"In that order," said Dillon instantly. "That's what we've tried to do.
We disguised ourselves as you because we wanted to learn how to make
friends before we tried. But what did we find, Coburn? What's your
guess?"
"You name it!" said Coburn.
"You Earth people," said Dillon, "are at a turning-point in your
history. Either you solve your problems and keep on climbing, or you'll
blast your civilization down to somewhere near a caveman level and have
to start all over again. You know what I mean. Our two more spectacular
interferences dealt with it."
"The Iron Curtain," said Coburn. "Yes. But what's that got to do with
you? It's none of your business. That's ours."
* * * * *
"But it _is_ ours," said Dillon urgently. "Don't you see, Coburn?
You've a civilization nearly as advanced as ours. If we can make
friends, we can do each other an infinite lot of good. We can complement
each other. We can have a most valuable trade, not only in goods, but in
what you call human values and we call something else. We'd like to
start that trade.
"But you're desperately close to smashing things. So we've had to rush
things. We did stop that Bulgarian raid. When you proved too sharp to be
fooled, we grew hopeful. Here might be our entering wedge. We hammered
at you. We managed to make your people suspicious that there might be
something in what you said. We proved it. It was rugged for you, but we
had to let you people force us into the open. If we'd marched out shyly
with roses in our hair--what would you have thought?"
Coburn said doggedly: "I'm still waiting for the terms. What do you
want?"
The General said something plaintive from his chair. It was to the
effect that Coburn still believed that Earth was in danger of conquest
from space.
"Look!" said Dillon irritably. "If you people had found the trick of
space travel first, and you'd found us, would you have tried to conquer
us? Considering that we're civilized?"
Coburn said coldly, "No. Not my particular people. We know you can't
conquer a civilized race. You can exterminate them, or you can break
them down to savagery, but you can't conquer them. You can't conquer
us!"
Then Dillon said very painstakingly: "But we don't want to conquer you.
Even your friends inside the Iron Curtain know that the only way to
conquer a country is to smash it down to savagery. They've done that
over and over for conquest. But what the devil good would savages be to
us? We want someone to trade with. We can't trade with savages. We want
someone to gain something from. What have savages to offer us? A planet?
Good Heavens, man! We've already found sixty planets for colonies, much
better for us than Earth. Your gravity here is ... well, it's
sickeningly low."
"What _do_ you want then?"
"We want to be friends," said Dillon. "We'll gain by it exactly what you
Earth people gained when you traded freely among yourselves, before
blocked currencies and quotas and such nonsense strangled trade. We'll
gain what you gained when you'd stopped having every city a fort and
every village guarded by the castle of its lord. Look, Coburn: we've got
people inside the Iron Curtain. We'll keep them there. You won't be able
to disband your armies, but we can promise you won't have to use
them--because we certainly won't help you chaps fight among yourselves.
We'll give you one of our ships to study and work on. But we won't give
you our arms. You'll have your moon in a year and your whole solar
system in a decade. You'll trade with us from the time you choose, and
you'll be roaming space when you can grasp the trick of it. Man, you
can't refuse. You're too near to certain smashing of your civilization,
and we can help you to avoid it. Think what we're offering."
Then Coburn said grimly: "And if we don't like the bargain? What if we
refuse?"
Dillon carefully put the ash from his cigarette into an ashtray. "If you
won't be our friends," he said with some distaste, "we can't gain
anything useful from you. We don't want you as slaves. You'd be no good
to us. For that reason we can't get anything we want from the Iron
Curtain people. They've nothing to offer that we can use. So our
ultimatum is--make friends or we go away and leave you alone. Take it or
leave it!"
There was a dead, absolute silence. After a long time Coburn said:
"Altruism?"