“Sorry,” said Mike. “But I’m captain. And you stay, Penny.”
“Sorry, captain,” retorted Penny. “But I’m the biologist. And if we’re going to be running into a number of other alien life forms—” She let the sentence hang.
Mike threw up his hands in helplessness.
The trip through the transporter was, so far as Mike and Penny had any way of telling, instantaneous and painless. They stepped through a door-shaped opaqueness and found themselves in a city.
The city was even almost familiar. They had come out on a sort of plaza or court laid out on a little rise, and they were able to look down and around them at a number of low buildings. These glowed in all manners of colors and were remarkable mainly for the fact that they had no roofs as such, but were merely obscured from overhead view by an opaqueness similar to that in the transporter. The streets on which they were set stretched in all directions, and streets and buildings were clear to the horizon.
“The museum,” said Moral, diffidently, and the two humans turned about to find themselves facing a low building fronting on the court that stretched wide to the left and right and far before them. Its interior seemed split up into corridors.
They followed Moral in through the arch of an entrance that stood without respect to any walls on either side and down a corridor. They emerged into a central interior area dominated by a single large statue in the area’s center. Penny caught her breath, and Mike stared. The statue was, indubitably, that of a human—a man.
The stone figure was dressed only in a sort of kilt. He stood with one hand resting on a low pedestal beside him; gazing downward in such a way that his eyes seemed to meet those of whoever looked up at him from below. The eyes were gentle, and the lean, middle-aged face was a little tired and careworn, with its high brow and the sharp lines drawn around the corners of the thin mouth. Altogether, it most nearly resembled the face of a man who is impatient with the time it is taking to pose for his sculptor.
“Moral! Moral!” cried a voice; and they all turned to see a being with white and woolly fur that gave him a rather polar-bear look, trotting across the polished floor toward them. He approached in upright fashion and was as four-limbed as Moral—and the humans themselves, for that matter.
“You are Moral, aren’t you?” demanded the newcomer, as he came up to them. His English was impeccable. He bowed to the humans—or at least he inclined the top half of his body toward them. Mike, a little uncertainly, nodded back. “I’m Arrjhanik.”
“Oh, yes… yes,” said Moral. “The Greeter. These are the humans, Mike Wellsbauer and Peony Matsu. May I… how do you put it… present Arrjhanik a Bin. He is a Siniloid, one of the Confederation’s older races.”
“So honored,” said Arrjhanik.
“We’re both very pleased to meet you,” said Mike, feeling on firmer ground. There were rules for this kind of alien contact.
“Would you… could you come right now?” Arrjhanik appealed to the humans. “I’m sorry to prevent you from seeing the rest of the museum at this time”—Mike frowned; and his eyes narrowed a little—“but a rather unhappy situation has come up. One of our Confederate heads—the leader of one of the races that make up our Confederation—is dying. And he would like to see you before… you understand.”
“Of course,” said Mike.
“If we had known in advance—But it comes rather suddenly on the Adrii—” Arrjhanik led them off toward the entrance of the building and they stepped out into sunlight again. He led them back to the transporter from which they had just emerged.
“Wait a minute,” said Mike, stopping. “We aren’t going back to Tolfi, are we?”
“Oh, no. No,” put in Moral from close behind him. “We’re going to the Chamber of Deputies.” He gave Mike a gentle push; and a moment later they had stepped through into a small and pleasant room half-filled with a dozen or so beings each so different one from the other that Mike had no chance to sort them out and recognize individual characteristics.
Arrjhanik led them directly to the one piece of furniture in the room which appeared to be a sort of small table incredibly supported by a single wire-thin leg at one of the four corners. On the surface of this lay a creature or being not much bigger than a seven-year-old human child and vaguely catlike in form. It lay on its side, its head supported a little above the table’s surface by a cube of something transparent but apparently not particularly soft, and large colorless eyes in its head focused on Mike and Penny as they approached.
Mike looked down at the small body. It showed no signs of age, unless the yellowish-white of the thin hair covering its body was a revealing shade. Certainly the hair itself seemed brittle and sparse.
The Adri—or whatever the proper singular was—stirred its head upon its transparent pillow and its pale eyes focused on Mike and Penny. A faint, drawn out rattle of noise came from it.
“He says,” said Arrjhanik, at Mike’s elbow, “’You cannot refuse. It is not in you.’”
“Refuse what?” demanded Mike, sharply. But the head of the Adri lolled back suddenly on its pillow and the eyes filmed and glazed. There was a little murmur that could have been something reverential from all the beings standing about; and without further explanation the body of the being that had just died thinned suddenly to a ghostly image of itself, and was gone.
“It was the Confederation,” said Arrjhanik, “that he knew you could not refuse.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Mike. He swung about so that he faced them all, his stocky legs truculently apart. “Now, listen—you people are acting under a misapprehension. I can’t accept or refuse anything. I haven’t the authority. I’m just an explorer, nothing more.”
“No, no,” said Arrjhanik, “there’s no need for you to say that you accept or not, and speak for your whole race. That is a formality. Besides, we know you will not refuse, you humans. How could you?”
“You might be surprised,” said Mike. Penny hastily jogged his elbow.
“Temper!” she whispered. Mike swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded more reasonable.
“You’ll have to bear with me,” he said. “As I say, I’m an explorer, not a diplomat. Now, what did you all want to see me about?”
“We wanted to see you only for our own pleasure,” said Arrjhanik. “Was that wrong of us? Oh, and yes—to tell you that if there is anything you want, anything the Confederation can supply you, of course you need only give the necessary orders—”
“It is so good to have you here,” said one of the other beings.
A chorus of voices broke out in English all at once, and the aliens crowded around. One large, rather walruslike alien offered to shake hands with Mike, and actually did so in a clumsy manner.
“Now, wait. Wait!” roared Mike. The room fell silent. The assembled aliens waited, looking at him in an inquiring manner.
“Now, listen to me!” snapped Mike. “And answer one simple question. What is all this you’re trying to give to us humans?”
“Why, everything,” said Arrjhanik. “Our worlds, our people, are yours. Merely ask for what you want. In fact—please ask. It would make us feel so good to serve you, few though you are at the moment here.”
“Yes,” said the voice of Moral, from the background. “If you’ll forgive me speaking up in this assemblage—they asked for nothing back on Tolfi, and I was forced to exercise my wits for things to supply them with. I’m afraid I may have botched the job.”
“I sincerely hope not,” said Arrjhanik, turning to look at the Tolfian. Moral ducked his head, embarrassedly.