“I heard you the first time, Meikl,” the officer snapped. “Watch your tongue and your tone!”
A brief hush in the cabin as hostility flowed between them. There was only the hiss of air from the ventilators, and the low whine of the flagship’s drive units somewhere below.
The erect and elderly gentleman who sat behind the desk cleared his throat politely. “Have you any further clarifications to make, Meikl?” he asked.
“It should be clear enough to all of you,” the analyst retorted hotly. He jerked his head toward the misty crescent of Earth on the viewing screen that supplied most of the light in the small cabin. “You can see what they are, what they’ve become. And you know what we are.”
The two wingsmen bristled slightly at the edge of contempt in the analyst’s voice. The elderly gentlemen behind the desk remained impassive, expressionless.
The analyst leaned forward with a slow accusing glance that swept the faces of the three officers, then centered on his antagonist at the other end of the desk. “You want to infect them, Thaüle?” he demanded.
The wingsman darkened. His fist exploded on the desktop. “Meikl, you’re in contempt! Restrict yourself to answering questions!”
“Yes, sir.”
“There will be no further breaches of military etiquette during the continuance of this conference,” the elderly gentleman announced icily, thus seizing the situation.
After a moment’s silence, he turned to the analyst again. “We’ve got to refuel,” he said flatly. “In order to refuel, we must land.”
“Yes, sir. But why not on Mars? We can develop our own facilities for producing fuel. Why must it be Earth?”
“Because there will be some existing facilities on Earth, even though they’re out of space. The job would take five years on Mars.”
The analyst lowered his eyes, shook his head wearily. “I’m thinking of a billion earthlings. Aren’t they worth considering, sir?”
“I’ve got to consider the men in my command, Meikl. They’ve been through hell. We all have.”
“The hell was our own making, baron.”
“Meikl!”
“Sorry, sir.”
Baron ven Klaeden paused ominously, then: “Besides, Meikl, your predictions of disaster rest on certain assumptions not known to be true. You assume that the recessive determinants still linger in the present inhabitants. Twenty thousand years is a long time. Nearly a thousand generations. I don’t know a great deal about culturetics, but I’ve read that kulturverlaengerung reaches a threshold of extinction after about a dozen generations, if there’s no restimulation.”
“Only in laboratory cultures, sir,” sighed the analyst. “Under rigid control to make certain there’s no restimulant. In practice, in a planet-wide society, there’s constant accidental restimulation, unconsciously occuring. A determinant gets restimulated, pops back to original intensity, and gets passed on. In practice, a kult’laenger linkage never really dies out—although, it can stay recessive and unconscious.”
“That’s too bad,” a wingsman growled sourly. “We’ll wake it up, won’t we?”
“Let’s not be callous,” the other wingsman grunted in sarcasm. “Analyst Meikl has sensitivities.”
The analyst stared from one to the other of them in growing consternation, then looked pleadingly at the baron. “Sir, I was summoned here to offer my opinions about landing on Earth. You asked about possible cultural dangers. I’ve told you.”
“You discussed the danger to earthlings.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I meant ‘danger’ to the personnel of this fleet—to their esprit, their indoctrination, their group-efficiency. I take it you see none.”
“On the contrary, I see several,” said the analyst, coming slowly to his feet, eyes flashing and darting among them. “Where were you born, Wingman?” he asked the officer at the opposite end of the desk.
“Lichter Six, Satellite,” the officer grunted after a moment of irritable silence.
“And you?”
“Omega Thrush,” said the other wingsman.
All knew without asking that the baron was born in space, his birthplace one of the planetoid city-states of the Michea Dwarf. Meikl looked around at them, then ripped up his own sleeve, unsheathed his rank-dagger, and pricked his forearm with the needle point. A red droplet appeared, and he wiped at it with a forefinger.
“It’s common stuff, gentlemen. We’ve shed a lot of it. And each of us is a walking sackful of it.” He paused, then turned to touch the point of his dagger to the viewer, where it left a tiny red trace on the glass, on the bright crescent of Earth, mist-shrouded, chastely wheeling her nights into days.
“It came from there,” he hissed. “She’s your womb, gentlemen. Are you going back?”
“Are you an analyst or a dramatist, Meikl?” the baron asked sharply, hoping to relieve the sudden chill in the room. “This becomes silly.”
“If you land on her,” Meikl promised ominously, “you’ll go away with a fleet full of hate.”
Meikl’s arm dropped to his side. He sheathed his dagger. “Is my presence at this meeting still imperative, sir?” he asked the baron.
“Have you anything else to say?”
“Yes—don’t land on Earth.”
“That’s a repetition. No further reasons?—in terms of danger to ourselves?”
The analyst paused. “I can think of nothing worse that could happen to us,” he said slowly, “than just being what we already are.”
He snapped his heels formally, bowed to the baron, and stalked out of the cabin.
“I suggest,” said a wingsman, “that we speak to Frewek about tightening up the discipline in the Intelligence section. That man was in open contempt, Baron.”
“But he was also probably right,” sighed the graying officer and nobleman.
“Sir—!”
“Don’t worry, Wingsman, there’s nothing else to do. We’ll have to land. Make preparations, both of you—and try to make contact with surface. I’ll dictate the message.”
When the wingsmen left, it was settled. The baron arose with a sigh and went to peer morosely at the view of Earth below. Very delicately, he wiped the tiny trace of blood from the glass. She was a beautiful world, this Earth. She had
