other, and each will carry home more information than can be taken otherwise! We can agree on this same Crab Nebula as a rendezvous when the double-star has made another circuit, and if our people want to meet them they can do it, and if they are scared they can duck it! That's my proposal! And he'll take it, or Dort and I blow up their ship and the Llanvabon blasts what's left!'
He glared about him while he waited for the translation to reach the tense small stocky figures about him. He could tell when it came because the tenseness changed.
The figures stirred. They made gestures. One of them made convulsive movements. It lay down on the soft floor and kicked. Others leaned against its walls and shook.
The voice in Tommy Doit's helmet phones had been strictly crisp and professional, before, but now it sounded blankly amazed.
'He says, sir, that it is a good joke. Because the two crew members he sent to our ship, and that you passed on the way, have their spacesuits stuffed with atomic explosive too, sir, and he intended to make the very same offer and threat! Of course he accepts, sir. Your ship is worth more to him than his own, and his is worth more to you than the Llanvabon. It appears, sir, to be a deal.'
Then Tommy Dort realized what the convulsive movements of the aliens were.
They were laughter.
It wasn't quite as simple as the skipper had outlined it. The actual working-out of the proposal was complicated. For three days the crews of the two ships were intermingled, the aliens learning the workings of the Llanvabon's engines, and the men learning the controls of the black spaceship. It was a good joke—but it wasn't all a joke. There were men on the black ship, and aliens on the Llanvabon, ready at an instant's notice to blow up the vessels in question. And they would have done it in case of need, for which reason the need did not appear. But it was, actually, a better arrangement to have two expeditions return to two civilizations, under the current arrangement, than for either to return alone.
There were differences, though. There was some dispute about the removal of records. In most cases the dispute was settled by the destruction of the records. There was more trouble caused by the Llanvabon's books, and the alien equivalent of a ship's library, containing works which approximated the novels of Earth. But those items were valuable to possible friendship, because they would show the two cultures, each to the other, from the viewpoint of normal citizens and without propaganda.
But nerves were tense during those three days. Aliens unloaded and inspected the foodstuffs intended for the men on the black ship. Men transshipped the foodstuffs the aliens would need to return to their home. There were endless details, from the exchange of lighting equipment to suit the eyesight of the exchanging crews, to a final checkup of apparatus. A joint inspection party of both races verified that all detector devices had been smashed but not removed, so that they could not be used for trailing and had not been smuggled away. And of course, the aliens were anxious not to leave any useful weapon on the black ship, nor the men upon the Llanvabon. It was a curious fact that each crew was best qualified to take exactly the measures which made an evasion of the agreement impossible.
There was a final conference before the two ships parted, back in the communication room of the Llanvabon.
'Tell the little runt,' rumbled the Llanvabon's former skipper, 'that he's got a good ship and he'd better treat her right.'
The message frame flicked word-cards into position.
'I believe,' it said on the alien skipper's behalf, 'that your ship is just as good. I will hope to meet you here when the double star has turned one turn.'
The last man left the Llanvabon. It moved away into the misty nebula before they had returned to the black ship. The vision plates in that vessel had been altered for human eyes, and human crewmen watched jealously for any trace of their former ship as their new craft took a crazy, evading course to a remote part of the nebula. It came to a crevasse of nothingness, leading to the stars. It rose swiftly to clear space. There was the instant of breathlessness which the overdrive field produces as it goes on, and then the black ship whipped away into the void at many times the speed of light.
Many days later, the skipper saw Tommy Dort poring over one of the strange objects which were the equivalent of books. It was fascinating to puzzle over. The skipper was pleased with himself. The technicians of the Llanvabon1 & former crew were finding out desirable things about the ship almost momently. Doubtless the aliens were as pleased with their discoveries in the Llanvabon. But the black ship would be enormously worth while—and the solution that had been found was by any standard much superior even to a combat in which the Earthmen had been overwhelmingly victorious.
'Hm-m-m, Mr. Dort,' said the skipper profoundly. 'You've no equipment to make another photographic record on the way back. It was left on the Llanvabon. But fortunately, we have your record taken on the way out, and I shall report most favorably on your suggestion and your assistance in carrying it out. I think very well of you, sir.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Tommy Dort.
He waited. The skipper cleared his throat.
'You ... ah ... first realized the close similarity of mental processes between the aliens and ourselves,' he observed. 'What do you think of the prospects of a friendly arrangement if we keep a rendezvous with them at the nebula as agreed?'
'Oh, we'll get along all right, sir,' said Tommy. 'We've got a good start toward friendship. After all, since they see by infrared, the planets they'd want to make use of wouldn't suit us. There's no reason why we shouldn't get along. We're almost alike in psychology.'
'Hm-m-m. Now just what do you mean by that?' demanded the skipper.
'Why, they're just like us, sir!' said Tommy. 'Of course they breathe through gills and they see by heat waves, and their blood has a copper base instead of iron and a few little details like that. But otherwise we're just alike! There were only men in their crew, sir, but they have two sexes as we have, and they have families, and ... er... their sense of humor— In fact—'
Tommy hesitated.
'Go on, sir,' said the skipper.
'Well— There was the one I called Buck, sir, because he hasn't any name that goes into sound waves,' said Tommy. 'We got along very well. I'd really call him my friend, sir. And we were together for a couple of hours just before the two ships separated and we'd nothing in particular to do. So I became convinced that humans and aliens are bound to be good friends if they have only half a chance. You see, sir, we spent those two hours telling dirty jokes.'
Margaret reached over to the other side of the bed where Hank should have been.
Her hand patted the empty pillow, and then she came altogether awake, wondering that the old habit should remain after so many months. She tried to curl up, cat-style, to hoard her own warmth, found she couldn't do it any more, and climbed out of bed with a pleased awareness of her increasingly clumsy bulkiness.
Morning motions were automatic. On the way through the kitchenette, she pressed the button that would start breakfast cooking—the doctor had said to eat as much breakfast as she could—and tore the paper out of the facsimile machine. She folded the long sheet carefully to the 'National News' section, and propped it on the bathroom shelf to scan while she brushed her teeth.
No accidents. No direct hits. At least none that had been officially released for publication. Now, Maggie, don't get started on that. No accidents. No hits. Take the nice newspaper's word for it.
The three clear chimes from the kitchen announced that breakfast was ready. She set a bright napkin and cheerful colored dishes on the table in a futile attempt to appeal to a faulty morning appetite. Then, when there was nothing more to prepare, she went for the mail, allowing herself the full pleasure of prolonged anticipation, because today there would surely be a letter.
There was. There were. Two bills and a worried note from her mother: 'Darling, why didn't you write and tell me sooner? I'm thrilled, of course, but, well one hates to mention these things, but are you certain the doctor was
