space that was new to them, and after blinking thousands of light-years, they had still had no encounter with them. Of course, the galaxy was an enormous place and the likelihood of a chance encounter was small, even if the aliens numbered in the billions
and were flying all over space. Still, it seemed likely that they would be few in number. Otherwise, if a swarming civilization had been conducting a search for man's home, they would have found it. Plank, himself, would have eventually discovered the solar system merely by systematically covering every star in the arm as he worked his way outward. It might have taken him 1,000 years; but a civilization that could produce the technology represented by the two ships, the planet of the empty tinker-toys and the medical techniques that allowed Plank's brain to live indefinitely as the guiding force of a starship would have been around for a long time. Perhaps, Hara suggested, they were not vitally interested in finding man, but merely in checking him now and then by lifting some of his ships. The idea of being checked on by alien intelligence was not new. But it was no more welcome to Plank than it had been to intelligent people in the days of flying saucers, when it was widely believed that alien spaceships made regular check flights over the Earth and even went so far as to pick up humans for examination. «I don't think there's anything systematic about it,» Plank said. «There's a certain randomness about the entire thing. We've studied the time intervals between ship disappearances. There's no pattern. We're quite sure now that the ships are discovered by reading the tiny disturbances in the continuum. We know the blink generator sends a signal ahead of itself and that such a signal can be read from vast distances. It stands to reason that the hydro-powered ships also made some sort of disturbance when, at turnaround, they built power suddenly to decelerate. The fact that all of the blink test vehicles disappeared shows that they send a much stronger signal, while the signal sent by the hydro ships must be weak and erratic, otherwise there might have been a 100 percent disappearance of the conventional ships, just as there was in the blink ships.» «What worries me is that we send such a signal each time we blink,» Hara said. «That's another reason why I feel there is a certain unexplained randomness about this whole thing,» Plank said. «There's almost an indifference on their part. Certainly, from almost anywhere in the galaxy, they can read our blinks. They know where we've been, and they probably can figure out where we're going. Yet they make no contact.» «Perhaps we're not really important enough to demand much of their time,» Heath said. «It's scary,» Hara said. «But you know, there are nuts on Earth who could make a new religion of this. They'd build blink ships and go off inviting them to seize the ship, praying and singing all the while, waiting to be taken by these godlike creatures with such fantastic powers to a better place.» «It would be nice to believe that,» Plank said. «There's such a casual disregard of the human individuals involved. Take Webb. He just vanished. Take my case. I wasn't asked if I wanted to be disembodied. I wasn't asked if I wanted to live, perhaps for thousands of years, without the niceties of human existence.» He was in his mobile form. It seemed to make the other two feel more comfortable. He looked at Hara. It was not exactly what he was thinking when he said, «No one asked me if I wanted to exist for a long period of time without even being able to eat a steak.» «To pursue Hara's thought, although I don't think any of us really believe it, perhaps they saved your life,» Heath said. «Perhaps they were doing a nice thing for you by giving you a form of life after your body was seriously harmed or destroyed.» «If so,» Plank said, «then they were the agent of my body's harm. They were the ones who seized my ship.» «Do you think there could be dozens, hundreds of ships like yours, with the brains of space people encased?» Hara asked. «The list of the missing numbers in the hundreds,» Heath said. «It's possible,» said Plank. «What we're trying to do,» Hara went on, «is understand the thinking of alien beings. It's rather futile to wonder what someone else is thinking, especially when that someone may be very, very different.» «Just how different is illustrated by that tinker-toy planet back there,» Plank said. «We know from it, and from the ships, that nothing is done with hands. It's all done mentally. In my case, I actually flow into a
mechanical thing through its electric wiring. Is that the way they do it? Or do they do it with pure mental force? Along the same line, the message beams can be nothing but mental force. They travel on no physical wavelength. They travel infinite distances with no time lapse.» «A race with powerful extrasensory ability. Telepathic,» Heath said. «And what else?» «Beings that exist as powerful force fields?» Plank asked. «All around us? Laughing at us?» «No need for hardware, then,» Hara said. «Toys?» Plank asked. «Some of the constructions on the tinker-toy planet had, I swear, no practical purpose.» «As we know practical purpose,» Heath said. «There was an accelerator. It was recognizable. Now we know they're good on subatomics. In effect, they do the old alchemist's magic, transmuting one element into another. Now you'll have to admit that this is an accomplishment of some value, so why waste the materials on constructions that begin nowhere and end nowhere? A culture that uses an accelerator should be rather practical. The inconsistencies of that planet bother me.» «I think the worst thing of all is that we've always wondered if we were alone in the universe, so we've made attempts to contact others. We used to have huge observatories dedicated to alien contact. We wanted so desperately to find someone out there to whom we could say, hey, we are and you are, how about that?» She paused for a moment before going on. «I remember reading that on the first unmanned probe launched on a path that would take it outside the solar system, they put a stylized drawing of a man and woman and a simple star chart for locating old Sol in relationship to nearby pointer stars. I thought it was a very touching, very human thing, but futile, since the little probe was traveling at a snail's pace and probably won't reach the vicinity of another star for
hundreds of years yet, if it's still out there. But we were so alone. And now that we know we're not alone, I'm not sure I didn't like it best the other way.» «This is interesting,» Plank said, having completed another blink while Hara was talking. «Take a look.» He flashed a chart onto a screen. «Here we are.» He illustrated their position with a blip of light. «And here is where I first became aware that I was no longer a man, but a brain inside a machine.» Behind the blip of light indicating the ship, a zigzagging line extended back into the heart of the galaxy. An extension of that line pointed toward the planet he called Plank's World. «As I told you, it was the only world supporting a considerable amount of life. The slug things, remember?» «It couldn't be them,» Hara said. «No,» Plank agreed. «But that seems to be where we're headed.» «They seemed interested in having you search out life- zone planets,»
Heath said. «Now they're there, if we're right in believing that the relayed signals are going to them.» «Why would they be there?» Hara mused. «There are several possibilities,» Plank said. «To help. To observe. To harm.» He left his mobile extension inert. «And whatever the reason, we're going to be ready.» «To do what?» Heath asked. «To talk, to question. I hope that's all,» Plank said. «But if not, then we have enough fire power on these two ships to pulverize the planet.» He approached the planet at sublight speed. All eyes, all ears on the alert. He had transfered Hara and Heath to the dark ship since it was more heavily armored. He left the dark ship dead in space, keeping contact, while easing the Pride closer. The dark ship was always in his view, under constant monitoring. At first hint of trouble he would blink it out of there to a predetermined safe distance. He was certain he was being observed. It did not stand to reason that they, being so advanced, could be surprised. At any moment he expected contact, so he kept the communications bank aboard the dark ship open. It was reasonable to believe that they would have their weapons, at least as powerful as the weapons aboard the ships, perhaps weapons he could not even imagine. What was the power of a being who could manipulate atomic subparticles at will? Once again, he felt futility. The first man to take up spear and rock and go after the tiger must have had the same feeling. And, because he shared a common humanity with that first hunter, he pressed on. When a tiger begins to pick off your fellow villagers one by one, you take arms and go after him. You know that if you are not quick, not smart, you, too, will be tiger bait, yet you press ahead. That's the way man is. Otherwise, back on
Earth, the jungles might be still full of tigers, hip deep in them, with man a small, frightened thing running for his life and hiding in holes in the ground. The planet looked deceptively peaceful. A water and oxygen world is beautiful from space. Blues and the cover of clouds, a large storm system in the southern hemisphere. Winter in the northern temperate zone. He boarded the scout in his mobile form and blinked to within the atmosphere to begin his sweeps. He had selected the largest landmass, the one that had been populated most densely by the small, sluglike creatures—the planet's dominant form of life. Moving at low altitudes, slightly higher than 1,500 meters, he scanned the ground. The first thing that came to his attention was the total absence of the little animals. Where there had been millions, there were none. He lowered, slowed his speed. A dozen instruments found and analyzed a new substance, piled
and strewn, a reeking, oily, glutinous mass. It was in evidence all over the landscape. He did not take time to collect a sample. He returned to his high speed survey. Hours later, he was convinced that the largest landmass was not only devoid of animal life, but was empty of the presence of any alien visible to his detection instruments. Reporting his findings to the others aboard the dark ship, he flashed across an ocean to the second continental landmass. The findings were the same. Scattered islands and two subcontinental masses were yet to be searched. He chose to cover the larger area first. Once again he found that
