Takeoff! (11 page)

Before Thagobar could ask anything else, another thought occurred to the Earthman. The thousand-inch telescope on Luna had discovered, spectroscopically, the existence of large planets in the Andromeda Nebula, “In addition,” he continued blandly, “we have found planets in other galaxies than this,”

There!
That
ought to confuse them!

Again the sound was cut off, arid Magruder could see the two aliens in hot discussion. When the sound came back again, Thagobar had shifted to another tack.

“How many spaceships do you have?”

Magruder thought that one over for a long second, There were about a dozen interstellar ships in the Earth fleet-not nearly enough to colonize ten million planets, He was in a jam!

No! Wait! A supply ship came to New Hawaii every six months, But there were no ships on New Hawaii.

“Spaceships?” Magruder looked innocent, “Why, we have no spaceships,”

Thagobar Verf shut off the sound again, and this time, he made the wall opaque, too, “No spaceships?
No spaceships?
He lied…I hope?”

Zandoplith shook his head dolefully. “Absolute truth,”

“But—but—but—”

“Remember what he said his race called themselves?” the psychologist asked softly,

Thagobar blinked very slowly. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper. “Beings
with minds
of vast
power.”

“Exactly,” said Zandoplith,

Magruder sat in the interrogation chamber for a long time without hearing or seeing a thing. Had they made sense out of his statements? Were they beginning to realize what he was doing? He wanted to chew his nails, bite his lip, and tear his hair; instead, he forced himself to outward calm. There was a long way to go yet.

When the wall suddenly became transparent once more, he managed to keep from jumping.

“Is it true,” asked Thagobar, “that your race has the ability to move through space by means of mental power alone?”

For a moment, Magruder was stunned, It was beyond his wildest expectations. But he rallied quickly,

How does a man
walk?
he thought,

“It is true that by using mental forces to control physical energy,” he said carefully, “we are able to move from place to place without the aid of spaceships or other such machines,”

Immediately, the wall blanked again.

Thagobar turned around slowly and looked at Zandoplith. Zandoplith’s face looked a dirty crimson; the healthy violet had faded.

“I guess you’d best call in the officers,” he said slowly; “we’ve got a monster on our hands.”

It took three minutes for the twenty officers of the huge
Verf
to assemble in the Psychology Room. When they arrived, Thagobar asked them to relax and then outlined the situation.

“Now,” he said, “are there any suggestions?”

They were definitely not relaxed now. They looked as tense as bowstrings.

Lieutenant Pelquesh was the first to speak. “What are the General Orders, Your Splendor?”

“The General Orders,” Thagobar said, “are that we are to protect our ship and our race, if necessary. The methods for doing so are left up to the commander’s discretion.”

There was a rather awkward silence. Then a light seemed to come over Lieutenant Pelquesh’s face. “Your Splendor, we could simply drop an annihilation bomb on the planet.”

Thagobar shook his head. “I’ve already thought of that. If they can move themselves through space by means of thought alone, they would escape, and their race would surely take vengeance for the vaporization of one of their planets.”

Gloom descended.

“Wait a minute,” said Pelquesh. “If he can do that,
why hasn’t
he escaped from us?”

Magruder watched the wall become transparent. The room was filled with aliens now. The big cheese, Thagobar, was at the pickup.

“We are curious,” he said, “to know why, if you can go anywhere at will, you have stayed here. Why don’t you escape?”

More fast thinking. “It is not polite,” Magruder said, “for a guest to leave his host until the business at hand is finished.”

“Even after we…ah…disciplined you?”

“Small discomforts can be overlooked, especially when the host is acting in abysmal ignorance.”

There was a whispered question from one of Thagobar’s underlings and a smattering of discussion, and then:

“Are we to presume, then, that you bear us no ill will?”

“Some,” admitted Magruder candidly. “It is only because of your presumptuous behavior toward me, however, that I personally am piqued. I can assure you that my race as a whole bears no ill will whatever toward your race as a whole or any member of it.”

Play it up big, Magruder, he told himself. You’ve got ‘em rocking—I hope.

More discussion on the other side of the wall.

“You say,” said Thagobar, “that your race holds no ill will toward us; how do you know?”

“I can say this,” Magruder told him; “I know-beyond any shadow of a doubt-exactly what every person of my race thinks of you at this very moment.

“In addition, let me point out that I have not been harmed as yet, they would have no reason to be angry. After all, you haven’t been destroyed yet.”

Off went the sound. More heated discussion. On went the sound.

“It has been suggested,” said Thagobar, “that, in spite of appearances, it was intended that we pick you, and you alone, as a specimen. It is suggested that you were sent to meet us.”

Oh, brother! This one would have to be handled with
very
plush gloves.

“I am but a very humble member of my race,” Magruder said as a prelude-mostly to gain time. But wait! He was an extraterrestrial biologist, wasn’t he? “However,” he continued with dignity, “my profession is that of meeting alien beings. I was, I must admit, appointed to the job.”

Thagobar seemed to grow tenser. “That, in turn, suggests that you knew we were coming.”

Magruder thought for a second. It had been predicted for centuries that mankind would eventually meet an intelligent alien race.

“We have known you were coming for a long time,” he said quite calmly.

Thagobar was visibly agitated now. “In that case, you must know where our race is located in the galaxy; you must know where our home base is.”

Another tough one. Magruder looked through the wall at Thagobar and his men standing nervously on the other side of it. “I know where you are,” he said, “and I know exactly where every one of your fellows is.”

There was sudden consternation on the other side of the wall, but Thagobar held his ground.

“What is our location then?”

For a second, Magruder thought they’d pulled the rug out from under him at last. And then he saw that there was a perfect explanation. He’d been thinking of dodging so long that he almost hadn’t seen the honest answer .

He looked at Thagobar pityingly. “Communication by voice is so inadequate. Our coordinate system would be completely unintelligible to you, and you did not teach me yours if you will recall.” Which was perfectly true; the Dal would have been foolish to teach their coordinate system to a specimen-the clues might have led to their home base. Besides, General Orders forbade it.

More conversation on the other side.

Thagobar again: “If you are in telepathic communication with your fellows, can you read our minds?”

Magruder looked at him superciliously. “I have principles, as does my race; we do not enter any mind uninvited.”

“Do the rest of your people know the location of our bases, then?” Thagobar asked plaintively.

Magruder’s voice was placid. “I assure you, Thagobar Verf, that everyone
of
my people, on every planet belonging to our race, knows as much about your home base and its location as I do.”

Magruder was beginning to get tired of the on-and-off sound system, but he resigned himself to wait while the aliens argued among themselves.

“It has been pointed out,” Thagobar said, after a few minutes, “that it is very odd that your race has never contacted us before. Ours is a very old and powerful race, and we have taken planets throughout a full half of the galaxy, and yet, your race has never been seen nor heard of before.”

“We have a policy,” said Magruder, “of not disclosing our presence to another race until it is to our advantage to do so. Besides, we have no quarrel with your race, and we have never had any desire to take your homes away from you. Only if a race becomes foolishly and insanely belligerent do we trouble ourselves to show them our power.”

It was a long speech-maybe too long. Had he stuck strictly to the truth? A glance at Zandoplith told him; the chief psychologist had kept his beady black eyes on the needle all through the long proceedings, and kept looking more and more worried as the instrument indicated a steady flow of truth.

Thagobar looked positively apprehensive. As Magruder had become accustomed to the aliens, it had become more and more automatic to read their expressions. After all, he held one great advantage: they had made the mistake of teaching him their language. He knew them, and they didn’t know him.

Thagobar said: “Other races, then, have been...uh ...punished by yours?”

“Not in my lifetime,” Magruder told him. He thought of Homo
neanderthalensis
and said: “There was a race, before my time, which defied us. It no longer exists.”

“Not in your lifetime? How old are you?”

“Look into your magniscreen at the planet below,” said the Earthman in a solemn tone. “When I was born, not a single one of the plants you see existed on Earth. The continents of Earth were nothing like that; the seas were entirely different.

“The Earth on which I was born had extensive ice caps; look below you, and you will see none. And yet, we have done nothing to change the planet you see; any changes that have taken place have come by the long process of geologic evolution.”

Gleek!”
It was a queer sound that came from Thagobar’s throat just before a switch cut off the wall and the sound again.

Just
like
watching a
movie
on an
old film,
Magruder thought. No sound
half the time.
and
it
breaks every so
often.

The wall never became transparent again. Instead, after about half an hour, it slid up silently to disclose the entire officer’s corp of the
Verf
standing at rigid attention.

Only Thagobar Larnimisculus Verf, Borgax of Fenigwisnok, stood at ease, and even so, his face seemed less purple than usual.

“Edwin Peter St. John Magruder ,” he intoned, ‘‘as commander of this vessel, Noble of the Grand Empire, and representative of the Emperor himself, we wish to extend to you our most cordial hospitality.

“Laboring under the delusion that you represented a lower form of life, we have treated you ignominiously, and for that we offer our deepest apologies.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Magruder coolly. “The only thing that remains is for you to land your ship on our planet so that your race and mine can arrange things to our mutual happiness.” He looked at all of them. “you may relax,” he added imperiously. “ And bring me my clothes.”

The human race wasn’t out of the hole yet; Magruder was perfectly well aware of that. Just what should be done with the ship and the aliens when they landed, he wasn’t quite sure; it would have to be left up to the decision of the President of New Hawaii and the Government of Earth. But he didn’t foresee any great difficulties.

As the
Verf
dropped toward the surface of New Hawaii, its commander sidled over to Magruder and said, in a troubled voice: “Do you think your people will like us?”

Magruder glanced at the lie detector. It was off.

“Like you? Why, they’ll
love
you,” he said.

He was sick and tired of being honest.

THE COSMIC BEAT

This one is not a takeoff on any particular author; it is a takeoff on the so-called “beat generation” of the late Fifties—a generation which was soon to be replaced by the “hippies,” who are now as defunct as the “beatniks.”

{Ever wonder where the word “beatnik” came from? It was a takeoff on the word “sputnik”—the Earth’s first orbital satellite, sent up by the Russians. The word “sputnik” means “fellow traveler.” Work that one out in your home computer.)

By
Randall Garrett

“That’s very
odd,” said Lady Curvert.

The sound that accompanied her
voice
was that of her egg spoon taking the top off her egg in its cup, so it is not remarkable that Lord Curvert, without lowering his copy of the Times, merely inquired: “Something wrong with the egg, my dear?”

“What? Egg? No, silly; it’s this night club in New York.”

Lord Curvert, well aware that his wife never remarked on anything of that sort without good reason, reluctantly lowered his newspaper and looked at her. She was absently spooning up egg with her right hand while her left held the tabloid upon which her gaze was fastened.

“What is it, Evelyn?” his lordship asked. “Something?”

“I’m not certain,” she said. “Listen to this: ‘The Village’s newest and farthest-out espressoteria, the Venus
Club,
is the latest subject of a quiet investigation by the Musician’s Union, according
tb
the B’way scuttlebutt. Seems that the weirdly-dressed musicos who are pulling in the jazz-lovers by the horde are too good to be believed. The management claims they’re unpaid amateurs and don’t need a union card, but the big-name pros who’ve heard them don’t believe any amateur group could be that good. The “Venusian” get-ups they wear, which make them look as though the instruments they play are part of their bodies, make the players unrecognizable, and Union officials can’t find out who they are. Since a combo as good as the “Venusians” could get hi-pay spots easily, according to Union officials, it doesn’t make sense for them to keep on at the
Venus
Club
unless they actually are getting something under the counter. If they are, the Union wants its cut.”‘ Lady Curvert looked up at her husband through glorious deep blue eyes. “Isn’t that odd?”