Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

“Here they come now,” she said.

A small procession was emerging from the camp. It approached the spaceship at a run, single file, the tallest Tolfian figure in the lead, and the others grading down in size behind until the last was a half-grown alien that was pretty sure to be the one Mike had sent on the errand.

“If we could just get through to home base back on Altair A—” muttered Mike; and then he could mutter no more, because the approaching file was already dashing into hearing distance. The lead Tolfian raced to the very feet of Mike and sat down on his tail. His muzzle was gray with age and authority and the years its color represented had made him almost as tall as Mike.

“Mike!” he said, happily.

The other Tolfians had dispersed themselves in a semicircle and were also sitting on their tails and looking rather like a group of racetrack fans on shooting sticks.

“Hello, Moral,” said Mike, in a pleasantly casual tone. “What’re you building over there now?”

“A terminal—a transport terminal, I suppose you’d call it in English, Mike,” said Moral. “It’ll be finished in a few hours. Then you can all go to Barzalac.”

“Oh, we can, can we?” said Mike. “And where is Barzalac?”

“I don’t know if you know the sun, Mike,” said Moral, seriously. “We call it Aimna. It’s about a hundred and thirty light-years from ours. Barzalac is the Confederation center—on its sixth planet.”

“A hundred and thirty light-years?” said Mike, staring at the Tolfian.

“Isn’t that right?” said Moral, confusedly. “Maybe I’ve got your terms wrong. I haven’t been speaking your language since yesterday—”

“You speak it just fine. Just fine,” said Mike. “Nice of you all to go to the trouble to learn it.”

“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble,” said Moral. “And for you humans—well,” he smiled, “nothing’s too good, you know.”

He said the last words rather shyly, and ducked his head for a second as if to avoid Mike’s eyes.

“That’s very nice,” said Mike. “Now, would you mind if I asked you again why nothing’s too good?”

“Oh, didn’t I make myself clear before?” said Moral, in distressed tones. “I’m sorry—the thing is, we’ve met others of your people before.”

“I got that, all right,” said Mike. “Another race of humans, some thousands or dozens of thousands of years ago. And they aren’t around any more?”

“I am very sorry,” said Moral, with tears in his eyes. “Very, very sorry—”

“They died off?”

“Our loss—the loss of all the Confederation—was deeply felt. It was like losing our own, and more than our own.”

“Yes,” said Mike. He locked his hands behind his back and took a step up and down on the springy turf before turning back to the Tolfian squire. “Well, now, Moral, we wouldn’t want that to happen to us.”

“Oh, no!” cried Moral. “It mustn’t happen. Somehow—we must insure its not happening.”

“My attitude, exactly,” said Mike, a little grimly. “Now, to get back to the matter at hand—why did you people decide to build your transportation center right here by our ship?”

“Oh, it’s no trouble, no trouble at all to run one up,” said Moral. “We thought you’d want one convenient here.”

“Then you have others?”

“Of course,” said Moral. “We go back and forth among the Confederation a lot.” He hesitated. “I’ve arranged for them to expect you tomorrow—if it’s all right with you.”

“Tomorrow? On Barzalac?” cried Mike.

“If it’s all right with you.”

“Look, how fast is this… transportation, or whatever you call it?”

Moral stared at him.

“Why, I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “I’m just a sort of a rural person, you know. A few millionths of a second, I believe you’d say, in your terms?”

Mike stared. There was a moment’s rather uncomfortable silence. Mike drew a deep breath.

“I see,” he said.

“I have the honor of being invited to escort you,” said Moral, eagerly. “If you want me, that is. I… I rather look forward to showing you around the museum in Barzalac. And after all, it was my property you landed on.”

“Here we go again,” said Mike under his breath. Only Penny heard him. “What museum?”

“What museum?” echoed Moral, and looked blank. “Oh, the museum erected in honor of those other humans. It has everything,” he went on eagerly, “artifacts, pictures—the whole history of these other people, together with the Confederation. Of course”—he hesitated with shyness again—“there’ll be experts around to give you the real details. As I say, I’m only a sort of rural person—”

“All right,” said Mike, harshly. “I’ll quit beating around the bush. Just why do you want us to go to Barzalac?”

“But the heads of the Confederation,” protested Moral. “They’ll be expecting you.”

“Expecting us?” demanded Mike. “For what?”

“Why to take over the Confederation, of course,” said Moral, staring at him as if he thought the human had taken leave of his senses. “You are going to, aren’t you?”

Half an hour later, Mike had a council of war going in the lounge of Exploration Ship 29XJ. He paced up and down while Penny, Red Sommers, Tommy Anotu, and Alvin Longhand sat about in their gimballed armchairs, listening.

“…The point’s this,” Mike was saying, “we can’t get through to base at all because of the distance. Right, Red?”

“The equipment just wasn’t designed to carry more than a couple of light-years, Mike,” answered Red. “You know that. To get a signal from here to Altair we’d need a power plant nearly big enough to put this ship in its pocket.”

“All right,” said Mike. “Point one—we’re on our own. That leaves it up to me. And my duty as captain of this vessel is to discover anything possible about an intelligent life form like this—particularly since the human race’s never bumped into anything much brighter than a horse up until now.”

“You’re going to go?” asked Penny.

“That’s the question. It all depends on what’s behind the way these Tolfians are acting. That transporter of theirs could just happen to be a fine little incinerating unit, for all we know. Not that I’m not expendable—we all are. But the deal boils down to whether I’d be playing into alien hands by going along with them, or not.”

“You don’t think they’re telling the truth?” asked Alvin, his lean face pale against the metal bulkhead behind him.

“I don’t know!” said Mike, pounding one fist into the palm of his other hand and continuing to pace. “I just don’t know. Of all the fantastic stories—that there are, or have been, other ethnic groups of humans abroad in the galaxy! And that these humans were so good, so wonderful that their memory is revered and this Confederation can’t wait to put our own group up on the pedestal the other bunch vacated!”

“What happened to the other humans, Mike?” asked Tommy.

“Moral doesn’t know, exactly. He knows they died off, but he’s hazy on the why and how. He thinks a small group of them may have just pulled up stakes and moved on—but he thinks maybe that’s just a legend. And that’s it. ” He pounded his fist into his palm again.

“What’s it?” asked Penny.

“The way he talked about it—the way these Tolfians are,” said Mike. “They’re as bright as we are. Their science—and they know it as well as we do—is miles ahead of us. Look at that transporter, if it’s true, that can whisk you light-years in millisecond intervals. Does it make any sense at all that a race that advanced—let alone a bunch of races that advanced—would want to bow down and say ‘Master’ to us ?”