Chapter II: Part 2

All of this had happened years before, but the emotions that gripped the man now, as he stood facing the incredible alien from the center of the galaxy--these emotions reminded him of that fight. He felt now as he had felt when he regained consciousness in the dressing room--a little out of his senses, the wind still knocked out of him, and emotionally completely stunned.

The fact that Lan Sur had spoken perfect English had been the first blow. Every sentence that the alien had spoken was like a sharp jab, a sudden punch to a vital area. As in his boxing days, after a few brief moments of listening, Hawkins had stopped thinking with his brain--and had begun thinking with his stomach. But he was completely open and unguarded for the Sunday punch.

"You have exactly twenty-four hours in which to make up your minds."

* * * * *

The three men stood facing each other for at least a full minute, none of them speaking. Broussard recovered his voice before Hawkins could and said feebly, "You can't mean it."

Lan Sur's face gave no expression of emotion. "I realized that you would be incapable of comprehending what I have said so soon after I had said it. This is why I am giving you a length of time in which to make your decision. But you might as well realize that this high emotional index rating of your race is one of the main reasons you rate so low. It is a trait that we will have to breed out of your race."

Hawkins came to life suddenly, reacting violently, his emotional control shattered. He almost shouted at the alien, "If we're in such bad shape, why can't you just go off and leave us alone? You've got all the rest of the universe. Why can't you just leave us alone in our little corner of it?"

"If you were not so emotionally aroused at the moment, you would understand why we cannot 'leave you alone,' as you put it," the alien told him calmly. "It is completely impossible for two differing cultures to exist in this galaxy, as large as it is. Eventually the two cultures would have to come into contact, and this would cause friction. We do not care for friction, and we always seek to avoid it. By forcing you to join us now--or by destroying you if you refuse--we make absolutely sure that your race will never be the cause of any friction to us in the future."

"Friction?" asked Broussard slowly.

"If we allowed you to go your own way, your population would expand and you would be forced to take over more and more of this area of the universe. We have our own plans for this part of the galaxy which do not include fighting constant wars with you for the possession of each new planetary system that one of us sees fit to colonize." The alien spoke to them as he might have spoken to children.

Hawkins refused to abandon the train of thought. "But we could promise to give up all our worlds except our own home planet. You could have all the rest."

Lan Sur shook his head. "At the present moment, you will promise anything to rid yourself of the painful necessity of making the decision that I have demanded of you. You might even be quite willing to live up to your promise of retiring to your home planet, never to voyage forth again. But your children and their children would grow discontent and restless. Eventually, either a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand years from now, you would come forth to challenge us again." Lan Sur's face grew a trifle grim. "And next time you would be better equipped and stronger. You would be able to put up a better fight than you can at the moment." Then he smiled. "Oh, of course, the Dakn Empire would win eventually. We always do. But we would be back at exactly the same point that we are at right now. We would be forced to absorb you into our Empire, or to destroy you utterly. And, in the meantime, we would, of necessity, be forced to keep a careful watch on everything you did."

He shook his head. "No, you must realize that we cannot tolerate anything but absolute surrender. You have my terms. You must make your decision. There is nothing more to say."

Hawkins felt the numbing hand of deep fear within him. Like a losing boxer, he fought for any advantage that he might be able to take. "But, good Lord, man," he said quickly. "You don't understand the situation at all. Twenty-four hours isn't nearly enough time to make a decision that will affect our entire population. We can't even inform our home base of what's going on in that length of time, much less get a message _back_ from them. And this is the sort of thing that would have to be submitted to our population as a whole, for them to decide. We're just a very, very small part of our race. Why, we ... we don't have the authority to make a decision that would affect the people back home. You _must_ give us more time."

"Your complete lack of insight amazes me, even though I expected it," the alien said. "Surely you must understand that the more time I give you, the more time you have to prepare your physical defenses. I am just as aware as you are that, lacking the C^{2} communications methods, it is impossible for you to contact your home planet in the time that I have allowed you. But the war ships that I have already summoned will be here shortly, and even before they arrive, there is much that I must do to ready you and your people for the change if you decide to come with us. If you do not decide to come with us, then I must begin the search for your home planet, so that it may be destroyed. In either event, the sooner your choice is made, the better it is for me. Already I have allowed you more time than is actually necessary for you to overcome your emotion and to think the problem through logically."

"But I simply haven't got the _authority_ to make such a choice!" Hawkins found himself shouting. "Can't you understand that?"

Lan Sur paused a moment to let the other man regain some of his composure. Then he said simply but firmly, "I am in control here now. I have the authority, and I delegate it to you. _You_ must decide for everyone."

Broussard's reactions were perhaps a little less emotionally tinged than might have been thought from his facial reactions. He had held back what he felt to be a highly pertinent question until he felt that the alien was preparing to conclude the interview. He asked it now. "You seem to know a great many things about us, Lan Sur. And we seem to know very little about you. In a sense, this is strong evidence of your race's superiority. And yet you cannot really expect us to capitulate our entire culture to yours without giving us very conclusive proof that you are able to carry out your threats. After all, we are a large ship full of fighting men, and you seem to be one man all by yourself. What is to keep us from...." Deliberately the psychologist let the question hang uncompleted.

Lan Sur smiled. "At least you respond in a semi-logical fashion. The point is well taken, and if you had not brought it up now, I would have had to do so myself at a later time. I am therefore prepared to demonstrate to you the strength of our technology. You two will return to your ship, and I will remain here. You will then, for the next two hours, have the opportunity to attack me by any means you see fit. I will simply defend myself, without endangering you or your ship in any fashion. When you have discovered that even as undefended as I appear to be at the moment, all of your weapons are powerless to harm me, perhaps you will understand that I can carry out my threats if I so choose to."

The alien gestured with his hand. "And now, you must return to your ship. During the two hours at which I place myself at your mercy, you may naturally maneuver your vessel as you desire. But at the end of the two hours, you must have returned to your landing place here--or to whatever other spot on this planet that I may choose to indicate to you by radio. Any attempt on your part to escape either now, or during the period following, or any attack you attempt on me except during these first two hours, or any effort to summon additional help, will mean the instant destruction of your ship--and of your race. I hope that you will both understand what I have said and will believe that I have the power to achieve my ends."

Surveyor Lan Sur crossed his arms. "This interview is at an end."

After a few seconds of stunned silence, the two men turned and walked the long and lonesome way back to the _Sunward_.

* * * * *

All of the scientists aboard the _Sunward_ and most of the ship's officers were assembled in the central meeting hall when Broussard and Hawkins arrived. Hawkins walked directly to the central podium and turned to face the group.

"Gentlemen," he began slowly, his features a mask of repressed emotion. "I know that I do not have to give you any fuller explanations than you have already received. We have been given a challenge that seems to be insoluble. But we must face the situation, as the alien Lan Sur has suggested, with a minimum of emotionality and with a maximum of good, hard logic. I would welcome any comments, suggestions you might have to offer."

There was a general shuffling of feet and clearing of throats among the crowd. It seemed to Hawkins as if each member present was waiting for someone else to speak first. Finally the Communications Officer broke the silence.

"Captain, it has occurred to me that if the alien's powers are as great as he claims, he may well be able to monitor every word any of us speaks, even here. I think we must take that into consideration."

The crowd murmured an assent, feeling, Hawkins was sure, that it gave them an excellent excuse for not being able to propose any solution to the problem. "I think you are quite right," Hawkins answered. "However, I feel that for the moment we must operate as if he couldn't monitor us. In the meantime, the communications department must take what precautions it can to assure us that our future conversations are held in complete privacy." A touch of bitter defeat crept into his voice. "And I would imagine that even if he _is_ listening right now, he'll gain precious little in the way of useful information."

The group shuffled its feet again, embarrassed at its own impotence. "Are there any further comments?" Hawkins asked. There seemed to be none, until the Gunnery Officer spoke up.

"Captain," he said, a slight smile on his broad face. "I'd sort of like to see just how much punishment the bastard can take."

Hawkins laughed, breaking the tension. "I think we all agree with you. Suppose we put off any further discussion until after we've put the alien through his paces. It will give us an opportunity to test his strength--and to test our own.

"Many of you--" Hawkins indicated with a wave of his hand the officers in the room "--are familiar with the offensive strength of this vessel. She is one of the most powerfully armed ships that Earth has. What I intend to do, then, is this: We'll give our friend out there just as much hell as the _Sunward_ can dish out. But while we're doing it, I want photographs of every attack we make, fast photos that will give us, perhaps, an inkling of how he overcomes all of our weapons, if he does. I think this is extremely important." He looked the crowd over. "We'll begin the attack just as soon as all of you have indicated to me that your departments are ready. That is all, gentlemen."

* * * * *

Half an hour later the _Sunward_ rose from her landing site and floated gently into the atmosphere. She came to a halt about ten thousand feet up and drifted into an optimum firing position. Every gun and camera the ship possessed was trained on the now scarcely visible figure of the alien almost two miles beneath her. Hawkins was on the battle bridge, his experienced hand controlling the ship firmly, belying the nervousness he felt.

"Gunnery all ready, Sir!" came the report.

"Fire!" shouted Hawkins a little louder than he meant to. He strained forward in his seat to watch the scene on the screen in front of him.

The heat guns opened up first. In less than a second the area of maximum temperature was less than two feet away from the alien's body. A space of ground 300 yards in diameter suddenly went up in smoke at the intensity of the rays. Slim shreds of fire licked at the edge of the ring, and in the center all was fierce flame and smoke as the heat actually melted the earth. For a full five minutes the guns remained firing at maximum intensity. No organic substance known to man could withstand such violence.

"Cease firing," Hawkins called. He leaned back slowly in his chair. It would take a few minutes for the smoke to clear, but he knew in his heart what they would see once it had. And even before the wind had blown enough of the smoke away to make things visible, they saw the figure of the alien come walking briskly out of the hellish ring of destruction and wave his arm to them.

"God," said Hawkins quietly. After a moment he threw open a communications switch that connected him to the Gunnery Officer. "Well, what's next?" he asked quietly.

Next came a huge ball of electricity that spat sparks as it hurtled through space and shattered itself into a million bolts of lightning at the very feet of the alien. The resulting burst of light was painful to the eyes, but when vision cleared, they saw the alien again, still standing erect and still waving.

They tried launching a dozen space torpedoes at once, filled with the highest chemical explosives known to man. They crashed in criss-cross fashion about the alien, ripping the very air asunder with their fantastic devastation. They left a crater almost a mile wide, and standing in the middle of it, still untouched, the enemy. Then the ship bombarded the small figure below with every wavelength known to man, still without effect.

Finally the Gunnery Officer called Hawkins on the intercom. "I'm sorry, Captain, but we did our best. I guess there's only one thing left to do."

"I guess you're right," Hawkins admitted reluctantly. And turning to his helmsman he said, "Take her up."

The _Sunward_ was almost fifty miles from the alien when she unleashed her final weapon. She had dropped tattle-tale robots behind to feed her information both before and after the blast. And then she aimed the mightiest atomic weapon man had created straight at Lan Sur.

The very planet shook at its detonation, so powerful was the bomb. The fire and clouds rose miles into the sky, and the _Sunward's_ delicate instruments indicated the presence of a radiation so intense that it was certain an area hundreds of miles in size was completely destroyed. It took several minutes before enough of the aftermath of the explosion had cleared away for them to find him, but they located the alien sitting calmly in a crater at the very center of the affected area, obviously still unharmed.

Hawkins contemplated the situation for several minutes, and then wearily stretched out his hand and turned on the radio. After a moment he said simply, "All right, Lan Sur, you win. Where do you want us to land?"

Lan Sur answered immediately. "You will place your vessel in an area almost directly beneath your present position which I have caused to be marked in red. Any attempt to move the vessel without my permission will result in your immediate destruction. If, during the waiting time, you have any further questions to ask of me, I will be available. However, if you have not come to any conclusion by the end of that time, I shall be forced to destroy you without further hesitation. You have exactly twenty-two hours and nine minutes left."

* * * * *

When the ship had landed, Hawkins returned to the conference room. Most of the executive personnel were there, although some of the scientists were absent, ostensibly still analyzing the results of the futile attack on the alien. Hawkins strode briskly to the podium and faced the group.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you saw what happened. Perhaps some of you refused to believe that the alien could enforce his demands on us--and I'm sure that all of us hoped that this would be the case. But now we must accept the fact that the choice we were told to make will _have_ to be made, unless we can come up with some means of destroying this creature or of escaping his wrath.

"I want you to know that although it might well be within my province as Captain of the _Sunward_ to decide which of the alternatives we will take, I will not do so. What is decided here will affect all of Earth's peoples everywhere. Neither one man nor one small group can make this choice. Therefore, exactly one hour before the deadline, we will hold a plebiscite. Every person aboard the _Sunward_ will have exactly one vote, and the majority decision will hold. I will refrain from voting and will decide the issue in the event of a tie.

"In the meantime, I want you to think. To think not only of a means of escape from our dilemma, if this be possible, but also how you will vote. If any of you have any ideas, or if you simply wish to talk about something, you will find me available at any hour.

"I do not know how each of you will react to this situation. Perhaps the alien is right. Perhaps man is far too emotional an animal to merit more than slave status in the councils of the stars. But I hope that our actions will prove otherwise--and that this, man's darkest hour, will also become his finest."

Hawkins turned from the group and walked quietly from the room. He knew that his speech had been anything but an example of clear logic devoid of emotional context, and he had no idea why he had let himself be so carried away. But with the inborn and well-trained sense he had of men and situations, he knew that he could not have spoken otherwise.

The men on board the _Sunward_ faced the crisis in various fashions. A few of the scientists worked with erratic bursts of speed to finish up their analyses of the data they had gathered during the bombardment of the alien. Some of the crew wrote letters home. The communications department was swamped with personal messages to be relayed back to Earth. The Chaplain gave up his attempt at private counseling and held hourly open services. The routine jobs were still performed, albeit in a perfunctory manner. But mostly the men just gathered around in small groups and talked, usually in low voices. A few of the luckier ones got drunk.

Captain Hawkins remained in his room, completely isolated from the rest of the ship, for almost four hours. During that time he simply sat in his easy chair and thought. At the beginning of the fifth hour he broke a precedent and opened a bottle of whiskey. At the beginning of the sixth hour he broke still another precedent and sent for Broussard. Hawkins was neither too drunk nor too sober when the psychologist arrived. He told the scientist to sit down and offered him a drink.

"I know it's unethical for me to take you away from the men when they need your help more than ever before," Hawkins began slowly, choosing to stare moodily at the table instead of directly at the man he was talking to. "But for once I am exercising a Captain's perogatives.

"You must have realized some of the problems that face anyone in a position of command. Usually we have to operate on pretty rigid rules, but things always go better if it seems as though we aren't quite as rigid as we really must be. The men under you always feel better if they think they have some free choice about things. In any military set-up you can't allow much of this free will at all. The best commander is the one who decides what it is his men must do in a given situation, and then finds some way of making the men want to do it." Again he paused, then looked up, facing Broussard squarely.

"I have decided what the result of the balloting must be--and I want you, as a psychologist, to help me make sure that I get that result without anyone else being aware that we've rigged things." He got up from the table and began nervously pacing the floor.

After a few moments he stopped and turned to face the psychologist, both his fists clenched tightly on the back of his easy chair. He said nothing.

After several moments of silence, Broussard cleared his throat and asked, "And which choice have you decided it must be?"

Hawkins collapsed into the chair. Finally his mouth opened, his lips trembled, and he said, "Slavery, of course. It's the only choice.

"You're the psychologist, perhaps you can understand the fierce pride I'd take in knowing that the men would have the ... the _guts_ to want to end it all instead of bowing down to that bastard out there who holds us in the very palm of his hands." Hawkins paused in this outburst, blinked his eyes briefly, and then continued.

"But that's just the emotion showing through. From the logical point of view, our race must continue. If we choose slavery we'll live and breathe and die just as we always have. We'll do all of these things on alien planets, having forgotten the Earth we sprang from and all our past history, as sorry as some of that has been. We'll have forgotten who _we_ are. We will have lost ourselves."

He banged a fist down on the table. "But we _will_ exist! The protection of the race comes first, and we've got to make sure that it is protected, that the _Sunward_ makes the logical decision. I'll steer things as best I can, but I'll need help."

He turned to Broussard. "I'm not a psychologist. I won't tell you how to go about it. I don't care what you do. All I want are the results."

For a space of several seconds the two men sat without speaking. Then Hawkins said, "And I guess that unless you have something to add, that's all for now. Let me know what you're doing, if you have time to tell me. But more important than that, let me know if you think you're going to fail. We may have to rig the ballots if you do."

Broussard gave a deep sigh and rose to leave. He could understand the torment the Captain was going through, but there was little that he could do for the man at the moment. He was almost at the door when Hawkins stopped him.

"Broussard!" Hawkins shouted. "What in God's name makes a man's personality so dear to him? Why has it always been just about the last thing that a man will give up? You're the psychologist. You must know the answer. Even a man with a diseased mind who knows that he's sick and wants help badly will fight back tooth and nail when you try to change even one small part of his personality make-up. Didn't you once tell me that? Didn't you?"

The Captain's voice grew louder and louder. "That's why therapy is so hard, isn't it? That's why constructive education is so difficult, isn't it? That's why politicians who appeal to existing fears and hates and loves get elected instead of those men who try to shift public opinion for the better.

"Oh, why in God's name are we so proud of this tiny, puny, weak, insignificant, miserable thing inside each of us we call the real _me_!" He picked up the whiskey bottle and hurled it with full force against the wall. It shattered in a thousand pieces. The dark liquor inside ran down the wall leaving long thin fingers of stain behind it.

Captain Hawkins' personal steward came rushing into the room at the sound of the crash, and looked, horrified, at the mess on the wall.

"Oh, get out! Get out, both of you, and leave me alone!" Hawkins shouted.

* * * * *

After they were gone, Hawkins threw himself on his bunk and buried his face in his pillow. The mood of fierce hot anger passed rapidly, leaving only the warm sting of shame. Although he had made the decision to capitulate to the alien, at least at an intellectual level, he could not really bring himself to believe that there was no means of escape. His head ached from his emotional outburst and every effort toward constructive thinking seemed to end in a blind alley. He had been tossing restlessly for perhaps two hours when the Communications Officer brought him a message from Earth that had just been received. Hawkins reached for the message blank eagerly at first, his befuddled mind thinking for just an instant that here were instructions from home telling him how to meet the crisis, telling him of a means of escape, or just taking the awful responsibility of the decision from him. But then he remembered that communications, even when they passed through subspace, took several days to get from Earth to here. Earth was still unaware of the crisis on Trellis, and this message that had just been received had begun its journey long before they were made so painfully aware of the existence of the alien.

The radiogram was of a semi-routine nature, but one that, in normal circumstances, would have demanded an immediate answer. "Shall we bother replying to it?" the Communications Officer asked.

"Of course not," Hawkins said angrily. "It wouldn't be necessary, even if we dared break radio silence to reply."

The Communications Officer's eyes opened wide in a startled fashion. "Radio silence?" he said feebly. "But, Captain, we've ... we've...."

Hawkins sat bolt upright in his bunk. "Good Lord, man, do you mean to say that you've been sending messages to Earth right along?"

The Communications Officer nodded. "We started relaying from the moment you contacted the alien. We've sent out all the talks, speeches, reports, everything. Just as you ordered." The man was cringing in fright.

"But didn't you hear the alien tell us to make no attempt to contact our home base or he'd destroy us at once?" Hawkins demanded.

The other officer felt like crawling out of the room without bothering to open the door. "I'm sorry, Captain," he managed to stutter. "But I must have missed that ... that part of what he said. I ... I was called out of the office during part of the contact when something went wrong with one of our main transmitters." The man had turned a very pale shade of white. "But I'll stop transmission at once," he said, turning nervously towards the door.

Hawkins looked at his watch. "If he hasn't blasted us for it by now, I don't guess he ever will. But all the same, you'd better stop sending immediately." As the Communications Officer left the room, Hawkins cursed mildly under his breath. After all of his plans and sweat and pains, it would take something like this to bring the whole house of cards crashing about him, some little insignificant something that he had overlooked. "For want of a nail...." he said aloud, reminding himself of the age-old parable.

"But if he meant what he said about not notifying Earth, why hasn't he already destroyed us?" Hawkins asked himself. Perhaps Lan Sur wasn't as cruelly logical and unfeeling as they had thought. Hawkins pushed the thought from his mind, knowing that it would lead him to too much false hope if he pursued it further. It would be too easy to hope that simply because Lan Sur had not acted upon one of his threats, he might not act on the rest of them.

As he thought, Hawkins found himself pacing the floor of his room anxiously--first to one wall, then a stop, an about face, and back to the opposite side of the room. He stopped his walking and slumped down into his chair.

"Back and forth," he said out loud. "From one side to another. I'm just like the child in Broussard's story. Only instead of a man with a stick at one end of the hall and a dog at the other, I've got Lan Sur at both ends. Death, or a kind of slavery which is just about as bad. A real 'avoidance situation' if ever one existed." He laughed bitterly. "The closer I come to one choice, the worse it seems and the better the other choice appears."

He shrugged his shoulders sadly. "But eventually I'll have to realize that there's no escape. Unfortunately, unlike the child in Broussard's example, I can't...."

Hawkins stopped suddenly as something occurred to him. "Good God," he said after a moment. He sat upright in the chair. "It couldn't be. It just _couldn't_," he told himself. "And yet, I bet, I bet it is!"

He got up from the chair and walked quickly to the wall communicator. "Hello, Bridge?" he demanded. "Inform all officers not on watch and all the scientific personnel that I want to see them in the council chamber in thirty minutes. Exactly thirty minutes, do you understand?"

There was a broad smile on his face as he marched out of his stateroom to talk with some of the officers and scientists before the meeting.

* * * * *

After all of the men had crowded into the meeting hall, they closed and locked the doors. The group kept up a low but excited chatter while they waited for Captain Hawkins to begin.

"Gentlemen," he said finally, calling the meeting to order. "I am informed by the electronics specialists aboard that they have made this meeting room as 'spy-proof' as is humanly possible, but I think we've learned not to trust the power of human technology too much these past few hours. Therefore, I'm going to tell you just as little of my plans as I possibly can, on the theory that the best-kept secret is the one that the fewest people know about."

The crowd seemed anxious, and a little apprehensive, but still hopeful.

"Within the past hour, I have made what I think are several remarkable discoveries. I shall not tell you what they are, but I think I have discovered a way out of the dilemma that we are facing."

The crowd breathed a unanimous sigh of relief. Smiles broke out on several faces.

"I cannot tell you just at the moment what this mode of escape is. But I have discussed it with a few of you--the fewest number possible--and all of them agree that there is an excellent chance that it will work. If it does, we of Earth will still face a great many problems. But we shall, at least, be free, and that is the important thing. If we fail...." Hawkins let his voice trail off for a moment. "If we fail, we can expect instant destruction not only for us, but for all of mankind."

He waited for the meaning to sink in, his face set in a firm frown. And then, purposefully, he let his facial muscles relax into a broad smile. "But I do not think that we will fail. I think we will win. And I have come to ask your permission to risk all our lives on the venture. I cannot give you any more information. I can only ask for your confidence--and for your votes of approval." He looked around the room deliberately, pausing for just the right length of time. And then he said, "Will all of you who have sufficient faith in me and my judgment please rise in assent?"

Broussard had given him the trick of mass decision--had told him that if you make people commit themselves openly, the decision has a better chance of unanimity. Hawkins smiled to see how well the device worked. Every man in the room was on his feet, most of them cheering.

He waited for the shouting to die down and then said simply, "Thank you. And now to battle stations."

* * * * *

Captain Allen Hawkins sat in his control seat on the _Sunward's_ bridge, staring at the button that turned on his radio set. "The purpose of a position of responsibility is to make decisions," he told himself.

A green light burst into life on the control panel, indicating that all of the preparations he had asked for were in readiness. Such signals would be his only means of communications during the entire maneuver, for he had given orders that no one was to utter one word aloud during the entire operation. He was taking no chances.

Hawkins grinned. "And the devil take the hindmost," he told himself.

Pressing down on the radio button, he said aloud, "This is Captain Allen Hawkins of the _Sunward_ calling Surveyor Lan Sur of the Dakn Empire."

Almost at once he heard a voice answering, "You may go ahead."

"I think we have finally reached our decision," Hawkins said soberly. "But before we announce it, we have one request to make, and I do not think you will find it an unreasonable one. As you yourself pointed out, ours is an incredibly emotional race. Had we not been so, we could have given you our answer much sooner."

The alien's voice came booming into the control room. "I will listen to your request, but you surely realize that none of the terms that I have given you can be changed."

"Yes, we realize that, and our request is along slightly different lines," said Hawkins. "As I said, we are an emotion-ridden race. But you must have realized that we aboard the _Sunward_ are probably much more stable than are the majority of our peoples back on our home planets. It is always so with explorers and scientists. Therefore, we were able to reach a logical decision, and we will be able to hold to it.

"Unfortunately, we anticipate a little more trouble than this with 'the folks back home,' if you understand that term. And to make things much easier, not only for us, but also for you, we have a request to make."

"I understand the semantic import of the term and will give you my decision on the request if you will but come to the point," came the alien's voice. "We are wasting valuable time, and I have other things to do."

Hawkins was beginning to sweat a little. He was purposefully needling the alien, and he had no idea of how far he dared to go.

"Well, we of the _Sunward_ are convinced that you can carry out your threats if we attempt any rebellion. We have seen you stand untouched by all the power this ship could muster. But defense against our meager weapons is one thing. The ability to destroy a star is another....

"The folks back home would accept our decision without hesitation, and would never dream of giving you or your people any trouble, if we could show them authentic pictures of how powerful you are offensively. We request, therefore, that you unleash your weapons and turn this entire solar system into a nova while we photograph the procedure."

Lan Sur's answering voice sounded frighteningly loud to Hawkins. "What you request is impossible for several reasons. First, the Dakn Empire has no desire to destroy potentially valuable property simply to demonstrate its powers. Second, the procedure would occupy too much time, for while my small ship could outrace the enveloping flames of the nova, your larger ship, unequipped as it is with the C^{2} drive, would be caught in the destruction and you would perish. I recognize that from the emotionality index of your race, such a demonstration would probably aid in the peaceful absorption of your culture into ours, but it is impossible."

Hawkins allowed himself the luxury of a quick smile. His analysis of the situation had been absolutely correct. "Well, look," he said in reply. "According to our survey, the outer planet in this system is pretty small and of little use to anybody. Could you possibly destroy it instead?" He paused for just the smallest fraction of a second, but then hurried on before the alien could reply. "Of course, if you can't do it without destroying all the rest of the planets too, why, we'll understand. But it would help...."

The alien's voice boomed back, interrupting the man. "You obviously still underestimate the technological level of the Dakn Empire." The alien paused, as if checking something. "According to my analysis of this system, the fourth and outer planet is of no value whatsoever to my people. Therefore, I accede to your request. The planet will be destroyed at once."

"Hey, wait a minute," Hawkins cried in a startled tone of voice.

"You need not worry," came the alien's flat response. "I fully realize that your visual recording equipment cannot function at such a distance. Therefore, you will raise ship at once and locate yourself to take advantage of the best recording angles."

Hawkins had to hold himself in his chair to keep from dancing a jig. He had set a trap for the alien, and somehow, some incredible how, it had worked. At least he dared hope that it had....

* * * * *

The _Sunward_ came to a full stop just inside the orbit of the third planet. The alien ship danced on ahead of them towards the tiny outer world. "You can come closer than that," Lan Sur informed Hawkins, noting that the _Sunward_ had stopped sooner than expected.

"No, thank you," Hawkins replied. "We can get excellent pictures from this distance, and you must remember that we haven't the protective devices that you have."

Hawkins noted that Lan Sur's voice carried with it an almost petulant, disdainful note. "There is a great deal of difference between the destruction of one small planet and the creation of a nova. However, if you feel safer there, you may remain where you are." A few moments later, the alien added, "Are your recording devices in readiness?"

Hawkins indicated to the alien that they were.

"Then watch," Lan Sur said.

It took perhaps three minutes for the first burst of light to reach their position. The tiny planet, scarcely 500 miles in diameter, began to glow slightly, then suddenly came alive with fire. Bursts of flame danced up hundreds of miles above its surface, then fell back, exhausted, into the boiling cauldron the planet had become. For almost ten minutes the small world seethed in agonized torment, and then, all at once, it seemed to shake apart at the seams. There was no sound, but those watching on board the _Sunward_ mentally supplied the missing component to the greatest explosion they had ever witnessed. The cameras recorded the scene noiselessly.

A few minutes later, after most of the fragments of the once-world had disintegrated in flaming splendor, Lan Sur's voice broke the silence. "I used only one of many possible means of destruction. However, it promised to be, under the circumstances, the most spectacular. And so you have seen the offensive might of the Dakn Empire. Are you ready to give me your decision?"

The control board in front of Hawkins displayed all green signals. "Yes," he said. "I think we're finally ready. Here is our answer to the choice you gave us." His finger pressed firmly on a single red key.

* * * * *

The _Sunward_ had been hurling itself back towards Earth for almost an hour when Broussard discovered Captain Hawkins, standing by himself in the observation room, staring out into the black of subspace.

"Well," the psychologist said. "I don't suppose it looks quite so bleak to you now as it did on the trip out."

Hawkins turned and smiled at the man. "No, I don't guess it does. Funny what the presence of one small pinpoint of light does to the blackness of a field, eh?"

Broussard nodded in assent. "I wonder what our alien friend thought when suddenly Clarion, Trellis, the two other planets, and us too, just up and disappeared and left him behind?"

Hawkins laughed. "You're the alienist. You tell me."

"I'd rather ask you something. How did you know it would work?"

"You might say I became an expert in psychology over night," Hawkins replied. "Oh, not the scientific kind that you practice--but the every day kind that most people mean when they use the word. I discovered, for example, that because of a misunderstanding on the part of the communications people, we continued to send messages home after the alien had specifically warned us not to do so. At first I thought he might be ignoring this infraction of his rules, but then I began to wonder if it didn't mean that he just wasn't aware of what we were doing. I remembered that he talked a great deal about a C^{2} drive system which he claimed was so much better than the type we used. But when I asked the Navigator to do a little figuring, I discovered that by using subspace, we can actually get places much faster than his race does.

"It all added up to the fact that his race had never stumbled onto the use of subspace. I know that sounds incredible, but when I checked with one of the top physicists, I found out that we happened onto it by sheer accident--and an impossibly stupid one at that--and not through any high-level theorizing. The theory came later, after the process had been demonstrated in a laboratory.

"For a while I still couldn't believe it. But when we discovered that his space ship was a very small one--too small to utilize the subspace drive--I knew my guess had been correct. So I tricked him into letting us get into position where we could activate the drive--and had the engineers increase the effective radius so that we could pull Clarion and her three planets into subspace with us." Hawkins paused for a few seconds as he turned back to the observation window. "We'll need every sun and every planet we can lay our hands on."

Broussard leaned comfortably back against the door. "I think you were wise to take the pictures of the destruction of that fourth planet. We may need them to convince 'the folks back home' that this was the only solution to the problem."

Hawkins agreed with him. "They won't like giving up all the universe they've come to be used to, just to run away and hide in subspace. And you know, I think the poets and the sailors and the young people in love will hate us most of all."

"How do you mean?" asked Broussard.

"No more heaven full of stars to write poems about, to sail true courses by, and to sing love songs under. I guess a lot of us will be lonely for all the stars."

"Do you think they'll ever find us?" Broussard asked, changing the subject. "From the look on Lan Sur's face when he told about that other world, I suspect they'll move heaven and earth to find out where we've run to."

"Find us? The Dakn Empire? I just don't know. We've got a thousand ships equipped with the subspace drive. That's a thousand or so solar systems we can pull through into subspace before they can catch up with us--I hope. But we'll have to be careful. If one of our ships is ever caught, and they discover the drive, we're all done for. I doubt that they'll show us much mercy.

"A thousand suns--and only a handful of usable worlds in the whole lot of them. Not much for a race that's grown as fast as ours has. And to some of us, I guess, subspace will never be quite the same as the one we grew up in--and came to know and love." Hawkins shook his head sadly.

"But _if_ they find us?" Broussard insisted.

"Well, at least we'll have had time to prepare. Perhaps a year, perhaps ten, perhaps a thousand. But we beat them this time, and maybe we can do it again."

For a long time he continued to stare quietly into the blackness. "I just don't know...."