“Sure, Ross. Shall I look for a spaceport?”
Ross frowned. “Of course. Do you think these people are savages? We’ll go in openly and take our problem to them. Besides, imagine the radar setup they must have! We’d never sneak through even if we wanted to.”
Helena casually fingered the controls; there was the sickening swoop characteristic of her ship-handling, several times repeated. As she jerked them wildly across the planet’s orbit she explained over her shoulder, I had the darnedest time finding a really big spaceport on that little radar thing—oops!—but there’s a nice-looking one near that coastal city. Whee! That was close! There was one—sorry, Ross—on a big lake inland, but I didn’t like—Now everybody be very quiet. This is the hard part and I have to concentrate.”
Ross hung on.
Helena landed the ship with her usual timber-shivering crash. “Now,” she said briskly, “we’d better allow a little time for it to cool down. This is nice, isn’t it?”
Ross dragged himself, bruised, from the floor. He had to agree. It was nice. The landing field, rimmed by gracious, light buildings (with cooling fins), was dotted with great, silvery ships. They didn’t, Ross thought with a twinge of irritation, seem to be space vessels, though; leave it to Helena to get them down at some local airport! Still—the ships also, he noticed, were liberally studded with the fins. He peered at them with puzzlement and a rising sense of excitement. Certainly they had a function, and that function could only be some sort of energy receptor. Could it be—dared he imagine that it was the long-dreamed-of cosmic energy tap? What a bonus that would be to bring back with him! And what other marvels might this polished technology have to give them . . .
Bernie distracted him. He said, “Hey, Ross. Here comes somebody.”
But even Bernie’s tone was awed. A magnificent vehicle was crawling toward them across the field. It was long, low, bullet-shaped—and with cooling fins. Multiple plates of silvery metal contrasted with a glossy black finish. All about its periphery was a lacy pattern of intricate crumples and crinkles of metal, as though its skirts had been crushed and rumpled. Ross sighed and marveled: What a production problem these people had solved, stamping those forms out between dies.
Then he saw the faces of the passengers.
He drew in his breath sharply. Godlike. Two men whose brows were cliffs of alabaster, whose chins were strong with the firmness of steady, flamelike wisdom. Two women whose calm, lovely features made the heart within him melt and course.
The vehicle stopped ten yards from the open spacelock of the ship. From its tip gushed upward a ten-foot fountain of sparks that flashed the gamut of the rainbow. Simultaneously one of the godlike passengers touched the wheel, and there was a sweet, piercing, imperative summons like a hundred strings and brasses in unison.
Helena whispered, “They want us to come out. Ross—Ross—I can’t face them!” She buried her face in her hands.
“Steady,” he said gravely. “They’re only human.”
Ross gripped that belief tightly; he hardly dared permit himself to think, even for a second, that perhaps these people were no longer merely human. Hoarsely he said, “We need their help. Maybe we should send Doc Jones out first. He’s the oldest of us, and he’s the only one you could call a scientist; he can talk to them. Where is he?”
A raucous Jones voice bellowed through the domed control room: “Who wansh ol’ doc, hargh? Who wansh goo’ ol’ doc?”
Good old doc staggered into the room, obviously loaded to the gills by a very enjoyable backslide. He began to sing:
“In A.J. seven thirty-two a Jones from Jones’s Valley, He wandered into Jones’s Town to hold a Jonesist Rally. He shocked the gents and ladies both; his talk was most disturbing; He spoke of seven-sided doors and purple colored curbing—”
Jones’s eyes focused on Helena. He flushed. “I’m deeply sorry,” he mumbled. “Unforgivable vulgarity. Mom’ntarily. I’ got ladies were present.”
Again that sweet summons sounded.
“Pull yourself together, doctor,” Ross begged. “This is Earth. The people seem—very advanced. Don’t disgrace us. Please!”
Jones’s face went pale and perspiration broke out. “ ‘scuse me,” he mumbled, and staggered out again.
Ross closed the door on him and said, “We’ll leave him. He’ll be all right; nothing’s going to happen here.” He took a deep breath. “We’ll all go out,” he said.
Unconsciously Ross and Helena drew closer together and joined hands. They walked together down the unfolding ramp and approached the vehicle.
One of the coolly lovely women scrutinized them and turned to the man beside her. She remarked melodiously,
“Yuhsehtheybebems!”, and laughed a silvery tinkle.
Panic gripped Ross for a long moment. A thing he had never considered, but a thing which he should have realized would be inevitable. Of course! These folk—older and incomparably more advanced than the rest of the peoples in the universe—would have evolved out of the common language into a speech of their own, deliberately or naturally rebuilt to handle the speed, subtlety, and power of their thoughts.
But perhaps the older speech was merely disused and not lost.
He said formally, quaking: “People of Earth, we are strangers from another star. We throw ourselves on your mercy and ask for your generosity. Our problem is summed up in the genetic law L-sub-T equals L-sub-zero e to the minus T-over-two-N. Of course—”
One of the men was laughing. Ross broke off.
The man smiled: “Wha’s that again?”
They understood! He repeated the formula, slowly, and would have explained further, but the man cut him off.
“Math,” the man smiled. “We don’ use that stuff no more. I got a lab assistant, maybe he uses it sometimes.”
They were beyond mathematics! They had broken through into some mode of symbolic reasoning that must be as far beyond mathematics as math was beyond primitive languages!
“Sir,” he said eagerly, “you must be a scientist. May I ask you to—”
“Get in,” he smiled. Gigantic doors unfolded from the vehicle. Thought-reading? had the problem been snatched from his brain even before he stated it? Mutely he gestured at Helena and Bernie. Jones would be all right where he was for several hours if Ross was any judge of blackouts. And you don’t quibble with demigods.
The man, the scientist, did something to a glittering control panel that was, literally, more complex than the Wesley board back on the starship. Noise filled the vehicle—noise that Ross identified as music for a moment. It was a starkly simple music whose skeleton was three thumps and a crash, three thumps and a crash. Then followed an antiphonal chant—a clear tenor demanding in a monotone: “Is this your car?” and a tremendous chorally-shouted: “NO!”
Too deep for him, Ross thought forlornly as the car swerved around and sped off. His eyes wandered over the control board and fixed on the largest of its dials, where a needle crawled around from a large forty to a large fifty and a red sixty, proportional to the velocity of the vehicle. Unable to concentrate because of the puzzling music, unable to converse, he wondered what the units of time and space were that gave readings of fifty and sixty for their very low rate of speed—hardly more than a brisk walk, when you noticed the slow passage of objects outside. But there seemed to be a whistle of wind that suggested high speed—perhaps an effect peculiar to the cooling-fin power system, however it worked. He tried to shout a question at the driver, but it didn’t get through. The driver smiled, patted his arm and returned to his driving.
They nosed past a building—cooling fins—and Ross almost screamed when he saw what was on the other side: a curve of highway jammed solid with vehicles that were traveling at blinding speed. And the driver wasn’t stopping.
Ross closed his eyes and jammed his feet against the floorboards waiting for the crash which, somehow, didn’t come. When he opened his eyes they were in the traffic and the needle on the speedometer quivered at 275. He ble
w a great breath and thought admiringly: reflexes to match their superb intellects, of course. There couldn’t have been a crash.
Just then, across the safety island in the opposing lane, there was a crash.
The very brief flash of vision Ross was allowed told him, incredibly, that a vehicle had attempted to enter the lane going the wrong way, with the consequences you’d expect. He watched, goggle-eyed, as the effects of the crash rippled down the line of oncoming traffic. The squeal of brakes and rending of metal was audible even above the thumping music: “Is this your car?”
“NO!”
Thereafter, as they drove, the opposing lane was motionless, but not silent. The piercing blasts of strings and trumpets rose to the heavens from each vehicle, as did the brilliant pyrotechnic jets. A call for help, Ross theorized. The music was beginning to make his head ache. It had been going on for at least ten minutes. Suddenly, blessedly, it changed. There was a great fanfare of trombones in major thirds that seemed to go on forever, but didn’t quite. At the end of forever, the same tenor chanted: “You got a Roadmeister?” and the chorus roared: “YES!”
Ross realized forlornly that the music must contain values and subtleties which his coarser senses and undeveloped esthetic background could not grasp. But he wished it would stop. It was making him miss all the scenery. After perhaps the fifteenth repetition of the Roadmeister motif, it ended; the driver, with a look of deep satisfaction, did something to the control board that turned off a subsequent voice before it could get out more than a syllable.
He turned to Ross and yelled above the suddenly-noticeable rush of air, “Talk-talk-talk,” and gave a whimsical shrug.
During the moment his attention wandered from the road, his vehicle rammed the one ahead, decelerated sharply and was rammed by the one behind, accelerated and rammed the one ahead again and then fell back into place.
Ross suddenly realized that he knew what had caused those crumples and crinkles around the periphery of the car.
“Subtle,” the driver yelled. “Indirection. Sneak it in.”
“What?” Ross screamed.
“The commersh,” the driver yelled.
It meant nothing to Ross, and he felt miserable because it meant nothing. He studied the roadside unhappily and almost beamed when he saw a sign coming up. Not advertising, of course, he thought. Perhaps some austere reminder of a whole man’s duty to the race and himself, some noble phrase that summed up the wisdom of a great thinker . . .
But the sign—and it had cooling fins—declared:
BE SMUG!
SMOKE SMOGS!
And the next one urged:
BEAT YOUR SISTER
CHEAT YOUR BROTHER
BUT SEND SOME SMOGS
TO DEAR OLD MOTHER.
It said it on four signs which, apparently alerted by radar, zinged in succession along a roadside track even with the vehicle.
There were more. And worse. They were coming to a city.
Turmoil and magnificence! White pylons, natty belts of green, lacy bridges, the roaring traffic, nimble-skipping pedestrians waving at the cars and calling—greetings? It sounded like ‘suvvabih! Suvvabih! Bassa-bassa!’
The shops were packed and radiant, dazzling. Ross wondered fleetingly how one parked here, and then found out. A car pulled from the curb and a hundred cars converged on the spot, shrilling their sweet message and spouting their gay sparkles. Theirs too! There were a pair of jolting crashes as it shouldered two other vehicles aside and parked, two wheels over the curb and on the sidewalk.
“Suvvabih-bassa!” shouted drivers, and the man beside Ross gaily repeated the cry. The vehicle’s doors opened and they climbed out into the quick tempo of the street.
It was loud with a melodious babble from speaker horns ; visible everywhere. The driver yelled cheerfully at Ross: “C’mon. Party.” He followed, dazed and baffled, assailed by sudden doubts and contradictions.
It was a party, all right—twenty floors up a shimmering building in a large, handsome room whose principal decorative motif seemed to be cooling fins.
Perhaps twenty couples were assembled; they turned and applauded as they made their appearance.
The vehicle driver, standing grandly at the head of a short flight of stairs leading to the room, proclaimed: “I got these rocket flyers like on the piece of paper you guys read me. Right off the field. Twenny points. How about that?”
A tall, graying man with a noble profile hurried up and beamed: “Good show, Joe. I knew we could count on you to try for the high-point combo. You was always a real sport. You got the fish?”
“Sure we got the fish.” Joe turned and said to one of the lovely ladies, “Elna, show him the fish.”
She unwrapped a ten-pound swordfish and proudly held it up while Ross, Bernie, and Helena stared wildly.
The profile took the fish and poked it. “Real enough, Joe. You done great. Now if the rocket flyers here are okay you’re okay. Then you got twenny points and the prize.
“You’re a rocket flyer, ain’t you, Buster?”
Ross realized he was being addressed. He croaked: “Men of Earth, we come from a far-distant star in search of—”
The profile said, “Just a minute, Buster. Just a minute. You ain’t from Earth?”
“We come from a far-distant star in search of—”
“Stick to the point, Buster. You ain’t a rocket flyer from Earth? None of you?”
“No,” Ross said. He furtively pinched himself. It hurt. Therefore he must be awake. Or crazy.
The profile was sorrowfully addressing a downcast Joe. “You should of asked them, Joe. You really should of. Now you don’t even get the three points for the swordfish, because you went an’ tried for the combo. It reely is a pity. Din’t you ask them at all?”
Joe blustered, “He did say sump’m, but I figured a rocket flyer was a rocket flyer, and they come out of a rocket.” His lower lip was trembling. Both of the ladies of his party were crying openly. “We tried,” Joe said, and began to blubber. Ross moved away from him in horrified disgust.
The profile shook its head, turned and announced: “Owing to anunfortunate mistake, the search group of Dr. Joseph Mulcahy, Sc.D., Ph.D., got disqualified for the combination. They on’y got three points. So that’s all the groups in an’ who got the highest?”
“I got fifteen! I got fifteen!” screamed a gorgeous brunette in a transport of joy. “A manhole cover from the museum an’ a las’ month Lipreaders Digest an’ a steering wheel from a police car! I got fifteen!”
The others clustered about her, chattering. Ross said to the profile mechanically: “Man of Earth, we come from a far-distant star in search of—”
“Sure, Buster,” said the profile. “Sure. Too bad. But you should of told Joe. You don’t have to go. You an’ your friends have a drink. Mix. Have fun. I gotta go give the prize now.” He hurried off.
A passing blonde, stacked, said to Ross: “Hel-looo, baldy. Wanna see my operation?” He began to shake his head and felt Helena’s fingers close like steel on his arm. The blonde sniffed and passed on.
“I’ll operate her,” Helena said, and then: “Ross, what’s wrong with everybody? They act so young, even the old people!”
“Follow me,” he said, and began to circulate through the party, trailing Bernie and a frankly terrified Helena, buttonholing and confronting and demanding and cajoling. Nothing worked. He was greeted with amused tolerance and invited to have a drink and asked what he thought of the latest commersh with its tepid trumpets. Nobody gave a damn that he was from a far-distant star except Joe, who sullenly watched them wander and finally swaggered up to Ross.
“I figured something out,” he said grimly. “You made me lose.” He brought up a roundhouse right, and Ross saw the stars and heard the birdies.
Bernie and Helena brought him to on the street. He found he had been walking for some five minutes with a blanked-out mind. They told him he had been saying over and over again, “Men of Earth, I com
e from a far-distant star.” It had got them ejected from the party.
Helena was crying with anger and frustration; she had also got a nasty scare when one of the vehicles had swerved up onto the sidewalk and almost crushed the three of them against the building wall.
“And,” she wailed, “I’m hungry and we don’t know where the ship is and I’ve got to sit down and—and go someplace.”
“So do I,” Bernie said weakly.
So did Ross. He said, “Let’s just go into this restaurant. I know we have no money—don’t nag me please, Helena. We’ll order, eat, not pay, and get arrested.” He held up his hand at the protests. “I said, get arrested. The smartest thing we could do. Obviously somebody’s running this place—and it’s not the stoops we’ve seen. The quickest way I know of to get to whoever’s in charge is to get in trouble. And once they see us we can explain everything.”
It made sense to them. Unfortunately the first restaurant they tried was coin-operated—from the front door on. So were the second to seventh. Ross tried to talk Bernie into slugging a pedestrian so they could all be jugged for disturbing the peace, but failed.
Helena noted at last that the women’s wear shops had live attendants who, presumably, would object to trouble. They marched into one of the gaudy places, each took a dress from a rack and methodically tore them to pieces.
A saleslady approached them dithering and asked tremulously : “What for did you do that? Din’t you like the dresses?”
“Well yes, very much,” Helena began apologetically. “But you see, the fact is—”
“Shuddup!” Ross told her. He said to the saleslady: “No. We hated them. We hate every dress here. We’re going to tear up every dress in the place. Why don’t you call the police?”
“Oh,” she said vaguely. “All right,” and vanished into the rear of the store. She returned after a minute and said, “He wants to know your names.”
“Just say ‘Three desperate strangers’,” Ross told her.
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