"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!"