The alien made a gesture with his left hand, and both his facial slits flared wide. “Why should one of us be condemned to live on a primitive world?”
“But we’re not farmers—”
“We do not expect you to do any farming. There is a local population. Unfortunately, the planet is very primitive, in a state of—feudalism. Our need is not farmers, but soldiers to impose a government which will wish to plant our required crops, harvest them, and deliver the harvest to us.”
“And what makes you think we’ll be interested in living on a primitive world?” Rick demanded.
“Your reward should be obvious. You will rule as you will, without interference. You will have wealth and power, and you will have only to see that our crops are grown. We will supply you with luxuries and comforts in trade.”
“This sounds like a long-term project,” Rick said.
“Of course,” Karreeel said.
Before Agzaral spoke, Rick knew what he was going to say.
“The task will last your lifetime,” Agzaral said. “Captain Galloway, surely it must be obvious to you that you and your men will never return to Earth.”
4
“Just a damn minute!” Rick exploded. “You kidnap us, and then-”
“Rescued,” Agzaral said. “I asked you about it. I have taken the trouble to check the story. It is obvious to me that you would be dead if Karreeel had not taken you aboard his ship. Do you dispute that?”
Rick felt the anger drain out to be replaced by fear. “No. I can’t dispute that. But why can’t we go home?”
“Because you would be believed,” Agzaral said. “Too many witnesses. Karreeel planned on that, of course. By deliberately taking aboard such a large number, he made it certain that someone would take you seriously if you returned to Earth.”
“You mentioned alternatives,” Rick said. Agzaral nodded. “You have few enough. None include going back to your own world. You would have to stay here, in that chamber where you are now, until transport could be arranged to another planet. Some of you could probably find positions as experimental subjects for the university. Others might—find different work. I do not know what would happen to the majority. The High Commission would have to decide. I would have to report that you have been offered employment and refused it. Humans unwilling to work do not always have a pleasant life on most of our worlds. And it may be several years before transport could be found—at least for all of you.”
“That’s not much choice at all.”
“Or you may commit suicide,” Agzaral said.
“That’s even less.” Rick touched the grenade through his pocket. It was a new variety; a small grenade not much larger than a golf ball, made mostly of plastic. It would explode into thousands of tiny fragments, surely enough to kill everyone in the room—including himself. It didn’t seem a very useful weapon at the moment. “May I smoke?” he asked.
“I prefer that you do not,” Agzaral said.
“Okay. Look, how the hell do you expect thirty men to take over an entire planet?”
“Not an entire planet.” Karreeel’s tone didn’t change; it remained matter-of-fact, calm, unworried. “Most of”—he twittered something incomprehensible—”is of no interest or value. Only one region will be worth controlling. Surely your men with firearms and other military equipment will have no difficulty dominating primitives with lances, bows, and swords?”
That seemed possible. Rick didn’t care much for the idea. If the planet were that primitive in weapons, it would also be primitive in hygiene and medical science. Living there would not be much fun.
He wondered what it would be like to be on welfare in one of Agzaral’s cultures. It hadn’t sounded pleasant, but Agzaral was undoubtedly used to more luxuries than Rick was. But then there was that phrase “experimental subjects,” and that didn’t sound good at all.
There was another problem that would be even worse. “We’re all men,” Rick said. “And you’ll be sending us to another planet for the rest of our lives—”
“Ah,” Karreeel said. “I understand. Permit me to explain that there will be human females.”
“You’ve kidnapped women?” Rick demanded.
“No. Providing a sufficient number might be difficult without —violating — the regulations. The planet—let us call it Paradise. That is a good name for a planet. Paradise is inhabited by humans.”
“Bull puckey,” said Rick.
There was silence for a moment. Rick wondered if he had offended the alien.
“It is quite true,”Agzaral said. “There are humans in many parts of the galaxy.”
“How?” Rick demanded.
Agzaral smiled thinly. “Don’t your own scientists suggest that humans are not native to Earth?”
“I never heard of that theory being taken seriously. If people—humans—are spread all over the galaxy, how’d they get that way?”
“I doubt that you will ever find that out,” Agzaral said. His voice had become very serious, with no trace of warmth at all. Then he shrugged. “There are no English translations of galactic history, and I have no time to give you lessons. For the moment, believe it.”
Rick frowned. He wondered if it could be true. There were legends of early astronauts: Ezekiel and the wheel, cherubim, the biblical four-faced flying creatures; even the so-called evidence of commercial writers. Genesis could be interpreted as the transplantation of a very small number of people— the story said only two—onto a world where they hadn’t evolved.
It was beyond Rick. He had never been a brilliant student. One reason he had worked hard in ROTC classes was that he had thought he might need the army for a job. The only subject he had consistently done well in was military history, and that hadn’t promised a very good living.
Paradise. He smiled lopsidedly as he remembered a lump of uninhabitable ice had been named “Greenland” in the hopes of attracting suckers who might go there to settle. “Real people,” he said. “Homo sapiens.”
“How sapient is debatable. Not merely for those on Paradise, but everywhere,” Agzaral said. “But depend upon it; union with females there will be fertile.”
Something else nagged at Rick. “You’re a policeman,” he said. “I get the idea that you’re here to protect the people of Earth. All those regulations. Can’t kidnap people who aren’t going to die anyway. Yet you’re sending us off to conquer this primitive place you call Paradise. Why aren’t you concerned about the people there?”
Agzaral frowned. Rick wondered if he’d hit a sore spot.
“Paradise—you may as well know the place’s real name,” Agzaral said. “In the dominant language it is called ‘Tran.’ Tran is not covered by the same regulations as Earth.” He stopped and pressed his lips grimly together. “Besides, you can’t do anything to the people there that they haven’t been doing to themselves. You may save them much misery.”
There was some mystery here, Rick thought. Agzaral’s expression did not match his words. But what? “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it yourselves?”
“We can’t.” Agzaral pointed to Karreeel. “Discoverers, colonizers, and developers have their rights, too. But when you arrive on Tran with your weapons, you might recall that the people there are as human as you or I. Captain Galloway, you must make a decision.”
“How much time do I have?”
Agzaral looked to Karreeel.
“There is no vital hurry,” the alien said. “Shall we say twenty-four hours?”
Rick put the proposition to the troops. He wasn’t surprised when there was a long silence, then babble. He knew how they felt; he’d wanted to babble himself when he left the interview with Karreeel and Agzaral.
Then a loud voice cut through the chatter. “Another planet? That’s not possible.”
Private Larry Warner, called “Professor” by the other troops, had a voice that could be heard in the middle of a battle. He was a college graduate, and Rick had no idea why the man had volunteered for the army, still less why he had volunteered a second time for a CIA operation. He argued with everyone: officers, noncoms, anyone who would listen. Only threats of severe punishment could shut him up. For all that, he was an educated man, and Rick had found his knowledge valuable in the past.
“Faster-than-light travel is impossible,” Warner said. “We can’t get to another star system—and there sure aren’t any inhabited planets in the solar system. They must be lying to you.”
“It seems a pointless deception,” André Parsons said.
Sergeant Elliot had a simpler way. “Shut up, Warner.”
“Where did the aliens come from?” Jack Campbell shouted. “Not this solar system. You said so yourself, Professor.” Campbell was a college dropout who’d joined the army for lack of something better to do. He enjoyed teasing Warner. “Hey, I like it! Captain, I take it there’ll be some changes in our status. Most of us can hope for something more than twenty years in the army and retirement—”
Rick shrugged. “I hadn’t much thought about it, but I guess so. They talked like we could do pretty well what we wanted to.”