me."
"Yet I knew who you were and that you were here. I must have hadsomething to do with it, don't you think?"
"What?"
"I forced you to come by deception, so that no one knows you arehere--except the old man whose name you used. Who will believe him thatyou came on the Martian Princess? Our records will show that a JakeNorton will be there on Earth. No one can ever prove that Mel Hastingsever came aboard."
* * * * *
Mel let his breath out slowly. His fear suddenly swallowed caution. Hetook a crouching step forward. Then he stopped, frozen. James Connemorratilted the small pistol resting in his lap. Mel did not know how it cameto be there. He had not seen it a moment ago.
"What are you going to do?" Mel demanded. "What are you going to do withall of us?"
"You know too much," said Connemorra, shrugging in mock helplessness."What _can_ I do with you?"
"Explain what I don't understand about the things you say I know."
"Explain to you?" The idea seemed to amuse Connemorra greatly, as if ithad some utterly ridiculous aspect. "Yes, I might as well explain," hesaid. "I haven't had anyone interested enough to listen for a long time.
"Men have never been alone in space. We have been watched, inspected,and studied periodically since Neanderthal times by races in the galaxywho have preceded us in development by hundreds of thousands of years.These observers have been pleasantly excited by some of the things wehave done, appalled by others.
"There is a galactic organization that has existed for at least ahundred thousand years. This organization exists for the purpose ofmutual development of the worlds and races of the galaxy. It also existsto maintain peace, for there were ages before its organization wheninterstellar war took place, and more than one great world was wiped outin such senseless wars.
"When men of Earth were ready to step into space, the Galactic Councilhad to decide, as it had decided on so many other occasions, whether thenew world was to be admitted as a member. The choice is not one which anew world is invited to make; the choice is made for it. A world whichbegins to send its ships through space becomes a member of the Council,or its ships cease to travel. The world itself may cease to exist."
"You mean this dictatorial Council determines whether a world is fit tosurvive and actually wipes out those it decides against?" gasped Mel inhorror. "They set themselves up as judges in the Universe?"
"That's about the way they operate, to put it bluntly," said Connemorra."You can call them a thousand unpleasant names, but you can't change thefact of their existence, nor the fact of their successful operation fora period as long as the age of the human race.
"They would never have made their existence known to us if we had notbegun sending our ships into space. But once we did that we wereentering territory staked out by races that were there when we crawledout of our caves. Who can say what their rights are?"
"But to pass judgment on entire worlds--"
"We have no choice but to accept that such judgment is passed."
"And their judgment of Earth--?"
"Was that Earth was not ready for Council membership. Earthmen are stillmaking too many blunders to join creatures that could cross the galaxyat the speed of light when we were learning how to chip flint."
"But they didn't wipe us out!"
* * * * *
James Connemorra looked out at the stars. "I wonder," he said. "Iwonder--"
"What do you mean?" Mel said in a tight voice.
"We have defects which are not quite like any they have encounteredbefore. We have developed skills in the manufacture of artifacts, but wehave no capacity for using them. For example, we have developed vastsystems of communication, but these systems have not improved ourcommunications they have actually blocked communication."
"That's crazy!" said Mel. "Do they suppose smoke signals are superior tothe 3-d screens in our homes?"
"As a matter of fact, they do. And so do I. When a man must resort tosmoke signals he is very certain that he has something to say before hegoes to the trouble of putting the message in the air. But our fabulousscreens prevent us from communicating with each other by throwing up awall of pseudo-communication that we can't get through. We subjectourselves to a barrage of sound and light that has a communicationcontent of almost zero.
"The same is true of our inventions in transportation. We have efficientmeans of travel to all parts of the world and now to the Universeitself. But we don't travel. We use our machines to block traveling."
"I can understand the first argument, but not this one!" said Mel.
"We move our bodies to new locations with our machines, but our mindsremain at home. We take our rutted thoughts, our predispositions, ourcultural concepts wherever we go. We do not touch, even with a fragmentof our minds, that which our machines give us contact with. We do nottravel. We move in space, but we do not travel.
"This is their accusation. And they're right. We are still doing what wehave always done. We are using space flight for the boring, the trivial,the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watchon the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions:the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've builtcivilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. One raceof the Galactics has a phrase they apply to people like us: 'If there isa God in Heaven He has wept for ten thousand years.'
* * * * *
"But all this is not the worst. A race that is merely stupid seldom getsout to space. But ours has something else they fear: destructiveness.They have plotted our history and extrapolated our future. If they letus come out, war and conflict will follow."
"They can't know that!"
"They say they can. We are in no position to argue."
"So they plan to destroy us--"
"No. They want to try an experiment that has been carried out just a fewtimes previously. They are going to reduce us from what they term thecritical mass which we have achieved."
"Critical mass? That's a nuclear term."
"Right. Meaning ready to blow up. That's where we are. Two not-so-minornuclear wars in fifty years. They see us carrying our destructivenessinto space, fighting each other there, infecting other races with ourhostility. But if we are broken down into smaller groups, have the toolsof war removed, and are forced to take another line of development--well,they have hopes of salvaging us."
"But they can't do a thing like that to us! What do they intend? Takinggroups of Earthmen, deporting them to other worlds--breaking them apartfrom each other forever--?"
The coldness found its resting place in Mel's chest. He stared at JamesConnemorra. Then his eyes moved slowly over the walls of the room in theblack ship and out to the stars. The black ship.
"This ship--! You transfer your passengers to this Galactic ship fordeportation to other worlds! But they come back--"
"They are sent to colonies on other worlds where conditions are likethose on Earth--with significant exceptions. The colonies are small,the largest are only a few thousand. The problems there are differentthan on Earth--and they are tough. The natural resources are not thesame. The development of the resulting cultures will be vastly differentfrom that of Earth. The Galactic Council is very interested in theoutcome--which will not be known with certainty for a thousand years orso."
"But they come back," Mel repeated. "You bring them back!"
"For each Earthman who goes out, a replacement is sent back. Thereplacement is an android supplied by the Council."
"Android!" Mel felt his reason slipping. He knew he was shouting. "ThenAlice--the Alice that died was an android, she was not my wife! My Aliceis still alive! You can take me to her--"
Connemorra nodded. "Alice is still alive, and well. No harm has come toher."
"Take me to her!" Mel knew he was pleading, but in his anguish he had nopride.
Connemorra seemed to ignore his plea. "Eart
h's population is slowlybeing diluted by the removal of top people. The androids behave in everyway like the individuals they replace, but they are preconditionedagainst the inherent destructiveness of Earthmen."
Blind anger seemed to rise within Mel. "You have no right to separateme from Alice. Take me to her!"
His rage ignited and he leaped forward.
The small gun in Connemorra's hand spurted twice. Mel felt a doubleimpact in a moment of great wonder. It couldn't end like this, hethought. It couldn't end without his seeing Alice once more. Just oncemore--
* * * * *
He sank to the floor. The pain was not great, but he knew he was dying.He looked down at his hand that covered the great wound in hismid-section. There was something wrong.
He felt the stickiness, but the red blood was not welling out. Instead,a thick bubble of green ooze moved from the wound and spread over hisclothes and his hand. An alien greenness that was like nothing human.
He had seen it once before.
Alice.
He stared up at Connemorra with wide, wondering eyes.
"Everything went wrong, my poor android," said Connemorra softly. "Afteryour human was brought back to the ship we were forced to go throughwith the usual process of imprinting his mind content upon his android.But we had to wipe out all memory of the attempted escape from theMartian Princess. This was not successful. It still clung in thenightmares you experienced. And the psycho-recovery brought it all back.
"We tried to cover it with an amnesiac condition instead of the usualpre-printed memory of a Mars vacation. And all this might have worked ifthe Alice android had not been defective also. A normal android hasprotective mechanisms that make accidents and subsequent discoveryimpossible. But the Alice android failed, and you set out on a course touncover us. I had to find a way to destroy you--murder.
"I'm truly sorry. I don't know how an android thinks or feels. SometimesI'm afraid of all of you. You are like men, but I've seen the factoriesin which you are produced. There are many things I do not know. I knowonly that I had to obey the Galactic Council or Earth would have beendestroyed long ago.
"And something else I know: Alice and Mel Hastings are content andhappy. They are on a lovely world, very much like Central Valley."
He closed his eyes as he felt the life--or whatever it was--seeping outof him. It came out right, after all, he thought.
Like a wooden soldier with a painted smile, fallen from a shelf, he laytwisted upon the floor.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ December 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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