It was at this point that the man interrupted. “But what is the purpose of this endless expansion?” He seemed genuinely curious. “What will happen when you finally occupy every planet in this galaxy?”
Captain Gorsid’s puzzled eyes met Yoal’s, then flashed to Veed, then Enash. Enash shrugged his torso negatively, and felt pity for the creature. The man didn’t understand, possibly never could understand. It was the old story of two different viewpoints, the virile and the decadent, the race that aspired to the stars and the race that declined the call of destiny.
“Why not,” urged the man, “control the breeding chambers?”
“And have the government overthrown!” said Yoal.
He spoke tolerantly, and Enash saw that the others were smiling at the man’s naivete. He felt the intellectual gulf between them widening. The creature had no comprehension of the natural life forces that were at work. The man spoke again:
“Well, if you don’t control them, we will control them for you.”
There was silence.
They began to stiffen. Enash felt it in himself, saw the signs of it in the others. His gaze flicked from face to face, then back to the creature in the doorway. Not for the first time, Enash bad the thought that their enemy seemed helpless.
“Why,” he decided, “I could put my suckers around him and crush him.”
He wondered if mental control of nucleonic, nuclear, and gravitonic energies included the ability to defend oneself from a macrocosmic attack. He had an idea it did. The exhibition of power two hours before might have had limitations, but if so, it was not apparent. Strength or weakness could make no difference. The threat of threats had been made: “If you don’t controlwe will.”
The words echoed in Enash’s brain, and, as the meaning penetrated deeper, his aloofness faded. He had always re-garded himself as a spectator. Even when, earlier, he had argued against the revival, he had been aware of a detached part of himself watching the scene rather than being a part of it.
He saw with a sharp clarity that that was why he had finally yielded to the conviction of the others. Going back beyond that to remoter days, he saw that he had never quite considered himself a participant in the seizure of the planets of other races. He was the one who looked on, and thought of reality, and speculated on a life that seemed to have no meaning. It was meaningless no longer. He was caught by a tide of ir-resistible emotion, and swept along. He felt himself sinking, merging with the Ganae mass being. All the strength and all the will of the race surged up in his veins.
He snarled, “Creature, if you have any hopes of reviving your dead race, abandon them now.”
The man looked at him, but said nothing. Enash rushed on, “If you could destroy us, you would have done so already.
But the truth is that you operate within limitations. Our ship is so built that no conceivable chain reaction could be started in it. For every plate of potential unstable material in it there is a counteracting plate, which prevents the development of a critical pile. You might be able to set off -explosions in our engines, but they, too, would be limited, and would merely start the process for which they are intendedconfined in their proper space.”
He was aware of Yoal touching his arm. “Careful,” warned the historian. “Do not in your just anger give away vital in-formation.”
Enash shook off the restraining sucker. “Let us not be un-realistic,” he said harshly. “This thing has divined most of our racial secrets, apparently merely by looking at our bodies.
We would be acting childishly if we assumed that he has not already realized the possibilities of the situation.”
“Eruishi” Captain Gorsid’s voice was imperative.
As swiftly as it had come, Enash’s rage subsided. He stepped back. “Yes, commander.”
“I think I know what you intended to say,” said Captain Gorsid. “I assure you ,1 am in full accord, but I believe also that I, as the top Ganae official, should deliver the ultimatum.”
He turned. His homy body towered above the man. “You have made the unforgivable threat. You have told us, in effect, that you will attempt to restrict the vaulting Ganae spirit.”
“Not the spirit,” said the man.
The commander ignored the interruption. “Accordingly, we have no alternative. We are assuming that, given time to locate the materials and develop the tools, you might be able to build a reconstructor. In our opinion it will be at least two years before you can complete it, even if you know how. It is an immensely intricate machine, not easily assembled by the lone survivor of a race that gave up its machines millennia before disaster struck.
“You did not have time to build a spaceship. We won’t give you time to build a reconstructor.
“Within a few minutes our ship will start dropping bombs.
It is possible you will be able to prevent explosions in your vi-cinity. We will start, accordingly, on the other side of the planet. If you stop us there, then we will assume we need help. In six months of travelling at top acceleration, we can reach a point where the nearest Ganae planet would hear our messages. They will send a fleet so vast that all your powers of resistance will be overcome. By dropping a hundred or a thousand bombs every minute, we will succeed in devastating every city so that not a grain of dust will remain of the skeletons of your people.
“That is our plan. So it shall be. Now, do your worst to us who are at your mercy.”
The man shook his head. “I shall do nothingnow!” he said. He paused, then thoughtfully, “Your reasoning is fairly accurate. Fairly. Naturally, I am not all powerful, but it seems to me you have forgotten one little point. I won’t tell you what it is. And now,” he said, “good day to you. Get back to your ship, and be on your way. I have much to do.”
Enash had been standing quietly, aware of the fury building up in him again. Now, with a hiss, he sprang forward, suckers outstretched. They were almost touching the smooth fleshwhen something snatched at him.
He was back on the ship.
He had no. memory of movement, no sense of being dazed or harmed. He was aware of Veed and Yoal and Captain Goisid standing near him as astonished as he himself. Enash remained very still, thinking of what the man had said: “… Forgotten one little point.” Forgotten? That meant they knew. What could it be? He was still pondering about it when Yoal said:
“We can be reasonably certain our bombs alone will not work.”
They didn’t.
Forty light-years out from Earth, Enash was summoned to the council chambers. Yoal greeted him wanly. “The monster is aboard.”
The thunder of that poured through Enash, and with it came a sudden comprehension. “That was what he meant we had forgotten,” he said finally, aloud and wonderingly. “That he can travel through space at will within a limitwhat was the figure he once usedof ninety light-years.”
He sighed. He was not surprised that the Ganae, who had to use ships, would not have thought immediately of such a possibility. Slowly, he began to retreat from the reality. Now that the shock had come, he felt old and weary, a sense of his mind withdrawing again to its earlier state of aloofness. It required a few minutes to get the story. A physicist’s assistant, on his way to the storeroom, had caught a glimpse of a man in a lower corridor. In such a heavily manned ship, the wonder was that the intruder had escaped earlier observa-tion. Enash had a thought.
“But after all we are not going all the way to one of our planets. How does he expect to make use of us to locate it if we only use the video” be stopped. That was it, of course. Directional video beams would have’ to be used, and the man would travel in the right direction the instant contact was made.
Enash saw the decision in the eyes of his companions, the only possible decision under the circumstances. And yet, it seemed to him they were missing some vital point. He walked slowly to the great video plate at one end of the chamber. There was a picture on it, so sharp, so vivid, so majestic that the unaccustomed mind would have reeled as from a stunning blow. Even to him, who knew the scene, there came a constriction, a sense of unthinkable vastness. It was a video view of a section of the milky way. Four hundred million stars as seen through telescopes that could pick up the light of a red dwarf at thirty thousand light-years.
The video plate was twenty-five yards in diametera scene that had no parallel elsewhere in the plenum. Other galaxies simply did not have that many stars.