“Tried to adapt—to a form that would enable him to cling to his perch. That took the strength out of his tiger-fighting form, and I was able to get us both off the cliff together instead of being torn apart the minute I hit him. The minute we started to fall, he instinctively spread out and stopped fighting me altogether.”
Joe sat back in his chair. After a moment, he swore.
“And you’re just now telling me this?” he said.
Cal smiled a little wryly.
“I’m surprised you’re surprised,” he said. “I’d thought people back here would have figured all this out by now. This character and his people can’t ever pose any real threat to us. For all their strength and slipperiness, their reaction to life is passive. They adapt to it. Ours is active—we adapt it to us. On the instinctive level, we can always choose the battlefield and the weapons, and win every time in a contest.”
He stopped speaking and gazed at Joe, who shook his head slowly.
“Cal,” said Joe at last, “you don’t think like the rest of us.”
Cal frowned. A cloud passing beyond the window dimmed the light that had shone upon him.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” he said quietly. “For just a while, I had hopes it wasn’t so.”
THE CATCH
Time to send the audience out on a light note. Or maybe not so light, after all. Just maybe, there are times when humans might wish that the aliens are the ones with the edge.
“Sure, Mike. Gee!” said the young Tolfian excitedly, and went dashing off from the spaceship in the direction of the temporary camp his local people had set up at a distance of some three hundred yards across the grassy turf of the little valley. Watching him go, Mike Wellsbauer had to admit that in motion he made a pretty sight, scooting along on his hind legs, his sleek black-haired otterlike body leaning into the wind of his passage, and his wide, rather paddle-shaped tail extended behind him to balance the weight of his erected body. All the same…
“I don’t like it,” Mike murmured. “I don’t like it one bit.”
“First signs of insanity,” said a female and very human voice behind him. He turned about.
“All right, Penny,” he said. “You can laugh. But this could turn out to be the most unfunny thing that ever happened to the human race. Where is the rest of the crew?”
Peony Matsu sobered, the small gamin grin fading from her pert face, as she gazed up at him.
“Red and Tommy are still trying to make communication contact with home base,” she said. “Alvin’s out checking the flora—he can’t be far.” She stared at him curiously. “What’s up now?”
“I want to know what they’re building.”
“Something for us, I’ll bet,”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve just sent for the local squire.” Mike peered at the alien camp. Workers were still zipping around it in that typical Tolfian fashion that seemed to dictate that nobody went anywhere except at a run. “This time he’s going to give me a straight answer.”
“I thought,” said Penny, “he had.”
“Answers,” said Mike, shortly. “Not necessarily straight ones.” He heaved a sudden sigh, half of exhaustion, half of exasperation. “That young squirt was talking to me right now in English. In English! What can you do?”
Penny bubbled with laughter in spite of herself.
“All right, now hold it!” snapped Mike, glaring at her. “I tell you that whatever this situation is, it’s serious. And letting ourselves be conned into making a picnic out of it may be just what they want.”
“All right,” said Penny, patting him on the arm. “I’m serious. But I don’t see that their learning English is any worse than the other parts of it—”
“It’s the whole picture,” growled Mike, not waiting for her to finish. He stumped about to stand half-turned away from her, facing the Tolfian camp, and she gazed at his short, blocky, red-haired figure with tolerance and a scarce-hidden affection. “The first intelligent race we ever met. They’ve got science we can’t hope to touch for nobody knows how long, they belong to some Interstellar Confederation or other with races as advanced as themselves—and they fall all over themselves learning English and doing every little thing we ask for. ‘Sure, Mike!’—that’s what he said to me just now… ‘Sure, Mike!’ I tell you, Penny—”
“Here they come now,” she said.
A small procession was emerging from the camp. It approached the spaceship at a run, single file, the tallest Tolfian figure in the lead, and the others grading down in size behind until the last was a half-grown alien that was pretty sure to be the one Mike had sent on the errand.
“If we could just get through to home base back on Altair A—” muttered Mike; and then he could mutter no more, because the approaching file was already dashing into hearing distance. The lead Tolfian raced to the very feet of Mike and sat down on his tail. His muzzle was gray with age and authority and the years its color represented had made him almost as tall as Mike.
“Mike!” he said, happily.
The other Tolfians had dispersed themselves in a semicircle and were also sitting on their tails and looking rather like a group of racetrack fans on shooting sticks.
“Hello, Moral,” said Mike, in a pleasantly casual tone. “What’re you building over there now?”
“A terminal—a transport terminal, I suppose you’d call it in English, Mike,” said Moral. “It’ll be finished in a few hours. Then you can all go to Barzalac.”
“Oh, we can, can we?” said Mike. “And where is Barzalac?”
“I don’t know if you know the sun, Mike,” said Moral, seriously. “We call it Aimna. It’s about a hundred and thirty light-years from ours. Barzalac is the Confederation center—on its sixth planet.”
“A hundred and thirty light-years?” said Mike, staring at the Tolfian.
“Isn’t that right?” said Moral, confusedly. “Maybe I’ve got your terms wrong. I haven’t been speaking your language since yesterday—”
“You speak it just fine. Just fine,” said Mike. “Nice of you all to go to the trouble to learn it.”
“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble,” said Moral. “And for you humans—well,” he smiled, “nothing’s too good, you know.”
He said the last words rather shyly, and ducked his head for a second as if to avoid Mike’s eyes.
“That’s very nice,” said Mike. “Now, would you mind if I asked you again why nothing’s too good?”
“Oh, didn’t I make myself clear before?” said Moral, in distressed tones. “I’m sorry—the thing is, we’ve met others of your people before.”
“I got that, all right,” said Mike. “Another race of humans, some thousands or dozens of thousands of years ago. And they aren’t around any more?”
“I am very sorry,” said Moral, with tears in his eyes. “Very, very sorry—”
“They died off?”
“Our loss—the loss of all the Confederation—was deeply felt. It was like losing our own, and more than our own.”
“Yes,” said Mike. He locked his hands behind his back and took a step up and down on the springy turf before turning back to the Tolfian squire. “Well, now, Moral, we wouldn’t want that to happen to us.”
“Oh, no!” cried Moral. “It mustn’t happen. Somehow—we must insure its not happening.”
“My attitude, exactly,” said Mike, a little grimly. “Now, to get back to the matter at hand—why did you people decide to build your transportation center right here by our ship?”
“Oh, it’s no trouble, no trouble at all to run one up,” said Moral. “We thought you’d want one convenient here.”