“Lord, how long does it take slang to get from New York out to the sticks? The vaders, of course. Some professor who specializes in studying them described one as a wavery place in the ether, and ‘wavery’ stuck—Hello there, Maisie, my girl. You look like a million.”
They ate leisurely. Almost apologetically, George brought out beer, in cold bottles. “Sorry, Pete, haven’t anything stronger to offer you. But I haven’t been drinking lately. Guess—”
“You on the wagon, George?”
“Not on the wagon, exactly. Didn’t swear off or anything, but haven’t had a drink of strong liquor in almost a year. I don’t know why, but—”
“I do,” said Pete Mulvaney. “I know exactly why you don’t—because I don’t drink much either, for the same reason. We don’t drink because we don’t have to—say, isn’t that a radio over there?”
George chuckled. “A souvenir. Wouldn’t sell it for a fortune. Once in a while I like to look at it and think of the awful guff I used to sweat out for it. And then I go over and click the switch and nothing happens. Just silence. Silence is the most wonderful thing in the world, sometimes, Pete. Of course I couldn’t do that if there was any juice, because I’d get vaders then. I suppose they’re still doing business at the same old stand?”
“Yep, the Research Bureau checks daily. Try to get up current with a little generator run by a steam turbine. But no dice; the vaders suck it up as fast as it’s generated.”
“Suppose they’ll ever go away?”
Mulvaney shrugged. “Helmetz thinks not. He thinks they propagate in proportion to the available electricity. Even if the development of radio broadcasting somewhere else in the Universe would attract them there, some would stay here—and multiply like flies the minute we tried to use electricity again. And meanwhile, they’ll live on the static electricity in the air. What do you do evenings up here?”
“Do? Read, write, visit with one another, go to the amateur groups—Maisie’s chairman of the Blakestown Players, and I play bit parts in it. With the movies out everybody goes in for theatricals and we’ve found some real talent. And there’s the chess-and-checker club, and cycle trips and picnics—there isn’t time enough. Not to mention music. Everybody plays an instrument, or is trying to.”
“You?”
“Sure, cornet. First cornet in the Silver Concert Band, with solo parts. And—Good Heavens! Tonight’s rehearsal, and we’re giving a concert Sunday afternoon. I hate to desert you, but—”
“Can’t I come around and sit in? I’ve got my flute in the brief case here, and—”
“Flute? We’re short on flutes. Bring that around and Si Perkins, our director, will practically shanghai you into staying over for the concert Sunday—and it’s only three days, so why not? And get it out now; we’ll play a few old-timers to warm up. Hey, Maisie, skip those dishes and come on in to the piano!”
While Pete Mulvaney went to the guest room to get his flute from the brief case, George Bailey picked up his cornet from the top of the piano and blew a soft, plaintive little minor run on it. Clear as a bell; his lip was in good shape tonight.
And with the shining silver thing in his hand he wandered over to the window and stood looking out into the night. It was dusk out and the rain had stopped.
A high-stepping horse clop-clopped by and the bell of a bicycle jangled. Somebody across the street was strumming a guitar and singing. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
The scent of spring was soft and sweet in the moist air.
Peace and dusk.
Distant rolling thunder.
God damn it, he thought, if only there was a bit of lightning.
He missed the lightning.
OBEDIENCE
On a tiny planet of a far, faint star, invisible from Earth, and at the farther edge of the galaxy, five times as far as man has yet penetrated into space, there is a statue of an Earthman. It is made of precious metal and it is a tremendous thing, fully ten inches high, exquisite in workmanship.
Bugs crawl on it…
* * * *
They were on a routine patrol in Sector 1534, out past the Dog Star, many parsecs from Sol. The ship was the usual two-man scout used for all patrols outside the system. Captain May and Lieutenant Ross were playing chess when the alarm rang.
Captain May said, “Reset it, Don, while I think this out.” He didn’t look up from the board; he knew it couldn’t be anything but a passing meteor. There weren’t any ships in this sector. Man had penetrated space for a thousand parsecs and had not as yet encountered an alien life form intelligent enough to communicate, let alone to build spaceships.
Ross didn’t get up either, but he turned around in his chair to face the instrument board and the telescreen. He glanced up casually and gasped; there was a ship on the screen. He got his breath back enough to say “Cap!” and then the chessboard was on the floor and May was looking over his shoulder.
He could hear the sound of May’s breathing, and then May’s voice said, “Fire, Don!”
“But that’s a Rochester Class cruiser! One of ours. I don’t know what it’s doing here, but we can’t—”
“Look again.”
Don Ross couldn’t look again because he’d been looking all along, but he suddenly saw what May had meant. It was almost a Rochester, but not quite. There was something alien about it. Something? It was alien; it was an alien imitation of a Rochester. And his hands were racing for the firing button almost before the full impact of that hit him.
Finger at the button, he looked at the dials on the Picar ranger and the Monoid. They stood at zero.
He swore. “He’s jamming us, Cap. We can’t figure out how far he is, or his size and mass!”
Captain May nodded slowly, his face pale.
Inside Don Ross’s head, a thought said, “Compose yourselves, men. We are not enemies.”
Ross turned and stared at May. May said, “Yes, I got it. Telepathy.”
Ross swore again. If they were telepathic—
“Fire, Don. Visual.”
Ross pressed the button. The screen was filled with a flare of energy, but when the energy subsided, there was no wreckage of a spaceship…
Admiral Sutherland turned his back to the star chart on the wall and regarded them sourly from under his thick eyebrows. He said, “I am not interested in rehashing your formal report, May. You’ve both been under the psychograph; we’ve extracted from your minds every minute of the encounter. Our logicians have analyzed it. You are here for discipline. Captain May, you know the penalty for disobedience.”
May said stiffly, “Yes, sir.”
“It is?”
“Death, sir.”
“And what order did you disobey?”
“General Order Thirteen-Ninety, Section Twelve, Quad-A priority. Any terrestrial ship, military or otherwise, is ordered to destroy immediately, on sight, any alien ship encountered. If it fails to do so, it must blast off toward outer space, in a direction not exactly opposite that of Earth, and continue until fuel is exhausted.”
“And the reason for that, Captain? I ask merely to see if you know. It is not, of course, important or even relevant whether or not you understand the reason for any ruling.”
“Yes, sir. So there is no possibility of the alien ship following the sighting ship back to Sol and so learning the location of Earth.”
“Yet