element. Whereupon the indicating needles of two meters in the main laboratory went
enthusiastically through the full range of red and held unwaveringly against their stops.
Both Ardans felt the wave of shocked, astonished, almost unbelieving consternation
that swept through the observing scientists and, in slightly lesser measure (because
they knew less about radiation) through the Advisory Board itself in a big room halfway
across town. And from the Radiation Laboratory they were taken, via truck and freight
elevator, to the Office of the Commandant, where the Board was sitting.
The story, which had been sent in to the Board the day before on a scrambled beam,
was one upon which the Ardans had labored for days. Many facts could be withheld.
However, every man aboard the Perseus would agree on some things. Indeed, the
Earthship’s communications officers had undoubtedly radioed in already about longevity
and perfect health and Oman service and many other matters. Hence all such things
would have to be admitted and countered.
Thus the report, while it was air-tight, perfectly logical, perfectly consistent and
apparently complete, did not please the Board at all. It wasn’t intended to.
“We cannot and do not approve of such unwarranted favoritism,” the Chairman of the
Board said. “Longevity has always been man’s prime goal. Every human being has the
inalienable right to . . .”
“Flapdoodle!” Hilton snorted. “This is not being broadcast and this room is proofed, so
please climb down off your soapbox. You don’t need to talk like a politician here. Didn’t
you read paragraph 12-A-2, one of the many marked `Top Secret’?”
“Of course. But we do not understand how purely mental qualities can possibly have
any effect upon purely physical transformations. Thus it does not seem reasonable that
any except rigorously screened personnel would die in the process. That is, of course,
unless you contemplate deliberate cold-blooded murder.”
That stopped Hilton in his tracks, for it was too close for comfort to the truth. But it did
not hold the captain for an instant. He was used to death, in many of its grisliest forms.
“There are a lot of things no Terran ever will understand,” Sawtelle replied instantly.
“Reasonable or not, that’s exactly what will happen. And, reasonable or not, it’ll be
suicide, not murder. There isn’t a thing that either Hilton or I can do about it.”
Hilton broke the ensuing silence. “You can say with equal truth that every human being
has the right to run a fourminute mile or to compose a great symphony. It isn’t a matter
of right at all, but of ability. In this case the mental qualities are even more necessary
than the physical. You as a Board did a very fine job of selecting the BuSci personnel
for Project Theta Orionis. Almost eighty percent of them proved able to withstand the
Ardan conversion. On the other hand, only a very small percentage of the Navy
personnel did so.”
“Your report said that the remaining personnel of the Project were not informed as to
the death aspect of the transformation,” Admiral Gordon said. “Why not?”
“That should be self-explanatory,” Hilton said, flatly. “They are still human and still
Terrans. We did not and will not encroach upon either the duties or the privileges of
Terra’s Advisory Board. What you tell all Terrans, and how much, and how, must be
decided by yourselves. This also applies, of course, to the other `Top Secret’
paragraphs of the report, none of which are known to any Terran outside the Board.”
“But you haven’t said anything about the method of selection,” another Advisor
complained. “Why, that will take all the psychologists of the world, working full time;
continuously.”
“We said we would do the selecting. We meant just that,” Hilton said, coldly. “No one
except the very few selectees will know anything about it. Even if it were an unmixed
blessing which it very definitely is not-do you want all humanity thrown into such an
uproar as that would cause? Or the quite possible racial inferiority complex it might set
up? To say nothing of the question of how much of Terra’s best blood do you want to
drain off, irreversibly and permanently? No. What we suggest is that you paint the
picture so black, using Sawtelle and me and what all humanity has just seen as horrible
examples, that nobody would take it as a gift. Make them shun it like the plague. Hell, I
don’t have to tell you what your propaganda machines can do.”
The Chairman of the Board again mounted his invisible rostrum. “Do you mean to
intimate that we are to falsify the record?” he declaimed. “To try to make liars out of
hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the truth, to connive at .
.
“We aren’t asking you to do anything!” Hilton snapped. “We don’t give a damn what
you do. Just study that record, with all that it implies. Read between the lines. As for
those on the Perseus, no two of them will tell the same story and not one of them has
even the remotest idea of what the real story is. I, personally, not only did not want to
become a monster, but would have given everything I had to stay human. My wife felt
the same way. Neither of us would have converted if there’d been any other way in
God’s universe of getting the uranexite and doing some other things that simply must be
done.”
“What other things?” Gordon demanded.
“You’ll never know,” Hilton answered, quietly. “Things no Terran ever will know. We
hope. Things that would drive any Terran stark mad. Some of them are hinted at-as
much as we dared-between the lines of the report.”
The report had not mentioned the Stretts. Nor were they to be mentioned now. If the
Ardans could stop them, no Terran need ever know anything about them.
If not, no Terran should know anything about them except what he would learn for
himself just before the end. For Terra would never be able to do anything to defend
herself against the Stretts.
“Nothing whatever can drive me mad,” Gordon declared, “and I want to know all about
it-right now!”
“You can do one of two things, Gordon,” Sawtelle said in disgust. His sneer was plainly
visible through the six-ply, plasti-backed lead glass of his face-plate. “Either shut up or
accept my personal invitation to come to Ardvor and try to go through the wringer.
That’s an invitation to your own funeral.” Five-Jet Admiral Gordon, torn inwardly to
ribbons, made no reply.
“I repeat,” Hilton went on, “we are not asking you to do anything whatever. We are
offering to give you, free of charge but under certain conditions, all the power your
humanity can possibly use. We set no limitation whatever as to quantity and with no
foreseeable limit as to time. The only point at issue is whether or not you accept the
conditions. If you do not accept them we’ll leave now-and the offer will not be repeated.”
“And you would, I presume, take the UC-1 back with you?”
“Of course not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly welcome to that
one load of uranexite, no matter what is decided here.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Gordon sneered. “But the truth is that you know damned
well I’ll blow both of your ships out of space if you so much as . . .
“Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!” Hilton snapped. Then, as the admiral began
to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: “You want it the hard way, eh? Watch
what happens, all of you!”
The UC-1 shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer and into and
through the stratosphere. Earth’s fleet, already on full alert and poised to strike, rushed
to the attack. But the carrier had reached the Orion and both Ardvorian ships had been
waiting, motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran warships arrived and
began to blast with everything they had.
“Flashlights and firecrackers,” Sawtelle said, calmly. “You aren’t even warming up our
screens. As soon as you quit making a damned fool of yourself by wasting energy that
way, we’ll set the UC-1 back down where she was and get on with our business here.”
“You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral,” the chairman said, “or the rest of us will,
as of now, remove you from the Board.” Gordon gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the
order.
“If he hasn’t had enough yet to convince him,” Hilton suggested, “he might send up a
drone. We don’t want to kill anybody, you know. One with the heaviest screening he’s
got just to see what happens to it.”
“He’s had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That exhibition was not
only uncalled-for and disgusting-it was outrageous!”
The meeting settled down, then, from argument to constructive discussion, and many