He glanced at her, and said, “Leej how much time do we have?”
“Your question,” she said, “implies you yourself do not have anything more in mind besides what you did a minute ago.”
So she had noticed; not surprising, but he hadn’t thought about her; had been too intent. “True,” he said now.
Pause; then:
“About four minutes,” said the woman, “and then there’s that blankness.”
It could have been a special moment. But bare instants after the woman spoke, a rear door of the dining room opened, and three busboys came in with drinking water. They spent about a minute filling all the glasses. As they went out, the one who must have been head-boy turned and asked, “Do you want the waiters to come in?”
“Later,” said Gosseyn.
President Blayney spoke for the first time, firmly, “We’ll call you.”
The boy went out; and Gosseyn stood there.
It was a special moment. The fact that everyone at the table—including the two government leaders, Enro and Blayney, were looking at him, evoked in Gosseyn a visualization of what they were seeing:
Himself, standing here! Physically strong, leaned-faced, and tanned, a medium tall—just under six feet—determined man who felt calm and capable; and somehow that showed in everything he did: the way he held himself, every movement he made, reflected the power of the extra-brain and… General Semantics.
Where the tan had come from, he could only speculate. But he deduced that a source of mild radiation inside the capsule had been part of the life support system tending to his needs.
During those seconds of self-awareness, it seemed to him that there was no point in doing anything else but what he had already been doing. So he said, simply: “Any more comments?”
Prescott who, with the appearance of being in his forties and, therefore, along with Blayney, was one of the two oldest persons in the room, indicated with his fingers, and said, “What do you think is the basic purpose of these creatures?”
“I believe,” said Gosseyn, “they want to get back to their own galaxy; and I believe they’re studying me to see how I might have participated in helping to bring them here.”
Prescott made a small gesture with his hand, indicating the other people at the table. “If they were technically skilful enough to bring us all here, why haven’t they been able to accomplish that basic goal?”
Gosseyn explained about the damaged nerve ends in his head. “They’ll be studying me carefully in connection with that,” he said, “What I’m afraid of is that, when they’re ready to leave, they’ll kill everybody they can reach—that probably includes all of us—unless we can establish that Enro’s fleet will hit back before they can get away.”
There was silence in that small, private dining room. And so, after a small pause, Gosseyn continued, “We probably need everyone’s reaction. So, I’m going to go around the table, and when I name you, or point at you, give your comment, or suggestion, for this situation.” There was one obvious person who had to be first on a list of direct requests; and Gosseyn after a small inward groan at the waste of time involved, named him:
“President Blayney?” he said.
The elected head of the North American continent said, “I was, fortunately, alone in my office when I felt a peculiar sensation. And the next instant I was out there in that restaurant alcove without my guards. As soon as I walked farther into the place, there was that maître-de, evidently already briefed; for he said: ‘This way, Mr. President.’ ”
Blayney added, “I’ve naturally asked him to advise my office; so a small army will probably be here shortly, if that’s any help.”
He concluded, “I’ll have my people find out from the restaurant staff just how this luncheon was set up.” Gosseyn said courteously, “Thank you, Mr. President.” And, since time was pressing even harder at that four minute deadline, his gaze went hastily down the table. “Patricia,” he said.
The young woman, who was Enro’s sister and Eldred Crang’s wife, seemed momentarily taken aback at being named. But after a pause, she said, “I suppose you could say I’ve been in this whole business from the beginning. Yet I have to admit that the arrival of the Troogs leaves me blank.”
Having spoken, she leaned back in her chair, and shrugged.
Since Crang had already spoken, Gosseyn indicated Mrs. Prescott, who sat at Patricia’s side.
The woman sighed. “I was virtually killed once in this nightmare, so I know that death is blackout; and I guess I can take it if I have to, hoping that there will no preliminary pain.”
The words were spoken quietly, but they had a grimness to them that brought Gosseyn a sense of shock. He braced himself hastily, drew a deep breath, swallowed, raised his hand and indicated the scientist, who sat just beyond Mrs. Prescott: Voice Three.
The Dzan scientist said, “I think you shouldn’t waste another moment here. Get yourself back to the protection of the energy screen of our battleship, and let the other Gosseyn come out here, and rescue us. I—”
If there were other words spoken after that, Gosseyn did not hear them. There was a tugging inside him…
CHAPTER 22
“They’re probably studying you—”
That seemed truer than ever, as he looked around at his new location. This time he was on a street which, by no reach of the Gosseyn memory, resembled anywhere that a Gosseyn had visited.
He stood there. And looked slantingly down into the upturned face of a young woman. She was a complete stranger. Presumably, there must be something in his reaction to her that the aliens wanted to observe. What could it be?
The young woman said hesitantly—in English, “I received a photograph of you.”
She had a fine, well-balanced face, brown hair and brown eyes. It was not an earth face… somehow. He estimated her height at about five feet five inches. Her clothes seemed to consist of a pale beige cloth that was wrapped around her body from the top down like a series of scarfs. On her feet she wore brown sandles, and around her neck was a thin, leathery looking necklace.
Hers was a reasonably slender female body; but she was not, by earth standards, a beauty. And there was no way for him to deduce from what he was looking at, what the aliens had in mind for this meeting.
There she stood, an attractive female, seemingly about twenty-two or three in terms of earth years. Beyond her, a street was visible—he presumed it was a street because it was a level, grayish in color, that was about four hundred feet wide, and stretched straight for several miles to where he could see the beginning of a city of solid, yellow-brown masses: buildings, he assumed.
On either side of that straight, gray level were tall trees. And a curtain of shrubbery that made it difficult to see the vaguely visible low-built structures that he assumed were residences.
Everything looked… different. Not of earth, nor Venus, nor Gorgzid, nor other familiar scenes. Standing there, Gosseyn accepted that it was another human-inhabited planet somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.
He was simultaneously remembering: in those final moments at the dinner-to-be, as he felt the tugging sensation, it had been a flash decision to let a Troog transmission of him happen at least once more. Let it happen despite the fact that his reason had immediately agreed that Voice Three was giving good advice about going back to the Dzan battleship.
Unfortunately, what he had allowed to happen seemed a minor, almost meaningless meeting. And, sadly, the individual involved had now been damaged in that she was no longer able to communicate in her native language.