Daniel F. Galouye

“ The screen hunted out and steadied upon the alien ship.
"It's clean!" Mittich exclaimed. "They're not armed!"
"Nonsense," Vrausot said, coming over to see. "They've got to be. Why else would they come here?"
"The hull is sleek." The Assemblyman pointed with his long snout. "I see no gun-hatch outlines."
The Chancellor produced the Tzarean equivalent of a humorless laugh. "They're aliens, Mittich—with an alien technology. Perhaps we wouldn't even recognize their weapons if we saw them." ”

“ Kavula asked, drawing Mittich from his troubled thoughts.
"You do?"
The pilot flicked his tail rashly—a gesture usually associated with independent thought. "If he pushes on into the alien sector, it will be genocide. Those creatures are helpless. It isn't the sort of operation I'd care to be in on. Anyway, there's no reason why Tzareans and the aliens can't live side by side, even in one small pocket of the galaxy. We have different requirements. I don't think they would even be interested in the type of world we need." ”

“ Only, his praises would be hissed in the same breath with glorious tribute to the concepts of peaceful contact.
Vrausot turned to check the readiness of his landing party.
"All stun weapons loaded and set?" he asked, his voice sounding coarse both in Mittich's earphones and through a bulkhead speaker.
He received twenty affirmative tail flicks.
Of the pilot, standing by the hatch control switch, he demanded: "Status of the aliens' robots?"
"They are all impotent," Kavula reported back into the bulkhead speaker. "The last one used up its remaining power as we descended." ”

“ With the others, Stewart crowded into the cave entrance, careful not to let Carol press too far outside where she would no longer be in the stream of oxygen flowing from the bowels of the satellite.
"They're coming!" McAllister exclaimed, withdrawing. Mortimer retreated with him, striking out for a small passageway that fed from one of the side walls.
Stewart strained forward, shading his eyes against the glare of Aldebaran. The landing party's advance was half concealed by the mass of rocks and outcroppings that hid most of their ship. ”

“ Carol's eyes strained with disillusionment. "And the question is—what happens when we run out of galaxy?"
"Fat chance." Stewart laughed. "We've got a few billion years to go before we find ourselves short on worlds."
Having apparently lost interest in the conversation, Randall was staring ahead at the onrushing satellite.
"That's one way of looking at it," Carol said pensively. "But there's also another possibility—resistance to the expansion."
"You kidding? In two centuries we haven't run into a single life form that's the intellectual equivalent of a Terran fiddler crab. ”

“ The Great Hall resounded with click-hisses of approval and disapproval—an equal measure of each, it seemed to Stewart.
He watched Mittich smile—at least, it passed for a smile in the Tzarean Shoal—tolerantly at the excited Assemblyman.
"Killing our prisoners," he chided, "will not alter the fact that alien expansion is under way in the direction of our Shoal."
Chancellor Vrausot lumbered down the central aisle, defying the independence of the legislature as he had during all sessions which Stewart and Harlston had attended as Exhibits A and B of the "Alien threat" issue. ”

“ Stewart, however, wasn't even interested in the fact that she had misinterpreted his numb silence.
For the thousandth time he searched his mind for all its hidden knowledge on the alien space ship, on how he had gained that information, how he could have forgotten it.
Carol tried to console him again, as though he were a child. "We'll get home all right. Then we'll get out of the Bureau. We'll go to Terra—you and I—and you'll see how happy we'll be." ”

“ We must attack their centers of civilization before they attack ours!"
Another Assemblyman rose imploringly. "But how can we do that? We haven't fought a war in countless millennia! Once we were many and mighty, as they are now. But while they have grown, we have shrunk. Why, our entire Shoal consists of only two civilized worlds. All the others have long been in decay."
"Oh, we could take them by surprise and inflict much damage on their worlds," Hisser of the Assembly Mittich agreed with Chancellor Vrausot. ”

“ Mittich demanded.
Vrausot scratched his jaw with a rigid talon. "Interesting—that trouble between the aliens and their automatons. What interpretation do you put on it?"
Pivoting on his tail, the other spun around from the screen to face the Chancellor. "That they don't even carry side arms. They had no defense whatsoever against their machines. If they were here looking for a fight, wouldn't they be armed at all times?" ”

“ But Randall was shaking his head miserably.
"No, Dave," the director said finally. "The Hyadeans did not brainwash you. I did. I also planted the false impression—to justify this mission. It was necessary that only I know the true situation."
Stewart staggered back.
"Yes," the other went on, "after you and Harlston told me there was another culture out there of undetermined size and intentions, I almost hit the panic stud. Two cultures expanding toward each other, previously unaware of each other's existence. The wrong move could be the shot heard around the galaxy. ”

“ He swiveled his central section, redirecting the blaster at a boulder that lay between him and the needle and destroying it in a fiery eruption of light and heat and pulverizing forces.
Fuming, he paced forward, stopped and paced back again. He had seen the audacious creatures who were bold enough to invade His Realm! But He had been able to do nothing about them. For at that moment the irresistible compulsion of function had taken over and He could only orient and transmit all the data from his master tape. ”

“ The demands of logical deduction fully served, he published on each wave length an order that amounted to: "Vigilance is to be maintained against the non-Totemic mobiles. Report instantly on their reappearance."
That taken care of, he reduced current in his rationalization pack. But the pleasant calm of abstraction did not last long. Peter the Meter began flooding his allocated frequency with eureka signals from an infrared photometer. And once again the source of disturbance was at a remote distance in the sky.
Oh Bigboss, he invoked Himself. Not another Totemic-non-Totemic complication! ”

“ Rationalization circuits working sluggishly as he surveyed his realm, Bigboss dredged from the fragmented impressions on his memory drums his most fascinating, most disturbing subject for speculation:
In all Creation, there was nothing superior to Him. This material world that stretched out around Him, everything in the celestial reaches as far as infinity itself—all His! ”

“ Finally fearful of damage to instruments, Bigboss gruffly radioed "cut-the-comedy" impulses, then trained his rearward lens on Minnie. She had inched furtively forward and was now menacing his upper section with her drill head.
He considered wielding his blaster but rejected that expedient as an excessive and unnecessary ostentation. Instead he countered by raising his extensible vise. The lesser show of strength sufficed to discourage Minnie's ambition, for the moment at least. ”

“ Ports ablaze with luminous evidence of faultless power generation, the huge automaton ignored him. Shorn of its laser intensifier, it appeared somewhat pathetic. But Stewart was inclined to waste no sympathy. It stood swinging its upper command section, first right, then left, to compensate for loss of two video sensors. But he was more interested in the underslung, recessed compartment whose outline he could now see. ”

“ Kavula advised.
The Chancellor fumed at his pilot's insolence. "They'll do better at close range," he promised. "Meanwhile, I want this ship stripped for action. I've reached my decision. One close pass is all it should take. We strike after sunup."
Desperately, Mittich hurried over and swung his small arms imploringly. "You can't do this thing!"
"Oh, quit being such a floundering minnow! Nothing's going to happen. They're quite defenseless, I'm convinced."
"If that's the case, then you are under injunction of the Curule Assembly to make peaceful contact!"
"Drown peaceful contact!" ”

“ Again Chancellor Vrausot erupted in a series of violent hisses and clicks. "But that might only encourage them to attack!"
"Precisely. So the only course left is Number Five. That is to condition our prisoners to report indications of an interstellar culture in the Tzarean Shoal—nothing precise, nothing definite. Our prisoners will say they made no visual observations. We thus present the aliens with neither the temptation of our actual weakness, nor the fear of our pretended strength. ”

“ Apprehensive now, she assigned her meager rationalization capacity to the task of deducing the reasons behind the startling change. And many sine wave peaks passed before the judgment was handed back up to her main circuits for storage on a memory drum:
Bigboss had justifiably been the Supreme Being! For He had, indeed, been Supreme. The workers had voices, of course. But they were isolated voices that could be heard by other members of the clan only because they were passed along by Bigboss.
Minnie's drill head sagged until it rested on the ground. ”

“ Because we found evidence of bustling subspace travel and communications that indicated a vigorous culture of star-traveling Hyadeans!"
McAllister swore. Mortimer came forward, perplexed. "But—"
Randall motioned for silence. "Let him finish."
"We got the hell out of there," Stewart said, "without even having seen a Hyadean. We figured that if there was another intelligent race in this part of the galaxy, it might be a hostile one. And our worlds had to know about it. We couldn't chance being captured. ”

“ Rested, although no nearer a definite plan for resubjugation of the telepuppet team, Stewart cautiously watched the robots from behind an outcropping. To this concealed vantage point he had led Carol, Director Randall and McAllister while the automatons had been occupied with recharging.
"You're going to try some more voice commands on the OC?" Carol's voice came softly through the earphones as she squirmed to find more comfort within the folds of her oversized sheath.
"We're not doing anything," Stewart said firmly, "until that thing is well occupied with transmission." ”

“ The chair creaked its complaint as Mortimer shifted his weight. "And the Aldebaran telepuppets?"
Randall gestured for emphasis. "That robot team is now of first-rate importance. We'll need a full analysis of Four-B in the shortest time possible. The Hyades are a hundred and fifty light-years away—too far for direct development. But a halfway base in the Aldebaran system will open them up to us immediately."
Carol found Stewart's arm. "This one is really worthwhile. Think you can get your puppets back on their strings?"
"I suppose so. There can't be too much wrong with them." ”

“ Randall grinned benignly, lighted his pipe and stared out the port. "Couldn't help hearing your conversation about the horror of warfare. I've seen all the documentary tapes. It was rough."
"Thank God it's a closed book," Carol said seriously.
"But, is it? There's still a large and articulate school that regards armed conflict as an instinctive human mechanism."
"We've had no war in two hundred years," Stewart said.
"Only because political subdivisions haven't had time for one. The instinct is blurred as a result of our expanding into a vacuum." ”

“ Into this fury of swinging appendages Stewart decided he would have to hurl himself if he expected to immobilize the telepuppet team. As unpredictable as the robots were, he might never get this close to the master automaton again.
The flow of battle, however, made his decision unnecessary. For the grappling machines were now sweeping over the spot where he lay and a huge pedal pad barely missed him as it thudded down. ”

“ They want us to believe they are stupid and helpless."
Assemblyman Mittich laced the other with a calculating stare. He was aware of the heavy irony in Vrausot's hisses and clicks and he knew the Chancellor was only deriding him.
"If I had to arrive at an alternate assessment, Assemblyman—" Vrausot paused and Mittich braced himself for more scorn. "It would be that the aliens are stupid, inept, blundering, defenseless. Actually, it would seem that they must have gained interstellar status only through accident." ”

“ We know that isn't true."
Ignoring the interruption, the Chancellor continued. "And they were foolish enough to come here unarmed, apparently."
But Mittich broke in again. "If I had attracted more votes in the Curule Assembly, we would have come unarmed too."
"Ah! But we didn't. And do you know why? Because the Assembly really believes as I do, even though they might not have the courage to vote their convictions. That's why I'm going to exercise my own judgment—because I know their subliminal disposition in this matter."
Mittich unhinged his jaw, conveying dismay. ”

“ The Mineral Analyzer had already sunk its drill into the broad, flat surface of the stabilizer. And the Flora Collector and Analyzer was being boosted by the OC to the lowest spiral of the ship's subspace drive intensifier. Deposited upon the ceramics-insulated coil, the crablike puppet was doing its best to flake off some of the outer substance for testing.
McAllister laughed. "Look at those mixed-up machines! They're trying to analyze the ship!"
"That's what I mean," Randall pointed out soberly. "One of their inhibitions is to ignore refined metal. ”

“ Vrausot reared erect in protest. "But eventually the conditioning will break! They will remember! And their race will then fashion an attack!"
"If we are to assume that they would attack in the first place," Mittich pointed out. "Our prisoners themselves aren't certain whether their race would or would not.
"Three—we could try instilling fear in them. Condition our captives to go back home and report a powerful, vast Tzarean Shoal culture. But that, I suspect, would only drive the aliens into a frantic arming effort. ”

“ Perplexed, Bigboss pondered this inadequacy of communication between him and his servitor—until a rationalization circuit came up with the recommendation: Tap in on Grazer's direct video system.
He did.
And Bigboss went momentarily irrational as motor circuits fought one another to express the exultation flooding from his evaluation pack. He leaped three meters high. His upper command section turned up a hundred revolutions per minute in triumphant delirium. ”