Part 32 (1/2)
The Chairman of the Board again mounted his invisible rostrum. ”Do you mean to intimate that we are to falsify the record?” he declaimed. ”To try to make liars out of hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the truth, to connive at ...”
”We aren't asking you to do _anything_!” Hilton snapped. ”We don't give a d.a.m.n what you do. Just study that record, with all that it implies.
Read between the lines. As for those on the _Perseus_, no two of them will tell the same story and not one of them has even the remotest idea of what the real story is. I, personally, not only did not want to become a monster, but would have given everything I had to stay human.
My wife felt the same way. Neither of us would have converted if there'd been any other way in G.o.d's universe of getting the uranexite and doing some other things that simply _must_ be done.”
”What other things?” Gordon demanded.
”You'll never know,” Hilton answered, quietly. ”Things no Terran ever will know. We hope. Things that would drive any Terran stark mad. Some of them are hinted at--as much as we dared--between the lines of the report.”
The report had not mentioned the Stretts. Nor were they to be mentioned now. If the Ardans could stop them, no Terran need ever know anything about them.
If not, no Terran should know anything about them except what he would learn for himself just before the end. For Terra would never be able to do anything to defend herself against the Stretts.
”Nothing whatever can drive _me_ mad,” Gordon declared, ”and I want to know all about it--right now!”
”You can do one of two things, Gordon,” Sawtelle said in disgust. His sneer was plainly visible through the six-ply, plastic-backed lead gla.s.s of his face-plate. ”Either shut up or accept my personal invitation to come to Ardvor and try to go through the wringer. That's an invitation to your own funeral.” Five-Jet Admiral Gordon, torn inwardly to ribbons, made no reply.
”I repeat,” Hilton went on, ”we are not asking you to do anything whatever. We are offering to give you; free of charge but under certain conditions, all the power your humanity can possibly use. We set no limitation whatever as to quant.i.ty and with no foreseeable limit as to time. The only point at issue is whether or not you accept the conditions. If you do not accept them we'll leave now--and the offer will not be repeated.”
”And you would, I presume, take the _UC-1_ back with you?”
”Of course not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly welcome to that one load of uranexite, no matter what is decided here.”
”That's one way of putting it,” Gordon sneered. ”But the truth is that you know d.a.m.ned well I'll blow both of your s.h.i.+ps out of s.p.a.ce if you so much as ...”
”Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!” Hilton snapped. Then, as the admiral began to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: ”You want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you!”
The _UC-1_ shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full alert and poised to strike, rushed to the attack. But the carrier had reached the _Orion_ and both Ardvorian s.h.i.+ps had been waiting, motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran wars.h.i.+ps arrived and began to blast with everything they had.
”Flashlights and firecrackers,” Sawtelle said, calmly. ”You aren't even warming up our screens. As soon as you quit making a d.a.m.ned fool of yourself by wasting energy that way, we'll set the _UC-1_ back down where she was and get on with our business here.”
”You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral,” the chairman said, ”or the rest of us will, as of now, remove you from the Board.” Gordon gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the order.
”If he hasn't had enough yet to convince him,” Hilton suggested, ”he might send up a drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know. One with the heaviest screening he's got--just to see what happens to it.”
”He's had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That exhibition was not only uncalled-for and disgusting--it was outrageous!”
The meeting settled down, then, from argument to constructive discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were, however, so self-evident that they were not even mentioned.
Thus, it was a self-evident fact that no Terran could ever visit Ardvor; for the instrument-readings agreed with the report's statements as to the violence of the Ardvorian environment, and no Terran could possibly walk around in two tons of lead. Conversely, it was self-apparent to the Terrans that no Ardan could ever visit Earth without being recognized instantly for what he was. Wearing such armor made its necessity starkly plain. No one from the _Perseus_ could say that any Ardan, after having lived on the furiously radiant surface of Ardvor, would not be as furiously radioactive as the laboratory's calibrated instruments had shown Hilton and Sawtelle actually to be.
Wherefore the conference went on, quietly and cooperatively, to its planned end.
One minute after the Terran battles.h.i.+p _Perseus_ emerged into normal s.p.a.ce, the _Orion_ went into sub-s.p.a.ce for her long trip back to Ardvor.
The last two days of that seven-day trip were the longest-seeming that either Hilton or Sawtelle had ever known. The sub-s.p.a.ce radio was on continuously and Kedy-One reported to Sawtelle every five minutes. Even though Hilton knew that the Oman commander-in-chief was exactly as good at perceiving as he himself was, he found himself scanning the thoroughly screened Strett world forty or fifty times an hour.