would not understand,» she said. «Try us,» Hara said. «You lack the capacity.» «It seems to me that you, as we do, like comforts and luxuries,» Plank
said. «This place. It is beautiful, but different only in degree from the same sort of home on our planet.» «A moment,» she said. Each of them felt a slight alteration; suddenly they were standing atop a wooded hill. Around them the woodland was dense, heavily brushed, the ground littered with the debris of fallen limbs. «Do you think I needed a building? A home?» The woman was looking at them with a tiny smile. «Did you think the flowers were for me?» «What are you then?» Plank asked. «Even that you would not understand,» she said. «Can you show us?» Plank asked. «No.» «The Eater's basic form was functional,» Plank said. The woman-form began to fade. In its place was something, a
disturbance, not visible so much as felt, a twisting, a distortion of an area of space in front of them. And then they were seated again in the luxurious room, the beautiful woman before them. «I have one question,» Plank said. «It's been demonstrated that you have control over physical things, but how much is real and how much is in our minds?» «I could, if I chose, leave the area, here, as it was. In time the natural growth would creep back, but the other, the flowers from a far planet, the building itself, they would remain.» «What do you do?» Plank said. «What is your purpose?» «I told you that you lacked the ability to understand. Greatly simplified, we blend.» «With what?» Plank persisted. «With ourselves, with the universe.» «Is the universe limited?» Plank asked. «You would not understand.» Plank snorted. «Let me say, then, that it is not my function to educate you beyond your abilities,» the woman said. «And now I think we have reached the conclusion of our discussion.» «No,» Plank said, standing quickly. «You have merely talked with three humans. You can't possibly have an overall view of the race from such limited contact. You should, before making your decision, talk to our philosophers, our men of science and religion, our artists and writers, our physicians.» «That will not be necessary,» she said. «You deserve your chance.» Plank sat down, sighing. «And now you have a choice,» the beautiful woman continued. «I will return you either to your planet or your base on the satellite of your planet.» «As we are?» Plank asked. «I told you that you were most fortunate that your missiles did not destroy the data banks when you fired upon…» She said the name that could not be pronounced, the name of the Eater. «…'s planet. He was well trained in scientific methods, even if he did not have the patience or the
intelligence to use the material he gathered. He very carefully recorded the basic patterns—you think of them, I believe, as the dna chains, which form each of your individual cells. Had he cared to, he could have duplicated millions of you, but he was too shortsighted for that. However, you will be made as you were.» She laughed. «This should remove any lingering doubts that you are, for a fact, merely a more advanced form of food creature.» «And the others?» Hara asked. «Matt Webb? All the men who were taken from their ships between Earth and the Centauri systems?» «We could recreate their bodies,» the woman said. «They were measured before they were, ah, enjoyed. But apparently the human brain is a tasty morsel.» She smiled and Plank saw, or imagined he saw, a hint of the death's head she had shown them. «He described the taste so well it raised an atavistic appetite. He saved only the brains, and thus the personalities, of just three. You three.» Hara suppressed a shudder. Plank started to speak, angered, but there was a blackness. He was aboard the Pride. He knew it, could remember how he had been a part of it, but he was no longer. Once he had flowed in that ship, had known each intricate system. Now, as he looked at it from the interior, from the lounge, he was blocked out. His mind could not extend beyond the smoothness of the panels that hid the workings of the ship. He pinched the flesh of his arm between thumb and forefinger, twisting until he felt pain. Beside him Hara looked up, her eyes wet. A glow of life was in her cheeks. Heath stood as if dazed, hands hanging at his side. The voice was in their minds and in their ears. «Here is your final instruction. Remember it well. Do your best to impress it upon your
leaders. See to it that it is recorded well. You have your place. We leave it to you. Stay in your place. It is large, large enough to accommodate even your animal-breeding habits. Do not ever expect more. We give you your galaxy, and we will not hinder your development in any way. We will not intrude upon your privacy as long as you remain in your place. It is your nature, however, to want more than you have. You will never need more,
but you will want it. Admittedly, this warning is academic, for you lack the capacity to threaten us in any way, but we have had enough of you. We
will not interfere with your actions inside your place, but we will be here,
on the far side of the barrier, in the unlikely event that you develop to the point of threatening our privacy.» The Pride was moving, up and out, positioning itself for the first blink. «When you arrive near your satellite, you will be given time to leave this
ship. Do so at the first opportunity. Do not try to take it to the surface. I will be monitoring until the ship is empty.» «I've grown rather fond of it,» Plank said. «I'd like to keep it.» «I have already explained,» the voice said. «We will not contribute. Some of us were opposed to allowing a continuation of what is obviously
an artificial species. Feel fortunate that we allow you to exist in your own state.» Plank felt the generator building, felt the jump. It must have one heck of a jump, he was thinking, as he looked out the viewers and saw the familiar landmarks of the Orion Arm spread across the space before them. Walker Heath was rumbling around the ship. As the ship prepared for another blink, he returned to the lounge. «I don't know what makes this baby go,» he said, «but it must be something very much like our blink generator.» «She wiped it out of my mind,» Plank said. «I knew this ship.» «Yes, I remember,» Heath said. «She couldn't believe that we had developed the same principle.» He grinned excitedly. «Yes. It will work now. There's no one to stop us, no one to interfere. The blink drive will
work. It's all here.» He tapped his forehead. «She didn't touch it. She didn't believe it was there.» «So they are not all powerful; they are not infallible,» Plank said. «Plank, we have the galaxy. She left us with it. Let's not start wanting more right now,» Hara said. «No,» Plank said. «She did not leave us with the galaxy. It was ours, more so than it was the creature's. It was introduced into it. We are a product of it.» «Are you sure?» she asked. «Somewhere, someplace, back in the dawn of time, an apelike animal stood on his hind legs and pounded his chest,» Plank said. «That was my ancestry. She is not infallible. She depended upon the Eater's information to form her opinion of us. That was false data, for the Eater, himself, thought we were merely more advanced food creatures. But we are man. We grew in this galaxy. We grew from simple one-celled animals, which had formed from the soup of life on a young planet. And, by God, no animated force field is going to make me believe anything different.» As the Pride entered the Orion Arm, blinks became shorter. Out of boredom, Plank tried the manual controls he had once rigged. They had no effect. The tools from the old Pride were no longer in the cargo hold. They had no choice but to be mere passengers during the ship's huge leaps toward home. Plank had one consolation. He was alive, a man, and with him was the woman he loved. There was time for talk, for planning. They would be married immediately. With Hara in his arms, John Plank was happy. He would not have changed places with anyone in the universe, not even a being who could manipulate the whole works at will. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN When the Pride blinked out into normal space in close orbit around the moon, she registered on scanners. Hastily prepared defenses went into effect. A general alarm sent the moon's population into action. When the ship's contours proved to be those of an alien, two patrolling ships made course for her and, without preliminary, ten atomic warheads were launched from pads on the moon. Earth had found her external enemy
and all her warlike feelings told her to strike first and strike hard. She had seen one alien. Aboard the Pride, having no access to the ship's systems, Plank's first knowledge of the attack was the blossoming of ten small stars in the space surrounding the ship. Viewports darkened to protect their human eyes. Plank had been engaged in donning his lsg, because, denied access to the ship's communications, the radio in his suit offered the only chance to contact the moon. «You can't really blame them,» he said, as two ships closed in on the Pride, rockets making misty trails across empty space as the ships fired. «They saw the Eater.» He began to place his call in a steady voice, identifying himself. The attacking rockets exploded prematurely, detonated by the ship's systems or by an overseeing presence. Plank didn't know which and he didn't care. He just wanted out of the ship. He had work to do. The two attacking Earth ships were joined by a third, and the three were hard to convince. The attack continued while Plank patiently called. After shooting up an area of space around the Pride and nothing more, the ships withdrew a distance, orbiting the stationary Pride. Now both Heath and Hara were using the radio in Plank's lsg, adding their own identification to Plank's. Finally, a reply. «We order you to surrender,» the call came. «Yes,» Plank said. «We surrender.» «Stand by for boarding.» «I don't think that's possible,» Plank replied. «Open a lock and stand by for boarding, or we'll blast you out of space,» the voice said. It was tense. Plank pictured a young captain on one of the nearby ships. «You've tried that,» Plank said. «Look, we're Earthmen. We've given you
our identification numbers. We are not in control of this ship. That will all be explained.» «Stand by for boarding,» the voice said. One of the ships blasted, moving closer. «Go easy,» Plank yelled. The ship smashed into the field surrounding the Pride. Only the fact that it was just getting underway saved it from total destruction. As it
