-was the difficulty of long-distance communication. It was limited to what human hosts could say in human speech over ordinary communication channels, and was further limited, unless the channel was secured throughout, to conventionalized code messages such as the one I had sent ordering the first two shipments of masters. Oh, no doubt the masters could communicate ship-to-ship and probably ship-to-home-base, but there was no ship nearby; this city had been stormed as a prize-of-opportunity, as a direct result of my raid on Des Moines in my previous life.

Such communication through servants was almost certainly not adequate to the purposes of the masters; they seemed to need frequent direct body-to-body conference to coordinate their actions. I am no expert in exotic psychologies; some of those who are maintain that the parasites are not discrete individuals, but cells of a larger organism, in which case-but why go on? They seemed to need direct-contact conferences.

Han föreslår också att varje slug kan vara en cell av en större organism. Från kapitel nitton:

They did do some direct experimentation which raised my opinion of them a little. Vargas ordered brought in a baboon who was wearing a slug and had him introduced into the cage with the gibbons and the chimps. Up to then the gibbons had been acting like gibbons, grooming each other and such, except that they seemed rather quiet-and kept a sharp eye on our movements. As soon as the newcomer was dumped in they gathered in a ring facing outwards and went into direct conference, slug to slug. McIlvaine jabbed his finger excitedly at them. "You see? You see? Conference is not for reproduction, but for exchange of memory. The organism, temporarily divided, has now re-identified itself."

I could have told him the same thing without the double talk; a master who has been out of touch always gets into direct conference as soon as possible.

Medan han inte specifikt anger hur beslutet att odla en pansarbete är gjord, är det rimligt att anta att det gjordes av slug superorganismen. Det kan ha bytt minne långsamt, men det lärde sig och anpassade sig.