meter tall, they're covered with green fur, they don't sleep, and they're not human beings in my frame of reference!'
'Captain Davidson,' said the Cetian, 'doyou consider the native hilfs human, or not?' 'I don't know.'
'But you had sexual intercourse with one— this Selver's wife. Would you have sexual intercourse with a female animal? What about the rest of you?' He looked about at the purple colonel, the flowering majors, the livid captains, the cringing specialists. Contempt came into his face. 'You have not thought things through/' he said. By his standards it was a brutal insult.
The Commander of the Shackleton at last salvaged words from the gulf of embarrassed silence.
'Well, gentlemen, the tragedy at Smith Camp clearly is involved with the entire colony-native relationship, and is not by any means an insignificant or isolated episode. That's what we had to establish. And this being the case, we can make a certain contribution towards easing your problems here. The main purpose of our journey was not to drop off a couple of hundred girls here,
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though I know you've been waiting for 'em, but to get to Prestno, which has been having some difficulties, and give the government there an an-sible. That is, an ICD transmitter.*'
'What?' said Sereng, an engineer. Stares became fixed, all round the table.
'The one we have aboard is an early model, and it cost a planetary annual revenue, roughly. That, of course, was 27 years ago planetary time, when we left Earth. Nowadays they're making them relatively cheaply; they're SI on Navy ships; and in the normal course of things a robo or manned ship would be coming out here to give your colony one. As a matter of fact it's a manned Administration ship, and is on the way, due here in 9.4 E-years if I recall the figure.'
'How do you know that?' somebody said, setting it up for Commander Yung, who replied smiling, 'By the ansible: the one we have aboard. Mr. Or, your people invented the device, perhaps you'd explain it to those here who are unfamiliar with the terms?'
The Cetian did not unbend.' 'I shall not attempt to explain the principles of ansible operation to those present,' he said. 'Its effect can be stated simply: the instantaneous transmission of a message over any distance. One element must be on a large-mass body, the other can be anywhere in the cosmos. Since arrival in orbit the Shackleton has been in daily communication with Terra, now 27 lightyears distant. The message does not take 54
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years for delivery and response, as it does on an electromagnetic device. It takes no time. There is no more time-gap between worlds.'
'As soon as we came out of NAFAL time-dilatation into planetary space-time, here, we rang up home, as you might say,' the soft-voice Commander went on. 'And were told what had happened during the 27 years we were traveling. The time-gap for bodies remains, but the information lag does not. As you can see, this is as important to us as an interstellar species, as speech itself was to us earlier in our evolution. It'll have the same effect: to make a society possible.'
'Mr. Or and I left Earth, 27 years ago, as Legates for our respective governments, Tau n and Hain,' said Lepennon. His voice was still gentle and civil, but the warmth had gone out of it. 'When we left, people were talking about the possiblity of forming some kind of league among the civilized worlds, now that communication was possible. The League of Worlds now exists. It has existed for 18 years. Mr. Or and I are now Emissaries of the Council of the League, and so have certain powers and responsibilities we did not have when we left Earth,**
The three of them from the ship kept saying these things: an instantaneous communicator exists, an interstellar supergoveramenl exists. . . . Believe it or not. They were in league, and lying. This thought went through Lyubov's mind; he considered it, decided it was a
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reasonable but unwarranted suspicion, a defense-mechanism, and discarded it. Some of the military staff, however, trained to compartmentalize their thinking, specialists in self-defense, would accept it as unhesitatingly as he discarded it. They must believe that anyone claiming a sudden new authority was a liar or conspirator. They were no more constrained than Lyubov, who had been trained to keep his mind open whether he wanted to or not.
'Are we to take all—all this simply on your word, sir?' said Colonel Dongh, with dignity and some pathos; for he, too muddleheaded to compartmentalize neatly, knew that he shouldn't believe Lepennon and Or and Yung, but did believe them, and was frightened.
'No,' said the Cetian. 'That's done with. A colony like this had to believe what passing ships and outdated radio-messages told them. Now you don't. You can verify. We are going to give you the ansible destined for Prestno. We have League authority to do so. Received, of course, by ansible. Your colony here is in a bad way. Worse than I thought from your reports. Your reports are very incomplete; censorship or stupidity have been at work. Now, however, you'll have the ansible, and can talk with your Terran Administration; you can ask for orders, so you'll know how to proceed. Given the profound changes that have been occurring in the organisation of the Terran Government
since we left there, I should recommend that you do so at once.'There is
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no longer any excuse for acting on outdated orders; for ignorance; for irresponsible autonomy.'
Sour a Cetian and, like milk, he stayed sour. Mr. Or was being overbearing, and Commander Yung should shut him up. But could he? How did an 'Emissary of the Council of the League of Worlds' rank? Who's in charge here, thought Lyubov, and he too felt a qualm of fear. His headache had returned as a sense of constriction, a sort of tight headband over the temples.
He looked across the table at Lepennon's white, long-fingered hands, lying left over right, quiet, on the bare polished wood of the table. The white skin was a defect to Lyubov's Earth-formed aesthetic taste, but the serenity and strength of those hands pleased him very much. To the Hain-ish, he thought, civilisation came naturally. They fca3 been at it so long. ITiey lived the social-intellectual life with the grace of a cat hunting in a garden, the certainty of a swallow following summer over the sea. They were experts. They never had to pose, to fake. They were what they' were. Nobody seemed to fit the human skin so well. Except, perhaps, the little green men?
The deviant, dwarfed, over-adapted, stagnated creechies, who were as absolutely, as honestly, as serenely what they were. ...
An officer, Benton, was asking Lepennon if he and Or were on this planet as observers for the [he hesitated] League of Worlds, or if they claimed any authority to ... Lepennon took him up
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politely: 'We are observers here, not empowered to command, only to report. You are still answerable only to your own government on Earth.'
Colonel Dongh said with relief,' 'Then nothing has essentially changed—'
'You forget the ansible,' Or interrupted. 'I'll instruct you in its operation, Colonel, as soon as this discussion is over. You can then consult with your Colonial Administration.*'
'Since your problem here is rather urgent, and since Earth is now a League member and may have changed the Colonial Code somewhat during recent years, Mr. Or's advice is both proper and timely. We should be very grateful to Mr. Or and Mr. Lepennon for their decision to give this Terran colony the ansible destined for Pre-, stno. It was their decision; I can only applaud it. Now, one more decision remains to be made, and this one I have to make, using your judgment as my guide. If you feel the colony is in imminent peril of further and more massive attacks from the natives, I can keep my ship here for a week or two as a defense arsenal; I can also evacuate the women. No children yet, right?'
'No, Sir,' said Gosse. '482 women, now.'
'Well, I have space for 380 passengers; we might crowd a hundred more in; the extra mass would add a year or so to the trip home, but it could be done. Unfortunately that's all I can do. We must proceed to Prestno; your nearest neighbor, as you know, 1.8 lightyears distant. We'll stop here on the way home to Terra, but that's
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going to be three and a half more E-years at least. Can you stick it out?'
'Yes,' said the Colonel, and others echoed him. 'We've had warning now and we won't be caught napping again.'
