Takeoff. Part 9

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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sure 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 hasnever 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 h.o.m.o 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, n.o.ble 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 lords.h.i.+p 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 scuttleb.u.t.t. 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?"

His lords.h.i.+p blinked thoughtfully. "Odd, yes," he said after a moment, "but hardly world-shattering. I scarcely see how it concerns us."

Lady Curvert tapped the paper. "Venusians."

Lord Curvert elevated an eyebrow a fraction of a millimeter. "My dear old girl," he said in a voice tinged with sarcasm, "the last time I was on Venus, back in 1948, nothing on that vast overheated Turkish bath had evolved any higher than the sponges. I hardly think that the succeeding fifteen years could have produced the intelligence required to beat out a hot rhythm on a set of bongo drums in a beatnik coffee house-though that is admittedly not such a tremendous leap in intelligence."

"I'm quite aware of that, Charles," his wife said coolly. "It's merely that this article has apparently started an intuitive chainweb in my mind. Something will come of it, I'm sure."

"Ah, I see." Lord Curvert was well aware of his wife's mental abilities. "Very well, my dear; when you've formed a full intuition, let me know. Meantime, I'll have some more kippers."

Lord Curvert finished the kippers, the Times, and the coffee, excused himself, and headed toward the library, leaving his wife to continue her reading. She had already finished the American papers and had begun on Pravda. Within an hour, she would have all the salient points of the day's news filed away in her capacious and accurate memory, where her subconscious could get at them in its ceaseless work of forming the "hunches" that made Evelyn Curvert so useful in her position as a.s.sistant to the GalacticObserver.

Fesswick, the butler-tall, broad shouldered, a pluperfectly correct expression on his very human-looking face-was waiting for his lords.h.i.+p in the library.

"Good morning, Fesswick. Anything interesting this morning?"

"Very little, my lord," said Fesswick in his precise voice. "The instrument readings are normal. The Russians attempted to launch another of their new rockets at 0517 this morning. It exploded at 0521."

"They won't publish this failure, either," said Lord Curvert.

"Very likely not, my lord," said Fesswick. "According to the neutrino emission detectors, the new reactor at Tel-Aviv suffered a slight misfunction at 1143 last night. Nothing serious, but it was damped at 1144 and has remained so."

"Down for repairs, eh?" his lords.h.i.+p commented.

"Precisely so, my lord. Solar emission," Fesswick continued, "remains normal. The..."

Fesswick took nearly seven minutes more to deliver his report of the happenings of the past twenty-four hours as they had been recorded on the special instruments concealed within the depths of Castle Curvert. They had been reporting their data precisely since they had been built into the castle, six hundred years before, and they would go on doing so until they were shut off-or destroyed.

All in all, everything was quite normal.

Lord Curvert sat down behind his desk and sighed gently. "Rather dull, isn't it, Fesswick? I mean, we haven't had any real excitement since that squadron of Mizarian s.h.i.+ps got off course and tried to land, back in '47." He gazed reminiscently at the ceiling. "Had the devil's own time with them for a while, there."

"A masterful piece of work on your part, if I may say so."

"Thank you," his lords.h.i.+p said absently. "Fesswick, has it occurred to you that our work may soon be completed on this planet?"

"The thought has crossed my mind, my lord."

"They've come up fast, Fesswick. In another half century, they may be ready to go to the stars, and a hidden Observer will no longer be necessary. Still, it's been interesting, hasn't it?"

"Very interesting, my lord."

There was a note in Fesswick's voice that made Lord Curvert look curiously at his butler. He had always regarded Fesswick as-well, as part of the machinery. He was simply there. He had always been there. To imagine Castle Curvert without Fesswick was to imagine Egypt without the pyramids.

And yet "You've been with the family for a long time, haven't you, Fesswick?"

Instead of answering immediately, Fesswick turned to look at the s.h.i.+eld on the wall, upon which was emblazoned the Curvert arms-Vert, on a pale or, a heart of the field.