«Of course,» he answered, a little irritable with excitement. «Any other procedure would be madness!»
«But… if they have bad intentions—»
«Listen, Mr. Dickson, if they meant to do anything hostile, they’d do it. That one ship has more power than all this planet’s combined military forces.» The awe of it swept over Brackney, he breathed almost religiously: «A spaceship from the stars—and men aboard—»
The Secretary of Defense spoke slowly: «You know, every night for the past month I’ve gone down on my knees—and am not ashamed to admit it—to thank God that ship landed here. Not in some potential enemy’s camp, but here—with us.»
«It wouldn’t have made any difference,» said the President. «The visitors have been all over Earth in their lifeboats, seeing for themselves, taking almost all the printed matter they could get back. They probably have a better overall picture of Earth than we do.»
He said, as the car swung up the driveway: «This is by rights not a matter for us at all. The United Nations alone should handle it, and they must take over soon. But—it was never set up to deal with ambassadors. I have to make the first official approach, for lack of anyone else.»
The farmer stood nervously waiting. Since that rainy night a month gone when the ship landed in his pasture, he had lived in such a glare of publicity as to become a bit blasé about it. But after all—the President—
«I think they’re waiting, sir,» he mumbled.
«Very well. Come along, gentlemen.» Brackney led the way.
A ramp had been lowered from the entrance lock, a hundred feet above ground. The party stepped on it and it rose smoothly up, with an uncanny, almost living flexibility.
For a moment, Brackney’s throat was dry. A spaceship from the stars—Don’t be a fool! he reproached himself sharply. The Taithans have emphasized their friendliness a hundred times. They aren’t conquistadores, they are representatives of a culture a thousand years ahead of ours—a culture that must have outgrown war, or the race would destroy itself with the weapons it has.
The crew of the ship stood waiting at the lock. There were not many of them, a score or so, and nearly all of these were scientists. The ship, they had said, practically ran itself. Nor were they at all spectacular. They looked like very ordinary human beings of a curiously mixed race—dark skin, Mongoloid eyes of a light shade, thin Caucasoid noses, woolly hair. They wore robes of a shimmering blue material, and had no outward insignia of rank.
«Greetings, gentlemen,» said one, in accented but ready-flowing English, «Permit me to introduce myself—Gor Haml, the one of us who learned your language. The others, of course, have learned other tongues of your planet.»
«I am Philip Brackney—» Introductions went around, acknowledged by the Taithans with grave bows. Thereafter Gor Haml led the way along a bare metal corridor and into a small—well, living room, thought Brackney, who was no sailor. It was furnished with chairs and tables of a comfortable, massive style, and there were some uncannily three-dimensional pictures on the walls. As the party sat down, they felt the chairs mold themselves to the body contours.
«I take it that the visit of such high dignitaries may be considered official?» asked Gor Haml.
«Certainly,» replied Brackney. «But—may I ask if your own visit is in the nature of a formal embassy? Your refusal to admit anyone to your ship, or to hold other than the most academic discourse with those you met, until your invitation to me yesterday—that suggests you are on an official mission yourselves.»
«Yes and no,» answered the Taithan. «We are travelers, exploring this section of the Galaxy, but we are representatives of the Taithan people too, empowered to decide policy with regard to any world we visit.»
«But why did you hold yourselves so aloof?» The Secretary of State looked worried. «All Earth was ready to welcome you. Nearly all churches held thanksgiving services that you had come. Every government has besieged you with official congratulations and invitations.»
Gor Haml seemed a little unhappy. «We have met great courtesy everywhere,» he said, «but it is a rule of the exploration service not to perform any policy-making act until the new planet is—classified.»
«I should hardly think a month would suffice for that,» ventured Brackney.
Gor Haml rubbed a hand over his weary eyes. «It is grueling work,» he admitted, «but it can be done, due to a combination of the highly evolved Taithan psychotechnology and certain phenomena of evolution and history. We have a very exact technique for dealing with human races.»
«Human races!»
«Yes! It seems strange, but the fact is that in three hundred years of Galactic exploration the Taithans have never found an Earth-like world which was not inhabited by a human race. Oh, there are differences, of course, and even races which look and think exactly alike could hardly be so similar as to make interbreeding possible—but by and large, the similarities exceed the differences.»
«I should think the random element—»
«There is none, not if you agree that like causes produce like effects. All planets are produced by the same basic process, and so every Sol-type star must have a system like this one. And every Earth-type planet must produce the same general forms of life—because two processes beginning with the same initial conditions must run the same course.»
«But how can the initial conditions be so much alike?»
«They are, in at least half the cases. There are deviations of greater or less degree, but over half the G0-type stars explored so far have been found to have planets similar to Taitha inhabited by an intelligent race similar to our own—and Earth is such a one.» Gor Haml’s eyes rested speculatively on the President: «We were astonished at this ourselves, when we first began exploring, but the fact was there. Now we know the reasons and see that such similarity is inevitable in this universe, but I cannot explain the philosophy to you. A thousand years from now, Earthlings should be able to understand it—but not at your present stage of development.»
«I begin to see how you were able to learn about us so quickly,» said Brackney. «You knew just about what to expect and what to look for.»
«That is part of it, to be sure. Also, we have the benefits of a psychological science evolved to a point that might seem miraculous to you. It includes all human knowledge, which is after all only a function of the human organism, and integrates it according to principles your scientists and philosophers have not yet imagined. You have the germ of it in your experimental and analytical psychology, in semantics and symbolic logic, in physical and biological sciences, yes, and in some of your philosophical speculations. But you have not begun to exploit the potentialities of your own nervous systems. Taithans have no more inherent intelligence than Earthlings, but they know how to use it; just as a caveman was inherently capable of using, say, tensor analysis, but the knowledge did not exist for him. Thus we can perform such apparent feats of legerdemain as understanding and classifying a planet in a month’s hard work.»
«I see,» nodded Brackney. «I can even guess your main line of approach—simply reading tons of written material of every kind, at some fantastic speed, and analyzing the information, both direct and indirect, it contains.»
«That is one important line, at least,» smiled the Taithan. «I might add that history books are the leading source of the knowledge we are after.»
There was a moment of silence. The Earthlings sat looking at the strangers, seeking some sign of foreignness or of godlike power or anything, rather than the score of weary-looking, ordinary men before them. Brackney, with a politician’s sensitivity to moods, could not escape the nagging conviction that the Taithans were depressed. They look at us as if they felt sorry for us!