He drove on. Lucy turned once to look behind.
"Don't do that!" commanded Hackett. "I can tell how far back they are by their headlights shining in."
The car went into the woodland. Straight pine trunks rose on either hand, with a minimum of brushwood at the roadside.
There was a crumpled newspaper in the center of the road. Hackett braked. He came to a stop exactly over the newspaper.
The limousine stopped just five yards back. Doors opened with a rush and men seemed to pour out of it. Then there was sudden, intolerable brightness. A pitiless glare made all the pine boles seem to glitter. There was a very harsh, rasping roar which was most inappropriate to the scene. The echoes of a pine forest give a remarkable quality to the sound of a tommy-gun aimed skyward.
A voice said, "Stop it! Stand still! And you don't need those guns. Drop them, fast!"
There were men moving out from among the pine trees. It was a really perfect ambush. The men from the limousine were completely at the mercy of those who'd waited for them here. Blinded by light, with the rasp of an automatic weapon to inform them what they faced in the way of armament, anything short of complete surrender would be suicide. They did not commit suicide. They dropped their weapons.
The ambassador from an iron curtain country gasped. He protested vehemently that if he were robbed—
"We're not robbing you," said an icy voice. "We're not arresting you, either. But the Greks wanted you to arrange a couple of murders. Remember? We're taking you somewhere to show you something. If you complain too much, as private citizens we can always turn into a lynch mob."
There was no confusion after that. None whatever— unless it was the confusion felt by the owner of a farmhouse who saw the brightest possible glare among the trees of his wood lot and came to find out what had happened. He was bewildered when he was taken aside and soothed, and kept from telephoning the local sheriff until no less than six cars came out of his wood lot—one of them a very expensive limousine—and seemed to be welcomed at the main highway by an odd assemblage of private cars, a truck, a motorcycle, and a panel truck. All the ill-assorted vehicles moved off together, with the limousine in the center. The farmer thought, too, that he saw various peculiarly inactive figures passed into the various motor vehicles. But he didn't know what had happened. He never found out.
In fact, there was never any public knowledge of the fact that an ambassador of a foreign country, sacrosanct by international agreement, had been carried bodily back to the place from which a space ship had risen less than twelve hours earlier. Nobody ever heard, officially, what he was shown there. But there is no question that he decided the Greks had been less than candid with his government—even in the act of making a highly special arrangement for the very special benefit of that nation.
Hackett noticed that the ambassador was very pale when he'd seen what was to be seen. He was nearly as gray-faced as a Grek. He had members of his entourage brought there and shown what was to be seen. And they became skeptical—and afraid—of the actual purposes that moved the visitors from space.
Not reasonably, but very naturally, the ambassador was particularly convinced by a discovery just made, while his limousine was following Hackett and Lucy.
Someone at an autopsy table beside the pit noticed two small scars behind the ear of an Aldarian corpse. They wouldn't be visible ordinarily, because of the furry covering of the skin, but these just happened to catch his eye. The scars matched exactly. So they were examined. It developed that something like a scalpel had made a small, deep, long-healed incision at those two places and had severed thick nerve bundles leading to the Aldarian's ears. And every other Aldarian whose body could be examined had had the same surgical operation.
They'd been deliberately and artificially made deaf. Obviously, by the Greks. These particular Aldarians had been killed and their carcasses thrown out with the ship's waste matter. Obviously, by the Greks. So the standing of Aldarians in Grek eyes was specific. To the Greks they were domestic animals, subject to any enormity their owners might choose to inflict.
By some miracle of intelligence, somebody happened to use the word "serfs" in the ambassador's hearing, referring to the status of the Aldarians. And that word had a very strong impact on the ambassador. It evoked traditions and a bitter hate. It may be that the one word had much influence on the future policy of a great nation which believed it had made a private deal with the Greks.
But this discovery, and all the information gotten from the garbage pit, was kept from the general public There was little enough hope for humanity anyhow, considering what the Greks could do, and our strictly primitive means of defense. But there would be no hope at all if everyone in the world went crazy with panic, or if the public revolted bloodily against losing its illusions. Some few officials in a few countries were let in on the facts. Certain scientific men were informed. But those whom the Greks rated highest in understanding Grek science....
Those illustrious nitwits joined the rest of us in gloating over the happy prospects we believed in. True, these was much unemployment at the moment, but that would soon be ended. True, even people who were employed tended to stay home and loaf instead of working, because soon they'd hardly have to work at all. But—why shouldn't they loaf? In the United States there were enormous stores of surplus food. The Greks had showed us a sinter field which made the mineral fertilising elements in topsoil beautifully available to growing things. We wouldn't really have to work at farming, hereafter. Make a hole and drop in a seed, and that would be that. And we'd have free power and practically free food, and retirement at forty, with everybody owning everything he'd ever envied anybody else.
To a later generation our reactions may be hard to understand. But we weren't inherently stupid. The intention to murder Lucy and Hackett, for example, had been handled beautifully. We were quite capable of acting rationally. But not many of us did.
Even now we can act like idiots. Everybody. Of all generations now alive. It's quite possible that we may do so.
But if we do, we'll deserve what happens.
7
It seems to be true that all the intelligent races in the galaxy think more or less in the same manner. That is, everyone will act stupidly if allowed, and hell hath no fury like a population expecting impossibilities, when they aren't produced. The public expected paradise to turn up immediately, when it would have been impossible for months—if it were possible at all. So there was trouble.
The unemployment rate went up to thirty per cent. The number of people on relief more than doubled. There were crowds demonstrating and rioting in the streets. They did not demand employment, because that would soon be unimportant. They rioted for more speed in producing the perfect state of things for which the Greks had prepared the way.
Here there is still some dispute. Some students of the matter consider that the Greks read human psychology with a fine precision, and used their knowledge of us to plan their actions. Other students say that any intelligent race would have been as foolish as we were, under the circumstances. The odds are that the latter view is correct.
Some factories were shut down in order to be retooled for service in a Grek-oriented future society. Then they found it difficult to get men to work on the retooling. Most people decided to draw unemployment pay and wait until the factories were ready to hire them at a week's wages for a day's work, and frienge benefits besides. So most factories did not get retooled.