Some occupations and industries appeared certain to be wiped out. Filling stations were obviously on the way to extinction, with cars due to run on broadcast power. These cars were already present in considerable numbers. The entire oil industry faltered. The coal industry stopped. The building industry suspended operations, because new materials were going to make future building infinitely easier and cheaper. People waited for the new materials. Textiles we'd known how to make didn't compare with the new textiles the Greks had shown us how to produce, so the textile industry collapsed. And absenteeism went up unbelievably. There came a time when sixty per cent of the population was either without work, or else was staying home to wait for the working conditions that ought to be on the way.
Food was still needed, to be sure. But the return for producing and distributing it was not satisfying. Workers in the food industries felt that they should work only one day a week, as other workers were waiting to do, and they should be at least as prosperous now as the rest of the world expected to be later. Food processing and distribution began to suffer from an excessive loss of manpower.
Then people, happily engaged in waiting, demanded home relief to prevent starvation in the meantime. They were so many in number that they got it. The gigantic government-surplus food warehouses began to ship out food in bulk to nonpaying customers. Unemployment insurance funds began to dwindle. There was indignation that the benefits the Greks had brought us were not making their appearance in the life of the average man. There was suspicion of dirty work at the crossroads.
Really determined rioting began when a government ruling denied food to families of whom no member would accept employment of any sort. An infinite number of formerly tractable citizens found this outrageous. They demanded indignantly that what the Greks had made possible, the government should make fact, and ignored suggestions that somebody had to do a considerable amount of work to bring that about.
The business of government became simply that of trying to satisfy popular demands for the impossible. The government of the United States had been established two centuries earlier to protect its citizens against the unreasonable demands of a former government. Now it was forced to pretend to be struggling to meet the preposterous demands of its own citizens. Its really basic function of guarding its people against those disasters a government can prevent—that function had to be performed in secret. It had, in effect, to go underground to do what it was made for.
Obviously, with the world in such a state, the discoveries in the garbage pit could not be told, because mankind was drunk; drunk on dreams it would defend by revolt, if necessary. And if by any feat of reason the truth were driven into the public consciousness, the result would have been a mass panic a hundred times worse than the one produced by the arrival of the Grek ship in the first place.
But Hackett got an opportunity to work on the problem of the gadget from the injured Aldarian. It wasn't the kind of opportunity he might have imagined. Twelve hours after the ship's lift-off he saw an ambassador depart from the place of its departure. The ambassador was a very much shaken man. He had to convince his superiors that in attempting to sell out the rest of the world, it had sold itself out too. If he put the fact across, there would be a subtle change of policy. It would be a return to apprehensive cooperation, which was highly desirable. But his country might only pretend to change. And if it didn't—or even if it did—it might still think it politic to get two people murdered, just in case the Greks came back.
"There's no way to know," the FBI man in charge told Hackett, "whether you're as safe as you were in your mother's arms, or whether you've got a hell of a problem. But you'd better not go home. We can lock you up if you like, and keep you pretty safe that way. How about it?"
"I don't think I'd like it," admitted Hackett. "And there's Doctor Thale to consider. If I'm in danger, so is she."
"I don't think Rogers University would be a good place, either," the FBI man observed. "We could have somebody look out for your safety there, but—"
"I was fired from there," said Hackett drily, "for being incapable of understanding theoretic physics as the Greks teach it to human students. There'd have to be much explanation to the faculty, and I don't think I'd care for it."
"If you can take it," suggested the FBI man, "the best place would be one nobody could guess. Somewhere you've never been and nobody would think of, and where a stranger looking for you would stick out like a sore thumb. That'd be the last kind of place we'd send anybody, ordinarily, but usually the kind of man we'd want to hide would rather be in jail."
Hackett shrugged. "Suppose I ask Doctor Thale? After all, if the Greks want me killed, they want her killed too. And if the ambassador's government wants to please them, it'll try for both of us."
He went to consult Lucy. When he brought her back to the FBI man, she looked uncertain, but not depressed.
"She knows a place," said Hackett. "A tiny town, no more than a village. She visited there once when she was a child. Not since then. She has a woman cousin living there."
Lucy said, "She's older than I am. Her one claim to distinction is that she went to school one year with the President of the United States. She always says it that way."
"Give me the name and the place, and I'll check it," said the FBI man briskly. "Ill only take a minute."
It was longer than a minute. It was nearly an hour. But he came back looking pleased.
"We've got a man who was born there," he said in deep satisfaction. "He knows your cousin. Old maid, eh?" When Lucy nodded, he said, "Everything's set. No loyalty check needed. The President's going to call her on the phone. Somebody'll come there to keep his eyes open for you. He'll get in touch with you. He'll arrange about money, get things you want from somewhere else, and so on. We'll fix it so you can get through fast with a phone message if you think of something."
Hackett said with some dryness, "I'm supposed to think? About what?"
The FBI man said cordially, "How do I know? Would anybody have told you to think about garbage pits? We've got a ve-e-ery tough job on our hands. How long do you think it'll be before they come back? Not ten years, like they said!"
"No-o-o," said Hackett. "Not nearly. In that time we could get over their first appearance. We might have developed some sense."
The FBI man shook his head. "That's bad! We've got to get a lot of people thinking. Like you. We've got to have research teams working. They're good, aren't they? Research teams? You hear a lot about 'em."
"They're good for developing something commonplace," said Hackett. "Not for concocting new stuff. They're really research committees. And somebody once said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee."
The FBI man grinned. "I like that! I'll get you a car and somebody to drive you. Had to give the car you just used back to its owner, with its gas tank refilled. You ought to get to this place where you're going about nine o'clock in the morning." He paused. "I'd like to say something."
"What?" asked Hackett.
"No flag-waving," said the FBI man. "Just this— we're pretty good in our line, but this isn't it. We're going to do everything we can, but the really important stuff is going to be done by somebody else. Maybe you. It's important, I'd say."
"So would I," agreed Hackett drily.
"If you and the others like you do your stuff as well as we do ours, maybe we'll come out on top. There's a chance."
Hackett didn't see that chance. In the back of the car, soon afterwards, driving furiously through the night, matters looked no brighter than they had hours earlier. We humans had incredibly little real information about the Greks, when one thought of it. They said they lived on one of innumerable inhabited planets in the Nurmi star cluster. That there were many different races on different planets there. That the Aldarians were among those races. That there was a well-developed interstellar commercial system, carried on by ships like their own, some larger and some smaller. There was no interstellar empire or equivalent organization. The Greks were teaching a class of Aldarian aspirants the arts of astrogation and interstellar commerce. There were forty or so such student-spacemen on the ship. There were a dozen Greks, as officers and instructors.