"As what?" I said.
"Kid, don't you read your history?"
"He goes in for lurid novels," Clair said.
"Waal, it's like this. Right at the end of the war it was rumored the
Ruskies developed a super-duper weapon. Something really hot, that
would make the atom-bomb look like a kid's squirt gun. They didn't have
a chance to use it, and when the war was over they hid it out here in
the Belt somewheres, thinking maybe they'd get another chance. So them
guys think this is the place. Hmm-m, maybe they're right, and if we
could find that weapon before them.... Oh boy!"
I shook my head. It was a pretty little story, with one major flaw.
"There's no such weapon," I said. "I remember the history part of
it, all right. But I also remember what followed. Government sent
out hundreds of ships, in ten years they combed the Belt. No secret
asteroid. No Ruskie cache. No weapon. No nothing."
"Well, these guys are looking--"
I told him, "On Earth, people still look for Captain Kid's treasure,
and for sea serpents, too. They just won't find either. There aren't
any. Nope, Gramps--there's just a lot of copper on this asteroid,
that's all. If we could convince our visitors of that, they'd get out
quick."
"Well, we can't," Clair said. "You heard those two guys. Their boss is
as sure of finding that weapon here as he's sure of anything."
I began to smile, and I think I even laughed a little, because they
both looked at me queerly. "That's it," I said.
"That's what?" Evidently, my enthusiasm had not carried to Clair.
"The way we'll do it. We'll use Gramps' idea, the war of nerves...."
"Hot dog!" Gramps purred like an impossibly ancient kitten.
"We'll agree with them. Okay, there's a weapon here, a pretty awful
thing. We'll talk over our intercom and let them know we know it too."
"Uh-uh," said Clair, definitely interested. "They'll probably be
listening, just like us. Go on, Jerry, let's hear more."
"Sure. And we'll go a step further."
* * * * *
"I got you!" Gramps cried. "We'll really find the weapon." There just
was no convincing a die-hard romantic who had fought in the last war.
"Yes and no," I said. "There is no weapon, none here and none anyplace
else in the Belt. _Only we'll make believe that we find one._ A war of
nerves, Gramps. Maybe we can scare them the hell off this planet."
"Hmm-m," said Gramps. "I knew you'd come around to my way of thinking."
Because we all liked the idea, we continued to speak of it for hours,
and this is the way things boiled down.
Item. It had to be an awful weapon, something that would frighten a
man and make the little hackles stand up on the back of his neck, and
something which apparently could be applied most readily here on 4270.
They were convinced that a weapon did exist, good: they'd believe
almost anything we could concoct.
Item. This one I didn't like. Since our two talkative friends had
intimated that their boss knew the weapon couldn't be within our dome,
we'd have to go outside for the weapon and let them catch a glimpse or
two of us prowling about. That could be dangerous, because they could
pop us off with their disintegrators any time they got the urge. Which
would probably be as soon as they saw something tangible at which to
fire. We'd have to flit about like shadows. Less than shadows.
Item. We'd start "broadcasting" to them, and we'd pretend we didn't
know we were doing it. The bigger the lie the better it would sound,
and we'd have to start almost at once. This could be fun.
Item. We had nothing concretely in mind beyond that. But the important
thing, as Gramps put it, was this: we'd be in the driver's seat,
conducting the war exactly how we wanted, and they'd have to sit around
guessing.
Gramps was chipper enough to strum a few notes on his guitar.
* * * * *
For three Earth days by the clock in our living quarters, we managed to
stay out of trouble. And I think we were getting somewhere, too. Gramps
would go outside with Clair, poking around amid the rubble, talking
about how close they were coming. Then they'd let themselves be seen,
just for the briefest moment, and they'd scoot back inside our dome,
fast.
Probably, it was pretty safe at that. We could tell from what they said
via intercom that our visitors were interested. And, if they thought we
knew something, they'd be in no hurry to kill us. At the most, they'd
want to take us alive and see what they could learn.
Gramps and Clair were outside, talking, and as I listened, I got
an idea. If I went outside, too, our enemy would be confused into
believing there were more of us. I could invent a few new voices and
a few names and they might be led to believe we had a whole army here
with us. So what if our ship was small? This could have been the last
of several trips....
"Confuse 'em," Gramps had said once. "Get 'em on the ground and tramp
all over 'em with a war of nerves. Bury 'em under a pack of terrible
lies, that's what." I'd do it.
I stood atop a pinnacle of rock and made myself look busy. If they had
any lookouts perched high within their dome, they wouldn't miss seeing
me, and I was gambling everything on the fact that they wouldn't shoot
because they wanted to learn something from us.
Then I popped behind my pinnacle of rock, out of their range of vision,
and I hauled myself up the other side. I did this a few times, and
they probably thought half a dozen of us swarmed all over the rock,
exploring.