Part 12 (2/2)
”One more thing. Our psych, Tillinghast. He's been talking to me and sending me memos, but today he gave me a formal tape to approve and hand personally to you. So here it is. By the way, I didn't approve it; I simply endorsed it 'Submitted to Director Hilton without recommendation'.”
”Thanks.” Hilton accepted the sealed canister. ”What's the gist? I suppose he wants me to squeal for help already? To admit that we're licked before we're really started?”
”You guessed it. He agrees with you and Kincaid that the psychological approach is the best one, but your methods are all wrong. Based upon misunderstood and unresolved phenomena and applied with indefensibly faulty techniques, et cetera. And since he has 'no adequate laboratory equipment aboard', he wants to take a dozen or so Omans back to Terra, where he can really work on them.”
”Wouldn't _that_ be a something?” Hilton voiced a couple of highly descriptive deep-s.p.a.ce expletives. ”Not only quit before we start, but have all the top bra.s.s of the Octagon, all the hot-shot politicians of United Worlds, the whole d.a.m.n Congress of Science and all the top-bracket industrialists of Terra out here lousing things up so that n.o.body could ever learn anything? Not in seven thousand years!”
”That's right. You said a mouthful, Jarve!” Everybody yelled something, and no one agreed with Tillinghast; who apparently was not very popular with his fellow officers.
Sawtelle added, slowly: ”If it takes _too_ long, though ... it's the uranexite I'm thinking of. Thousands of millions of tons of it, while we've been h.o.a.rding it by grams. We could equip enough Oman s.h.i.+ps with detectors to guard Fuel Bin and our lines. I'm not recommending taking the _Perseus_ back, and we're 'way out of hyper-s.p.a.ce radio range. We could send one or two men in a torp, though, with the report that we have found all the uranexite we'll ever need.”
”Yes, but d.a.m.n it, Skipper, I want to wrap the whole thing up in a package and hand it to 'em on a platter. Not only the fuel, but whole new fields of science. And we've got plenty of time to do it in. They equipped us for ten years. They aren't going to start worrying about us for at least six or seven; and the fuel shortage isn't going to become acute for about twenty. Expensive, admitted, but not critical. Besides, if you send in a report now, you know who'll come out and grab all the glory in sight. Five-Jet Admiral Gordon himself, no less.”
”Probably, and I don't pretend to relish the prospect. However, the fact remains that we came out here to look for fuel. We found it. We should have reported it the day we found it, and we can't put it off much longer.”
”I don't agree. I intend to follow the directive to the letter. It says nothing whatever about reporting.”
”But it's implicit....”
”No bearing. Your own Regulations expressly forbid extrapolation beyond or interpolation within a directive. The Bra.s.s is omnipotent, omniscient and infallible. So why don't you have your staff here give an opinion as to the time element?”
”This matter is not subject to discussion. It is my own personal responsibility. I'd like to give you all the time you want, Jarve, but ... well, d.a.m.n it ... if you must have it, I've always tried to live up to my oath, but I'm not doing it now.”
”I see.” Hilton got up, jammed both hands into his pockets, sat down again. ”I hadn't thought about your personal honor being involved, but of course it is. But, believe it or not, I'm thinking of humanity's best good, too. So I'll have to talk, even though I'm not half ready to--I don't know enough. Are these Omans people or machines?”
A wave of startlement swept over the group, but no one spoke.
”I didn't expect an answer. The clergy will worry about souls, too, but we won't. They have a lot of stuff we haven't. If they're people, they know a sublime h.e.l.l of a lot more than we do; and calling it psionics or practical magic is merely labeling it, not answering any questions. If they're machines, they operate on mechanical principles utterly foreign to either our science or our technology. In either case, is the correct word 'unknown' or 'unknowable'? Will any human gunner _ever_ be able to fire an Oman projector? There are a hundred other and much tougher questions, half of which have been scaring me to the very middle of my guts. Your oath, Skipper, was for the good of the Service and, through the Service, for the good of all humanity. Right?”
”That's the sense of it.”
”Okay. Based on what little we have learned so far about the Omans, here's just one of those scarers, for a snapper. If Omans and Terrans mix freely, what happens to the entire human race?”
Minutes of almost palpable silence followed. Then Sawtelle spoke ...
slowly, gropingly.
”I begin to see what you mean ... that changes the whole picture. You've thought this through farther than any of the rest of us ... what do you want to do?”
”I don't know. I simply don't know.” Face set and hard, Hilton stared unseeingly past Sawtelle's head. ”I don't know what we _can_ do. No data. But I have pursued several lines of thought out to some pretty fantastic points ... one of which is that some of us civilians will have to stay on here indefinitely, whether we want to or not, to keep the situation under control. In which case we would, of course, arrange for Terra to get free fuel--FOB Fuel Bin--but in every other aspect and factor both these solar systems would have to be strictly off limits.”
”I'm afraid so,” Sawtelle said, finally. ”Gordon would love that ... but there's nothing he or anyone else can do ... but of course this is an extreme view. You really expect to wrap the package up, don't you?”
”'Expect' may be a trifle too strong at the moment. But we're certainly going to try to, believe me. I brought this example up to show all you fellows that we need time.”
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