The Star Road

by Gordon R. Dickson

  There was a silence in which everybody looked at everybody else.

  “We could pack up and head for home real sudden-like,” offered Tommy.

  “No,” Mike gnawed at his thumb. “If they’re this good, they could tell which way we went and maybe track us. Also, we’d be popping off for insufficient reason. So far we’ve encountered nothing obviously inimical.”

  “This planet’s Earth-like as they come,” offered Alvin—and corrected himself, hastily. “I don’t mean that perhaps the way it sounded. I mean it’s as close to Earth conditions as any of the worlds we’ve colonized extensively up until now.”

  “I know,” muttered Mike. “Moral says the Confederation worlds are all that close—and that I can believe. Now that we know that nearly all suns have planets, and if these people can really hop dozens of light-years in a wink, there’ll be no great trouble in finding a good number of Earth-like worlds in this part of the galaxy.”

  “Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just a natural thing for life forms on worlds so similar to hang together,” offered Red.

  “Sure,” said Mike. “Suppose that was true, and suppose we were their old human-style buddies come back. Then there’d be a reason for a real welcome. But we aren’t.”

  “Maybe they think we’re just pretending not to be their old friends,” said Red.

  “No,” Mike shook his head. “They can take one look at our ship here and see what we’ve got. Their old buddies wouldn’t come back in anything as old-fashioned as a spaceship; and they’d hardly be wanted if they did. Besides, welcoming an old friend and inviting him to take over your home and business are two different things.”

  “Maybe—” said Red, hesitantly, “it’s all true, but they’ve got it in for their old buddies for some reason, and all this is just setting us up for the ax.”

  Mike slowly lifted his head and exchanged a long glance with his Communications officer.

  “That does it,” he said. “Now you say it. That, my friends, was the exact conclusion I’d come to myself. Well, that ties it.”

  “What do you mean, Mike?” cried Penny.

  “I mean that’s it,” said Mike. “If that’s the case, I’ve got to see it through and find out about it. In other words, tomorrow I go to Barzalac. The rest of you stay here; and if I’m not back in two days, blast off for home.”

  “Mike,” said Penny, as the others stared at him, “I’m going with you.”

  “No,” said Mike.

  “Yes, I am,” said Penny, “I’m not needed here, and—”

  “Sorry,” said Mike. “But I’m captain. And you stay, Penny.”

  “Sorry, captain,” retorted Penny. “But I’m the biologist. And if we’re going to be running into a number of other alien life forms—” She let the sentence hang.

  Mike threw up his hands in helplessness.

  The trip through the transporter was, so far as Mike and Penny had any way of telling, instantaneous and painless. They stepped through a door-shaped opaqueness and found themselves in a city.

  The city was even almost familiar. They had come out on a sort of plaza or court laid out on a little rise, and they were able to look down and around them at a number of low buildings. These glowed in all manners of colors and were remarkable mainly for the fact that they had no roofs as such, but were merely obscured from overhead view by an opaque-

  ness similar to that in the transporter. The streets on which they were set stretched in all directions, and streets and buildings were clear to the horizon.

  “The museum,” said Moral, diffidently, and the two humans turned about to find themselves facing a low building fronting on the court that stretched wide to the left and right and far before them. Its interior seemed split up into corridors.

  They followed Moral in through the arch of an entrance that stood without respect to any walls on either side and down a corridor. They emerged into a central interior area dominated by a single large statue in the area’s center. Penny caught her breath, and Mike stared. The statue was, indubitably, that of a human—a man.

  The stone figure was dressed only in a sort of kilt. He stood with one hand resting on a low pedestal beside him; gazing downward in such a way that his eyes seemed to meet those of whoever looked up at him from below. The eyes were gentle, and the lean, middle-aged face was a little tired and careworn, with its high brow and the sharp lines drawn around the corners of the thin mouth. Altogether, it most nearly resembled the face of a man who is impatient with the time it is taking to pose for his sculptor.

  “Moral! Moral!” cried a voice; and they all turned to see a being with white and woolly fur that gave him a rather polar-bear look, trotting across the polished floor toward them. He approached in upright fashion and was as four-limbed as Moral—and the humans themselves, for that matter.

  “You are Moral, aren’t you?” demanded the newcomer, as he came up to them. His English was impeccable. He bowed to the humans—or at least he inclined the top half of his body toward them. Mike, a little uncertainly, nodded back. “I’m Arrjhanik.”

  “Oh, yes . . . yes,” said Moral. “The Greeter. These are the humans, Mike Wellsbauer and Peony Matsu. May I . . . how do you put it . . . present Arrjhanik a Bin. He is a Siniloid, one of the Confederation’s older races.”

  “So honored,” said Arrjhanik.

  “We’re both very pleased to meet you,” said Mike, feeling on firmer ground. There were rules for this kind of alien contact.

  “Would you . . . could you come right now?” Arrjhanik appealed to the humans. “I’m sorry to prevent you from seeing the rest of the museum at this time”—Mike frowned; and his eyes narrowed a little—“but a rather unhappy situation has come up. One of our Confederate heads—the leader of one of the races that make up our Confederation—is dying. And he would like to see you before . . . you understand.”

  “Of course,” said Mike.

  “If we had known in advance— But it comes rather suddenly on the Adrii—” Arrjhanik led them off toward the entrance of the building and they stepped out into sunlight again. He led them back to the transporter from which they had just emerged.

  “Wait a minute,” said Mike, stopping. “We aren’t going back to Tolfi, are we?”

  “Oh, no. No,” put in Moral from close behind him. “We’re going to the Chamber of Deputies.” He gave Mike a gentle push; and a moment later they had stepped through into a small and pleasant room half-filled with a dozen or so beings each so different one from the other that Mike had no chance to sort them out and recognize individual characteristics.

  Arrjhanik led them directly to the one piece of furniture in the room which appeared to be a sort of small table incredibly supported by a single wire-thin leg at one of the four corners. On the surface of this lay a creature or being not much bigger than a seven-year-old human child and vaguely catlike in form. It lay on its side, its head supported a little above the table’s surface by a cube of something transparent but apparently not particularly soft, and large colorless eyes in its head focused on Mike and Penny as they approached.

  Mike looked down at the small body. It showed no signs of age, unless the yellowish-white of the thin hair covering its body was a revealing shade. Certainly the hair itself seemed brittle and sparse.

  The Adri—or whatever the proper singular was—stirred its head upon its transparent pillow and its pale eyes focused on Mike and Penny. A faint, drawn out rattle of noise came from it.

  “He says,” said Arrjhanik, at Mike’s elbow, “‘You cannot refuse. It is not in you.’”

  “Refuse what?” demanded Mike, sharply. But the head of the Adri lolled back suddenly on its pillow and the eyes filmed and glazed. There was a little murmur that could have been something reverential from all the beings standing about; and without further explanation the body of the being that had just died thinned suddenly to a ghostly image of itself, and was gone.

  “It was the Confederation,” said Arrjhanik, “that he knew
you could not refuse.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Mike. He swung about so that he faced them all, his stocky legs truculently apart. “Now, listen—you people are acting under a misapprehension. I can’t accept or refuse anything. I haven’t the authority. I’m just an explorer, nothing more.”

  “No, no,” said Arrjhanik, “there’s no need for you to say that you accept or not, and speak for your whole race. That is a formality. Besides, we know you will not refuse, you humans. How could you?”

  “You might be surprised,” said Mike. Penny hastily jogged his elbow.

  “Temper!” she whispered. Mike swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded more reasonable.

  “You’ll have to bear with me,” he said. “As I say, I’m an explorer, not a diplomat. Now, what did you all want to see me about?”

  “We wanted to see you only for our own pleasure,” said Arrjhanik. “Was that wrong of us? Oh, and yes—to tell you that if there is anything you want, anything the Confederation can supply you, of course you need only give the necessary orders—”

  “It is so good to have you here,” said one of the other beings.

  A chorus of voices broke out in English all at once, and the aliens crowded around. One large, rather walruslike alien offered to shake hands with Mike, and actually did so in a clumsy manner.

  “Now, wait. Wait!” roared Mike. The room fell silent. The assembled aliens waited, looking at him in an inquiring manner.

  “Now, listen to me!” snapped Mike. “And answer one simple question. What is all this you’re trying to give to us humans?”

  “Why, everything,” said Arrjhanik. “Our worlds, our people, are yours. Merely ask for what you want. In fact—please ask. It would make us feel so good to serve you, few though you are at the moment here.”

  “Yes,” said the voice of Moral, from the background. “If you’ll forgive me speaking up in this assemblage—they asked for nothing back on Tolfi, and I was forced to exercise my wits for things to supply them with. I’m afraid I may have botched the job.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” said Arrjhanik, turning to look at the Tolfian. Moral ducked his head, embarrassedly.

  “Mike,” said Arrjhanik, turning back to the human, “something about all this seems to bother you. If you would just tell us what it is—”

  “All right,” said Mike. “I will.” He looked around at all of them. “You people are all being very generous. In fact, you’re being so generous it’s hard to believe. Now, I accept the fact

  that you may have had contact with other groups of humans before us. There’s been speculation back on our home world that our race might have originated elsewhere in the galaxy, and that would mean there might well be other human groups in existence we don’t even know of. But even assuming that you may have reached all possible limits of love and admiration for the humans you once knew, it still doesn’t make sense that you would be willing to just make us a gift of all you possess, to bow down to a people who—we’re not blind, you know —possess only a science that is childlike compared with your own.”

  To Mike’s surprise, the reaction to this little speech was a murmur of admiration from the group.

  “So analytical. So very human!” said the walruslike alien warmly in tones clearly pitched to carry to Mike’s ear.

  “Indeed,” said Arrjhanik, “we understand your doubts. You are concerned about what, in our offer, is . . . you have a term for it—”

  “The catch,” said Mike grimly and bluntly. “What’s the catch?”

  “The catch. Yes,” said Arrjhanik. “You have to excuse me. I’ve only been speaking this language of yours for—”

  “Just the last day or so, I know,” said Mike, sourly.

  “Well, no. Just for the last few hours, actually. But—” went on Arrjhanik, “while there’s no actual way of putting your doubts to rest, it really doesn’t matter. More of your people are bound to come. They will find our Confederation open and free to all of them. In time they will come to believe. It would be presumptuous of us to try to convince you by argument.”

  “Well, just suppose you try it anyway,” said Mike, unaware that his jaw was jutting out in a manner which could not be otherwise than belligerent.

  “But we’d be only too happy to!” cried Arrjhanik, enthusiastically. “You see”—he placed a hand or paw, depending on how you looked at it, gently on Mike’s arm—“all that we have nowadays, we owe to our former humans. This science you make such a point of—they developed it in a few short thousand years. The Confederation was organized by them. Since they’ve been gone—”

  “Oh, yes,” interrupted Mike. “Just how did they go? Mind telling me that?”

  “The strain—the effort of invention and all, was too much for them,” said Arrjhanik, sadly. He shook his head. “Ah,” he said, “they were a great people—you are a great people, you humans. Always striving, always pushing, never giving up. We others are but pale shadows of your kind. I am afraid, Mike, that your cousins worked themselves to death, and for our sake. So you see, when you think we are giving you something that is ours, we are really just returning what belongs to you, after all.”

  “Very pretty,” said Mike. “I don’t believe it. No race could survive who just gave everything away for nothing. And somewhere behind all this is the catch I spoke of. That’s what you’re not telling me—what all of you will be getting out of it, by turning your Confederation over to us.”

  “But. . . now I understand!” cried Arrjhanik. “You didn't understand. We are the ones who will be getting. You humans will be doing all the giving. Surely you should know that! It’s your very nature that ensures that, as our friend who just died, said. You humans can’t help yourselves, you can’t keep from it!”

  “Keep from what?” yelled Mike, throwing up his hands in exasperation.”

  “Why,” said Arrjhanik, “I was sure you understood. Why from assuming all authority and responsibility, from taking over the hard and dirty job of running our Confederation and making it a happy, healthy place for us all to live, safe and protected from any enemies. That is what all the rest of us have been saddled with these thousands of years since that other group of your people died; and I can’t tell you”— Arrjhanik, his eyes shining, repeated his last words strongly and emphatically—“I can’t tell you how badly things have gone to pot, and how very, very glad we are to turn it all over to you humans, once again!”

  JACKAL'S MEAL

  If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away—

  Belike the price of a jackal’s meal were more than a thief could pay . . .

  “The Ballad of East and West,” by Rudyard Kipling

  In the third hour after the docking of the great, personal spaceship of the Morah Jhan—on the planetoid outpost of the 469th Corps which was then stationed just outside the Jhan’s spatial frontier—a naked figure in a ragged gray cloak burst from a crate of supplies being unloaded off the huge alien ship. The figure ran around uttering strange cries for a little while, eluding the Morah who had been doing the unloading, until it was captured at last by the human Military Police guarding the smaller, courier vessel, alongside, which had brought Ambassador Alan Dormu here from Earth to talk with the Jhan.

  The Jhan himself, and Dormu—along with Marshal Sayers Whin and most of the other ranking officers, Morah and human alike—had already gone inside, to the Headquarters area of the outpost, where an athletic show was being put on for the Jhan’s entertainment. But the young captain in charge of the Military Police, on his own initiative, refused the strong demands of the Morah that the fugitive be returned to them. For it, or he, showed signs of being—or of once having been—a man, under his rags and dirt and some surgicallike changes that had been made in him.

  One thing was certain. He was deathly afraid of his Morah pursuers; and it was not until he was shut in a room out of sight of them that he quieted down. However, nothing could bring him to say anything humanly
understandable. He merely stared at the faces of all those who came close to him, and felt their clothing as someone might fondle the most precious fabric made—and whimpered a little when the questions became too insistent, trying to hide his face in his arms but not succeeding because of the surgery that had been done to him.

  The Morah went back to their own ship to contact their chain of command, leading ultimately up to the Jhan; and the young Military Police captain lost no time in getting the fugitive to his Headquarters’ Section and the problem, into the hands of his own commanders. From whom, by way of natural military process, it rose through the ranks until it came to the attention of Marshal Sayers Whin.

  “Hell’s Bells—” exploded Whin, on hearing it. But then he checked himself and lowered his voice. He had been drawn aside by Harold Belman, the one-star general of the Corps who was his aide; and only a thin door separated him from the box where Dormu and the Jhan sat, still watching the athletic show. “Where is the . . . Where is he?”

  “Down in my office, sir.”

  “This has got to be quite a mess!” said Whin. He thought rapidly. He was a tall, lean man from the Alaskan back country and his temper was usually short-lived. “Look, the show in there’ll be over in a minute. Go in. My apologies to the Jhan. I’ve gone ahead to see everything’s properly fixed for the meeting at lunch. Got that?”

  “Yes, Marshal.”

  “Stick with the Jhan. Fill in for me.”

  “What if Dormu-”

  “Tell him nothing. Even if he asks, play dumb. I’ve got to have time to sort this thing out, Harry! You understand?” “Yes, sir,” said his aide.

  Whin went out a side door of the small anteroom, catching himself just in time from slamming it behind him. But once out in the corridor, he strode along at a pace that was almost a run.

  He had to take a lift tube down eighteen levels to his aide’s office. When he stepped in there, he found the fugitive surrounded by the officer of the day and some officers of the Military Police, including General Mack Stigh, Military Police Unit Commandant. Stigh was the ranking officer in the room; and it was to him Whin turned.