A half hour after the big rubber hands of the telemanipulator yanked
Phil out of his cubicle in the black maria, he had been exposed to
so many sets of security checks that he guessed there were only two
places in America he could be headed for: the Heptagon or White House,
Junior, in New Washington.
Moved along by telemanipulators which did not seem to care which
side up they carried people, he had been prodded, thumped, scanned,
sampled, and subjected to other indignities. His footprints, retinal
blood vessel layout and other physical patterns and dimensions had been
taken, presumably for checking against his FBL dossier; likewise his
voice pattern and hand writing. He had been X-rayed and magnetically
tested for bombs that might be surgeried inside him. His breath and
blood had been checked for BW germs and viruses. He had been thoroughly
geigered. Lights had been flashed in his eyes, questions had droned in
his ears. Once or twice he thought he'd been put to sleep. All through
the process he'd felt a miserable and futile indignation.
But now, as a final rubber hand sliding in a slot in the wall hurried
him down a corridor and deposited him at the entrance to a large room,
he suddenly realized that he didn't care any more. In fact, he began to
feel calm.
And then he was being conducted to a seat by a human usher at last. He
looked around. Almost everyone he'd been mixed up with in the past few
days was here: Jack and Juno Jones, looking quite awestruck, along with
Cookie; Moe Brimstine with his incongruous red hair; Mitzie Romadka and
her father, pale and woozy; Sacheverell and Mary Akeley; Dr. Garnett
and Chancellor Frobisher from the Humberford Foundation; Dion and Dytie
da Silva, the latter with a cloak huddled around her; even Carstairs,
Llewellyn and Buck. Along with them were quantities of unfamiliar
faces--FBL people, Phil supposed. Others, presumably guards, lined the
walls.
Most of these individuals were watching three men who were seated
like judges behind a large desk across the room: Dr. Morton Opperly,
President Robert T. Barnes, and a stony faced man whom Phil recognized
as John Emmet, head of the FBL.
Emmet looked as thin as Opperly, but infinitely tougher. Like Opperly's
his face showed an intense and ceaseless curiosity, but a curiosity
that never became carefree, as if each new fact was for him a new
responsibility.
At the moment, Emmet was speaking to Dave Greeley, who was supervising
two white-smocked technicians as they telemanipulated Lucky, who was
limp as a dish cloth, into a low walled box set between banks of
electronic tubes and transistors. Apparently Greeley had voiced a doubt
as to the safety of the set up, for Emmet was telling Greeley that the
research division guaranteed that the low intensity stunfield in which
Lucky had now been placed would keep the green cat harmless.
But Phil heard only the tail end of the conversation as he was being
seated between Dr. Garnett and Sacheverell. The next moment the room
got very quiet. Emmet looked them all over.
Finally Emmet said, "I think you all know why you're here. I want the
fullest cooperation from everyone. Within the walls of security now
surrounding us, complete frankness is possible. I, myself, shall be as
frank as I expect you to be."
Emmet paused, then leaned forward a little. "To begin with, the
creature known as the green cat is real. Its powers of influencing
thought and emotion are also real. It truly intends the conquest of
America and of the entire world. Finally, it is neither mutant nor
mechanism, but an invader from the planetary system of another star.
Dr. Opperly, will you kindly outline the information you have obtained
from the being masquerading as Miss Aphrodite da Silva?"
Dr. Opperly's voice was faint but very clear.
"The eighth planet of the Star Vega--that is, if Miss da Silva and
I have got our indentifications straight--is earth-type though of
somewhat greater mass. Its landscape, Miss da Silva tells me, can be
pictured as endless, hard baked plains dotted with small lakes and
marshes, and groves of tall trees. On this planet, intelligence evolved
in a swift hoofed biped leaf eater, whose forelegs became specialized
as organs for manipulating branches and for brief food seeking climbs.
This specialization occurred when the creature was a primitive equine,
so that while its hind legs were developing very horselike hoofs, its
forelegs were becoming startlingly humanoid hands. The result was a
being remarkably similar to the satyrs and fauns of Greek mythology.
Miss da Silva, would you care to give these people an idea?"
Dytie stood up, whipped off her cloak, and stood facing them in hirsute
nudity. For a moment there was no reaction, then she stamped her hoofs
twice and her figure became real. She wrapped the cloak around her and
sat down.
"Miss da Silva tells me that clothing is not customary on Vega
Eight," Opperly observed. "They have also advanced farther than we in
technology, possessing force fields that divert gravity, also direct
atomic drive spaceships capable of approaching the speed of light.
But perhaps the most remarkable fact about this satyr race is that
they are symbiotes, and that their symbiotic partners are a sort of
creature that never evolved on Earth and that has a way of life with
which we are quite unfamiliar. For the moment I will say nothing about
these symbiotic partners, except that they have no technology, did not
originate on Vega Eight, and that they are not very intelligent, but
are responsible for the Vegan invasion of Earth."
Opperly ignored the murmurs greeting these paradoxical statements.
"Under the urging of their symbiotic partners, the satyrs--if I may
use that term--sent a spaceship to Earth. I gather that the 26 light
years were covered in something like 35, though of course the time
was much less to the voyagers. Approaching Earth, they put their
ship into an orbit and rendered it invisible. For about two more
years they stayed in the ship, except for careful exploratory trips
in a gravity-diverting space dinghy. They monitored our radio and TV
broadcasts, learned something of our languages and customs. The satyrs
realized that it would be possible to disguise themselves as earthlings
and eagerly did so, since they knew it would be highly desirable
for them to keep in close contact with their rather scatter-brained
symbiotic partners when the invasion began.
"And now," Opperly said slowly, "I come to the point where I must
describe the symbiotic partners and I'm not too sure that I can. Don't
you think, Miss da Silva--?" But Dytie shook her head emphatically.
Opperly shut his eyes for a moment, then he said, "You know how the
presence of a pet can occasionally bring harmony into a home. Or
sometimes it's a child. Well, imagine an animal that, at some nudge
in the evolutionary helter-skelter, began to specialize for this
purpose, and to evolve into a harmony bringer. Think how the cat has
established itself in our culture, largely on the basis of its charm,
and imagine how much more successful it would be if it could bring
us not only beauty but harmony and peace. Imagine such a creature
gradually evolving the power to create and spray hormones that would
dispel anger and create amity in other creatures, somewhat like the
flowers which evolved scents and odors to attract the bees. And think
of it developing, for self-defensive purposes, hormones to create
terror. Imagine it acquiring extrasensory perception and a sensitivity
to thought waves, and discovering in this way a whole new realm of
possibilities for bringing harmony and creating peace. Imagine it
becoming what might be called an esp-catalyst, either by acting as
an esp relay station amplifying and redirecting thought waves, or by
receiving, copying and projecting clouds of punched memory molecules.
Imagine it surviving and multiplying because it is paid for the peace
and emotional rapport it brings, as the cat is paid for its beauty, in
the coin of food, fondling and protection.
"Such a creature wouldn't develop general intelligence, because it
would always depend for its survival on the care of others. Yet it
would have a high intelligence in understanding and manipulating moods
and feelings in other animals. It would...."