The Best of Fredric Brown

Not Yet the End

THERE WAS a greenish, hellish tinge to the light within the metal cube. It was a light that made the dead-white skin of the creature seated at the controls seem faintly green.

A single, faceted eye, front center in the head, watched the seven dials unwinkingly. Since they had left Xandor that eye had never once wavered from the dials. Sleep was unknown to the race to which Kar-388Y belonged. Mercy, too, was unknown. A single glance at the sharp, cruel features below the faceted eye would have proved that.

The pointers on the fourth and seventh dials came to a stop. That meant the cube itself had stopped in space relative to its immediate objective. Kar reached forward with his upper right arm and threw the stabilizer switch. Then he rose and stretched his cramped muscles.

Kar turned to face his companion in the cube, a being like himself. 'We are here,^" he said. ^"The first stop, Star Z-5689. It has nine planets, but only the third is habitable. Let us hope we find creatures here who will make suitable slaves for Xandor.^"

Lal-i6B, who had sat in rigid mobility during the journey, rose and stretched also. "Let us hope so, yes. Then we can return to Xandor and be honored while the fleet comes to get them. But let^'s not hope too strongly. To meet with success at the first place we stop would be a miracle. We^'ll probably have to look a thousand places.^"

Kar shrugged. "Then we^'ll look a thousand places. With the Lounacs dying off, we must have slaves else our mines must close and our race will die.^"

He sat down at the controls again and threw a switch that activated a visiplate that would show what was beneath them. He said, "We are above the night side of the third planet. There is a cloud layer below us. I'll use the manuals from here."

He began to press buttons. A few minutes later he said, ^"Look, Lal, at the visiplate. Regularly spaced lights—a city! The planet is inhabited.^"

Lal had taken his place at the other switchboard, the fighting controls. Now he too was examining dials. ^"There is nothing for us to fear. There is not even the vestige of a force field around the city. The scientific knowledge of the race is crude. We can wipe the city out with one blast if we are attacked.^"

^"Good,^" Kar said. ^"But let me remind you that destruction is not our purpose—yet. We want specimens. If they prove satisfactory and the fleet comes and takes as many thousand slaves as we need, then will be time to destroy not a city but the whole planet. So that their civilization will never progress to the point where they^'ll be able to launch reprisal raids.^"

Lal adjusted a knob. ^"All right. I^'ll put on the megrafield and we^'ll be invisible to them unless they see far into the ultraviolet, and, from the spectrum of their sun, I doubt that they do.^"

As the cube descended the light within it changed from green to violet and beyond. It came to a gentle rest. Kar manipulated the mechanism that operated the airlock.

He stepped outside, Lal just behind him. "Look," Kar said, two bipeds. Two arms, two eyes—not dissimilar to the Lounacs, although smaller. Well, here are our specimens.^"

He raised his lower left arm, whose three-fingered hand held a thin rod wound with wire. He pointed it first at one of the creatures, then at the other. Nothing visible emanated from the end of the rod, but they both froze instantly into statuelike figures.

^"They^'re not large, Kar,^" Lal said. ^"I'll carry one back, you carry the other. We can study them better inside the cube, after were back in space.^"

Kar looked about him in the dim light. "All right, two is enough, and one seems to be male and the other female. Let's get going.^"

A minute later the cube was ascending and as soon as they were well out of the atmosphere, Kar threw the stabilizer switch and joined Lal, who had been starting a study of the specimens during the brief ascent.

^"Vivaparous,^" said Lal. ^"Five-fingered, with hands suited to reasonably delicate work. But—let^'s try the most important test, intelligence.^"

Kar got the paired headsets. He handed one pair to Lal, who )ut one on his own head, one on the head of one of the specimens. Kar did the same with the other specimen.

After a few minutes, Kar and Lal stared at each other bleakly.

^"Seven points below minimum,^" Kar said. ^"They could not be trained even for the crudest labor in the mines. Incapable of understanding the most simple instructions. Well, we^'ll take hem back to the Xandor museum.^"

^"Shall I destroy the planet?^"

^"No,^" Kar said. ^"Maybe a million years from now—if our race lasts that long—they^'ll have evolved enough to become suitable for our purpose. Let us move on to the next star with planets.^"

The make-up editor of the Milwaukee Star was in the composing room, supervising the closing of the local page. Jenkins, the head make-up compositor, was pushing in leads to tighten the second last column.

^"Room for one more story in the eighth column, Pete,^" he said. "About thirty-six picas. There are two there in the overset that will fit. Which one shall I use?^"

The make-up editor glanced at the type in the galleys lying on the stone beside the chase. Long practice enabled him to read the headlines upside down at a glance. ^"The convention story and the zoo story, huh? Oh, hell, run the convention story. Who cares if the zoo director thinks two monkeys disappeared off Monkey Island last night?^"