Suddenly he leaped to his feet, his face pale for a moment, as he obviously tried to remember what he had said. Then he laughed.
“Clever. That’s the first time that particular trick has been played on me, and the last time. But, gentlemen, it didn’t do you any good. I don’t know, myself, how to go about killing me.” He laughed at the blank walls.
“Besides,” he continued, “the colonizing team must have the direction now. They’ll find you with or without me.”
He sat down again, smiling.
“That does it!” Darrig cried. “He’s not invulnerable. Something killed his friend Alfern.”
“Something out in space,” Cercy reminded him. “I wonder what it was.”
“Let me see,” Darrig reflected aloud. “The regularizing principle. That must be a natural law we knew nothing about. And underneath—what would be underneath?”
“He said the colonization team would find us anyhow,” Malley reminded them.
“First things first,” Cercy said. “He might have been bluffing us … no, I don’t suppose so. We still have to get the Ambassador out of the way.”
“I think I know what is underneath!” Darrig exclaimed. “This is wonderful. A new cosmology, perhaps.”
“What is it?” Cercy asked. “Anything we can use?”
“I think so. But let me work it out. I think I’ll go back to my hotel. I have some books there I want to check, and I don’t want to be disturbed for a few hours.”
“All right,” Cercy agreed. “But what—?”
“No, no, I could be wrong,” Darrig said. “Let me work it out.” He hurried from the room.
“What do you think he’s driving at?” Malley asked.
“Beats me,” Cercy shrugged. “Come on, let’s try some more of that psychological stuff.”
First they filled the Ambassador’s room with several feet of water. Not enough to drown him, just enough to make him good and uncomfortable.
To this, they added the lights. For eight hours, lights flashed in the Ambassador’s room. Bright lights to pry under his eyelids; dull, clashing ones to disturb him.
Sound came next—screeches and screams and shrill, grating noises. The sound of a man’s fingernails being dragged across slate, amplified a thousand times, and strange, sucking noises, and shouts and whispers.
Then, the smells. Then, everything else they could think of that could drive a man insane.
The Ambassador slept peacefully through it all.
“Now look,” Cercy said, the following day, “let’s start using our damned heads.” His voice was hoarse and rough. Although the psychological torture hadn’t bothered the Ambassador, it seemed to have backfired on Cercy and his men.
“Where in hell is Darrig?”
“Still working on that idea of his,” Malley said, rubbing his stubbled chin. “Says he’s just about got it.”
“We’ll work on the assumption that he can’t produce,” Cercy said. “Start thinking. For example, if the Ambassador can turn into anything, what is there he can’t turn into?”
“Good question,” Harrison grunted.
“It’s the payoff question,” Cercy said. “No use throwing a spear at a man who can turn into one.”
“How about this?” Malley asked. “Taking it for granted he can turn into anything, how about putting him in a situation where he’ll be attacked even after he alters?”
“I’m listening,” Cercy said.
“Say he’s in danger. He turns into the thing threatening him. What if that thing were itself being threatened? And, in turn, was in the act of threatening something else? What would he do then?”
“How are you going to put that into action?” Cercy asked.
“Like this.” Malley picked up the telephone. “Hello? Give me the Washington Zoo. This is urgent.”
The Ambassador turned as the door opened. An unwilling, angry, hungry tiger was propelled in. The door slammed shut.
The tiger looked at the Ambassador. The Ambassador looked at the tiger.
“Most ingenious,” the Ambassador said.
At the sound of his voice, the tiger came unglued. He sprang like a steel spring uncoiling, landing on the floor where the Ambassador had been.
The door opened again. Another tiger was pushed in. He snarled angrily and leaped at the first. They smashed together in midair.
The Ambassador appeared a few feet off, watching. He moved back when a lion entered the door, head up and alert. The lion sprang at him, almost going over on his head when he struck nothing. Not finding any human, the lion leaped on one of the tigers.
The Ambassador reappeared in his chair, where he sat smoking and watching the beasts kill each other.
In ten minutes the room looked like an abattoir.
But by then the Ambassador had tired of the spectacle, and was reclining on his bed, reading.
“I give up,” Malley said. “That was my last bright idea.”
Cercy stared at the floor, not answering. Harrison was seated in the corner, getting quietly drunk.
The telephone rang.
“Yeah?” Cercy said.
“I’ve got it!” Darrig’s voice shouted over the line. “I really think this is it. Look, I’m taking a cab right down. Tell Harrison to find some helpers.”
“What is it?” Cercy asked.
“The chaos underneath!” Darrig replied, and hung up.
They paced the floor, waiting for him to show up. Half an hour passed, then an hour. Finally, three hours after he had called, Darrig strolled in.
“Hello,” he said casually.
“Hello, hell!” Cercy growled. “What kept you?”
“On the way over,” Darrig said, “I read the Ambassador’s philosophy. It’s quite a work.”
“Is that what took you so long?”
“Yes. I had the driver take me around the park a few times, while I was reading it.”
“Skip it. How about—”
“I can’t skip it,” Darrig said, in a strange, tight voice. “I’m afraid we were wrong. About the aliens, I mean. It’s perfectly right and proper that they should rule us. As a matter of fact, I wish they’d hurry up and get here.”
But Darrig didn’t look certain. His voice shook and perspiration poured from his face. He twisted his hands together, as though in agony.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “Everything became clear as soon as I started reading it. I saw how stupid we were, trying to be independent in this interdependent Universe. I saw—oh, look, Cercy. Let’s stop all this foolishness and accept the Ambassador as our friend.”
“Calm down!” Cercy shouted at the perfectly calm physicist.
