Thus it came about that Earth’s first four deep-spacemen were completely out of reach when unexpected developments began.
Alonzo P. Ferber was one of the VIP’s on Bundy’s person-
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ally conducted tour of the stars. He was a very able executive, with an extremely keen profit-sense. This new thing simply reeked of money. SSE would have to get in on it.
Ferber was not thin-skinned; where money was concerned it would never occur to him to cherish grudges or to retain animosities. Wherefore SSE’s purchasing department suggested to the Galaxian Society that negotiations be opened concerning licenses, franchises, royalties, and so on. These suggestions were politely but firmly brushed off. Then emissaries were sent, of ever-increasing caliber and weight. Next, Ferber himself tried the tri-di; and finally he came in person.
Rebuffed, he made such legally-sound threats that Evans and Macey agreed to a meeting – stating flatly, however, that no commitments could possibly be made without the knowledge and approval of the Society’s president, Cleander Garlock. Thus, at the meeting, the Galaxians made only two statements that were even approximately definite. One was that Garlock would probably return to Earth during the afternoon or evening of the following Friday; the other that they would take the matter up with Garlock as soon as they could.
After that meeting Macey was unperturbed, but Evans was a deeply worried man.
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘the real crux wasn’t even mentioned.’
‘No. What is it, then?’
‘Operators, Primes, and the practically nonexistent laws pertaining to their … what? Labor? Skill? Genius? For instance, could Garlock be forced to do whatever it is that he does? On the other hand, if Ferber offered Belle Bellamy five million credits a year to “work” for SSE, is there anything we could do about it?’
‘Oh, I thought all there was to it was that you’d delay ’em for a year or so and that’d be it.’
‘Far from it. To date I have listed fifty-eight points for which, as far as we can learn, there are no precedents.’ And the lawyer called a meeting of his staff.
For Belle and Garlock, the week went quickly. On Friday afternoon, high above Earth’s Galaxian Field, Garlock said, more than half regretfully, ‘No more fun. Back to the desk. Back to the salt-mines.’ James frowned in puzzlement. ‘Why
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the sob-and-moan routine, Clee, from a guy who’s going to be monarch of all he surveys?’
‘His conscience aches him,’ Belle explained. ‘This monarch-ing business is tough if you haven’t thought up how to monarch it, and he hasn’t. Have you, Clee?’
‘No.’ Garlock smiled slightly. ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘You better start to,’ she advised darkly. ‘You aren’t busy now, and we’ve got about an hour. We better confer – I’ll make like a slave-driver.’
‘Conferring with slave-drivers is the fondest thing I am of,’ Garlock said.
They ‘ported into his room and he set the blocks. His attitude changed instantly. ‘Nice act, Belle. What was it all about?’
‘That theory of yours. Your predictions are too uncannily accurate to be guesswork, and the more times you dead-center the bullseye the worse scared I get. I really want to know, Clee.’
‘Okay. It isn’t complete – I need a lot more data – but 111 show you what I have. It’s fairly strong medicine and it comes in big chunks.’
‘It would have to – it covers the whole macrocosmic universe, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. I’ll start with the striking fact that, on every out-galaxy planet we visited, the human beings were Homo Sapiens to N decimal places – fertile with each other and, according to expert testimony, with us. All planets had humanoid “guardians”, the Arpalones and Arpales. Some, but not all, had one or more non-human, more-or-less-intelligent races. Such as the Fumapties, the Lemarts, the Sencors, and so on. These other races never seemed to fight each other, but both races of Guardians fought any and all of them, on sight and to the death. What do those facts mean to you?’
‘Nothing beyond face value. I’ve gnawed at them and others – “nibbled” might be a better word – but I haven’t been able to come up with anything.’
‘I have.’ He unrolled a sheet of drafting paper covered with diagrams, symbols, and equations.’ But before I go into this stuff, consider the human body. How many red cells are there in your blood stream?’
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‘Billions, I suppose.’
‘And there are billions of human beings on billions of planets, each having red blood cells identical, as far as we know, with yours and mine. Also white cells. Also, sometimes, various kinds of pathogenic microorganisms, such as staphs streps, viruses, spiros, and so on.
‘Okay. My thought is that the Lemarts, Ozobes, and the like are analogous to disease-producing organisms. We saw the full range of effects – from none at all up to death itself.’
‘But the Ozobes and so on died, too.’
‘How long do disease germs live in a human body after they’ve killed it?’
‘But that horrible Dilipic – the golop. They don’t seem to fit.’
‘Try that on for size as cancer. Also, the Arpalones typed us before they’d let us land on any planet. Why didn’t we blast them out of the way and land anyway?’
‘Why, we didn’t want to. It wasn’t worthwhile.’
‘We couldn’t Psychic Block. And if we had, we would have died. Different blood-types don’t mix.’
‘So you and I are merely two red cells in the blood-stream of a super-galactic super-monster? Like hell!’ she snorted. ‘That chestnut was propounded a thousand years ago. Are you trying to take me for a ride on that old sawhorse?’
‘That’s the attitude I had at first. So now we’re ready for the chart.’ He pointed to a group of symbols. ‘We start with symbolic logic; manipulating like so to get this.’ There was a long mathematical dissertation, a mind-to-mind, rigorous, point-to-point proof.
‘Q.E.D.’ Garlock concluded.
‘I see your math, and if I believed half of it I’d be scared witless. Those few pieces fit, but they’re scattered around in vast areas of blackness and you’re just jumping around between them. And how about our own galaxy, the most important piece of all? It’s different, and we’re different, mentally. That wrecks your whole theory.’
‘No. I told you I need a lot more data. Also, beyond a certain point the analogy appears to get looser.’
‘Appears to! It’s as loose as it can get!’
‘Think a minute. Is it actually lose, or are we getting up into
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concepts that no human mind can grasp?’
‘Oh… You’re quite a salesman, Clee, but I’m still not buying.’
‘Our galaxy is a bit of specialized tissue – part of a ganglion, maybe. Over here, see? I’ll have to leave it dangling until we find some more like it.’
‘I see. But anyway, you haven’t a tenth’s worth of real material on that whole sheet. Feed everything you have there into a computer and it’d just laugh at you.’
‘Sure it would. The great advantage of the human brain is its ability to arrive at valid conclusions from incomplete data.’
‘The brain of a Newton or an Einstein, yes.’ Belle thought for a minute, then grinned at him impishly. ‘Now watch the brain of a Bellamy perform. Get into high gear, brain… I wish I knew something about biochemical embryology; but I read somewhere that ova are sterile, so our galaxy in an ovum. Therefore our super-monster is a female – which accounts for and explains rigorously the long-known truth that women always have been, are now, and always will be vastly superior to men in every quality, aspect, and …’
‘Hold it!’ Garlock snapped. His face hardened into intense concentration. Then: ‘Do you think you’re kidding, Belle?’
‘Why, of course I’m kidding…’
‘Look here, then.’ He picked up a pencil and filled in blank after blank after blank. ‘I’m making one unjustifiable assumption – that the Pleiades is the first intergalactic starship. The super-being is a female, and she is just becoming pregnant…’
‘Nonsense! There are no blood cells in a sperm, and I don’t think there are any in an ovum.’
‘I didn’t mention either sperm or ovum. The analogy is so loose here that it holds only in the broadest, most general terms. The actual process of reproduction is unknowable. But wherever we went, we changed things. Not only by what we actually did, but also as a catalyst – no…’
‘No, not a catalyst. A hormone.’
‘Exactly. Each of these changes would cause others, and so on. An infinite series. Calling the first three terms alpha, beta, and gamma, we operate like this…’ Garlock’s pencil was flying now. ‘Following me?’
‘On your tail.’ Belle was breathing hard; as the blank spaces
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became fewer and fewer her face began to turn white.
‘From this we get that… and that makes the whole bracket tie into the same conclusion I had before. So, except for that one assumption, it’s solid.’