“There are many things,” said Buster, sadly, “that I don’t understand. Maybe Elmer does, but I don’t think he does. It doesn’t bother him. That’s because he’s a Ghost and I’m only a robot. You see, he’s sure he’s right. I can’t be sure. I wish I could be. It would make things easier.”
The Earthman grinned at the robot, flipped the gun.
“You Earthmen think differently,” Buster went on. “Your minds are limber. You never say a thing is right until you’ve proven it. You never say a thing’s impossible until you’ve proven that. And one right, so far as you are concerned, isn’t the only right. To you it doesn’t matter how you do a thing just so you get it done.”
“That, Buster,” said Lathrop gently, “is because we’re a young race. We haven’t gotten hidebound yet. Age may give a race a different viewpoint, an arrogant, unswerving viewpoint that makes it hard to get at truth. The Martians should come to us straightforward, explain the situation. They shouldn’t try to propagandize us. The human race, from bitter experience, hates propaganda, can spot it a mile away. That’s why we’re suspicious of the Preachers, make things so tough for them.”
“The Martians don’t trust you,” Buster said. “You take over things.”
Lathrop nodded. It was, he realized, a legitimate criticism.
“They’re a cautious people,” Buster went on. “Caution played a part in the course they took. They wanted to be sure, you see. When the future of the race was at stake, they couldn’t take a chance. Now they’re afraid of the human race — not because of what it can do now, but what it might do later. And still they know you are the closest to them, in thought and temperament, of any peoples in the Universe. They feel that for that reason they should help you.”
“Look, Buster,” said Lathrop, “you told me they became small. You mean they went into a subatomic universe?”
“Yes,” said Buster. “They found a principle. It was based on the fourth dimension.”
“What has the fourth dimension got to do with being small?”
“I don’t know,” said Buster.
Lathrop got to his feet. “All right,” he said. “We’ll see Elmer now.”
He moved slowly down the stairs, the weapon dangling from a hand that swung by his side. Below Buster waited, meekly.
Suddenly Buster moved, straight up the stairs, charging with tentacles flailing. Lathrop jerked back, retreating before the rush. For a fumbling moment he held his breath as he brought up the clumsy gun and pressed the button.
A tentacle slammed against his shoulder and knocked him sidewise even as he fired. He brought up against the stone wall of the staircase with a jolt, the gun still hissing in his hand.
For an instant Buster halted as the faint blue radiance from the weapon spattered on his armor, then tottered, half fell, regained erectness with an effort. Slowly at first, then with a rush, he began to shrink — as if he were falling in upon himself.
Lathrop lifted his finger from the button, lowered the gun. Buster was trying to scramble up the steps, still trying to get at him, but the stairs now were too high for him to negotiate.
In stricken silence, Lathrop watched him grow smaller and smaller, just as the spaceship had grown smaller out there on the desert.
Thrusting the gun back into his belt, Lathrop knelt on the stairs and watched the frantic running of the tiny robot, running as if be were trying to escape from something, trapped by his very smallness on a single tread.
Buster was no more than two inches tall, seemed to be growing no smaller. Gently, Lathrop reached down and picked him up. He shuddered as he held the robot in his hand.
Buster, he knew, had almost succeeded in his purpose, had almost captured him. Had lulled him to sleep by his almost human attributes, by his seeming friendliness. Perhaps Buster had figured out it was the only way to get him.
He lifted his hand until it was level with his face. Buster waved stubby tentacles at him.
“You almost did it, chum,” said Lathrop.
A feeble thought piped back at him: “You wait until Elmer gets at you!”
Lathrop said grimly: “I have Elmer where I want him now.”
He tucked the squirming Buster carefully in a pocket and started down the stairs.
Outside the door that had been locked to keep him in, Peter Harper carefully checked himself. His beard, he decided, was just a shade too red. He concentrated on it and the beard grew pink.
“The fools!” he hissed in contempt at the still-locked door.
His body, he knew, was all right — just as it had been before. But his mind was in a mess. Standing rigidly, he sought to smooth it into pattern, forcing it into human channels, superimposing upon it the philosophy he hated.
All this, he told himself, would be over soon. The end of his mission finally was in sight — the mission he had worked so hard to carry out.
Footsteps were coming down the corridor and Harper forced himself to relax. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for a cigarette, was calmly lighting it as Stephen Lathrop, still clad in space gear, came around the corner.
“You must be Harper,” Lathrop said. “I heard that you were here.”
“Just for a time,” said Harper. “Studying the canvases.”
“You are lucky. Not many people have that chance.”
“Lucky. Oh, yes. Very lucky.” Harper rolled the phrases on his tongue.
Lathrop crinkled his nose. “Do you smell anything?” he asked.
Harper took the cigarette from between his lips. “It might be this. It’s not a usual brand.”
Lathrop shook his head. “Couldn’t be. Just caught a whiff. Like something dead.”
Lathrop’s eyes swept the man from head to foot, widened a bit at the alarming whiskers.
“The beard is quite natural, I assure you,” Harper declared.
“I do not doubt it,” Lathrop said. “You should wear a purple tie.”
Without another word, he wheeled and tramped away. Harper watched him go.
“Purple tie!” spat Harper. Hate twisted his face.
Buster scurried back and forth across the table top, tiny feet beating out a frenzied minor patter.
“There is no use in arguing,” Elmer said. “This talk of Earthmen co-operating with the Martians is impossible. It would never work. They’d be at one another’s throats before they were acquainted. You, Lathrop, killed the Martian out in space. There was no provocation. You simply murdered him.”
“He got in my hair,” said Lathrop. “He’d been in it for almost twenty years.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Elmer. “If the two races could get along, they’d be unbeatable. But they couldn’t get along. They’d grate on one another’s nerves. You have no idea the gulf that separates them — not so much the gulf of knowledge, for that could be bridged, nor a lack of co-operation, for the Martians know that as well as the race of Earth, but temperamentally they would be poles apart.”
Carter nodded, understandingly: “They’d be old fossils and we’d be young squirts.”
“But we could work at long range,” insisted Lathrop. “They could stay in their subatomic world, we could stay where we are. Elmer could act as the go-between.”
“Impossible,” Carter argued. “There is the time angle to consider. A few days for us must be a generation for them. Everything would be speeded up in their world — even the rate of living. The time factor would be basically different. We could not co-ordinate our effort.”
“I see,” said Lathrop, He tapped his fingers on the table top. Buster scurried to the other side, as far as he could get from the tapping fingers.
Lathrop shot a quick glance at Elmer. “Where does that leave us?”