Stone said, “We must choose the way of peace. Norglan leaders and Terran leaders will meet. We will divide the stars between us.” He paused, making sure the ambassadors comprehended the meaning of divide. “We will draw a line,” Stone went on, emphasizing his words by scratching a boundary between the two spheres of dominion on the ground. Quickly he scuffed out with his foot those Norglan spokes that projected into the Terran side of the line, and those Terran spokes which overreached the boundary in the Norglan’s direction.
Stone smiled. “All these worlds”—he made a sweeping gesture over the left-hand side of his sketch—“will be Norglan. No Terrans will settle there. And on this side”—he indicated the Terran doman—“no Norglans may come. These worlds will be Terran.”
He waited for some response from the Norglans.
The aliens were silent, peering down at the lines scrawled in the dirt. Taking their silence for lack of understanding, Stone repeated his suggestion.
“On this side, all worlds to be Terran. On this, all Norglan. Do you understand?”
“We understand,” said Skrinri slowly and heavily.
The wind whipped furiously at the tent, whacking the loose flap back and forth. Rising from the squat he had maintained with so little discomfort for so long, Skrinri stepped forward to tower over Stone’s diagram.
Carefully placing one huge bare foot over the lines, the Norglan rubbed out the boundary Stone had drawn to delimit the proposed Norglan and Terran sectors. Then, kneeling, Skrinri obliterated with his fingers every one of the spokes of expansion Stone had depicted as radiating from the Terran sphere.
A moment before Skrinri spoke, Martin Bernard divined what the Norglan was going to say. A cold hand seemed to clutch at the sociologist’s throat. The triumph of an instant before vanished like a snuffed flame.
Skinri’s voice was level, somber, without any hit of malice. He made a broad gesture with both hands, as if to take in the entire universe.
“Norgla builds colonies. We expand. You—Earthmen— have occupied certain worlds. You may keep these worlds. We will not take them away. All other worlds belong to Norgla. We do not have to talk further.”
With calm dignity, the two Norglans made their way from the tent. In the shocked silence that followed, the wind rose to a mocking screech.
All other worlds belong to Norgla. Stunned, the nine Earthmen stared white-faced at each other; no one had expected this.
“It’s a bluff!” Dominici whispered harshly. “Limiting us to present holdings? They can’t mean it!”
“Perhaps they can,” Havig said quietly. “Perhaps this is the end of our fine dream of galactic colonization. And perhaps this is a disguised blessing. Come: we’ll accomplish no more here today.”
The Earthmen filed out of the tent, into the alien darkness, into the suddenly hostile wind.
NINE
Morning came slowly. The little red moon twirled across the sky and was gone; the unfamiliar constellations passed above and lost themselves beyond the horizon. As the hours of night gave way to the hours of dawn, blackness to grayness, chill to morning warmth, the men of the XV-ftl busied themselves in the routine tasks of daybreak. No one had slept that night aboard the ship. Cabin lights had burned through till dawn, as Earthmen too weary to sleep argued and reargued the aspects of the situation.
“We shouldn’t have let them march out of there like that,” Stone said bitterly, cupping his plump cheeks with plump hands. “They stalked out like a couple of princes giving the word to a rabble of commoners. We should have made them stay, let them know that Earth wasn’t going to listen to their high-handed nonsense.”
“ ‘You may keep these worlds’ ” Dominici repeated in harshly sardonic tories. “ ‘All other worlds belong to Norgla.’ As if we were worms!”
“Perhaps it was the will of God that man’s expansion through the heavens come to a halt,” Havig suggested. “The Norglans may have been sent as a reminder that pride is sinful, that there are limits beyond which we dare not go.”
“You’re making the assumption that the Norglans are a genuine limit,” Bernard said. “I don’t think they are. I don’t think they’ve got the technology to keep us penned into our present sphere. They sound like bluffers to me.”
“I’ll go for that idea,” Dominici said. “What I saw of their science didn’t impress me. They’ve got spaceships and transmats, but nothing that’s qualitatively advanced over what we’ve got. In a war we could hold our own with them, I’m sure.”
“But why a war?” Havig asked. “Why not accept the decree and keep within our limits?” He answered his own question immediately, cutting off Dominici’s hot outburst. “I know. We do not accept limits because we are Earthmen, and in some mysterious way Earthmen have a divine mandate to spread throughout the entire universe.” Havig smiled darkly. “None of you pay attention to what I say, of course. You think I’m a religious crank, and in your eyes I suppose I am. But is it so utterly wrongheaded to be humble, gentlemen? To draw back our frontiers and say, Thus far and no farther shall we go? When the alternative is bloody warfare, is it cowardly to choose the path of peace?”
Bernard looked up. “I’ll grant the strength of what you’re saying, Havig. None of us wants war with these people, and maybe it isn’t man’s destiny to colonize the universe. I can’t answer for what is or isn’t our destiny. But I know enough about psychology to figure these people out, alien though they are. Right now they’re being tolerant, in a lordly way— they’ll let us keep our piddling little empire, provided we leave all the rest for them. But their tolerance won’t last forever. If all the rest of the universe becomes Norglan, some day they’re going to cast covetous eyes at us and decide to make it a clean sweep. If we give ground now, we’re inviting them to come wipe us out later. Dammit, Havig, there’s a difference between being humble and being suicidally meek!”
“So you think we should make war on Norgla?” the linguist asked.
“I think we should go back to them today and let them know we aren’t going to let ourselves be bluffed,” Bernard said. “Reject their ultimatum. Maybe that’s simply their alien way of negotiating: begin with an absurd demand and work backward to a compromise.”
“No,” Dominici said. “They want war. They’re spoiling for it. Well, we’ll give it to ’em! Let’s tell Laurance we’re pulling out of here, heading for home. We’ll toss the whole business in the Archonate’s lap and wait for the shooting to start.”
Stone shook his head mildly. “Bernard’s right, Dominici. We have to go back and try again. We can’t just go storming off to Earth like hotheads, or even go meekly crawling away with our tails dragging, as Havig would like. We’ll give it another try today.”
The cabin door opened, and Laurance, Clive, and Hernandez entered. They, too, had been up all night, or so it looked from their paleness of face and redness of eye.
Laurance forced a smile. “It’s almost morning. I see you haven’t done much sleeping.”
“We’ve been trying to figure out whether we ought to try another session with the Norglans,” Bernard said.
“Well? What was the decision?”
“We aren’t sure. Matter of fact, we seem to be split down the middle on the subject.”
“What’s the point of disagreement?” Laurance asked.
“I feel it’s time for mankind to pull in its horns,” Havig said with an apologetic smile. “Our friend Dominici wants to go home too, but for the opposite reason: he doesn’t think it’s worth talking to the Norglans again.”