But it wasn't until several seconds later that he realized he had used
two _clicks_ of his teeth and a _hiss_ to pronounce the strange word
between "the" and "ship."
* * * * *
Chancellor Vrausot was even more imposing in his home-environment suit.
The helmet made his head seem twice as large and the clear-plastic
snout cup enormously magnified his craggy teeth.
Just inside the main hatch, Assemblyman Mittich regarded the other and
swallowed a strong taste of neglected opportunity. He had soaked awake
all night, trying desperately to muster the will to accuse Vrausot of
malfeasance and assume command.
But he had to face the bitter fact that he lacked sufficient courage.
And, even more distressing, his cowardice was something he would have
to live with for the rest of his life--as he watched the destruction of
many worlds and billions of their inhabitants.
Odd, he thought, how so much could hinge on a single twist of
circumstance. Vrausot would return to the Shoal and become a symbol
around which Tzarean determination would rally.
On the other hand, if he, Mittich, were leader of this expedition, he
too would receive a hero's welcome. Only, his praises would be hissed
in the same breath with glorious tribute to the concepts of peaceful
contact.
Vrausot turned to check the readiness of his landing party.
"All stun weapons loaded and set?" he asked, his voice sounding coarse
both in Mittich's earphones and through a bulkhead speaker.
He received twenty affirmative tail flicks.
Of the pilot, standing by the hatch control switch, he demanded:
"Status of the aliens' robots?"
"They are _all_ impotent," Kavula reported back into the bulkhead
speaker. "The last one used up its remaining power as we descended."
Vrausot stepped toward the hatch, but hesitated again. "Kavula, you
will double check the detention compartment and see that the proper
protein nutrient is being synthesized."
The pilot acknowledged with a thump of his tail and opened the hatch.
A short while later the landing party was making its way across the
plain toward the area strewn densely with boulders and the cave in the
cliff beyond. Formality was strictly observed. Vrausot went first.
Twenty paces behind him came Mittich; then, at intervals of ten paces,
the remainder of the detail.
* * * * *
For Minnie, impotence was a strange and bewildering sensation as she
stood paralyzed out among the boulders.
Equilibrium gyros spinning too slowly to accomplish their function, she
had tilted over against a rock. In a final and desperate spasm, her
drill head had swung upward, toppled over, fallen a few centimeters and
come to rest precariously against a ridge.
Frantically, she fought relentless inertia. She opened special circuits
that would ordinarily have flooded her balancing system with emergency
current. But servomechanisms failed to respond and her chrome-plated
neck remained thrust toward a sun now well up in the sky.
Gears whirred faintly and her head turned ever so slowly on its axis,
bringing its video sensor to bear on the cave entrance.
It had been her determined efforts to reach the non-Totemic mobiles,
she reasoned, that had drained off all her energy. She had been aware
of the imminent power failure even during her last, frantic blows at
the rocks. Then, retreating, she had struggled desperately against
terrifying paralysis.
And now she stood almost powerless, whereas before her forced
ascendancy she had imagined she would be _All_ Powerful. It was an
ironic turn of fate indeed. Oh, how she longed now for the telemetric
voices of the clan, the crisp orders from Bigboss, the obedient,
sometimes plaintive responses of Screw Worm to her own directions.
Incapable of movement, she sensed finally and with much distress that
her rationalization processes themselves--were becoming--sluggish,
weak. She could hardly--think coherently--or with rapidity--any longer.
Slowly her head responded to the pull of gravity and turned once
more on its axis, the weighty chuck arcing down like a pendulum. It
reached the nadir of its swing and momentum carried it up in the other
direction. In a desperate effort, she locked the servo unit.
In that position, her video lens took in the huge, new symmetrical form
that had come to rest out on the plain.
It was--another Totem! And approaching--in her direction now were--many
other non-Totemic creatures--somewhat different in form--perhaps,
from--the ones Bigboss had--pursued. But--still insolent,
despicable--things, nevertheless.
Was it--possible that she--could still--discharge her--function
as--Supreme Being? If they--passed--close enough, it--would
require--only one--final--desperate--impulse--to--
* * * * *
With the others, Stewart crowded into the cave entrance, careful not
to let Carol press too far outside where she would no longer be in the
stream of oxygen flowing from the bowels of the satellite.
"They're coming!" McAllister exclaimed, withdrawing. Mortimer retreated
with him, striking out for a small passageway that fed from one of the
side walls.
Stewart strained forward, shading his eyes against the glare of
Aldebaran. The landing party's advance was half concealed by the
mass of rocks and outcroppings that hid most of their ship. Only
occasionally could he see part of a space-suited Hyadean form as its
clumsy, swaying stride brought it more completely into his line of
sight.
And vision was further complicated by the glint of sunlight off the
Mineral Analyzer's up-thrust drill head, which had finally come to rest
against the rock.
Carol tilted her head attentively and frowned. "I'm picking up the
_oddest_ radio stuff. The modulation breaks down into nothing more than
clicking and hissing sounds. I can't seem to get any meaning. It's
too--alien!"
Randall reached back into the cave for his hostile-atmosphere sheath.
"I'm going out there and see what happens. After all, I'm responsible
for our predicament."
But just then the first alien figure pulled into view, coming around
the boulder and pausing. Apparently sighting Randall's movement in the
cave entrance, the Hyadean raised a stubby arm that held a gleaming
metal instrument.
Randall pulled Carol back into the subterranean chamber. But Stewart
only stood there frozen in bewilderment.
Then the Mineral Analyzer's ponderous drill head slipped from its perch
and came plunging down. It shattered the Hyadean's helmet and almost
tore his grotesque head off, sending his weapon flying out across the
plain.
The creature lay there writhing for a moment, then was still, its
hideous crocodile head turned lifelessly toward Aldebaran.
Stewart, his eyes locked hypnotically on the prostrate form, could only
watch with shocked fascination as the other members of the landing
party appeared from behind the rocks. They stood silently around the
body, then turned back toward their ship.
"Tzareans"--"Tzarean Shoal"--"Curule
Assembly"--"Vrausot"--"Mittich"--"_uraphi_"--
Strange words and phrases whirled about in Stewart's thrashing
thoughts as a great flood of deeply buried experiences rushed
with cyclonic fury into the conscious levels of his mind. And he
realized that, just as the sight of the Hyadean ship had swept aside
the conditioning Randall had imposed upon him, so was the sight
of Hyadeans--Tzareans--hurling aside another, denser curtain of
conditioning.
He staggered back into the cave and fell sitting against the wall as
all the suppressed knowledge and memories engulfed him.
* * * * *
_Stewart and Harlston were seated beside the table in the Great Hall of
the Curule Assembly. They were having some difficulty making themselves
comfortable in chairs designed to accommodate Tzarean buttocks and
tail, rather than support the human form. They were manacled, but only
symbolically--with flimsy crepe paperlike handcuffs._
_"Our problem," Mittich, the Hisser of the Assembly was saying, "has
been clearly defined. We have captured the expeditionary ship of an
alien culture that appears to be expanding in the direction of the
Tzarean Shoal. We have taken pain to teach its two crew members the
rudiments of our language. And we have found that the official alien
response to this situation may or may not be hostile."_
_"Kill them! Kill them!" one of the Assemblymen clicked out as he
sprang up on his tail._
_The Great Hall resounded with click-hisses of approval and
disapproval--an equal measure of each, it seemed to Stewart._
_He watched Mittich smile--at least, it passed for a smile in the
Tzarean Shoal--tolerantly at the excited Assemblyman._
_"Killing our prisoners," he chided, "will not alter the fact that
alien expansion is under way in the direction of our Shoal."_
_Chancellor Vrausot lumbered down the central aisle, defying the
independence of the legislature as he had during all sessions which
Stewart and Harlston had attended as Exhibits A and B of the "Alien
threat" issue._
_Whacking his tail against the floor for attention, he stood before
the table and hissed vehemently, "We must arm to the limit of our
potential. We must dispose of these prisoners. We must attack their
centers of civilization before they attack_ ours!"
_Another Assemblyman rose imploringly. "But how can we do that? We
haven't fought a war in countless millennia! Once we were many and
mighty, as_ they _are now. But while they have grown, we have shrunk.
Why, our entire Shoal consists of only two civilized worlds. All the
others have long been in decay."_
_"Oh, we could take them by surprise and inflict much damage on their
worlds," Hisser of the Assembly Mittich agreed with Chancellor Vrausot.
"But they would recover. And we would be annihilated."_
_"Then what," the Chancellor asked scornfully, "would you propose that
we do?"_
_"Our choices are enumerable:_
_"One--we kill these captives and prepare a surprise attack. Two--we
condition our captives to return to the center of their civilization
and report that they found no worlds worth possessing in this sector."_
_Vrausot reared erect in protest. "But eventually the conditioning will
break! They will remember! And their race will then fashion an attack!"_
_"If we are to assume that they would attack in the first place,"
Mittich pointed out. "Our prisoners themselves aren't certain whether
their race would or would not._
_"Three--we could try instilling fear in them. Condition our captives
to go back home and report a powerful, vast Tzarean Shoal culture. But
that, I suspect, would only drive the aliens into a frantic arming
effort. And, once a formidable striking potential is accumulated, use
will be found for it--believe me._
_"Four--we could let them return and tell the truth--that the Tzareans
are a declining culture on its last tail, so to speak."_
_Again Chancellor Vrausot erupted in a series of violent hisses and
clicks. "But that might only encourage them to attack!"_
_"Precisely. So the only course left is Number Five. That is to
condition our prisoners to report_ indications _of an interstellar
culture in the Tzarean Shoal--nothing precise, nothing definite. Our
prisoners will say they made no visual observations. We thus present
the aliens with neither the temptation of our actual weakness, nor the
fear of our pretended strength._
_"At the same time we interrupt communications between them and the
robots they have stationed in the system halfway between their center
of civilization and ours. We shall hope they interpret that action as
signifying we have discovered their automatons and desire to meet them
in peace on that satellite._
_"We shall go there prepared for friendly contact. If they come_
unarmed, _we shall know there will be no fighting; that perhaps they
will even provide the stimulus and inspiration for regeneration of the
Tzarean culture. After all, it's a pretty big galaxy and there's plenty
of room for_ two _interstellar races."_
_"But," Vrausot hissed grimly, "what if they come_ armed?"
_"Then we shall know what fate holds in store for us. We will prepare
to the limit of our resources and acquit ourselves honorably."_
_Stewart watched Vrausot thump his tail on the floor in an expression
of displeasure._
_"The administration," click-hissed the Chancellor, "will agree to
that plan with two modifications: one--that the Tzarean ship we send
to contact the aliens will itself be armed so that the lives of our
brave men will not be jeopardized; two--that the highest administrative
authority be appointed to lead the expedition."_
* * * * *
"Dave! Oh, Dave! What's wrong?"
He opened his eyes and stared up into Carol's solicitous face. "I'm all
right," he said numbly.
Randall was tinkering with the transceiver, while Mortimer and
McAllister were moving about excitedly in the cave entrance.
"Come see what those Hyadeans are doing!" the latter exclaimed.
Stewart went over. In front of the cave, obscuring the formation
of outcroppings and boulders beyond, was a pile of shining, metal
instruments that looked like--
"The linear intensifiers off their laser guns!" Mortimer revealed.
"They've been stripping them off the ship for the past half hour. And
look!"
He pointed off to the side, indicating another mound of weapons that
were quite obviously of the class the landing party had worn as side
arms. In between the two piles and lying directly in front of the
cave's mouth was the body of the Tzarean who had been slain by the fall
of the Mineral Analyzer's drill head.
Even as Stewart watched, other Tzareans brought more weapons to add to
the two stacks.
"Dave!" Randall's voice sounded excitedly back in the cave. "Come
listen to this. I've tuned in on their frequency!"
Stewart accepted the earphones and listened to the clicks and hisses
that translated readily into:
"How many gun batteries left?"
"Two more and they will have all been dismantled."
"And the stun weapons?"
"There isn't a single one left on the ship."