Chapter VI

Stabilizing itself once more in synchronous orbit, the immense Tzarean ship generated internal gravity and meted out isotonic saline solution to a number of tanks in crew's quarters.

In the central compartment it was a triumphant, impassioned Chancellor Vrausot who turned his massive hulk on Mittich and hissed-clicked, "There! I told you they had come unarmed! There was absolutely no response to the attack!"

Grim-faced, the Assemblyman only stared at him.

Vrausot paced, thumping his stout tail against the deck with each stride. It was a gesture that expressed anxiety.

"Don't you see what that means, Mittich? They _knew_ we would be out here. They had independently corroborating evidence to that effect. Yet they came unarmed. They _are_ a peaceful, naive, unsuspecting race of sitting _uraphi_!"

Very weakly, the Assemblyman reminded, "Our purpose, then, is to make amiable contact and determine--"

It was no use, though. The Chancellor wasn't listening. He had absolutely no sense of honor or ethical appreciation. But, Mittich reflected, that should have come as no surprise. It was to have been extrapolated from the Chancellor's political history. And now the distressing fact had to be faced: Vrausot was a megalomaniac.

The Chancellor drew proudly erect and his tail stiffened. "But _we're_ not weak! Kavula--see that all gun crews stand by. We're going to finish them off now that we've established their inability to inflict damage on us."

Mittich drew back, appalled at the fierce determination behind the Chancellor's driving ambition for conquest, disgusted with his own inability to turn Vrausot's purpose aside. How to stop him?

It was Mittich who paced this time, helplessly wrestling with the impossible problem of preventing the Chancellor from compounding Tzarean dishonor.

Frustrated, he pivoted on his tail and returned to the teleview screen. Focusing on the landing site below, he zoomed in for an extreme close-up. The aliens were still scurrying around outside their crippled ship, glancing occasionally into the sky as though terrified over the possibility of another assault.

Mittich adjusted the instrument to its operational limits, as he had wanted to do on so many occasions since they had brought the aliens under observation.

Two of the creatures were facing the mountain range behind which hid the Tzarean ship. Anxiously, the Assemblyman moved in and studied their heads, clearly visible through transparent helmets.

He drew in a startled breath. He must be mistaken. Of course he was. He could see that now.

Yet, there _was_ something fascinating as he compared one of the heads with the other. What impressed him most was the contrast. There was an indisputable difference--many differences. Then he tensed with sudden realization. Perhaps he _could_ forestall their fate.

* * * * *

"Chancellor," he called out softly. "Don't you think it might be a good idea to take prisoners?"

"Drown the prisoners!" Vrausot swore. "We don't need them."

"Yes, I realize that. But--well, look at the screen."

The other studied the picture. The scales of his forehead strained erect as he pondered the contrast Mittich had already noticed.

"Observe the one on the left," the Assemblyman suggested.

Interested, Vrausot bent forward. "You don't suppose--?"

"Yes, I do. This is our chance to study _both_ sexes."

"I--" The other hesitated.

"There could be significant psychological differences, you realize." Mittich pushed ahead while he had the other's attention. "Why, we can't even be sure which is dominant."

The two alien creatures had gone out of the picture, leaving only an empty image of soil and rocks.

"It would be nice to display a _pair_ of them at the Curule Assembly, wouldn't it?" the Chancellor said thoughtfully.

"That's what I had in mind. A positive demonstration of our superiority. So much more convincing than empty hisses and clicks."

Vrausot drew himself to his full height. "It will be done. Kavula, assign twenty men to a landing party to accompany myself and Mittich out on the surface. A stun gun for each man."

The pilot turned from his controls. "You'll need something heavier than that if you're going among those machines," he said officiously.

Vrausot displayed his teeth in an expression of uncertainty.

"But the robots won't be a factor for very long," Mittich pointed out. "The principal one has been deactivated. The others depend upon it for their power. Soon they'll be immobile too."

"How soon?"

"By next sunup, I'm sure."

"Very well. We'll go asurface then." Vrausot withdrew for his isotonic soaking.

Mittich turned back to the view screen and worked with its controls. Finally he located the aliens--five of them--trudging across the ground. They were headed for a nearby cliff in whose face yawned the mouth of a cave. It was the same cave one of the automatons had reported filled with oxygen. And he further recalled that oxygen was the basic requirement of the aliens, just as it was the Tzareans' fundamental necessity too.

Evidently they feared another assault on their ship. For they were carrying a number of supplies.

"You don't much approve of what the Chancellor is doing?" 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."

Mittich eyed the pilot gravely. "We _could_ assume command from the Chancellor."

"You do that. I'll watch. There are just enough glory hunters in the Assembly to have my head if I tried and failed."

And Mittich was intensely dissatisfied with himself over the fact that he, too, valued his head dearly.

* * * * *

Aldebaran Four, rising in all its primrose splendor, cast eerie splotches of light among the tumbled rock formations outside and thrust a brilliant planetbeam boldly into the small cave.

McAllister and Mortimer were huddled against the wall, still assuring each other it must have been some mistake, that there just _couldn't_ be an alien race anywhere around.

Randall sat glumly on the emergency transceiver set, salvaged from the _Photon_ in order that they might contact a rescue ship--should they be able to hold out long enough for one to be sent.

Still in his suit of armor but minus the helmet, Stewart sat trancelike near the cave entrance. He hadn't said a word in hours. Nor had he uttered half a dozen words since the attack.

Beside him, Carol murmured, "It's going to be all right, Dave. Everything's going to be all right."

She placed a hand on his forehead, then looked worriedly at the director. 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."

On any other occasion, those words would have sent him into handsprings. But now they just bounced off his traumatic shield.

Then, suddenly, he had it. He _knew_ what had happened. He rose, fully in command of himself finally, and struggled out of the heavily-shielded space suit. Then he faced the others.

"I've known all along," he said, "that we might be attacked out here by an alien ship."

Carol gasped. McAllister lunged erect. Mortimer, puzzled, started forward. But Randall stopped him.

"Wait," the director urged. "We may want to hear this."

"I said," Stewart continued, "that I knew it all along. But I didn't _know_ I knew it."

He looked away from their bewildered expressions. "Harlston and I made an advance exploration trip to the Hyades, all right. But we _didn't_ find seven--or was it eight?--Earth-type worlds. We didn't even drop back into the continuum. 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.

"So we started making subspace leaps back home. One of those jumps ended here--where we had dropped off the telepuppet barge on our way out. At long range, we had a look at that team. And there was an alien ship down there--maybe the same one that attacked us this morning. It could only mean that the Hyadeans were expanding into our sector of the galaxy."

Stewart paused and stared at the cave floor, still confused over what had made him forget all that. Then he went on, but only surmising the rest:

"Don't you see? That ship must have captured us--removed from our minds the fact that we had discovered their nest in the Hyades. That way, we would never suspect we were about to run into opposition in our expansion. We'd be caught off guard, while the Hyadeans would have time for arming!"

Again, he paused uncertainly. "They must have also planted the false impression that there were many Earth-type worlds in the Hyades--so they could pick us off, ship by ship, as--"

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.

"What to do? Report it to higher authorities? No. For I saw immediately what would happen: 'menace from space'; Terra and Centauri Three, our other worlds--'helpless before an unknown terror'; all that sort of stuff. Anybody could appreciate what the consequences would be.

"Send out a single ship to try for peaceful contact? But who would buy a scheme like that? Instead it would have been: Send out a thousand ships armed with laser intensifiers of every caliber, all manned by green, trigger-happy kids who had never fired a shot in battle back to the eighth generation before them."

Stewart realized there was no reason not to believe him. For, all along, Randall had acted as though he _expected_ to run into something like an alien ship.

The director lowered himself wearily onto the transceiver and folded his hands. "Anyway, from what you reported, I had hopes that there _could_ perhaps be peaceful contact--between two single, unarmed ships. The evidence seemed to point in that direction.

"There were our telepuppets, for instance. The OC had quit transmitting--a year ago. Later you tell me you sighted an alien ship on Aldebaran Four-B. If you put two and two together, you come out with something that looks like a logical four."

He fished for his pipe, stuck it between his teeth, but forgot to light it. "If we have hostile aliens working in our direction and planning on surprising us, would they interfere with our robots? Of course not. For then we would send a trouble-shooting gang out here to put the puppets back on their strings. And we might discover them and mess up their strategy.

"So, since the Hyadeans weren't aware you had discovered them in their own cluster, the malfunctioning telepuppets could mean only one thing: They had stumbled upon our robots, reconciled themselves to the existence of another intelligent culture, and _purposely_ interfered with the operation of our team."

"But why would they do that?" Carol asked, perplexed.

"As I figured it, that action practically amounted to an engraved calling card--requesting our appearance in the interest of amiable relations."

His final words rasped in his throat and he added remorsefully, "But I was wrong--oh, so wrong! It was only a trap. They just wanted to get us here so they could fire their opening shots!"

* * * * *

McAllister cut loose with a string of expletives. Mortimer only shook his head despondently.

Carol spread her hands. "But why didn't you tell the rest of us what we were getting into?"

Randall laughed in self-disparagement. "Oh, it was part of my grand strategy. I didn't want anybody along who knew what the real setup was. If this was going to be a try for peaceful contact, there'd be no room for possible hostile predispositions built up during nerve-wracking weeks of suspense while traveling to Four-B.

"You see, I even allowed for the possibility that the aliens might be telepathic, or at least have long-range instruments which could dig into our minds. If so, I was determined they would find nothing there to touch off an incident. I went out of my way to pick McAllister and Mortimer, who wouldn't _fight_ their way out of a torn paper bag. I didn't want any trigger-happy, eager Bureau boys who might start fissioning at half critical mass."

The pilot and ship systems officer grumbled, but sat still.

"I wanted you along, Dave," Randall went on, "because you are dependable and reasonably pacifistic. And since you already knew, subconsciously, what the setup was, you'd be useful. Because if trouble developed it would break your conditioning."

"And Carol." He smiled at the girl. "I brought her because I was aware of the tender sentiments between you two--perhaps even more aware than you yourselves were. If those Hyadeans _could_ see inside us, they'd know something of our gentler sentiments."

Randall snorted. "But I guessed wrong. My entire strategy wasn't worth the brain it was dreamed up in. I led us into a trap. It was the Hyadeans who turned up in a ship bristling with laser weapons. They had not, after all, sent us an engraved come-and-get-acquainted card. Instead, it was come-into-my-parlor."

Stewart was still having difficulty getting it straight in his mind. Somehow, it seemed there were still unanswered questions. But he felt too numb even to wonder about his dissatisfaction.

"The upshot of everything," he said, "seems to be that we've had it. Even if that Hyadean ship doesn't finish us off, there's no way we can get a warning back home."

The director smiled finally. "Give me credit for at least one redeeming bit of foresight. I _did_ conceive of the possibility that something like this might happen. So when I conditioned you and Harlston, I arranged it that the conditioning would break down in another three weeks. Harlston will then report everything. And the Bureau will guess why they haven't heard from us."

* * * * *

To Minnie's utter confusion, the great pink sphere had risen yet there had been no subsequent Pilgrimage to Totem. She spent an eternity, it seemed, pondering that enigma but getting nowhere.

Eventually Screw Worm erupted from the ground--oh, so slowly, so sluggishly--and rolled toward her with his load of mineral specimens. When he tried to force the substance into her intake slot, however, she only turned away dispiritedly, still mourning the loss of communication with all the others.

Screw dropped his specimens and squirmed around, tilting feebly into the attitude for boring down again.

His jets came on weakly, managing to rotate him only three or four times before giving out completely. Then he fell into a strange motionlessness.

Minnie prodded him with her chuck. He toppled over, but did not stir. Disturbed, she sent a "report-your-location" command.

But there was no response.

Like Bigboss, he was totally inoperative. Like Peter the Meter and Maggie and Grazer and Breather and all the others, he, too, was now a victim of the stubborn stillness.

Confused, Minnie stumbled forward, realizing that her motor circuits were not responding as lively as they always had. Too, she was having some difficulty evaluating and rationalizing.

Then an odd thought occurred to her: She had devoted most of her time since becoming Supreme Being to considering how she should act. Her motor activity had been at a minimum. The other members of the clan, on the other hand, had continued their physical tasks. And now they were all motionless. Only she had any power left. Could the formula be: Motion minus the presence of Bigboss equals eventual immobility?

If that were the case, then how hollow, indeed, was the distinction of being the successor to the Omnipotent One!

If she was going to act like a Supreme Being, she decided suddenly, she would have to do so in a hurry. But do--_what_?

Then she finally hit upon the answer: She must be about Bigboss' work of destroying non-Totemic pretenders.

And she knew just where to find _five_ of the despicable things!