"Sure," replied Dusty indifferently. "Go on."
"Then on the other end of the scale we have the advanced race. They
have discovered the phanobands, know about space flight and perhaps
have colonized the planets of other stars say within ten to fifty
light-years. A race of this stage of development would understand and
grasp the problem quickly. Then having been shown the problem, they
would make the move willingly and no doubt help, because they would
understand that their destiny is a part of the Galactic Destiny."
"Oh, yeah? You mean to say that if Marandis were found to lie across
the road like a stone wall you would all happily toss Marandis into a
barytrine field for a thousand years?"
* * * * *
Gant smiled serenely at his objection. "Well, doubt it as you will, but
we would. Of course, we know that no such case would ever come up. But
if it did--"
"Y'know what you remind me of," snapped Dusty. "You remind me of a
parent explaining to his kid that this castor oil is good for the
kid, and that if the parent needed it he would take it with a happy
smile--excepting of course that the parent does not need anything of
that nature. We have an old adage: he dies well who never faced a
sword! I think it applies here. Well, go on, Gant. Tell me where Terra
lies in your scale of values."
"That's what we are trying to determine. You are obviously not of the
pre-aware stage. You have your limited space travel and your historical
records which will preclude any attempt at forcing the affair upon you
and causing you to put the change as superstition that would be wiped
out."
"Thanks."
"On the other hand you are not of the advanced stage which could accept
a change in your night sky without trouble, nor will you accept it
willingly."
"How true. Now this brings us to the impasse, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
From across the table a man waved for attention. "It's more than that.
The moment Dusty Britton opened the distress phanoband, the secret of
the galactic rift was let out. Like everybody else, we put direction
finding equipment on the signal and have it located rather well. Then
we went back through our files and found that as far as we can tell,
Sol was mentioned as a possible beacon by one of our early exploratory
parties. One that disappeared. One that--"
"So what?" barked a man down the table from Dusty. "Seems to me that
Intercluster sits on its duff and waits for us to find rifts for them."
"Transgalactic isn't the only outfit with a spacecraft," snarled the
man from Intercluster angrily. "We've done our share."
"Not on my books," said the Transgalactic representative.
Intercluster eyed Transgalactic sourly. "What's the matter?" asked
Intercluster softly, "Are you mad because Intercluster happens to have
records on the rift you re-discovered?"
"Re-discovered my--"
Intercluster turned to Gant. "I leave it up to you," he said. "Our
records show that we, too, have rights to this rift."
Transgalactic hammered on the table. "Like hell!" he roared. "If you
have rights, why aren't you using them?"
"Because you and your gang concealed them from us until Scyth Radnor
got into trouble. A fine bunch of incompetents you are! A fine group to
be representatives of our culture. You can't even keep your hands off
native females--"
Barbara rose with a single lithe motion and hurled the contents of her
glass in the Intercluster man's face. He staggered back, floundered
back into his chair, landed hard and tilted it back on hind legs to go
over backward in a crash.
"Native female?" spat Barbara.
The room went breathlessly silent; the music stopped on a flubbed note;
the scent soured in a brief wave as though the man at the valves had
miscued. The lights flickered awkwardly.
Barbara stood there tense and ready. Her breasts were pushed against
the nylosheer of her dress; her stomach was flat and hard. She was
poised like a healthy wild animal daring any onlooker to try to tame
her.
Dusty rose lazily and pushed her back into her chair with a hand on her
shoulder. No other man in the room would have dared to lay a hand on
her except Dusty. This he somehow realized, and it gave him personal
gratification to know that he had once more done that which the
Marandanians would not have dared.
Then he went over and picked up the Intercluster man with one hand,
standing the man on his feet like a puppet.
"We apologize for reacting to your unfortunate choice of words," he
said smoothly. "We admit to being a bit primitive and impulsive. I came
unarmed," and he pointed to the band across his hips where the Dusty
Britton Blaster belt had protected the whipcord from the sun, "because
we are advanced enough to realize that we are impulsive and perhaps a
trifle inclined to act before considering the matter fully."
* * * * *
He turned away from the man and sauntered over to Gant Nerley. "I
apologize again," he said. "But I do suggest that our nerves are a bit
short. After all it is hard to sit here and listen to your friends and
fellow-citizens discuss the ways and means of making use of that rift
through the galaxy without once recognizing that we poor devils have to
move out whether we like it or not."
Gant smiled nervously. "I am trying to appreciate your position," he
said. "And in a way I do. But you must try to appreciate ours. We are
not taking anything away from you that you will miss. After all, Dusty,
what do you stand to lose, really?"
Dusty swallowed. It dawned on him what he was doing and why. And also
how he had managed to get away with it so far.
And in these fractions of a second, Dusty probably matured more than he
had grown during the great part of his life.
He realized suddenly that he was only Dusty Britton of The Space
Patrol and as phony as The Space Patrol itself. To date he had done
as good a job of wool-pulling as the best statesmen or scientists,
but only because he was an actor. He had succeeded in convincing the
whole bunch of them that the cultural level of Sol was higher than it
was. A scientist would have admitted his lack because that was the
way scientists operate. A businessman would have been baffled, and
a statesman would have tried to cover his indecision in a gout of
flowery language that would be known for what it was by this bunch of
high-brain characters.
But Dusty was an actor, blunt and not too smart. Modesty is not part
of an actor, while the ability to submerge himself is. He had become
Dusty Britton of The Space Patrol and the hero of a hundred adventures
in space among a people who were hard and fast because they were still
in struggle against their environment. He was tall and strong and young
and handsome, and he was Dusty Britton, fast on the draw, hard on the
trail, and the bes' dam' cabba-yero in all Mehi-co and he had them all
convinced that he and his friends spent their time racing around in
dangerous, imperfect spacecraft powered by reaction motors.
He was Dusty Britton who had plugged Scyth Radnor for playing games
with his woman. Then Dusty Britton had taken the controls of a
completely foreign spacecraft and had driven the ship halfway across
the galaxy through danger and God-knew-what (Dusty did not) horrors and
possible fates. The fact that Gant Nerley and a corps of engineers and
a bank of computing machines had supervised Dusty's every motion and
move did not detract from the feat in their eyes. It added, because
of the sheer guts of a man who would enter an alien ship and have the
self-confidence to touch the tiniest push-button.