The Second Fredric Brown Megapack. Fredric Brown
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sir. I am hoping that if news of my mission is known to the entire fleet it will reach the aliens. And knowing that my ship is unarmed, they will make contact. I will see what they have to say to me, to us, and possibly that message will include a clue to the location of their home planet.”
Admiral Sutherland said, “And in that case that planet would last all of twenty-four hours. But what about the converse, Lieutenant? What about the possibility of their following you back?”
“That, sir, is where we have nothing to lose. I shall return to Earth only if I find out that they already know its location.”
“With their telepathic abilities I believe they already do—and that they have not attacked us only because they are not hostile or are too weak. But whatever the case, if they know the location of Earth they will not deny it in talking to me. Why should they? It will seem to them a bargaining point in their favor, and they’ll think we’re bargaining. They might claim to know, even if they do not—but I shall refuse to take their word for it unless they give me proof.”
Admiral Sutherland stared at him. He said, “Son, you have got something. It’ll probably cost you your life, but—if it doesn’t, and if you come back with news of where the aliens come from, you’re going to be the hero of the race. You’ll probably end up with my job. In fact, I’m tempted to steal your idea and make that trip myself.”
“Sir, you’re too valuable. I’m expendable. Besides, sir, I’ve got to. It isn’t that I want any honors. I’ve got something on my conscience that I want to make up for. I should have tried to stop Captain May from disobeying orders. I shouldn’t be here now, alive. We should have blasted out into space, since we weren’t sure we’d destroyed the alien.”
The admiral cleared his throat. “You’re not responsible for that, son. Only the captain of a ship is responsible, in a case like that. But I see what you mean. You feel you disobeyed orders, in spirit, because you agreed at the time with what Captain May did. All right, that’s past, and your suggestion makes up for it, even if you yourself did not man the contact ship.”
“But may I, sir?”
“You may, Lieutenant. Rather, you may, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“A ship will be ready for you in three days. We could have it ready sooner, but it will take that long for word of our ‘negotiations’ to spread throughout the fleet. But you understand—you are not, under any circumstances, to deviate on your own initiative from the limitations you have outlined.”
“Yes, sir. Unless the aliens already know the location of Earth and prove it completely, I shall not return. I shall blast off into space. I give you my word, sir.”
“Very good, Captain Ross.”
* * * *
The one-man spacer hovered near the center of Sector 1534, out past the Dog Star. No other ship patrolled that sector.
Captain Don Ross sat quietly and waited. He watched the visiplate and listened for a voice to speak inside his head.
It came when he had waited less than three hours. “Greetings, Donross,” the voice said, and simultaneously there were five tiny spaceships outside his visiplate. His Monoid showed that they weighed less than an ounce apiece.
He said, “Shall I talk aloud or merely think?”
“It does not matter. You may speak if you wish to concentrate on a particular thought, but first be silent a moment.”
After half a minute, Ross thought he heard the echo of a sigh in his mind. Then: “I am sorry. I fear this talk will do neither of us any good. You see, Donross, we do not know the location of your home planet. We could have learned, perhaps, but we were not interested. We were not hostile and from the minds of Earthmen we knew we dared not be friendly. So you will never be able, if you obey orders, to return to report.”
Don Ross closed his eyes a moment. This, then, was the end; there wasn’t any use talking further. He had given his word to Admiral Sutherland that he would obey orders to the letter.
“That is right,” said the voice. “We are both doomed, Donross, and it does not matter what we tell you. We cannot get through the cordon of your ships; we have lost half our race trying.”
“Half! Do you mean—?”
“Yes. There were only a thousand of us. We built ten ships, each to carry a hundred. Five ships have been destroyed by Earthmen; there are only five ships left, the ones you see, the entire race of us. Would it interest you, even though you are going to die, to know about us?”
He nodded, forgetting that they could not see him, but the assent in his mind must have been read.
“We are an old race, much older than you. Our home is—or was—a tiny planet of the dark companion of Sirius; it is only a hundred miles in diameter. Your ships have not found it yet, but it is only a matter of time. We have been intelligent for many, many millennia, but we never developed space travel. There was no need and we had no desire.”
“Twenty of your years ago an Earth ship passed near our planet and we caught the thoughts of the men upon it. And we knew that our only safety, our only chance of survival, lay in immediate flight to the farthest limits of the galaxy. We knew from those thoughts that we would be found sooner or later, even if we stayed on our own planet, and that we would be ruthlessly exterminated upon discovery.”
“You did not think of fighting back?”
“No. We could not have, had we wished—and we did not wish. It is impossible for us to kill. If the death of one single Earthman, even of a lesser creature, would ensure our survival, we could not bring about that death.”
“That you cannot understand. Wait—I see that you can. You are not like other Earthmen, Donross. But back to our story. We took details of space travel from the minds of members of that ship and adapted them to the tiny scale of the ships we built.”
“We built ten ships, enough to carry our entire race. But we find we cannot escape through your patrols. Five of our ships have tried, and all have been destroyed.”
Don Ross said grimly, “And I did a fifth of that: I destroyed one of your ships.”
“You merely obeyed orders. Do not blame yourself. Obedience is almost as deeply rooted in you as hatred of killing is in us. That first contact, with the ship you were on, was deliberate; we had to be sure that you would destroy us on sight.”
“But since then, one at a time, four of our other ships have tried to get through and have all been destroyed. We brought all the remaining ones here when we learned that you were to contact us with an unarmed ship.”
“But even if you disobeyed orders and returned to Earth, wherever it is, to report what we have just told you, no orders would be issued to let us through. There are too few Earthmen like you, as yet. Possibly in future ages, by the time Earthmen reach the far edge of the galaxy, there will be more like you. But now, the chances of our getting even one of our five ships through is remote.”
“Goodby, Donross. What is this strange emotion in your mind and the convulsion of your muscles? I do not understand it. But wait—it is your recognition of perceiving something incongruous. But the thought is too complex, too mixed. What is it?”
Don Ross managed finally to stop laughing. “Listen, my alien friend who cannot kill,” he said, “I’m getting you out of this. I’m going to see that you get through our cordon to the safety you want. But what’s funny is the way I’m going to do it. By obedience to orders and by going to my own death. I’m going to outer space, to die there. You, all of you, can come along and live there. Hitchhike. Your tiny ships won’t show on the patrol’s detectors if they are touching this ship. Not only that, but the gravity of this ship will pull you along and you won’t have to waste fuel until you are well through the cordon and beyond the reach of its detectors. A hundred thousand parsecs, at least, before my fuel runs out.”
There