Blish,James – And all the Stars a Stage

about it now. You see, those creatures were never there at all.”

“Never there … I Excuse me, Dr. Kamblin, but they made some remarkably

real dents in the lavelin.”

‘I know. Let me begin at the beginning. Didn’t it strike you that that

black man was more than A little insane, going to such lengths to destroy

one ship, and refusing even to consider that we might have sornething to

offer him? And he was the only one of them we ever saw; he made decisions

that only the chief person of the entire system could have made-but under

what circumstances would such a personage be in direct command of a fleet?

“Then there was his claim that they had evacuated a whole planet, in

something under six months, just to trap one ship-ours. Not very easy, or

very logical either. But he also claimed that they had maintained strict

electromagnetic silence from the moment they overheard our computer until

the time they jumped us. Tell me, Jorn, is that possible?”

“Well, with chemical rockets … but then tberes communications, logistics

… No, you’re right, it isn’t possible. No electromagnetics, no

evacuation.”

“Very good, now we reach step two: To maintain a high energy civilization,

you must have power-lots of it. Yet he claimed that they shut themselves

down entirely for six months in order to hide themselves from us; and he

said they would do it again if our

158 James Blish

imaginary ‘main body’ proved to be too big for them to handle. For how long

could they have done that? Supposing this main body had decided to stick