The Star Road

by Gordon R. Dickson

  XI

  “Waking in a hospital,” Cal said later, “when you don’t expect to wake at all, has certain humbling effects.”

  It was quite an admission for someone like himself, who had by his very nature omitted much speculation on either humbleness or arrogance before. He went deeper into the subject with Joe Aspinall when the Survey Team Leader visited him in that same hospital back on Earth. Joe by this time, with a cane, was quite ambulatory.

  “You see,” Cal said, as Joe sat by the hospital bed in which Cal lay, with the friendly and familiar sun of Earth making the white room light about them, “I got to the point of admiring that alien—almost of liking him. After all, he saved my life, and I saved his. That made us close, in a way. Somehow, now that I’ve been opened up to include creatures like him, I seem to feel closer to the rest of my own human race. You understand me?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Joe.

  “I mean, I needed that alien. The fact brings me to think that I may need the rest of you, after all. I never really believed I did before. It made things lonely.”

  “I can understand that part of it,” said Joe.

  “That’s why,” said Cal, thoughtfully, “I hated to kill him, even if I thought I was killing myself at the same time.” “Who? The alien?” said Joe. “Didn’t they tell you? You didn’t kill him.”

  Cal turned his head and stared at his visitor.

  “No, you didn’t kill him!” said Joe. “When the rescue ship came they found you on top of him and both of you halfway down that rock slope. Evidently landing on top of him saved you. Just his own natural toughness saved him—that and being able to spread himself out like a rug and slow his fall. He got half a dozen broken bones—but he’s alive right now.” Cal smiled. “I’ll have to go say hello to him when I get out of here.”

  “I don’t think they’ll let you do that,” said Joe. “They’ve got him guarded ten deep someplace. Remember, his people still represent a danger to the human race greater than anything we’ve ever run into.”

  “Danger?” said Cal. “They’re no danger to us.”

  It was Joe who stared at this. “They’ve got a definite weakness,” said Cal. “I figured they must have. They seemed too good to be true from the start. It was only in trying to beat him out to the top of the mountain and get the Messenger off that I figured out what it had to be, though.”

  “What weakness? People’ll want to hear about this!” said Joe.

  “Why, just what you might expect,” said Cal. “You don’t get something without giving something away. What his race had gotten was the power to adapt to any situation. Their weakness is that same power to adapt.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about my alien friend on the mountain,” said Cal, a little sadly. “How do you suppose I got the Messenger off? He and I both knew we were headed for a showdown when we reached the top of the mountain. And he had the natural advantage of being able to adapt. I was no match for him physically. I had to find some advantage to outweigh that advantage of his. I found an instinctive one.”

  “Instinctive . . said Joe, looking at the big, bandaged man under the covers and wondering whether he ought not to ring for the nurse.

  “Of course, instinctive,” said Cal thoughtfully, staring at the bed sheet. “His instincts and mine were diametrically opposed. He adapted to fit the situation. I belonged to a people who adapted situations to fit them. I couldn’t fight a tiger with my bare hands, but I could fight something half-tiger, half something else.”

  “I think I’ll just ring for the nurse,” said Joe, leaning forward to the button on the bedside table.

  “Leave that alone,” said Cal calmly. “It’s simple enough. What I had to do was force him into a situation where he would be between adaptations. Remember, he was as exhausted as I was, in his own way; and not prepared to quickly understand the unexpected.”

  “What unexpected?” Joe gaped at him. “You talk as if you thought you were in control of the situation all the way.”

  “Most of the way,” said Cal. “I knew we were due to have a showdown. I was afraid we’d have it at the foot of the tower —but he was waiting until we were solidly at the top. So I made sure to get up to that flat spot in the tower first, and cut the rope. He had to come up the tower by himself.”

  “Which he was very able to do.”

  “Certainly—in one form. He was in one form coming up,” said Cal. “He changed to his fighting form as he came over the edge—and those changes took energy. Physical and nervous, if not emotional energy, when he was pretty exhausted already. Then I swung at him like Tarzan as he was balanced, coming over the edge of the depression in the rock.”

  “And had the luck to knock him off,” said Joe. “Don’t tell me with someone as powerful as that it was anything but luck. I was there when Mike and Sam got killed at the Harrier, remember.”

  “Not luck at all,” said Cal, quietly. “A foregone conclusion. As I say, I’d figured out the balance sheet for the power of adaptation. It had to be instinctive. That meant that if he was threatened, his adaptation to meet the threat would take place whether consciously he wanted it to or not. He was barely into tiger-shape, barely over the edge of the cliff, when I hit him and threatened to knock him off into thin air. He couldn’t help himself. He adapted.”

  “Adapted!” said Joe, staring.

  “Tried to adapt—to a form that would enable him to cling to his perch. That took the strength out of his tiger-fighting form, and I was able to get us both off the cliff together instead of being tom apart the minute I hit him. The minute we started to fall, he instinctively spread out and stopped fighting me altogether.”

  Joe sat back in his chair. After a moment, he swore.

  “And you’re just now telling me this?” he said.

  Cal smiled a little wryly.

  “I’m surprised you’re surprised,” he said. “I’d thought people back here would have figured all this out by now. This character and his people can’t ever pose any real threat to us. For all their strength and slipperiness, their reaction to life is passive. They adapt to it. Ours is active—we adapt it to us. On the instinctive level, we can always choose the battlefield and the weapons, and win every time in a contest.”

  He stopped speaking and gazed at Joe, who shook his head slowly.

  “Cal,” said Joe at last, “you don’t think like the rest of us.” Cal frowned. A cloud passing beyond the window dimmed the light that had shone upon him.

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said quietly. “For just a while, I had hopes it wasn’t so.”

  THE CATCH

  “Sure, Mike. Gee!” said the young Tolfian excitedly, and went dashing off from the spaceship in the direction of the temporary camp his local people had set up at a distance of some three hundred yards across the grassy turf of the little valley. Watching him go, Mike Wellsbauer had to admit that in motion he made a pretty sight, scooting along on his hind legs, his sleek black-haired otterlike body leaning into the wind of his passage, and his wide, rather paddle-shaped tail extended behind him to balance the weight of his erected body. All the same . . .

  “I don’t like it,” Mike murmured. “I don’t like it one bit.”

  “First signs of insanity,” said a female and very human voice behind him. He turned about.

  “All right, Penny,” he said. “You can laugh. But this could turn out to be the most unfunny thing that ever happened to the human race. Where is the rest of the crew?”

  Peony Matsu sobered, the small gamin grin fading from her pert face, as she gazed up at him.

  “Red and Tommy are still trying to make communication contact with home base,” she said. “Alvin’s out checking the flora—he can’t be far.” She stared at him curiously. “What’s up now?”

  “I want to know what they’re building.”

  “Something for us, I’ll bet.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.
I’ve just sent for the local squire.” Mike peered at the alien camp. Workers were still

  zipping around it in that typical Tolfian fashion that seemed to dictate that nobody went anywhere except at a run. “This time he’s going to give me a straight answer.”

  “I thought,” said Penny, “he had.”

  “Answers,” said Mike, shortly. “Not necessarily straight ones.” He heaved a sudden sigh, half of exhaustion, half of exasperation. “That young squirt was talking to me right now in English. In English! What can you do?”

  Penny bubbled with laughter in spite of herself.

  “All right, now hold it!” snapped Mike, glaring at her. “I tell you that whatever this situation is, it’s serious. And letting ourselves be conned into making a picnic out of it may be just what they want.”

  “All right,” said Penny, patting him on the arm. “I’m serious. But I don’t see that their learning English is any worse than the other parts of it—”

  “It’s the whole picture,” growled Mike, not waiting for her to finish. He stumped about to stand half-turned away from her, facing the Tolfian camp, and she gazed at his short, blocky, red-haired figure with tolerance and a scarce-hidden affection. “The first intelligent race we ever met. They’ve got science we can’t hope to touch for nobody knows how long, they belong to some Interstellar Confederation or other with races as advanced as themselves—and they fall all over themselves learning English and doing every little thing we ask for.

  'Sure, Mike!'—that’s what he said to me just now . . . 'Sure, Mike!’ I tell you, Penny—”

  “Here they come now,” she said.

  A small procession was emerging from the camp. It approached the spaceship at a run, single file, the tallest Tolfian figure in the lead, and the others grading down in size behind until the last was a half-grown alien that was pretty sure to be the one Mike had sent on the errand.

  “If we could just get through to home base back on Altair A—” muttered Mike; and then he could mutter no more, because the approaching file was already dashing into hearing distance. The lead Tolfian raced to the very feet of Mike and sat down on his tail. His muzzle was gray with age and authority and the years its color represented had made him almost as tall as Mike.

  “Mike!” he said, happily.

  The other Tolfians had dispersed themselves in a semicircle and were also sitting on their tails and looking rather like a group of racetrack fans on shooting sticks.

  “Hello, Moral,” said Mike, in a pleasantly casual tone. “What’re you building over there now?”

  “A terminal—a transport terminal, I suppose you’d call it in English, Mike,” said Moral. “It’ll be finished in a few hours. Then you can all go to Barzalac.”

  “Oh, we can, can we?” said Mike. “And where is Barzalac?” “I don’t know if you know the sun, Mike,” said Moral, seriously. “We call it Aimna. It’s about a hundred and thirty light-years from ours. Barzalac is the Confederation center-on its sixth planet.”

  “A hundred and thirty light-years?” said Mike, staring at the Tolfian.

  “Isn’t that right?” said Moral, confusedly. “Maybe I’ve got your terms wrong. I haven’t been speaking your language since yesterday—”

  “You speak it just fine. Just fine,” said Mike. “Nice of you all to go to the trouble to learn it.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t any trouble,” said Moral. “And for you humans—well,” he smiled, “nothing’s too good, you know.”

  He said the last words rather shyly, and ducked his head for a second as if to avoid Mike’s eyes.

  “That’s very nice,” said Mike. “Now, would you mind if I asked you again why nothing’s too good?”

  “Oh, didn’t I make myself clear before?” said Moral, in distressed tones. “I’m sorry—the thing is, we’ve met others of your people before.”

  “I got that, all right,” said Mike. “Another race of humans, some thousands or dozens of thousands of years ago. And they aren't around any more?”

  “I am very sorry,” said Moral, with tears in his eyes. “Very, very sorry—”

  “They died off?”

  “Our loss—the loss of all the Confederation—was deeply felt. It was like losing our own, and more than our own.” “Yes,” said Mike. He locked his hands behind his back and took a step up and down on the springy turf before turning back to the Tolfian squire. “Well, now, Moral, we wouldn't want that to happen to us.”

  “Oh, no!” cried Moral. “It mustn't happen. Somehow—we must insure its not happening.”

  “My attitude, exactly,” said Mike, a little grimly. “Now, to get back to the matter at hand—why did you people decide to build your transportation center right here by our ship?” “Oh, it's no trouble, no trouble at all to run one up,” said Moral. “We thought you'd want one convenient here.”

  “Then you have others?”

  “Ok course,” said Moral. “We go back and forth among the Confederation a lot.” He hesitated. “I've arranged for them to expect you tomorrow—if it's all right with you.” “Tomorrow? On Barzalac?” cried Mike.

  “If it’s all right with you.”

  “Look, how fast is this . . . transportation, or whatever you call it?”

  Moral stared at him.

  “Why, I don't know, exactly,” he said. “I'm just a sort of a rural person, you know. A few millionths of a second, I believe you'd say, in your terms?”

  Mike stared. There was a moment’s rather uncomfortable silence. Mike drew a deep breath.

  “I see,” he said.

  “I have the honor of being invited to escort you,” said Moral, eagerly. “If you want me, that is. I ... I rather look forward to showing you around the museum in Barzalac. And after all, it was my property you landed on.”

  “Here we go again,” said Mike under his breath. Only Penny heard him. “What museum?”

  “What museum?” echoed Moral, and looked blank. “Oh, the museum erected in honor of those other humans. It has everything,” he went on eagerly, “artifacts, pictures—the whole history of these other people, together with the Confederation. Of course”—he hesitated with shyness again— “there’ll be experts around to give you the real details. As I say, I’m only a sort of rural person—”

  “All right,” said Mike, harshly. “I’ll quit beating around the bush. Just why do you want us to go to Barzalac?” “But the heads of the Confederation,” protested Moral. “They’ll be expecting you.”

  “Expecting us?” demanded Mike. “For what?”

  “Why to take over the Confederation, of course,” said Moral, staring at him as if he thought the human had taken leave of his senses. “You are going to, aren’t you?”

  Half an hour later, Mike had a council of war going in the lounge of Exploration Ship 29XJ. He paced up and down while Penny, Red Sommers, Tommy Anotu, and Alvin Long-hand sat about in their gimballed armchairs, listening.

  “. . . The point’s this,” Mike was saying, “we can’t get through to base at all because of the distance. Right, Red?” “The equipment just wasn’t designed to carry more than a couple of light-years, Mike,” answered Red. “You know that. To get a signal from here to Altair we’d need a power plant nearly big enough to put this ship in its pocket.”

  “All right,” said Mike. “Point one—we’re on our own. That leaves it up to me. And my duty as captain of this vessel is to discover anything possible about an intelligent life form like this—particularly since the human race’s never bumped into anything much brighter than a horse up until now.”

  “You’re going to go?” asked Penny.

  “That’s the question. It all depends on what’s behind the way these Tolfians are acting. That transporter of theirs could just happen to be a fine little incinerating unit, for all we know. Not that I’m not expendable—we all are. But the deal boils down to whether I’d be playing into alien hands by going along with them, or not.”

  “You don’t think they’re tellin
g the truth?” asked Alvin, his lean face pale against the metal bulkhead behind him.

  “I don’t know!” said Mike, pounding one fist into the palm of his other hand and continuing to pace. “I just don’t know. Of all the fantastic stories—that there are, or have been, other ethnic groups of humans abroad in the galaxy! And that these humans were so good, so wonderful that their memory is revered and this Confederation can’t wait to put our own group up on the pedestal the other bunch vacated!”

  “What happened to the other humans, Mike?” asked Tommy.

  “Moral doesn’t know, exactly. He knows they died off, but he’s hazy on the why and how. He thinks a small group of them may have just pulled up stakes and moved on—but he thinks maybe that’s just a legend. And that’s it” He pounded his fist into his palm again.

  “What’s it?” asked Penny.

  “The way he talked about it—the way these Tolfians are,” said Mike. “They’re as bright as we are. Their science—and they know it as well as we do—is miles ahead of us. Look at that transporter, if it’s true, that can whisk you light-years in millisecond intervals. Does it make any sense at all that a race that advanced—let alone a bunch of races that advanced— would want to bow down and say ‘Master’ to us?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “All right,” said Mike, more calmly, “you know as well as I do it doesn’t. That leaves us right on the spike. Are they telling the truth, or aren’t they? If they aren’t, then they are obviously setting us up for something. If they are—then there’s a catch in it somewhere, because the whole story is just too good to be true. They need us like an idiot uncle, but they claim that now that we’ve stumbled on to them, they can’t think of existing without us. They want us to take over. Us!”

  Mike threw himself into his own chair and threw his arms wide.

  “All right, everybody,” he said. “Let’s have some opinions.”