Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

Nobody said anything.

“All right,” said Mike, more calmly, “you know as well as I do it doesn’t. That leaves us right on the spike. Are they telling the truth, or aren’t they? If they aren’t, then they are obviously setting us up for something. If they are—then there’s a catch in it somewhere, because the whole story is just too good to be true. They need us like an idiot uncle, but they claim that now that we’ve stumbled on to them, they can’t think of existing without us. They want us to take over. Us! ”

Mike threw himself into his own chair and threw his arms wide.

“All right, everybody,” he said. “Let’s have some opinions.”

There was a silence in which everybody looked at everybody else.

“We could pack up and head for home real sudden-like,” offered Tommy.

“No,” Mike gnawed at his thumb. “If they’re this good, they could tell which way we went and maybe track us. Also, we’d be popping off for insufficient reason. So far we’ve encountered nothing obviously inimical.”

“This planet’s Earth-like as they come,” offered Alvin—and corrected himself, hastily. “I don’t mean that perhaps the way it sounded. I mean it’s as close to Earth conditions as any of the worlds we’ve colonized extensively up until now.”

“I know,” muttered Mike. “Moral says the Confederation worlds are all that close—and that I can believe. Now that we know that nearly all suns have planets, and if these people can really hop dozens of light-years in a wink, there’ll be no great trouble in finding a good number of Earth-like worlds in this part of the galaxy.”

“Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just a natural thing for life forms on worlds so similar to hang together,” offered Red.

“Sure,” said Mike. “Suppose that was true, and suppose we were their old human-style buddies come back. Then there’d be a reason for a real welcome. But we aren’t.”

“Maybe they think we’re just pretending not to be their old friends,” said Red.

“No,” Mike shook his head. “They can take one look at our ship here and see what we’ve got. Their old buddies wouldn’t come back in anything as old-fashioned as a spaceship; and they’d hardly be wanted if they did. Besides, welcoming an old friend and inviting him to take over your home and business are two different things.”

“Maybe—” said Red, hesitantly, “it’s all true, but they’ve got it in for their old buddies for some reason, and all this is just setting us up for the ax.”

Mike slowly lifted his head and exchanged a long glance with his Communications officer.

“That does it,” he said. “Now you say it. That, my friends, was the exact conclusion I’d come to myself. Well, that ties it.”

“What do you mean, Mike?” cried Penny.

“I mean that’s it,” said Mike. “If that’s the case, I’ve got to see it through and find out about it. In other words, tomorrow I go to Barzalac. The rest of you stay here; and if I’m not back in two days, blast off for home.”

“Mike,” said Penny, as the others stared at him, “I’m going with you.”

“No,” said Mike.

“Yes, I am,” said Penny, “I’m not needed here, and—”

“Sorry,” said Mike. “But I’m captain. And you stay, Penny.”

“Sorry, captain,” retorted Penny. “But I’m the biologist. And if we’re going to be running into a number of other alien life forms—” She let the sentence hang.

Mike threw up his hands in helplessness.

The trip through the transporter was, so far as Mike and Penny had any way of telling, instantaneous and painless. They stepped through a door-shaped opaqueness and found themselves in a city.

The city was even almost familiar. They had come out on a sort of plaza or court laid out on a little rise, and they were able to look down and around them at a number of low buildings. These glowed in all manners of colors and were remarkable mainly for the fact that they had no roofs as such, but were merely obscured from overhead view by an opaqueness similar to that in the transporter. The streets on which they were set stretched in all directions, and streets and buildings were clear to the horizon.

“The museum,” said Moral, diffidently, and the two humans turned about to find themselves facing a low building fronting on the court that stretched wide to the left and right and far before them. Its interior seemed split up into corridors.

They followed Moral in through the arch of an entrance that stood without respect to any walls on either side and down a corridor. They emerged into a central interior area dominated by a single large statue in the area’s center. Penny caught her breath, and Mike stared. The statue was, indubitably, that of a human—a man.

The stone figure was dressed only in a sort of kilt. He stood with one hand resting on a low pedestal beside him; gazing downward in such a way that his eyes seemed to meet those of whoever looked up at him from below. The eyes were gentle, and the lean, middle-aged face was a little tired and careworn, with its high brow and the sharp lines drawn around the corners of the thin mouth. Altogether, it most nearly resembled the face of a man who is impatient with the time it is taking to pose for his sculptor.

“Moral! Moral!” cried a voice; and they all turned to see a being with white and woolly fur that gave him a rather polar-bear look, trotting across the polished floor toward them. He approached in upright fashion and was as four-limbed as Moral—and the humans themselves, for that matter.

“You are Moral, aren’t you?” demanded the newcomer, as he came up to them. His English was impeccable. He bowed to the humans—or at least he inclined the top half of his body toward them. Mike, a little uncertainly, nodded back. “I’m Arrjhanik.”

“Oh, yes… yes,” said Moral. “The Greeter. These are the humans, Mike Wellsbauer and Peony Matsu. May I… how do you put it… present Arrjhanik a Bin. He is a Siniloid, one of the Confederation’s older races.”

“So honored,” said Arrjhanik.

“We’re both very pleased to meet you,” said Mike, feeling on firmer ground. There were rules for this kind of alien contact.

“Would you… could you come right now?” Arrjhanik appealed to the humans. “I’m sorry to prevent you from seeing the rest of the museum at this time”—Mike frowned; and his eyes narrowed a little—“but a rather unhappy situation has come up. One of our Confederate heads—the leader of one of the races that make up our Confederation—is dying. And he would like to see you before… you understand.”

“Of course,” said Mike.

“If we had known in advance—But it comes rather suddenly on the Adrii—” Arrjhanik led them off toward the entrance of the building and they stepped out into sunlight again. He led them back to the transporter from which they had just emerged.

“Wait a minute,” said Mike, stopping. “We aren’t going back to Tolfi, are we?”

“Oh, no. No,” put in Moral from close behind him. “We’re going to the Chamber of Deputies.” He gave Mike a gentle push; and a moment later they had stepped through into a small and pleasant room half-filled with a dozen or so beings each so different one from the other that Mike had no chance to sort them out and recognize individual characteristics.

Arrjhanik led them directly to the one piece of furniture in the room which appeared to be a sort of small table incredibly supported by a single wire-thin leg at one of the four corners. On the surface of this lay a creature or being not much bigger than a seven-year-old human child and vaguely catlike in form. It lay on its side, its head supported a little above the table’s surface by a cube of something transparent but apparently not particularly soft, and large colorless eyes in its head focused on Mike and Penny as they approached.