Chapter V

Steve and Myra turned around at the sound of the voice and automatically stepped back into the room. It wasn't until a few seconds later that they realized what had happened. Someone here, light years away from Earth, had spoken to them in their own language! They looked at each other with amazement, then looked around for the speaker.

"I'm over here," the voice said, "to your right."

In that dimly-lit part of the room they made out the figure of an old man sitting in a high-backed chair, his hands stretched out on its arms.

"Please come in," he said.

Slowly they went over to him. He was a very old man, his face and hands deeply wrinkled, with white hair brushed neatly away from his intelligent forehead. There was a curious immobility about him that half-frightened them, but his eyes were kindly.

Steve and Myra sat down. There was silence for a minute. Then:

"I am very wise," the old man said abruptly.

Unable to help himself, Steve chuckled. Myra looked at him reprovingly.

"You mustn't laugh at me," said the old man. "I know much. What I say is true. You must remember that. And if you will be patient and humor me, I will tell you where you are, and how you came to be."

"You mean how we came to be _here_," corrected Steve.

"You mustn't interrupt me, either," said the old man irritably. "I mean what I say. I will tell you how you began and how you are related to me and many other trivial things like how you will leave here when you have decided to go."

"We were on our way to Jupiter," said Myra, "when we got kidnaped. Steve was going to teach at college there."

"It is a good thing to teach," the old man said. "Of course, you know very little, but it is admirable to teach those who know less. I have always been a teacher...." He trailed off into silence.

"Just what do you mean by 'always,'" asked Steve, "as long as we're being rude to each other. Just how old are you?"

"Who knows?" the old man answered slowly. "Hundreds of thousands of years."

Myra gave a little yip.

"Steve," she gasped. "His lips aren't moving!"

The oldster took this with equanimity.

"True," he said. "Because they aren't mine. At least not any more. You see, the real me is up here, in this vat. I'm just a brain. That thing you've been talking to is just a corpse. I hope you don't mind."

Myra shuddered.

"It's all right," the voice continued. "It's sanitary. They used the best embalming fluid."

"How come you speak English?" asked Steve.

"I don't," said the voice. "You might as well ask why people understand music written by people who speak different languages. I'm not speaking; I'm thinking out loud, if you will pardon the idiom. Music and thought are universal.

"Now I will tell you a story. Many millions of years ago there was a great planet, the greatest in the universe. On it was bred a race of geniuses. Mentally, the planet was ideal; physically, it was less fortunate. Our sun was about to become a nova. As a result, the day came when our scientists were forced to warn their people that they would have to leave the planet before it was burned to a cinder.

"There was one scientist who was more renowned than the others, and with good reason. It was he was had isolated the _gion_ beam, as it was called, which had the property of breaking down a substance to its component atoms and sending it wherever directed.

"To make the story easier to tell, I will admit that I was that scientist, and that my name is Gion, which you may call me, if you can do so without interrupting me."

He paused for a moment, as if marshalling his memories.

"Our scientists searched the universe with their instruments, seeking another planet. Finally this one was located. But it was too distant to be reached within a life-span by means of the antiquated space ships we had then. Only one method was possible--the _gion_ beam.

"Even this method was not completely satisfactory, because it would require terrific power to transport anything here and we hadn't fuel for more than one shipment. Therefore, it was necessary to make a careful selection of those who were to go and what they were to take with them.

"About three hundred were chosen--two hundred women and a hundred men, all unmarried and all about twenty. The emphasis was put on human beings, and not on equipment, so only certain surgical supplies were taken.

"It was decided that one master-scientist was to go, regardless of his age, to act as guide and counselor to the new race. I was chosen, and it was a very bad choice. You see, I was dying of cancer of the stomach at the time. Naturally, I protested, but they paid no attention. Instead they killed me."

* * * * *

"_What?_" gasped Myra.

"Exactly," said Gion. "They killed my body and locked my wise old brain in this glass case. Would you believe it--sometimes I get bored."

Steve laughed. "You know, Mr. Gion, you're amazing. Tell me, did your party ever get here?"

"No I'll tell you about the hairy people," said Gion reprovingly. "After we had set up our village and things were going along nicely, we met the people who lived on the planet long before we arrived. Those peach-colored scoundrels you've already met. Pack of thieves. They used to come around at night and steal anything they could lay their hands on. They would also watch up for hours while we worked and later imitate what we did. It didn't take them long to develop from dumb animals to malignantly intelligent creatures. Naturally we had to get rid of them.

"We drove them down to the sea. As we might have expected, they played a foul trick on us. They stole one of our ships and escaped across the ocean. Ever since they've been getting brighter and brighter and breeding like rabbits, until now they've overrun their continent and want ours. Naturally, we had to take steps."

"So you surrounded your continent with a field of insanity, producing vibrations to send them back gibbering?" asked Steve.

The voice laughed. "Is that what they told you? Crazy beasts--we did no such thing. It would be too much bother, too expensive and--well, impossible. Our defense is much simpler. We merely let them land and get out of their ships--then biff them with our insanity beam. And since we don't want any idiotic foreigners running around our forests, we pile them back into their ships and shoot them back home. Nothing to it."

Gion paused. Myra, who had been waiting for a propitious moment, said:

"I thought you were going to tell us how _we_ began?"

"I am. I am," he said. "Our new civilization was about a century old, when we began to receive messages from far out in space. They were from a ship that had taken off from our old planet just before the explosion, manned by an intrepid group of people who knew that they would never live to reach another land, but who hoped that their children might.

"The messages were pathetic. They were from the sole survivor of the original travelers, who said that their children had revolted against the rigid discipline he had tried to maintain, and that the ship was in a state of bedlam. Only the fact that he had sealed the engine room against them had prevented them from reaching the controls and destroying themselves. Inertia kept the ship on its course.

"Further messages from this old man reached us, saying that the rebels had reverted practically to wild beasts and were living in a state of indescribable filth. Our records show that the ship didn't reach your Earth until sixty years later, so you can imagine the condition its passengers were in when it finally landed. And those were your ancestors."

"A pretty picture," grimaced Steve. There was a moment's silence. Then said: "Why do you live underground, or at least work down here? Isn't it impractical?"

"On the contrary," explained Gion, "it's very practical. You see, we're a peace-loving people. We don't like trouble, and we don't believe in waging war to keep out of trouble at some future date. Consequently, we build all our factories underground, so that the hairy people can't blow them up whenever they feel like it by flying over and dropping bombs. Another reason is that we like the forest and believe it's healthy for our children to grow up there. We don't build cities to make targets for the potential enemy--human or bacterial, whichever it might be--but try to live in as close cooperation with nature as possible. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," agreed Myra. Steve nodded.

"And now," said Gion, "if I read your minds correctly, you'd like to get away from this garrulous old man and see some more of our country before you continue your interrupted journey to Jupiter."