before the voice of the Council negotiator was heard again.
“I wish to speak to someone in command,” he said in an emotionless monotone, trying not to betray surprise or emotion.
“I am in command here,” the girl said. “You wish our terms. All Com fleet and police vessels in space are to be evacuated within five standard days. Local forces are to disarm and place themselves at the disposal of the Dreel commanders when they arrive at each spaceport. All interworld commerce is to cease when ships reach their destinations.”
A choking sound became audible as if the Com negotiator couldn’t believe his ears. Finally he managed to continue. “We did not come to surrender, we came to reach an accommodation.”
The girl appeared unfazed. “You have no alternative. We do not offer death, only peace and order. You will not die. We will simply enter your bodies and direct your thoughts and actions.”
“But that is the same as death,” the negotiator countered.
“It is not death,” the Dreel girl insisted. “It is proper: Higher orders domesticate lower orders in nature; the horse, the cow, the romba, the worzeil—all serve you. We are a higher order, and therefore you must serve us.” She stated it matter-of-factly, as if she’d been insisting that her sky was blue or people grew old.
“We seek only to live without conflict, but we cannot accept your view of us,” the negotiator told her.
The girl showed some surprise. “It is natural,” she insisted. “Order. You cannot struggle against the way things are. It would be like saying that minerals are vegetables or that space is filled with oxygen. It would be false to say such things. It is false to say that the higher should not own the lower. It is against nature.”
Full circle. “We do not accept your view,” the negotiator repeated. “We cannot allow you to conquer our worlds.”
Still more surprise. “It is not something one accepts. Not something one allows. It
“Then we must fight.”
She was undisturbed. “The mule may kick but he will still plow. We have attempted a peaceful and methodical domestication. We will not argue, however. Often animals must be trained to do what is proper and right for their masters. If you will not do so now, this discussion is pointless.”
The negotiator had had just about enough. “What will happen,” he snapped back, “when the Dreel meet a higher race?”
She looked puzzled, not comprehending the question. “That is not possible,” she replied—and tuned them out.
“At almost the same point,” President Varga told them, “the Presidium ship and its attendant naval escorts were attacked by ships of the Dreel. Fourteen ships were in the Com party, thirteen were as heavily armed as anything now in service. What you heard was recorded here, by our message relay. None of the ships has been heard from again.”
Varga paused to let that sink in. That information had not been made public. Pandemonium took over the hall, and Varga needed several minutes to regain control. Finally he said, “Councillors, the Com was established by my race over a thousand years ago after a period of interplanetary war that was fought over ideologies now long dead. The awesome weapons that had exterminated life on nine worlds, including the world of my race’s origin, were sealed. The Com Police, established to monitor future threats to interplanetary peace, was composed of people prepared to apply whatever tools were necessary to prevent such conflicts. Properly supervised, the Com Police interfere not at all with a planet’s internal affairs, but they guarantee that planets shall harm only themselves, not others. Similar systems were established by the Rhone, the Tarak, the Milikud, and the Botesh, and these were integrated into a single structure when we merged. In fact, our races merged for the same reason that the Com system was established: not to influence one another but to keep harm from one another. The weapons were not, however, destroyed for no one knew what crises might arise—and, of course, the threat of their use has deterred many a would-be conqueror. Only a majority vote of all the members of this Council can unseal those weapons; only such a vote can direct the Com Police, who are trained in their use, to apply them. I think we must take that vote and I, speaking for myself and for the Presidium, must report to you a vote of twenty-six to five for so doing.”
And there it was, the request they had been expecting until now. The mission to Madalin had shown the Com to be impotent against alien invaders who claimed to have subjugated an entire galaxy.
Maps distributed with the briefing materials before the meeting showed that action had to be taken immediately. The Com comprised about two-thirds of one arm of the Milky Way. Assuming the Dreel came from Andromeda, as some of the captives had boasted, they had reached the Corn’s arm near its outer tip and were proceeding inward. It was most likely that the first civilization the Dreel had encountered was the human one—so the Dreel campaign had just begun. Still, they had absorbed at least one human world and had commanding positions on several more; they had had ample time to plant agents unobserved on almost all the worlds.
Now the Dreel, would accelerate their operations because within a year mass innoculation would have denied these human, then Rhone bodies—in geographical order. The Dreel would need those bodies; otherwise their expansion would be limited by their host’s gestation periods and by the time it would take for each new host to grow enough to be useful. From the Dreel point of view, most tragic of all would be loss of the knowledge they would have gained by subjugating established civilizations.
“Our military analysis is based on several assumptions,” Varga told the Council. “First, the Dreel are technologically in advance of us, at least in the ways that would count in a conflict. Second, they are at least as smart as we are. Given the fact that the opportunity for a high-profit takeover is diminishing—and given that they now know that we are aware of them—we assume they will launch an all-out attack on worlds within striking distance of their main fleet. That they haven’t done so yet indicates that though they are technologically superior, they are still numerically very much inferior to us. We caught them before they were ready; before their key agents were in place and set up to be fully effective; on all our worlds before they had secured enough resources to supply the fleets needed to beat us; before they had taken enough of our population to man those ships. We must hit them. Now. We must go after them with everything at our command. Now. We urge that you vote to open the weapons locker; that a general military and scientific mobilization be ordered throughout the Com; that we hit them first at Madalin, destroying the entire planet to draw their fleet into action before it is ready. I call for accelerated debate on this matter—and an immediate vote.”
The presentation was over. It was time for the most momentous decision by any of the races since they had sequestered the weapons. The debate wore on long after the sun set. Late in the night, they voted. Each Councillor had a specific key to the impregnible machinery that guarded the weapons locker; 1081 delegates would have to use their keys to enable the military experts to use the weapons. Weapons activation had been attempted before, but never successfully. Centuries earlier, the sponge syndicate had tried for a majority by drug blackmail. Had they succeeded, they would have been the absolute commanders of the then all-human Com; the attempt failed narrowly when the syndicate chief mysteriously disappeared—atomized, it was believed, by the Com Police.
This time, after the delicate point about the composition of the military staff was resolved by placing in overall command a Tarak—a capable general of a minority race—they voted, by almost three to one, to go ahead.
Immediately, the keys were activated. The proper signal was received by the great computers who guarded the machines. The highly trained staff was already in place.
And throughout the human and nonhuman worlds of the Com the word spread faster than could have been thought possible—the news that struck fear into every individual who heard it:
The weapons locker is open.
In the Madalin System
Although awareness of the weapons locker was almost universal—it was a nightmare employed to scare
