Iba¤ez looked pained. "Sergei, we can jeopardize this conference... 'jeopardize?' What am I saying? We can't toss away ten years' work because some crewman has a slight fever. The quarantine must be broken. But I don't expect you to do it."
Greenberg hesitated. "He's under hypnosis, for a tough job coming up. It may be a couple of hours before you can see him."
Iba¤ez looked blank. "I'll have to tackle the Secretary. I don't dare wait two hours. That sacred cow from Venus is like as not to order his skipper to head home... we can't risk that."
"And we can't risk bringing in an epidemic, either. Here's what you do. Call him and tell him you are coming to get him in person. Use a fast scout. Get him aboard and leave the Ariel in quarantine orbit. Once you get him aboard the scout... and not before... tell him that both you and he will attend the conference in isolation suits." The isolation suit was a sealed pressure suit; its primary use was to visit planets whose disease hazards had not yet been learned. "The scout ship and crew will have to go into quarantine, too, of course."
"Isolation suit! Oh, he'll love that. Sergei, it would be less damaging to call off the conference. An indignity like that would put him against us for certain. The jerk is poisonously proud."
"Sure he'll love it," Greenberg explained, "once you suggest how to play it. 'Great personal self-sacrifice'... 'unwilling to risk the welfare of our beloved sister planet'... 'the call of duty takes precedence over any et cetera.' If you don't feel sure of it, take one of the public relations boys along. And look, all through the conference he must be attended by a physician... in a white suit... and a couple of nurses. The conference must stop every now and then while he rests... put a cot and hospital screens in the Hall of Heroes near the conference table. The idea is that he's come down with it himself but is carrying on as his dying act. Get it? Tell him before you land the scout ship... indirectly, of course."
Iba¤ez looked perturbed. "Do you think that will work?"
"It's up to you to make it work. I'm sending down your memo, ordering quarantine to continue but telling you to use your initiative to insure his presence at the conference."
"Well... all right." Iba¤ez suddenly grinned. "Never mind the memo. I'm on my way." He switched off.
Greenberg turned back to the desk, feeling exhilarated by the sensation of playing God. He wondered what the boss would have done?... but did not care. There might be many correct solutions, but this was one; it felt right. He reached again for the pending urgent file.
He stopped. Something was gnawing at the back of his mind. The boss had not wanted to approve that death sentence; he had felt it. Shucks, the boss had told him that he was wrong; the proper action was a full investigation. But the boss, as a matter of loyalty to his subordinates, had not reversed him.
But he himself was sitting in the boss's chair at the moment. Well?
Was that why the boss had placed him there? To let him correct his own mistake? No, the boss was subtle but not omniscient; he could not have predicted that Greenberg would consider reopening the matter.
Still... He called the boss's private secretary. "Mildred?"
"Yes, Mr. Greenberg?"
"That brief-and-rec on that intervention I carried out Rt0411, it was. It went out fifteen minutes ago.
I want it back."
"It may have been dispatched," she said doubtfully.
"The communications desk has been running only about seven minutes behind demand today."
"There is such a thing as too much efficiency. If the order has left the building, send a cancellation and a more-to-follow, will you? And get the original document back to me."
Finally he got to the pending-urgent file. As Mr. Kiku had said, the jacket marked "Ftaeml" was not large. He found it subtitled: "Beauty & the Beast" and wondered why. The boss had a sense of humor... but it veered so much that other people had a hard time following it.
Presently his eyebrows lifted. Those tireless interpreters, brokers, go-betweens, and expounders, the Rargyllians, were always popping up in negotiations between diverse races; the presence of Dr. Ftaeml on Earth had tipped Greenberg that something was up with a nonhumanoid people... non-human in mentality, creatures so different psychologically that communication was difficult. But he had not expected the learned doctor was representing a race that he had never heard of... something termed "the Hroshii."
It was possible that Greenberg had simply forgotten these people with a name like a sneeze; they might be some unimportant breed, at a low cultural level, or economically inconsequential, or not possessing space travel. Or they might have been brought into the Community of Civilizations while Greenberg had been up to his ears in Solar System affairs. Once the human race had made contact with other races having interstellar travel the additions to the family of legal "humans" had come so fast that a man could hardly keep up; the more mankind widened its horizons the harder those horizons were to see.
Or perhaps he knew of the Hroshii under another name? Greenberg turned to Mr. Kiku's universal dictionary and keyed in the name.
The machine considered it, then the reading plate flashed: NO INFORMATION.
Greenberg tried dropping the aspirate on the assumption that the word might have degenerated in the mouths of non-Hroshii... still the same negative.
He dropped the matter. The. universal dictionary in the British Museum was not more knowledgeable than the one in the Under Secretary's office; its working parts occupied an entire building in another part of Capital, and a staff of cyberneticists, semanticians and encyclopedists endlessly fed its hunger for facts. He could be sure that, whatever the "Hroshii" were, the Federation had never heard of them before.
Which was astounding.
Having let astonishment persist a full second Greenberg went on reading. He learned that the Hroshii were already here, not landed on Earth but within waving distance... in a parking orbit fifty thousand miles out. He let himself be astonished for two whole seconds before going on to discover that the reason he had not heard of their advent was that Dr. Ftaeml had urgently advised Mr. Kiku to keep patrol ships and such from challenging and attempting to board the stranger.
He was interrupted by the return of his report of the Lummox matter, bearing on it Mr. Kiku's confirmation of the sentence. He thought for a moment, then added to the endorsement so that it read: "Recommendation approved... but this action is not to be carried out until after a complete scientific analysis of this creature has been made. Local authorities will surrender custody when required to the Bureau of Xenic Science, which will arrange transportation and select the agency to pursue the evaluation."
Greenberg signed Kiku's name to the change and put it back into the. system. He admitted sheepishly that the order was now weasel-worded... for it was a sure thing that once the xenobiologists got their hands on Lummox they would never let him go. Nevertheless his heart felt suddenly lighter. The other action was wrong; this one was right.
He turned his attention back to the Hroshii... and again his eyebrows went up. The Hroshii were not here to establish relations with Earth; they were here to rescue one of their own. According to Dr. Ftaeml, they were convinced that Terra was holding this Hroshia and were demanding that she be surrendered.
Greenberg felt as if he had blundered into a bad melodrama. These people with the asthmatic name had picked the wrong planet for cops-and-robbers nonsense. A non-human on Earth without a passport, without a dossier in the hands of the department, without an approved reason for visiting Earth, would be as helpless as a bride without a ration book. She would be picked up in no time... idiot's delight! she could not even get through quarantine.
Why didn't the boss simply tell them to take their wagon and go home?
Besides, how did they figure she had reached the surface of Earth? Walked? Or taken a swan dive? Star ships did not land; they were served by shuttles. He could just see her tackling the purser of one of those shuttles: "Excuse me, sir, but I am fleeing from my husband hi a distant part of the Galaxy. Do you mind if I hide under this seat and sneak down to your planet?"