Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

Don Ross managed finally to stop laughing. “Listen, my alien friend who cannot kill,” he said, “I’m getting you out of this. I’m going to see that you get through our cordon to the safety you want. But what’s funny is the way I’m going to do it. By obedience to orders and by going to my own death. I’m going to outer space, to die there. You, all of you, can come along and live there. Hitchhike. Your tiny ships won’t show on the patrol’s detectors if they are touching this ship. Not only that, but the gravity of this ship will pull you along and you won’t have to waste fuel until you are well through the cordon and beyond the reach of its detectors. A hundred thousand parsecs, at least, before my fuel runs out.”

There was a long pause before the voice in Don Ross’s mind said, “Thank you.” Faintly. Softly.

He waited until the five ships had vanished from his visiplate and he had heard five tiny sounds of their touching the hull of his own ship. Then he laughed once more. And obeyed orders, blasting off for space and death.

On a tiny planet of a far, faint star, invisible from Earth, and at the farther edge of the galaxy, five times as far as man has yet penetrated into space, there is the statue of an Earthman. It is a tremendous thing, ten inches high, exquisite in workmanship.

Bugs crawl on it, but they have a right to; they made it, and they honor it. The statue is of very hard metal. On an airless world it will last forever—or until Earthmen find it and blast it out of existence. Unless, of course, by that time Earthmen have changed an awful lot.

The spaceship from Andromeda II spun like a top in the grip of mighty forces. The five-limbed Andromedan strapped into the pilot’s seat turned the three protuberant eyes of one of his heads toward the four other Andromedans strapped into bunks around the ship.

“Going to be a rough landing,” he said.

It was.

Elmo Scott hit the tab key of his typewriter and listened to the carriage zing across and ring the bell. It sounded nice and he did it again. But there still weren’t any words on the sheet of paper in the machine.

He lit another cigarette and stared at it. At the paper, that is, not the cigarette. There still weren’t any words on the paper.

He tilted his chair back and turned to look at the sleek black-and-tan Doberman pinscher lying in the mathematical middle of the rag rug. He said, “You lucky dog.” The Doberman wagged what little stump of tail he had. He didn’t answer otherwise.

Elmo Scott looked back at the paper. There still weren’t any words there. He put his fingers over the keyboard and wrote: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” He stared at the words, such as they were, and felt the faintest breath of an idea brush his cheek.

He called out “Toots!” and a cute little brunette in a blue gingham house dress came out of the kitchen and stood by him. His arm went around her. He said, “I got an idea.”

She read the words in the typewriter. “It’s the best thing you’ve written in three days,” she said, “except for that letter renewing your subscription to the Digest. I think that was better.”

“Button your lip,” Elmo told her. “I’m talking about what I’m going to do with that sentence. I’m going to change it to a science-fiction plot idea, one word at a time. It can’t miss. Watch.”

He took his arm from around her and wrote under the first sentence: “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of the party.” He said, “Get the idea, Toots? Already it’s beginning to look like a science-fiction send-off. Good old bug-eyed monsters. Bems to you. Watch the next step.”

Under the first sentence and the second he wrote. “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of—” He stared at it. “What shall I make it, Toots? ‘The galaxy’ or ‘the universe’?”

“Better make it yourself. If you don’t get a story finished and the check for it in two weeks, we lose this cabin and walk back to the city and—and you’ll have to quit writing full time and go back to the newspaper and—”

“Cut it out, Toots. I know all that. Too well.”

“Just the same, Elmo, you’d better make it: ‘Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo Scott.’”

The big Doberman stirred on the rag rug. He said, “You needn’t.”

Both human heads turned toward him.

The little brunette stamped a dainty foot. “Elmo!” she said. “Trying a trick like that. That’s how you’ve been spending the time you should have spent writing. Learning ventriloquism!”

“No, Toots,” said the dog. “It isn’t that.”

“Elmo! How do you get him to move his mouth like—” Her eyes went from the dog’s face to Elmo’s and she stopped in mid-sentence. If Elmo Scott wasn’t scared stiff, then he was a better actor than Maurice Evans. She said, “Elmo!” again, but this time her voice was a scared little wail, and she didn’t stamp her foot. Instead she practically fell into Elmo’s lap and, if he hadn’t grabbed her, would probably have fallen from there to the floor.

“Don’t be frightened, Toots,” said the dog.

Some degree of sanity returned to Elmo Scott. He said, “Whatever you are, don’t call my wife Toots. Her name is Dorothy.”

“You call her Toots.”

“That’s—that’s different.”

“I see it is,” said the dog. His mouth lolled open as though he were laughing. “The concept that entered your mind when you used that word ‘wife’ is an interesting one. This is a bisexual planet, then.”

Elmo said, “This is a—uh—What are you talking about?”

“On Andromeda II,” said the dog, “we have five sexes. But we are a highly developed race, of course. Yours is highly primitive. Perhaps I should say lowly primitive. Your language has, I find, confusing connotations; it is not mathematical. But, as I started to observe, you are still in the bisexual stage. How long since you were monosexual? And don’t deny that you once were; I can read the word ‘amoeba’ in your mind.”

“If you can read my mind,” said Elmo, “why should I talk?”

“Consider Toots—I mean Dorothy,” said the dog. “We cannot hold a three-way conversation since you two are not telepathic. At any rate, there shall shortly be more of us in the conversation. I have summoned my companions.” He laughed again. “Do not let them frighten you, no matter in what form they may appear. They are merely Bems.”

“B-bems?” asked Dorothy. “You mean you are b-bug-eyed monsters? That’s what Elmo means by Bems, but you aren’t—”

“That is just what I am,” said the dog. “You are not, of course, seeing the real me. Nor will you see my companions as they really are. They, like me, are temporarily animating bodies of creatures of lesser intelligence. In our real bodies, I assure you, you would classify us as Bems. We have five limbs each and two heads, each head with three eyes on stalks.”

“Where are your real bodies?” Elmo asked.

“They are dead—Wait, I see that word means more to you than I thought at first. They are dormant, temporarily uninhabitable and in need of repairs, inside the fused hull of a spaceship which was warped into this space too near a planet. This planet. That’s what wrecked us.”

“Where? You mean there’s really a spaceship near here? Where?” Elmo’s eyes were almost popping from his head as he questioned the dog.

“That is none of your business, Earthman. If it were found and examined by you creatures, you would possibly discover space travel before you are ready for it. The cosmic scheme would be upset.” He growled. “There are enough cosmic wars now. We were fleeing a Betelgeuse fleet when we warped into your space.”