by Hal Clement
He wished with every atom of his being that he had never detected the poachers, had never seen this unfortunate planet or heard of its race. No good had come of it—or very little, anyway. There would, admittedly, be metal here before long, brought up with the magma flows, borne by subcrustal convection-currents in the stress-fluid that formed most of the worlds bulk.
The poachers would be coming back for it, and he could at least deprive them of that. He would beam a report in toward the heart of the galaxy, making sure it did not radiate in the direction they had taken. Then there would be freighters to forestall them.
It was ironic, in a way. If any of this race should have survived the disturbance that would bring back the metal, that disturbance would be the salvation both of their species and their civilization. Most probably, however, the only witnesses would be a few half-starved, dull-minded barbarians, who would wonder, dimly, what was happening for a little while before temblors shattered their bodies forever.
There was nothing to keep him here, and the place was distasteful. More of the organic robots were approaching his position, but he did not want to talk any more. He wanted to forget this planet, to blot the memory of it forever from his mind.
With abrupt determination, he sent the dirt boiling away from his hull in a rising cloud of dust, pointed his vessel’s blunt nose into the zenith and applied the drive. He held back just enough to keep his hull temperature within safe limits, while he was still in the atmosphere.
Then, with detectors fanning out ahead, he swung back to the line of his patrol orbit, and began accelerating away from the Solar system. Ignorant of events behind him, he never sensed the flight of swept-winged metal machines that hurtled close below while he was still in the air, split seconds after he had left the ground.
He did not notice the extra radar beam that fastened itself on his hull, while the machine projecting it flung itself through the sky, computing an interception course. This was too bad, for the relays in that machine would have made him feel quite at home, and its propulsion mechanism would have given him more food for thought.
He might have sensed its detonation, for his pursuer had a nuclear warhead. But its built-in brain realized, as quickly as the agent himself could have, that no interception was possible within its performance limits. It gave up, shutting off its fuel and curving back toward its launching station. Even the aluminum alloys in its hull would have interested the agent greatly—but he was trying to think of anything except Earth, its inhabitants and their appalling technology.
His patrol orbit would carry him back to this vicinity in half a million years or so. The freighters would have been there by that time.
He wondered if he could bring himself to look at the dead world.
IT WAS THE general who explained it to the Parsons, at the University a few weeks later. He said, “He must have been in the devil’s own hurry. All he did was get his warning through, take a quick look at Anaconda, and zoom off. Ground-to-Air sent up a nuclear rocket to intercept him, but he got clear of it just in time, thank God! Plenty of heads rolled after that foul-up, I can assure you. Trigger-happy idiots they were!”
Candace, looking exceptionally attractive in a new, soft-blue linen dress which almost miraculously complemented both her figure and her coloring, said, “I’m glad, too. It must have had something to do with his intuitive alertness, from what I’ve been able to gather. Perhaps, he thought this world was going to blow up at any minute.”
“Hah!” said General Eades. “We’ve already located nine of those damned underground borers he told us about. At the rate they’re moving, our fiftieth-generation descendants will be out in space themselves before anything catastrophic happens. We’ll have the whole bunch spotted and disarmed by that time.”
He paused, chuckled again and added, “The weird part of it is that twenty-seven of the damned monsters are doing their stuff under Iron Curtain soil.”
Hal Parsons spoke thoughtfully. “I’ve been reading some of the pull-together reactions in the headlines, General. Won’t all this put you out of a job?”
“Not for a while,” said Eades. “Actually, I hope so. No responsible soldier wants war—ever. Makes our uniforms too dusty.”
“I still wish I knew how he produced that rain,” said Candace. “I’ve added meteorology to my other duties, hoping to get to the bottom of it.”
“Probably, he was just taking a bath,” said Eades. He puffed on his cigar meditatively and added, “It’s good to know you got a full professorship out of it, Parsons—and that you’re on your way to one yourself, Mrs. Parsons.” He fingered the new, bright extra star on his own collar, then asked, “What happened to the big, good-looking kid you had with you? I thought for sure he’d be in Hollywood by now.”
“Oh—poor Truck,” replied Candace. “He was all set to go. But he wanted to play in the homecoming game first. He broke his nose, and right now the movie brass isn’t interested. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s making out fine with one of those cute little red-headed co-eds on the campus.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said the general. He paused, frowning. “You know, it’s funny—but ever since that damned metal monster flew out of our lives, I feel as if I’d lost a friend.”
“I feel the same way,” said Hal.
“I guess we all do,” said Candace. She was much too wise, being a woman, to add, “I told you so.”