Jack and Helen went together to the communications room. They ran the Earth message, as received so far. It was an extraordinary hodgepodge. Four years back, Earth had been enthusiastic over the thought of sending word to its most daring adventurers. A flash of immaterial energy could travel tirelessly through uncountable millions of billions of miles of space and overtake the explorers who had started three years before. By its text, this message had been sent some time after the first message of all. In the sending, it had been broadcast all over the Earth, and many millions of people undoubtedly had thrilled to the thought that they heard words which would span the space between two suns.
But the words were not helpful to those on the Adastra. The message was a “cheer-up” program, which began with lusty singing by a popular quartet, continued with wisecracks by Earth’s most highly paid comedian—and his jokes were all very familiar to those on the Adastra—and then a congratulatory address by an eminent politician, and other drivel. In short, it was a hodgepodge of trash designed to gain publicity by means of the Earth broadcast for those who took part in it.
It was not helpful to those on the Adastra, with the hull of the ship punctured, death before them, and probably destruction for the whole human race to follow as a consequence of their voyage.
Jack and Helen sat quietly and listened. Their hands clasped unconsciously. Rather queerly, the extreme brevity of the time before them made extravagant expressions of affection seem absurd. They listened to the unspeakably vulgar message from Earth without really hearing it. Now and again they looked at each other.
In the biology laboratory the building up of a vocabulary went on swiftly. Pictures came into play. A second Centaurian was released, and by his skill in delineation—which proved that the eyes of the plant men functioned almost identically with those of Earth men—added both to the store of definitions and equivalents and to knowledge of the Centaurian civilization.
Piecing the information together, the civilization began to take on a strange resemblance to that of humanity. The Centaurians possessed artificial structures which, were undoubtedly dwelling houses. They had cities, laws, arts—the drawing of the second Centaurian was proof of that—and sciences. The science of biology in particular was far advanced, taking to some extent the place of metallurgy in the civilization of men. Their structures were ‘grown’, not built. Instead of metals to shape to their own ends, they had forms of protoplasm whose rate and manner of growth they could control.
Houses, bridges, vehicles—even space ships—were formed of living matter which was thrown into a quiescent nonliving state when it had attained the form and size desired. And it could be caused to become active again at will, permitting such extraordinary features as the blisterlike connection that had been made by the space ship with the hull of the Adastra.
So far, the Centaurian civilization was strange enough, but still comprehensible. Even men might have progressed in some such fashion had civilization developed on Earth from a different point of departure. It was the economics of the Centaurians which was at once understandable and horrifying to the men who learned of it.
The Centaurian race had developed from carnivorous plants, as men from carnivorous forebears. But at some early date in man’s progression, the worship of gold began. No such diversion of interest occurred upon the planets of Proxima Centauri. As men have devastated cities for gold, and have cut down forests and gutted mines and ruthlessly destroyed all things for gold or for other things which could be exchanged for gold, so the Centaurians had quested animals.
As men exterminated the buffalo in America, to trade his hide for gold, so the Centaurians had ruthlessly exterminated the animal life of their planet. But to Centaurians, animal tissue itself was the equivalent of gold. From sheer necessity, ages since, they had learned to tolerate vegetable foodstuffs. But the insensate lust for flesh remained. They had developed methods for preserving animal food for indefinite periods. They had dredged their seas for the last and smallest crustacean. And even space travel became a desirable thing in their eyes, and then a fact, because telescopes showed them vegetation on other planets of their sun, and animal life as a probability.
Three planets of Proxima Centauri were endowed with climates and atmospheres favorable to vegetation and animal life, but only on one planet now, and that the smallest and most distant, did any trace of animal life survive. And even there the Centaurians hunted feverishly for the last and dwindling colonies of tiny quadrupeds which burrowed hundreds of feet below a frozen continent.
It became clear that the Adastra was an argosy of such treasure—in the form of human beings—as no Centaurian could ever have imagined to exist. And it became more than ever clear that a voyage to Earth would command all the resources of the race. Billions of human beings! Trillions of lesser animals! Uncountable Creatures in the seas! All the Centaurian race would go mad with eagerness to invade this kingdom of riches and ecstasy, the ecstasy felt by any Centaurian when consuming the prehistoric foodstuff of his race.
V
Eggshaped, featureless ships of space closed in from every side at once. The thermometer banks showed a deliberate, painstaking progression of alarm signals. One dial glowed madly red and faded, and then another, and yet another, as the Centaurian ships took up the momentary impact of a radiation beam on the Adastra’s hull.
Twenty minutes after the last of the beams had proved the Adastra’s helplessness, an egglike ship approached the Earth vessel and with complete precision made contact with its forward side above an air lock. Its hull bellied out in a great blister which adhered to the steel.
Alstair watched the visiplate which showed it, his face very white and his hands clenched tightly. Jack Gary’s voice, strained and hoarse, came from the biology-laboratory communicator.
“Sir, a message from the Centaurians. A ship has landed on our hull and its crew will enter through the air lock. A hostile move on our part, of course, will mean instant destruction.”
“There will be no resistance to the Centaurians,” said Alstair harshly. “It is my order! It would be suicide!”
“Even so, sir,” said Jack’s voice savagely, “I still think it would be a good idea!”
“Stick to your duty!” rasped Aistair. “What progress has been made in communication?”
“We have vocabulary cards for nearly five thousand words. We can converse on nearly any subject, and all of them are unpleasant. The cards are going through a duplicator now and will be finished in a few minutes. A second dictawriter with the second file will be sent you as soon as the cards are complete.”
In a visiplate, Aistair saw the headless figures of Centaurians emerging from the entrance to an air lock in the Adastra’s hull.
“Those Centaurians have entered the ship,” he snapped as an order to Jack. “You’re communications officer! Go meet them and lead their commanding officer here!”
“Check!” said Jack grimly.
It sounded like a sentence of death, that order. In the laboratory he was very pale indeed. Helen pressed close to him.
The fomerly captive Centaurian hooted into the dictawriter, inquiringly. The speaker translated.
“What—command?”
Helen explained. So swiftly does humanity accustom itself to the incredible that it seemed almost natural to address a microphone and hear the hoots and stridulations of a nonhuman voice fill the room with her meaning.