«So stay quiet,» Gene went on, «It’s your problem, whatever it is, and you’ve got a right to tell me to keep my nose out of it.»
«You’re going to tell the State Troopers I’m here?»
Instead of answering, Gene leaned against the table’s edge and said, «Listen. When I was about your age I ran away from home for the first time. That was in Cleveland. It was winter and there was a lot of snow. Damned cold, too. Now, you’d think that whatever made me leave home and freeze my backside in the snow for two days and nights—you’d think it was something pretty important, wouldn’t you?»
«Wasn’t it?»
Gene laughed out loud. «I don’t know! I can’t for the life of me remember what it was! It was awfully important to me then, of course. But now it’s nothing, nowhere.»
Johnny wanted to laugh with him, but he couldn’t, «My problem’s different.»
«Yeah, I guess so,» Gene said. But he was still smiling.
«I’m going to be dead before the year’s over,» Johnny said.
Gene’s smile vanished. «What?»
Johnny told him the whole story. Gene asked several questions, looked doubtful for a while, but at last simply stood there looking very grave.
«That is tough,» he said, at last.
«So I thought maybe the strangers—the aliens, that is—might do something, maybe cure it…» Johnny’s voice trailed off.
«I see,» Gene said, And there was real pain in his voice. «And we can’t even get them to notice us, let alone talk with us.»
«I guess it’s hopeless then.»
Gene suddenly straightened up. «No. Why should we give up? There must be something we can do!»
«Like what?» Johnny asked.
Gene rubbed a hand across his chin. It was dark with stubbly beard. «Well… maybe they do understand us and just don’t care. Maybe they’re just here sightseeing, or doing some scientific exploring. Maybe they think of us like we think of animals in a zoo, or cows in a field—»
«But we’re not animals!» Johnny said.
«Yeah? Imagine how we must seem to them,» Gene began to pace down the length of the table. «They’ve travelled across lightyears—billions on billions of miles—to get here. Their ship, their brains, their minds must be thousands of years ahead of our own. We’re probably no more interesting to them than apes in a zoo.»
«Then why…»
«Wait a minute,» Gene said. «Maybe they’re not interested in us—but so far they’ve only seen adults, men, soldiers mostly. Suppose we show them a child, you, and make it clear to them that you’re going to die.»
«How are you going to get that across to them?»
«I don’t know,» Gene admitted. «Maybe they don’t even understand what death is. Maybe they’re so far ahead of us that they live for thousands of years—or they might even be immortal!»
Then he turned to look back at Johnny, «But I’ve had the feeling ever since the first time we tried to talk to them that they understand every word we say. They just don’t care.»
«And you think they’ll care about me?»
«It’s worth a try. Nothing else we’ve done has worked. Maybe this will.»
Gene took Johnny to a tent that had cots and warm Army blankets.
«You get some sleep; you must be tired,» he said. «I’ll let the State Police know you’re okay.»
Johnny could feel himself falling asleep, even though he was only standing next to one of the cots.
«Do you want to talk to your parents? We can set up a radio-phone…»
«Later,» Johnny said. «As long as they know I’m okay—I don’t want to hassle with them until after we’ve talked to the aliens.»
Gene nodded and left the tent. Johnny sat on the cot, kicked off his boots, and was asleep by the time he had stretched out and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
Gene brought him breakfast on a tray the next morning. But as soon as Johnny had finished eating and pulled his boots back on, Gene led him out to one of the big vans.
«General Hackett isn’t too sure he likes our idea,» Gene said as they walked up to the tan-colored van. It was like a civilian camper, only much bigger. Two soldiers stood guard by its main door, with rifles slung over their shoulders. It was already hot and bright on the desert, even though the sun had hardly climbed above the distant mountains.
The alien star ship still hung in the middle of the camp circle, glowing warmly and barely touching the ground. For a wild instant, Johnny thought of it as a bright beach ball being balanced on a seal’s nose.
Inside, the van’s air conditioning was turned up so high that it made Johnny shiver.
But General Hackett was sweating. He sat squeezed behind a table, a heavy, fat-cheeked man with a black little cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. It was not lit, but Johnny could smell its sour odor. Sitting around the little table in the van’s main compartment were Sergeant Warner of the State Police, several civilians, and two other Army officers, both colonels.
There were two open chairs. Johnny and Gene slid into them.
«I don’t like it,» General Hackett said, shaking his head. «The whole world’s going nuts over these weirdos, every blasted newspaper and TV man in the country’s trying to break into this camp, and we’ve got to take a little kid out there to do our job for us? I don’t like it.»
Sergeant Warner looked as if he wanted to say something, but he satisfied himself with a stern glare in Johnny’s direction.
Gene said, «We’ve got nothing to lose. All our efforts of the past three days have amounted to zero results. Maybe the sight of a youngster will stir them.»
One of the civilians shook his head. A colonel banged his fist on the table and said, «By god, a couple rounds of artillery will stir them! Put a few shots close to ‘em—make ‘em know we mean business!»
«And run the risk of having them destroy everything in sight?» asked one of the civilians, his voice sharp as the whine of an angry hornet.
«This isn’t some idiot movie,» the colonel snapped.
«Precisely,» said the civilian. «If we anger them, there’s no telling how much damage they could do. Do you have any idea of how much energy they must be able to control in that ship?»
«One little ship? Three people?»
«That one little ship,» the scientist answered, «has crossed distances billions of times greater than our biggest rockets. And there might be more than one ship, as well.»
«NORAD hasn’t picked up any other ships in orbit around Earth,» the other colonel said.
«None of our radars have detected this ship,» the scientist said, pointing in the general direction of the glowing star ship. «The radars just don’t get any signal from it at all!»
General Hackett took the cigar from his mouth. «All right, all right. There’s no sense firing at them unless we get some clear indication that they’re dangerous.»
He turned to Gene. «You really think the kid will get them interested enough to talk to us?»
Gene shrugged. «It’s worth a try.»
«You don’t think it will be dangerous?» the general asked. «Bringing him right up close to them like that?»
«If they want to be dangerous,» Gene said, «I’ll bet they can hurt anyone they want to, anywhere on Earth.»
There was a long silence.
Finally General Hackett said, «Okay—let the kid talk to them.»
Sergeant Warner insisted that Johnny’s parents had to agree to the idea, and Johnny wound up spending most of the morning talking on the radio-phone in the sergeant’s State Police cruiser. Gene talked to them too, and explained what they planned to do.
It took a long time to calm his parents down. His mother cried and said she was so worried. His father tried to sound angry about Johnny’s running away. But he really sounded relieved that his son was all right. After hours of talking, they finally agreed to let Johnny face the aliens.