Collision Course

NINE

Morning came slowly. The little red moon twirled across the sky and was gone; the unfamiliar constellations passed above and lost themselves beyond the horizon. As the hours of night gave way to the hours of dawn, blackness to grayness, chill to morning warmth, the men of the XV-ftl busied themselves in the routine tasks of daybreak. No one had slept that night aboard the ship. Cabin lights had burned through till dawn, as Earthmen too weary to sleep argued and reargued the aspects of the situation.

“We shouldn’t have let them march out of there like that,” Stone said bitterly, cupping his plump cheeks with plump hands. “They stalked out like a couple of princes giving the word to a rabble of commoners. We should have made them stay, let them know that Earth wasn’t going to listen to their high-handed nonsense.”

“ ‘You may keep these worlds’ ” Dominici repeated in harshly sardonic tories. “ ‘All other worlds belong to Norgla.’ As if we were worms!”

“Perhaps it was the will of God that man’s expansion through the heavens come to a halt,” Havig suggested. “The Norglans may have been sent as a reminder that pride is sinful, that there are limits beyond which we dare not go.”

“You’re making the assumption that the Norglans are a genuine limit,” Bernard said. “I don’t think they are. I don’t think they’ve got the technology to keep us penned into our present sphere. They sound like bluffers to me.”

“I’ll go for that idea,” Dominici said. “What I saw of their science didn’t impress me. They’ve got spaceships and transmats, but nothing that’s qualitatively advanced over what we’ve got. In a war we could hold our own with them, I’m sure.”

“But why a war?” Havig asked. “Why not accept the decree and keep within our limits?” He answered his own question immediately, cutting off Dominici’s hot outburst. “I know. We do not accept limits because we are Earthmen, and in some mysterious way Earthmen have a divine mandate to spread throughout the entire universe.” Havig smiled darkly. “None of you pay attention to what I say, of course. You think I’m a religious crank, and in your eyes I suppose I am. But is it so utterly wrongheaded to be humble, gentlemen? To draw back our frontiers and say, Thus far and no farther shall we go? When the alternative is bloody warfare, is it cowardly to choose the path of peace?”

Bernard looked up. “I’ll grant the strength of what you’re saying, Havig. None of us wants war with these people, and maybe it isn’t man’s destiny to colonize the universe. I can’t answer for what is or isn’t our destiny. But I know enough about psychology to figure these people out, alien though they are. Right now they’re being tolerant, in a lordly way— they’ll let us keep our piddling little empire, provided we leave all the rest for them. But their tolerance won’t last forever. If all the rest of the universe becomes Norglan, some day they’re going to cast covetous eyes at us and decide to make it a clean sweep. If we give ground now, we’re inviting them to come wipe us out later. Dammit, Havig, there’s a difference between being humble and being suicidally meek!”

“So you think we should make war on Norgla?” the linguist asked.

“I think we should go back to them today and let them know we aren’t going to let ourselves be bluffed,” Bernard said. “Reject their ultimatum. Maybe that’s simply their alien way of negotiating: begin with an absurd demand and work backward to a compromise.”

“No,” Dominici said. “They want war. They’re spoiling for it. Well, we’ll give it to ’em! Let’s tell Laurance we’re pulling out of here, heading for home. We’ll toss the whole business in the Archonate’s lap and wait for the shooting to start.”

Stone shook his head mildly. “Bernard’s right, Dominici. We have to go back and try again. We can’t just go storming off to Earth like hotheads, or even go meekly crawling away with our tails dragging, as Havig would like. We’ll give it another try today.”

The cabin door opened, and Laurance, Clive, and Hernandez entered. They, too, had been up all night, or so it looked from their paleness of face and redness of eye.

Laurance forced a smile. “It’s almost morning. I see you haven’t done much sleeping.”

“We’ve been trying to figure out whether we ought to try another session with the Norglans,” Bernard said.

“Well? What was the decision?”

“We aren’t sure. Matter of fact, we seem to be split down the middle on the subject.”

“What’s the point of disagreement?” Laurance asked.

“I feel it’s time for mankind to pull in its horns,” Havig said with an apologetic smile. “Our friend Dominici wants to go home too, but for the opposite reason: he doesn’t think it’s worth talking to the Norglans again.”

“Damn right I don’t,” Dominici snapped. “They’ve as much as told us they dare us to make war. Now we ought to show them…”

“I’m willing to withdraw my objections to another session,” interrupted Havig calmly. “Something in me suggests that going home now would lead only to war. I join forces with Dr. Bernard and Mr. Stone. Let’s talk to the Norglans again.”

Bereft of his ally, Dominici stared around uncertainly. All eyes were on him. After a moment he frowned, turned up his hands, and said grudgingly, “All right. I’ll make it unanimous, I suppose. But we aren’t going to get anywhere, talking to them.”

“Is it definite, then?” Laurance asked. “We stay here at least another day?”

“Yes,” said Bernard. “At least another day.”

Breakfast was an uneasy meal; after the long night of debate and doubt, no one had much of an appetite. Bernard munched the synthetics Nakamura dished up, making himself swallow most of what was set before him more out of a sense of duty to his body than out of any real hunger. His face felt rough and stubbly; shaving entailed looking into the mirror, and he was not pleased by what he saw there. The sleekness was gone. His face looked pouchy, now; dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his skin seemed to droop. Some of the drooping, he knew, could be laid to the gravitation here, which was fractionally more than Earthnorm. But the real villains were fatigue and despair.

They set out an hour after sunrise for the Norgian settlement. The heat was beginning already. Plants whose leaves had rolled tight against the evening frost now uncoiled them, spreading them flat to soak in the sunlight. Everywhere on this untouched planet, life seemed to blossom. Only in the valley where the Norglans camped was the natural beauty marred by the activity of civilization.

And, Bernard thought bleakly, the Norglan colony was the plague center from which the corruption of civilization would spread outward, until some day every inch of virgin land would have yielded to the builders. Some day this wilderness world would be like Earth, civilized down to its final micron of land. Bernard silently shook his head. Havig was wrong; it was insupportable to think of retreating to the established bounds of the Terran sphere and abandoning an entire universe of fresh green worlds to the Norglans. For someday the new worlds of the Terran system would be old worlds; there would be skyscrapers on Betelgeuse XXIII, and the Terran system would boil with life, and there would be no place to go, for all else would be Norglan.

No! Bernard thought sharply. Better to drag both empires to flaming doom tomorrow than hand our descendants’ birthright to the Norglans!

The day was hot by the time the Terran sleds reached the outskirts of the alien encampment. Tirelessly the greenskins were working. An entire new ring of huts was under construction; the Norglans were building as if the speed with which they erected their settlement was a vital matter.

The Earthmen strode into the center of the colony together, Bernard, Stone, and Laurance leading the way. The greenskins had lost interest in them by now; work continued without any show of curiosity. But a blueskin that Bernard recognized as Zagidh came forward to meet them.

“You have come back,” Zagidh said flatly.

“Yes. We wish to talk with Skrinri and Vortakel again,” said Stone. “Tell them we are here.”

Zagidh swung his swivel-jointed arms loosely. “The kharvish are gone.”

“Gone?”

“We-they told we-I they did not talk to you-they again,” Zagidh said.

Stone frowned, puzzling out the complexities of the blueskin’s version of Terran. “We had not ended talking to the kharvish. Get them as you did yesterday.”

Zagidh’s arms continued to swing. “I can do not. They did not want to talk to you-they again.”

From the back of the group came Dominici’s bitter voice. “They’ve delivered their ultimatum and now they’re gone. We’re wasting our time jabbering with this blueface. Do we have to have things made any clearer for us?”

“Quiet,” Bernard warned him. “Let’s not give up quite this soon.”

Patiently, Stone tried it from several other approaches. But the result was the same. Skrinri and Vortakel were gone, back to the mother world; they had nothing further to say to the Earthmen. And no, Zagidh would not summon them a second time. Why should he? The position was plain enough. Skrinri had ordered the Earthmen not to colonize any more worlds. Did that statement require any clarification, Zagidh asked?

“Don’t you see this will be war between Norgla and Terra?” Stone demanded, exasperated. “Innocent people will die because of your stubbornness! We have to talk to the kharvish again.”

Zagidh swung his forearms faster, now; it looked like a gesture of growing irritation. “I have said the words they gave me to say. I must build now. You go. The kharvish do not come back.”

With one final annoyed flap of his arms, Zagidh spun away and instantly began to shout instructions to a group of greenskins struggling across the clearing with a heavy crate of equipment. The Earthmen, ignored, stood by themselves unshaded in the fierce sunlight, while the building of the colony continued all around them.

“I think that’s about it,” Bernard said quietly. “We’ve had it. Maybe they’re bluffing, but they’re bluffing hard.”

“Poof! The big boys can’t be bothered to talk to us!” Dominici growled. “Go away, little Earthmen, you bother us! They’re asking for war!”

“Perhaps that’s what they want,” Stone said. “Or else they simply think we’ll be obedient little creatures and go home to stay within the boundaries they allow us.”

“This comes as punishment for our pride,” said Havig. “We were alone in the universe too long. In solitude a man develops strange fantasies of power—fantasies that collapse when he learns he is not alone.”

Laurance said quietly, “I guess we go back to Earth, gentlemen. Or do you want to talk to Zagidh some more before we leave?”

Bernard shook his head. “There isn’t anything else we could say to him.”

“We might as well leave here,” Stone added sadly. “We’re up against a dead end. The Archonate will have to decide what happens next—not us.”

They returned to the sleds, and drove slowly out of the Norglan encampment. Turning to glance back, Bernard saw that nobody was watching their departure. None of the Norglans cared.

They traveled through the rolling meadows and over the by-now well-worn forest path to the ship. Bernard’s heart felt like cold lead behind his ribs. He shuddered at what they would have to tell the Technarch when they returned to Earth, only a few days hence. McKenzie would be furious; perhaps the galaxy would blaze into war almost at once, as soon as production models of the faster-than-light ship could be turned out.

“So we’re going to war,” Stone said. “And we don’t even know who we’re fighting, really.”

“And they don’t know who we are,” Laurance pointed out. “We’ll be like blind men jabbing in the dark. Our main objective will be to find Norgla, theirs to find Earth.”

“What if they don’t have faster-than-light ships?” Bernard asked. “They wouldn’t be able to reach Earth, but we’d be able to strike at them.”

“Until the first time they captured one of our ships,” Laurance said. “But they must have f-t-1. Otherwise they couldn’t risk war so lightheartedly.”

From the front of the sled, Clive chuckled. “You know, we could have gone along for thousands of years without ever running into these Norglans. If we hadn’t built the XV-ftl, if we hadn’t happened to blunder onto a Norglan-settled planet, if the Technarch hadn’t decided to negotiate in advance of the conflict…”

“That’s a lot of ifs” Bernard said.

“But they’re valid ones,” Clive protested. “If we’d minded our own business and expanded at a normal rate, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s pretty close to treason your man is talking,” Stone said quietly to Laurance.

“Let him talk,” the spaceman replied with a shrug. “We’ve listened to the Archons all along,, and where’s it getting us? Just back into the same muck of war that the Archonate was established to abolish, so…”

“Laurance!” Bernard snapped.

Laurance smiled. “So I’m talking treason too? All right—hang me on the tree next to Clive. But this will be Technarch McKenzie’s war we’ll be fighting, by the Hammer! And win or lose, it may bring the Archonate tumbling down.”