IV
"Look," said Stella Wing to Beverly Bell. "Over there."
"I've seen it before. It's simply disgusting."
"_That's_ a laugh." Stella's tawny-brown eyes twinkled. "You made yourbombing runs on that target, too, my sweet, and didn't score any higherthan I did."
"I soon found out I didn't want him--much too stiff and serious. Frank'sa lot more fun."
The staff had gathered in the lounge, as had become the custom, to spendan hour or so before bedtime in reading, conversation, dancing, lightflirtation and even lighter drinking. Most of the girls, and many of themen, drank only soft drinks. Hilton took one drink per day ofavignognac, a fine old brandy. So did de Vaux--the two usually making aceremony of it.
Across the room from Stella and Beverly, Temple Bells was looking up atHilton and laughing. She took his elbow and, in the gesture now familiarto all, pressed his arm quickly, but in no sense furtively, against herside. And he, equally openly, held her forearm for a moment in the fullgrasp of his hand.
"And he _isn't_ a pawer," Stella said, thoughtfully. "He never touchesany of the rest of us. She _taught_ him to do that, damn her, withouthim ever knowing anything about it ... and I wish I knew how she didit."
"That isn't pawing," Beverly laughed lightly. "It's simply self-defense.If he didn't fend her off, God knows what she'd do. I still say it'sdisgusting. And the way she dances with him! She ought to be ashamed ofherself. He ought to fire her."
"She's never been caught outside the safety zone, and we've all beenwatching her like hawks. In fact, she's the only one of us all who hasnever been alone with him for a minute. No, darling, she isn't playinggames. She's playing for keeps, and she's a mighty smooth worker."
"Huh!" Beverly emitted a semi-ladylike snort. "What's so smooth aboutshowing off man-hunger that way? Any of us could do that--if we would."
"Miaouw, miaouw. Who do you think you're kidding, Bev, you sanctimonioushypocrite--_me_? She has staked out the biggest claim she could find.She's posted notices all over it and is guarding it with a pistol. Halfyour month's salary gets you all of mine if she doesn't walk him up thecenter aisle as soon as we get back to Earth. We can both learn a lotfrom that girl, darling. And I, for one am going to."
"Uh-uh, she hasn't got a thing _I_ want," Beverly laughed again, stilllightly. Her friend's barbed shafts had not wounded her. "And I'd muchrather be thought a hypocrite, even a sanctimonious one, than aravening, slavering--I can't think of the technical name for a femalewolf, so--_wolfess_, running around with teeth and claws bared, lookingfor another kill."
"You _do_ get results, I admit." Stella, too, was undisturbed. "We don'tseem to convince each other, do we, in the matter of technique?"
* * * * *
At this point the Hilton-Bells _tete-a-tete_ was interrupted by CaptainSawtelle. "Got half an hour, Jarve?" he asked. "The commanders,especially Elliott and Fenway, would like to talk to you."
"Sure I have, Skipper. Be seeing you, Temple," and the two men went tothe captain's cabin; in which room, blue with smoke despite the bestefforts of the ventilators, six full commanders were arguing heatedly.
"Hi, men," Hilton greeted them.
"Hi, Jarve," from all six, and: "What'll you drink? Still making do withginger ale?" asked Elliott (Engineering).
"That'll be fine, Steve. Thanks. You having as much trouble as we are?"
"More," the engineer said, glumly. "Want to know what it reminds me of?A bunch of Australian bushmen stumbling onto a ramjet and trying tofigure out how it works. And yet Sam here has got the sublime guts toclaim that he understands all about their detectors--and that theyaren't anywhere nearly as good as ours are."
"And they _aren't_!" blazed Commander Samuel Bryant (Electronics)."We've spent six solid weeks looking for something that simply _is notthere_. All they've got is the prehistoric Whitworth system and that's_all_ it is. Nothing else. Detectors--_hell_! I tell you I can seebetter by moonlight than the very best they can do. With everythingthey've got you couldn't detect a woman in your own bed!"
"And this has been going on all night," Fenway (Astrogation) said. "Sothe rest of us thought we'd ask you in to help us pound some sense intoSam's thick, hard head."
Hilton frowned in thought while taking a couple of sips of his drink.Then, suddenly, his face cleared. "Sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen,but--at any odds you care to name and in anything from split peas toC-notes--Sam's right."
* * * * *
Commander Samuel and the six other officers exploded as one. When theclamor had subsided enough for him to be heard, Hilton went on: "I'mvery glad to get that datum, Sam. It ties in perfectly with everythingelse I know about them."
"How do you figure that kind of twaddle ties in with anything?" Sawtelledemanded.
"Strict maintenance of the _status quo_," Hilton explained, flatly."That's all they're interested in. You said yourself, Skipper, that itwas a hell of a place to have a space-battle, practically in atmosphere.They never attack. They never scout. They simply don't care whetherthey're attacked or not. If and when attacked, they put up just enoughships to handle whatever force has arrived. When the attacker has beenrepulsed, they don't chase him a foot. They build as many ships andOmans as were lost in the battle--no more and no less--and then go onabout their regular business. The Masters owned that half of the fuelbin, so the Omans are keeping that half. They will keep on keeping itfor ever and ever. Amen."
"But _that's_ no way to fight a war!" Three or four men said this, orits equivalent, at once.
"Don't judge them by human standards. They aren't even approximatelyhuman. Our personnel is not expendable. Theirs is--just as expendable astheir materiel."
While the Navy men were not convinced, all were silenced exceptSawtelle. "But suppose the Stretts had sent in a thousand more skeletonsthan they did?" he argued.
"According to the concept you fellows just helped me develop, itwouldn't have made any difference how many they sent," Hilton replied,thoughtfully. "One or a thousand or a million, the Omans have--_must_have--enough ships and inactivated Omans hidden away, both on Fuel Worldand on Ardry here, to maintain the balance."
"Oh, hell!" Elliott snapped. "If I helped you hatch out any suchbrainstorm as _that_, I'm going onto Tillinghast's couch for a six-weekoverhaul--or have him put me into his padded cell."
"Now _that's_ what I would call a thought," Bryant began.
"Hold it, Sam," Hilton interrupted. "You can test it easily enough,Steve. Just ask your Oman."
"Yeah--and have him say 'Why, of course, Master, but why do you keep ontesting me this way?' He'll ask me that about four times more, thestubborn, single-tracked, brainless skunk, and I'll _really_ go nuts.Are you getting anywhere trying to make a Christian out of Laro?"
"It's too soon to really say, but I think so." Hilton paused in thought."He's making progress, but I don't know how much. The devil of it isthat it's up to him to make the next move; I can't. I haven't thefaintest idea, whether it will take days yet or weeks."
* * * * *
"But not months or years, you think?" Sawtelle asked.
"No. We think that--but say, speaking of psychologists, is Tillinghastgetting anywhere, Skipper? He's the only one of your big wheels whoisn't in liaison with us."
"No. Nowhere at all," Sawtelle said, and Bryant added:
"I don't think he ever will. He still thinks human psychology will applyif he applies it hard enough. But what did you start to say aboutLaro?"
"We think the break is about due, and that if it doesn't come withinabout thirty days it won't come at all--we'll have to back up and startall over again."
"I hope it does. We're all pulling for you," Sawtelle said. "Especiallysince Karns's estimate is still years, and he won't be pinned down toany estimate even in years. By the way, Jarve, I've pulled my team offof that conversion stuff."
"Oh?" Hilton raised his eyebrows.
"
Putting them at something they can do. The real reason is thatPoindexter pulled himself and his crew off it at eighteen hours today."
"I see. I've heard that they weren't keeping up with our team."
"He says that there's nothing to keep up with, and I'm inclined to agreewith him." The old spacehound's voice took on a quarter-deck rasp. "It'sa combination of psionics, witchcraft and magic. None of it makes anykind of sense."
"The only trouble with that viewpoint is that, whatever the stuff maybe, it works," Hilton said, quietly.
"But damn it, how _can_ it work?"
"I don't know. I'm not qualified to be on that team. I can't evenunderstand their reports. However, I know two things. First, they'll getit in time. Second, we BuSci people will stay here until they do.However, I'm still hopeful of finding a shortcut through Laro. Anyway,with this detector thing settled, you'll have plenty to do to keep allyour boys out of mischief for the next few months."
"Yes, and I'm glad of it. We'll install our electronics systems on asquadron of these Oman ships and get them into distant-warning formationout in deep space where they belong. Then we'll at least know what isgoing on."
"That's a smart idea, Skipper. Go to it. Anything else before we hit oursacks?"
"One more thing. Our psych, Tillinghast. He's been talking to me andsending me memos, but today he gave me a formal tape to approve and handpersonally to you. So here it is. By the way, I didn't approve it; Isimply endorsed it 'Submitted to Director Hilton withoutrecommendation'."
"Thanks." Hilton accepted the sealed canister. "What's the gist? Isuppose he wants me to squeal for help already? To admit that we'relicked before we're really started?"
* * * * *
"You guessed it. He agrees with you and Kincaid that the psychologicalapproach is the best one, but your methods are all wrong. Based uponmisunderstood and unresolved phenomena and applied with indefensiblyfaulty techniques, et cetera. And since he has 'no adequate laboratoryequipment aboard', he wants to take a dozen or so Omans back to Terra,where he can really work on them."
"Wouldn't _that_ be a something?" Hilton voiced a couple of highlydescriptive deep-space expletives. "Not only quit before we start, buthave all the top brass of the Octagon, all the hot-shot politicians ofUnited Worlds, the whole damn Congress of Science and all thetop-bracket industrialists of Terra out here lousing things up so thatnobody could ever learn anything? Not in seven thousand years!"
"That's right. You said a mouthful, Jarve!" Everybody yelled something,and no one agreed with Tillinghast; who apparently was not very popularwith his fellow officers.
Sawtelle added, slowly: "If it takes _too_ long, though ... it's theuranexite I'm thinking of. Thousands of millions of tons of it, whilewe've been hoarding it by grams. We could equip enough Oman ships withdetectors to guard Fuel Bin and our lines. I'm not recommending takingthe _Perseus_ back, and we're 'way out of hyper-space radio range. Wecould send one or two men in a torp, though, with the report that wehave found all the uranexite we'll ever need."
"Yes, but damn it, Skipper, I want to wrap the whole thing up in apackage and hand it to 'em on a platter. Not only the fuel, but wholenew fields of science. And we've got plenty of time to do it in. Theyequipped us for ten years. They aren't going to start worrying about usfor at least six or seven; and the fuel shortage isn't going to becomeacute for about twenty. Expensive, admitted, but not critical. Besides,if you send in a report now, you know who'll come out and grab all theglory in sight. Five-Jet Admiral Gordon himself, no less."
"Probably, and I don't pretend to relish the prospect. However, the factremains that we came out here to look for fuel. We found it. We shouldhave reported it the day we found it, and we can't put it off muchlonger."
"I don't agree. I intend to follow the directive to the letter. It saysnothing whatever about reporting."
"But it's implicit...."
* * * * *
"No bearing. Your own Regulations expressly forbid extrapolation beyondor interpolation within a directive. The Brass is omnipotent, omniscientand infallible. So why don't you have your staff here give an opinionas to the time element?"
"This matter is not subject to discussion. It is my own personalresponsibility. I'd like to give you all the time you want, Jarve, but... well, damn it ... if you must have it, I've always tried to live upto my oath, but I'm not doing it now."
"I see." Hilton got up, jammed both hands into his pockets, sat downagain. "I hadn't thought about your personal honor being involved, butof course it is. But, believe it or not, I'm thinking of humanity's bestgood, too. So I'll have to talk, even though I'm not half ready to--Idon't know enough. Are these Omans people or machines?"
A wave of startlement swept over the group, but no one spoke.
"I didn't expect an answer. The clergy will worry about souls, too, butwe won't. They have a lot of stuff we haven't. If they're people, theyknow a sublime hell of a lot more than we do; and calling it psionics orpractical magic is merely labeling it, not answering any questions. Ifthey're machines, they operate on mechanical principles utterly foreignto either our science or our technology. In either case, is the correctword 'unknown' or 'unknowable'? Will any human gunner _ever_ be able tofire an Oman projector? There are a hundred other and much tougherquestions, half of which have been scaring me to the very middle of myguts. Your oath, Skipper, was for the good of the Service and, throughthe Service, for the good of all humanity. Right?"
"That's the sense of it."
"Okay. Based on what little we have learned so far about the Omans,here's just one of those scarers, for a snapper. If Omans and Terransmix freely, what happens to the entire human race?"
* * * * *
Minutes of almost palpable silence followed. Then Sawtelle spoke ...slowly, gropingly.
"I begin to see what you mean ... that changes the whole picture. You'vethought this through farther than any of the rest of us ... what do youwant to do?"
"I don't know. I simply don't know." Face set and hard, Hilton staredunseeingly past Sawtelle's head. "I don't know what we _can_ do. Nodata. But I have pursued several lines of thought out to some prettyfantastic points ... one of which is that some of us civilians will haveto stay on here indefinitely, whether we want to or not, to keep thesituation under control. In which case we would, of course, arrange forTerra to get free fuel--FOB Fuel Bin--but in every other aspect andfactor both these solar systems would have to be strictly off limits."
"I'm afraid so," Sawtelle said, finally. "Gordon would love that ... butthere's nothing he or anyone else can do ... but of course this is anextreme view. You really expect to wrap the package up, don't you?"
"'Expect' may be a trifle too strong at the moment. But we're certainlygoing to try to, believe me. I brought this example up to show all youfellows that we need time."
"You've convinced me, Jarve." Sawtelle stood up and extended his hand."And that throws it open for staff discussion. Any comments?"
"You two covered it like a blanket," Bryant said. "So all I want to say,Jarve, is deal me in. I'll stand at your back 'til your belly caves in."
"Take that from all of us!" "_Now_ we're blasting!" "Power to yourelbow, fella!" "_Hoch_ der BuSci!" "Seven no trump bid and made!" andother shouts in similar vein.
"Thanks, fellows." Hilton shook hands all around. "I'm mighty glad thatyou were all in on this and that you'll play along with me. Good night,all."