"But I still don't see the danger—"
"The danger," said the Chief, "lies in the fact that while such a story has its existence apparently—to humans—only for its moral and emotional values, the tactical lesson which we so obviously recognize is not lost, either. To us, this story shows a way of conquering. To the humans it shows not only a way but a reason, a justification. A race whose motives are founded upon such justifications is tremendously dangerous to us."
"You must excuse me," said the Envoy, bewilderedly. "Why—"
"Because we—and I mean all the Conqueror races, and all the Submissive races—" said the Chief, strongly, "have no defenses in the emotional and philosophic areas. Look at what you told me about the Bahrin, and the Submissives the humans took over from the Bahrin. Having no strong emotional and philosophic persuasions of their own, they have become immediately infected by the human ones. They are like people unacquainted with a new disease who fall prey to an epidemic. The humans, being self-convinced of such things as justice and love, in spite of their own arbitrariness and violence, convince all of us who lack convictions having never needed them before. Do you remember how you said you felt when you saw the little Bahrin being patted on the head?
That's
how vulnerable we are!"
The Envoy shivered again, remembering.
"Now I see," he said.
"I thought you would," said the Chief, grimly. "The situation to my mind is serious, enough so to call for the greatest emergency measures possible. We mustn't make the mistake of the creature under the bridge in the story. We were prepared to let the humans get by our community strength because we thought of them as embryo Conquerors, and we hoped for better entertainment later. Now they come along again, this time as something we can recognize as Conqueror-plus. And this time we can't let them get by. I'm going to call a meeting of our neighboring Conqueror executive Chiefs; and get an agreement to hit the humans now with a coalition big enough to wipe them out to the last one."
He reached for a button below a screen on his desk. But before he could touch it, it came alight with the figure of his own attaché.
"Sir—" began this officer; and then words failed him.
"Well?" barked the Chief.
"Sir—" the officer swallowed. "From the Shielded Worlds—a message." The Chief stared long and hard.
"From the Shielded Worlds?" said the Chief. "How? From the Shielded Worlds? When?"
"I know it's fantastic, sir. But one of our ships was passing not too far from one of the Shielded Worlds and it found itself caught—"
"And you just now got the message?" The Chief cut him short.
"Just this second, sir. I was just—"
"Let me have it. And keep your channel open," said the Chief. "I've got some messages to send."
The officer made a movement on the screen and something like a message cylinder popped out of a slot in the Chiefs' desk. The Chief reached for it, and hesitated. Looking up, he found the eyes of the Envoy upon him.
"Never—" said the Envoy, softly. "Never in known history have they communicated with any of us. . . ."
"It's addressed to me," said the Chief, looking at the outside of the cylinder. "If they can read our minds, as we suspect, then they know what I've just discovered about the humans and what I plan to do about it." He gave the cylinder a twist to open it "Let's see what they have to say."
The cylinder opened up like a flower. A single white sheet unrolled within it to lie flat on the desk; and the message upon it in the common galactic code looked up at the Chief. The message consisted of just one word. The word was:—
NO.
Back to human viewpoint—with a reminder of just how alien one human can be to another. This story shows Dickson's skill, as he takes two human characters, making neither one sympathetic or easy to identify with, and still creates an engrossing story where these Kilkenny Cats flummox the belligerent aliens. But don't pick a side to root for too soon. You have been warned!
"Well? Are the ships joined—or not?" demanded Arthur Mial.
"Look for yourself!" said Tyrone Ross.
Mial turned and went on out of the room. All right, thought Ty savagely, call it a personality conflict. Putting a tag on it is one thing, doing something about it another. And I have to do something—it could just be the fuse to this nitrojelly situation he, I, and Annie are all sitting on. There must be some way I can break down this feeling between us.
Ty glanced for a moment across the spaceliner stateroom at the statistical analysis instrument, called Annie, now sitting silent and unimpressive as a black steamer trunk against a far wall.
It was Annie who held the hope of peace for thousands of cubic light years of interstellar space in every direction. Annie—with the help of Ty. And the dubious help of Mial. The instrument, thought Ty grimly, deserved better than the two particular human companions the Laburti had permitted, to bring her to them.
He turned back to the vision screen he had been watching earlier.
On it, pictured from the viewpoint of one of the tractor mechs now maneuvering the ship, this leviathan of a Laburti spaceliner he was on was being laid alongside and only fifty yards from an equally huge Chedal vessel. Even Ty's untrained eye could see the hair-trigger risks in bringing those hundreds of thousands of tons of mass so close together. But with the two Great Races, so-called, poised on the verge of conflict, the Chedal Observer of the Annie Demonstration five days from now could not be simply ferried from his ship to this like any ordinary passenger.
The two ships must be faced, main airlock to main airlock, and a passageway fitted between the locks. So that the Chedal and his staff could stroll aboard with all due protocol. Better damage either or both of the giant craft than chance any suspicion of a slight by one of the Great Races to a representative of the other.
For the Laburti and the Chedal were at a sparking point. A sparking point of war that—but of course neither race of aliens was concerned about that—could see small Earth drafted into the armed camp of its huge Laburti neighbor; and destroyed by the Chedal horde, if the interstellar conflict swept past Alpha Centauri.
It was merely, if murderously, ironic in this situation that Ty and Mial who came bearing the slim hope of peace that was Annie, should be themselves at a sparking point. A sparking point willed by neither—but to which they had both been born.
Ty's thoughts came back from the vision screen to their original preoccupation.
It happened sometimes, he thought. It just—happened. Sometimes, for no discernable reason, suddenly and without warning, two men meeting for the first time felt the ancient furies buried deep in their forebrains leap abruptly and redly to life. It was rapport between individuals turned inside out—anti-rapport. Under it, the animal instinct in each man instantly snarled and bristled, recognizing a mortal enemy—an enemy not in act or attitude, but simply in
being.
So it had happened with Ty—and Mial. Back on Earth, thought Ty now, while there was still a chance to do something about the situation, they had each been too civilized to speak up about it. Now it was too late. The mistake was made.
And mistake it had been. For, practical engineer and reasonable man that Ty was, reasonable man and practical politician that Mial was, to the rest of mankind—to each other they were tigers. And common sense dictated that you did not pen two tigers alone together for two weeks; for a delicate mission on which the future existence of the human race might depend. Already, after nine days out—
"We'll have to go meet the Chedal." It was Mial, reentering the room. Ty turned reflexively to face him.
The other man was scarcely a dozen years older than Ty; and in many ways they were nearly alike. There could not be half an inch or five pounds of weight difference between them, thought Ty. Like Ty, Mial was square-shouldered and leanly built. But his hair was dark where Ty's was blond: and that dark hair had started to recede. The face below it was handsome, rather than big-boned and open like Ty's. Mial, at thirty-six, was something of a wonder boy in politics back on Earth. Barely old enough for the senatorial seat he held, he had the respect of almost everyone. But he had been legal counsel for some unsavory groups in the beginning of his career. He would know how, thought Ty watching him now, to fight dirty if he had to. And the two of them were off with none but aliens to witness.
"I know," said Ty now, harshly. He turned to follow Mial as the other man started out of the room. "What about Annie?"
Mial looked back over his shoulder.
"She's safe enough. What good's a machine to them if no one but a human can run her?" Mial's voice was almost taunting. "You can't go up with the big boys, Ross, and act scared."
Ty's face flushed with internal heat—but it was true, what Mial had said. A midget trying to make peace with giants did well not to act doubtful or afraid. Mial had courage to see it. Ty felt an unwilling touch of admiration for the man. I could almost like him for that, he thought—if I didn't hate his guts.
By the time they got to the airlock, the slim, dog-faced, and darkly-robed Laburti were in their receiving line, and the first of the squat, yellow-furred Chedal forms were coming through. First came the guards; then the Observer himself, distinguishable to a human eye only by the sky-blue harness he wore. The tall, thin form of the robed Laburti Captain glided forward to welcome him aboard first; and then the Observer moved down the line, to confront Mial.
A high-pitched chattering came from the Chedal's lipless slit of a mouth, almost instantly overridden by the artificial, translated human speech from the black translator collar around the alien's thick, yellow-furred neck. Shortly, Mial was replying in kind, his own black translator collar turning his human words into Chedal chitterings. Ty stood listening, half-self conscious, half-bored.
"—and my Demonstration Operator." Ty woke suddenly to the fact that Mial was introducing him to the Chedal.
"Honored," said Ty, and heard his collar translating.
"May I invite you both to my suite now, immediately, for the purpose of improving our acquaintance . . ." The invitation extended itself, became flowery, and ended with a flourish.
"It's an honor to accept . . ." Mial was answering. Ty braced himself for at least another hour of this before they could get back to their own suite.
Then his breath caught in his throat.
" . . . for myself, that is," Mial was completing his answer. "Unfortunately, I earlier ordered my Operator to return immediately to his device, once these greetings were over. And I make it a practice never to change an order. I'm sure you understand."
"Of course. Some other time I will host your Operator. Shall we two go?" The Chedal turned and led off. Mial was turning with him, when Ty stepped in front of him.
"Hold on—" Ty remembered to turn off his translator collar. "What's this about your
ordering
me—"
Mial flicked off his own translator collar.
"You heard me," he said. He stepped around Ty and walked off. Ty stood, staring after him. Then, conscious of the gazing Laburti all about him, he turned and headed back toward their own suite.
Once back there, and with the door to the ship's corridor safely closed behind him, he swore and turned to checking out Annie, to make sure there had been no investigation or tampering with her innards while he was absent. Taking off the side panel of her case, he pinched his finger between the panel and the case and swore again. Then he sat down suddenly, ignoring Annie and began to think.
With the jab of pain from the pinched finger, an incredible suspicion had sprung, full-armed into his brain. For the first time he found himself wondering if Mial's lie to the Chedal about an 'order' to Ty had been part of some plan by the other man against Ty. A plan that required Mial's talking with the Chedal Observer alone, before Ty did.
It was, Ty had to admit, the kind of suspicion that only someone who felt as he did about Mial could have dreamed up. And yet . . .
The orders putting the Annie Demonstration Mission—which meant Annie and Ty—under the authority of Mial had been merely a polite fiction. A matter of matching the high rank and authority of the Laburti and Chedal officials who would be watching the Demonstration as Observers. Ty had been clearly given to understand that by his own Department chief, back on Earth.
In other words, Mial had just now stopped playing according to the unwritten rules of the Mission. That might bode ill for Ty. And, thought Ty now, suddenly, it might bode even worse for the success of the Mission. But it was unthinkable that Mial would go so far as to risk that.
For, it was one thing to stand here with Annie and know she represented something possessed by neither the Laburti nor the Chedal technologies. It was all right to remind oneself that human science was growing like the human population; and that population was multiplying at close to three per cent per year—as opposed to a fraction of a per cent for the older Chedal and Laburti populations.
But there were present actualities that still had to be faced—like the size of this ship, and that of the Chedal ship now parting from it. Also, like the twenty-odd teeming worlds apiece, the thousands of years each of post-atomic civilization, the armed might either sprawling alien empire could boast.
Mial could not—would not—be playing some personal game in the face of all this. Ty shook his head angrily at the thought. No man could be such a fool, no matter what basic emotional factor was driving him.
When Mial returned to their stateroom suite a couple of hours later, Ty made an effort to speak pleasantly to him.
"Well?" said Ty, "how'd it go? And when am I to meet him?"