Nach Hitler!'
Mishnoff yelled with delight. 'That does help me. Es hilft! Horen Sie, bitte-' He went on in broken German interspersed with scraps of Planetary, 'For Heaven's sake, urn Gottes willen-'
Making it 2364 after Hitler was different altogether.
He put German together desperately, trying to explain.
The other frowned and grew thoughtful. He lifted his gloved hand to stroke his chin or make some equivalent gesture, hit the transparent visor that covered his face and left his hand there uselessly, while he thought.
He said, suddenly, 'Ich heiss George Fallenby.'
To Mishnoff it seemed that the name must be of Anglo-Saxon derivation, although the change in vowel form as pronounced by the other made it seem Teutonic.
'Guten Tag,' said Mishnoff awkwardly. 'Ich heiss Alec Mishnoff,' and was suddenly aware of the Slavic derivation of his own name.
'Kommen Sie mit mir, Hen Mishnoff,' said Fallenby.
Mishnoff followed with a strained smile, muttering into his transmitter, 'It's all right, Ching. It's all right.'
Back on Earth proper, Mishnoff faced the Sector's Bureau Head, who had grown old in the Service; whose every gray hair betokened a problem met and solved; and every missing hair a problem averted. He was a cautious man with eyes still bright and teeth that were still his own. His name was Berg.
He shook his head. 'And they speak German: but the German you studied was two thousand years old.'
'True,' said Mishnoff. 'But the English Hemingway used is two thousand years old and Planetary is close enough for anyone to be able to read it.'
'Hmp. And who's this Hitler?'
'He was a sort of tribal chief in ancient times. He led the German tribe in one of the wars of the twentieth century, just about the time the Atomic Age started and true history began.'
'Before the Devastation, you mean?'
'Right. There was a series of wars then. The Anglo-Saxon countries won out, and I suppose that's why the Earth speaks Planetary.'
'And if Hitler and his Germans had won out, the world would speak German instead?'
'They have won out on Fallenby's Earth, sir, and they do speak German.'
'And make their dates 'after Hitler' instead of A.D.?'
'Right. And I suppose there's an Earth in which the Slavic tribes won out and everyone speaks Russian.'
'Somehow,' said Berg, 'it seems to me we should have foreseen it, and yet, as far as I know, no one has. After all, there are an infinite number of inhabited Earths, and we can't be the only one that has decided to solve the problem of unlimited population growth by expanding into the worlds of probability.'
'Exactly,' said Mishnoff earnestly, 'and it seems to me that if you think of it, there must be countless inhabited Earths so doing and there must be many multiple occupations in the three hundred billion Earths we ourselves occupy. The only reason we caught this one is that, by sheer chance, they decided to build within a mile of the dwelling we had placed there. This is something we must check.'
'You imply we ought to search all our Earths.'
'I do, sir. We've got to make some settlement with other inhabited Earths. After all, there is room for all of us and to expand without agreement may result in all sorts of trouble and conflict.'
'Yes,' said Berg thoughtfully. '1 agree with you.'
Clarence Rimbro stared suspiciously at Berg's old face, creased now into all manner of benevolence.
'You're sure now?'
'Absolutely,' said the Bureau Head. 'We're sorry that you've had to accept temporary quarters for the last two weeks-'
'More like three.'
'-three weeks, but you will be compensated.'
'What was the noise?'
'Purely geological, sir. A rock was delicately balanced and, with the wind, it made occasional contact with the rocks of the hillside. We've removed it and surveyed the area to make certain that nothing similar will occur again.'
Rimbro clutched his hat and said, 'Well, thanks for your trouble.'
'No thanks necessary, I assure you, Mr. Rimbro. This is our job.'
Rimbro was ushered out, and Berg turned to Mishnoff, who had remained a quiet spectator of this completion of the Rimbro affair.
Berg said, 'The Germans were nice about it, anyway. They admitted we had priority and got off. Room for everybody, they said. Of course, as it turned out, they build any number of dwellings on each unoccupied world. . . . And now there's the project of surveying our other worlds and making similar agreements with whomever we find. It's all strictly confidential, too.
It can't be made known to the populace without plenty of preparation. . . . Still, none of this is what I want to speak to you about.'
'Oh?' said Mishnoff. Developments had not noticeably cheered him. His own bogey still concerned him.
Berg smiled at the younger man. 'You understand, Mishnoff, we in the Bureau, and in the Planetary Government, too, are very appreciative of your quick thinking, of your understanding of the situation. This could have developed into something very tragic, had it not been for you. This appreciation will take some tangible form.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'But, as I said once before, this is something many of us should have thought of. How is it you did? . . . Now we've gone into your background a little. Your co- worker, Ching, tells us you have hinted in the past at some serious danger involved in our probability-pattern setup, and that you insisted on going out to meet the Germans although you were obviously frightened. You were anticipating what you actually found, were you not? And how did you do it?'
Mishnoff said confusedly, 'No, no. That was not in my mind at all. It came as a surprise. I-'
Suddenly he stiffened. Why not now? They were grateful to him. He had proved that he was a man to be taken into account. One unexpected thing had already happened.
He said firmly, 'There's something else.'
'Yes?'
(How did one begin?) 'There's no life in the Solar System other than the life on Earth.'
'That's right,' said Berg benevolently.
'And computation has it that the probability of developing any form of interstellar travel is so low as to be infinitesimal.'
'What are you getting at?'
'That all this is so in this probability! But there must be some probability patterns in which other life does exist in the Solar System or in which interstellar drives are developed by dwellers in other star systems.'
Berg frowned. 'Theoretically.'
'In one of these probabilities, Earth may be visited by such intelligences. If it were a probability pattern in which Earth is inhabited, it won't affect us; they'll have no connection with us in Earth proper. But if it were a probability pattern in which Earth is uninhabited and they set up some sort of a base, they may find, by happenstance, one of our dwelling places.'
'Why ours?' demanded Berg dryly. 'What not a dwelling place of the Germans, for instance?'
'Because we spot our dwellings one to a world. The German Earth doesn't. Probably very few others do. The odds are in favor of us by billions
to one. And if extraterrestrials do find such a dwelling, they'll investigate and find the route to Earth proper, a highly developed, rich world.'
'Not if we turn off the twisting place,' said Berg.
'Once they know that twisting places exist, they can construct their own,' said Mishnoff. 'A race intelligent enough to travel through space could do that, and from the equipment in the dwelling they would take over, they could easily spot our particular probability. . . . And then how would we handle extraterrestrials? They're not Germans, or other Earths. They would have alien psychologies and motivations. And we're not even on our guard. We just keep setting up more and more worlds and increasing the chance every day that-'
His voice had risen in excitement and Berg shouted at him, 'Nonsense. This is all ridiculous-'
The buzzer sounded and the communiplate brightened and showed the face of Ching. Ching's voice said, 'I'm sorry to interrupt, but-'
'What is it?' demanded Berg savagely.
'There's a man here I don't know what to do with. He's drunk or crazy. He complains that his home is surrounded and that there are things staring through the glass roof of his garden.'
'Things?' cried Mishnoff.
'Purple things with big red veins, three eyes and some sort of tentacles instead of hair. They have-'
But Mishnoff and Berg didn't hear the rest. They were staring at each other in sick horror.
The Message
They drank beer and reminisced as men will who have met after long separation. They called to mind the days under fire. They remembered sergeants and girls, both with exaggeration. Deadly things became humorous in retrospect, and trifles disregarded for ten years were hauled out for airing.
Including, of course, the perennial mystery.
'How do you account for it?' asked the first. 'Who started it?'
The second shrugged. 'No one started it. Everyone was doing it, like a disease. You, too, I suppose.'
The first chuckled.
