21 November
Last Tuesday mankind throughout the Solar System watched an unprecedented event. Cynbe ru Taren, a member of the Aleriona delegation to Earth, appeared on an official 3V broadcast and answered questions put to him by Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, who represented the World Federation.
The questions were selected from an estimated forty million sent in by people around the globe, with Cynbe choosing a dozen from the final list. As he remarked, with a grim humor he displayed throughout the interview, “Thirteen bears for you an unhappy freight. It numbered either that one who betrayed or that one who was slain.”
In general, he repeated statements already made about the New Europe tragedy. How did it happen? “Our ships were on maneuvers. Near Aurore did they pass, for Alerion recognizes no other claim of sovereignty in the Phoenix.
Maychance the Terrestrial chief believed this was attack, for truth is we had many. When fired on, we made response, with more than he may have awaited.
His remnants entered atmosphere for an outflank with radiation protection. That it might save itself, our closest detachment launched weapons of multiple megatonnage. Grief, the settled fringe of that continent they named Pays d’Espoir was lineally beneath. At orbital height the warheads kindled a firestorm. Terrible it ran, from end to end of that coast. When we could land, we found none alive, and but few in the southern region, where also a missile struck. Those we have hither brought, with our own mourning. Yet their Thirteenth-the-Betrayer was that captain who took them not into account when he plunged.”
Why does Alerion now keep possession? “Naught but woe came ever from this intermingling. Time and again have humans ordered us from planets we discovered thousands of years agone, whose peace is now broken with machines and alien feet. And truth, we have often felt need to forbid places, even force them evacuated of the first few men. Races that knew us long grow latterly hostile to us, unrestful by what men have told and sold them. Resources we need are taken away. From such has come tension, which unseldom bursts in battle.
Long past is that hour we should have ended it.”
Why doesn’t Alerion let an inspection team from Earth visit New Europe?
“As we understand the symbolism of your culture, this were an admission of weakness and wrongness. Too, we cannot hazard espionage, or yet a suicide mission with nuclear bombs ensmuggled. I say never your Parliament would such plot, but you have individuals who are otherwise, some in high command.
Maychance later, when faith has been achieved…”
28 November
The Aleriona Craze, already well established in North America, gained so much momentum from delegate Cynbe ru Taren’s recent 3V appearance that in the past week it has swept like a meteorite through the upper-class teen-agers of most countries. Quite a few in Welfare have caught the fever too. Now girls blessed with naturally blonde long hair flaunt it past their sisters waiting in line to buy wigs and metal mesh jerkins-like their brothers. No disciplinary measure by parents or teachers seems able to stop the kids warbling every word they utter.
You need ear seals not to be assaulted by the minor-key caterwaulings of “Alerion, Alerion” from radio, juke, and taper. The slithering Aleriona Ramble has driven even the Wiggle off the dance floors. On Friday the city of Los Angeles put an educational program on the big screen at La Brea Park, a rebroadcast of the historic interview; and police fought three hours to halt a riot by five thousand screaming high-schoolers.
In an effort to learn whether this is a mere fad or a somewhat hysterical expression of the world’s sincere desire for peace, our reporters talked with typical youngsters around the globe. Some quotes:
Lucy Thomas, 16, Minneapolis: “I’m just in hyperbolic orbit about him. I play the show back even when I’m asleep. Those eyes—they freeze you and melt you at the same time. Yee-ee!”
Pedro Fraga, 17, Buenos Aires: “They can’t be male. I won’t believe they are.”
Machiko Ichikawa, 15, Tokyo: “The Samurai would have understood them.
So much beauty, so much valor.”
Simon Mbulu, 18, Nairobi: “Of course, they frighten me. But that is part of the wonder.”
In Paris, Georges de Roussy, 17, threatened surlily: “I don’t know what’s gotten into those young camels. But I’ll tell you this. Anybody we saw in that costume would get her wig cut off, and her own hair with it.”
No comment was available from the still hidden delegates.
5 December
Lisa Heim, 14, daughter of manufacturer and would-be exploration entrepreneur Gunnar Heim of San Francisco, disappeared Wednesday. Efforts to trace her have so far been unsuccessful, and police fear she may have been kidnapped. Her father has posted a reward of one million American dollars for “anything that helps get her back. I’ll go higher than this in ransom if I have to,” he added.
VII
Uthg-a-K’thaq twisted his face downward as far as he could, which wasn’t much, and pointed his four chemosensor tendrils directly at Heim. In this position the third eye on top of his head was visible to the man, aft of the blowhole. But it was the front eyes, on either side of those fleshy feelers, that swiveled their gray stare against him. A grunt emerged from the lipless gape of a mouth: “So war, you say. We ’rom Naqsa know little ow war.”
Heim stepped back, for to a human nose the creature’s breath stank of swamp. Even so, he must look upward; Uthg-a-K’thaq loomed eighteen centimeters over him. He wondered fleetingly if that was why there was so much prejudice against Naqsans.
The usual explanation was their over-all appearance. Uthg-a-K’thaq suggested a dolphin, of bilious green-spotted yellow, that had turned its tail into a pair of short fluke-footed legs. Lumps projecting under the blunt head acted as shoulders for arms that were incongruously anthropoid, if you overlooked their size and the swimming-membranes that ran from elbows to pelvis. Except for a purse hung from that narrowing in the body which indicated a sort of neck, he was naked, and grossly male. It wasn’t non-humanness as such that offended men, said the psychologists, rather those aspects which were parallel but different, like a dirty joke on Homo sapiens. Smell, slobbering, belching, the sexual pattern. But mainly they’re also space travelers, prospectors, colonizers, freight carriers, merchants, who’ve given us stiff competition, Heim thought cynically.
That had never bothered him. The Naqsans were shrewd but on the average more ethical than men. Nor did he mind their looks; indeed, they were handsome if you considered them functionally. And their private lives were their own business. The fact remained, though, most humans would resent even having a Naqsan in the same ship, let alone serving under him. And…
Dave Penoyer would be a competent captain, he had made lieutenant commander before he quit the Navy, but Heim wasn’t sure he could be firm enough if trouble of that nasty sort broke out.
He dismissed worry and said, “Right. This is actually a raiding cruise. Are you still interested?”
“Yes. Hawe you worgotten that horriwle den you wound me in?”
Heim had not. Tracking rumors to their source, he had ended in a part of New York Welfare that appalled even him. A Naqsan stranded on Earth was virtually helpless. Uthg-a-K’thaq had shipped as technical adviser on a vessel from the planet that men called Caliban, whose most advanced tribe had decided to get into the space game. Entering the Solar System, the inexperienced skipper collided with an asteroid and totaled his craft. Survivors were brought to Earth by the Navy, and the Calibanites sent home; but there was no direct trade with Naqsa and, in view of the crisis in the Phoenix where his world also lay, no hurry to repatriate Uthg-a-K’thaq.