I'd never known Miller to pull rank on any of the bunch. Only
deliberate thought would remind us that he was a colonel. But he
wasn't really a military man; he was a scientist whom the Army had
called in to keep a finger on a possibility that they had long known
might be realized. Yes--space travel. And Miller was the right guy for
the job. He had the dream even in the wrinkles around his deep-set
gray eyes.
Blaine wasn't the right guy. He was a fine technician, good at
machinery, radar--anything of the sort. And a nice fellow. Maybe he'd
just blown off steam--uncertainty, tension. I knew that no paper
relating to him would be marked, "Psychologically unsuited for task in
hand." But I knew just as surely that he would be quietly transferred.
In a big thing like this, Miller would surround himself only with men
who saw things his way.
That night we moved everything to our labs on the outskirts of St.
Louis. Every particle of that extraterrestrial wreck had been packed
and crated with utmost care. Klein and Craig went to work to build a
special refuge for that mud lump and what was in it. They were top
men. But I had got tied up with Miller more or less by chance, and I
figured I'd be replaced by an expert. I can say that I was a college
man, but that's nothing.
I guess you can't give up participation in high romance without some
regret. Yet I wasn't too sorry. I liked things the way they'd always
been. My beer. My Saturday night dates with Alice. On the job, the
atmosphere was getting a bit too rich and futuristic.
* * * * *
Later that evening, Miller drew me aside. "You've handled carrier
pigeons and you've trained dogs, Nolan," he said. "You were good at
both."
"Here I go, back to the farm-yard."
"In a way. But you expand your operations, Nolan. You specialize as
nurse for a piece of off-the-Earth animal life."
"Look, Miller," I pointed out. "Ten thousand professors are a million
times better qualified, and rarin' to go."
"They're liable to _think_ they're well qualified, when no man could
be--yet. That's bad, Nolan. The one who does it has to be humble
enough to be wary--ready for whatever _might_ happen. I think a knack
with animals might help. That's the best I can do, Nolan."
"Thanks, Miller." I felt proud--and a little like a damn fool.
"I haven't finished talking yet," Miller said. "We know that real
contact between our kind and the inhabitants of another world can't be
far off. Either they'll send another ship or we'll build one on Earth.
I like the idea, Nolan, but it also scares the hell out of me. Men
have had plenty of trouble with other ethnic groups of their own
species, through prejudice, misunderstanding, honest suspicion. How
will it be at the first critical meeting of two kinds of things that
will look like hallucinations to each other? I suspect an awful and
inevitable feeling of separateness that nothing can bridge--except
maybe an impulse to do murder.
"It could be a real menace. But it doesn't have to be. So we've got to
find out what we're up against, if we can. We've got to prepare and
scheme. Otherwise, even if intentions on that other world are okay,
there's liable to be an incident at that first meeting that can spoil
a contact across space for all time, and make interplanetary travel
not the success it ought to be, but a constant danger. So do you see
our main objective, Nolan?"