pieces—he was going insane—his mouth trembled as he tried to repeat the First Truth:
“Humanity is infallible. To doubt the infallibility of Humanity is inhuman. To state that man is fallible is error, and to err is inhuman. Therefore the fallible man can be proven, by logical demonstration, not to be a Man at all.”
Yes; even if Narth had not deliberately perverted Truth, he had proven himself fallible and therefore forfeited his claim to be called human. But still…
* * * *
With a furious, gesture, Ketil snapped on the viewing-screen, then turned it off again. He was tired of newsreels; tired of puzzles. He had read all the fact-accumulation micros on board, and he was weary to death of this waiting! The presence of Narth—naked and insane in his cell—was un-nerving, too; hating himself for a superstitious fool, Ketil made an obsolete gesture toward his lips and whispered half-aloud “Guard us from inhuman error, 0 Greatest Truth…”
Blazing space! Where was Alath? He would not stay alone in here! Down at the end of the corridor, Narth was weeping aloud in great blubbering sobs, his hold on reason quite loosed; it prompted Ketil to the superstitious gesture again, but instead he straightened his back and bellowed “Alath!”
Alath thrust his head out of the bunk-cubby he shared with Luss—now absent on the scouting mission—and Ketil said “Come in here!”
Alath scowled. “Is that an expression-of-a-wish, or is it an order?” he inquired stiffly.
Ketil looked at the floor. “Its an expression-of-a-wish,” he mumbled. “I regret making you angry. I spoke in my Truth, but I don’t like to be alone and I dislike your anger.”
“To your Truth,” Alath said politely, but added nothing to the formal phrase. Then, advancing into the lounge, he said—still, Ketil noticed, not answering—“I sighted one of the scout ships. Soon we should know whether an attack is practical.”
* * * *
One after another, the miniature reconnaissance ships matched velocities with the mother ship, and the crew of the R’rin ship, after the briefest of intervals for necessary refreshment, gathered in the common lounge.
Ketil—who had been the first to return, having had the simplest mission—pulled himself together and related what he had seen in the small detector ship, repeating what he had told Alath. “The planet is rich,” he added. “Plenty of heavy minerals, no serious radioactivity, no oxygen-deterioration, no trace of previous exploitation. Low-order non-space civilization, presumably less than ten Galactic Aeons from savagery. Pending a report from the surfacing ships, my vote is definitely cast to summon the fleet and invade.”
The captain, Rudan, hemmed and hawed. “Of course, you didn’t go down to the surface,” he mused. “Luss, you had the bio-detector scout-ship. What did you find?”
“I didn’t surface, either,” Luss said. Alath’s bunkmate, he was a burly, cheerful man past middle age, and now his mouth was curled up with faintly ribald humor. “First of all, I’ll relieve the mind of our psychologist,” he said, with a pleasant nod. “The dominant race is human.”
A shout of laughter went up all over the cabin at Alath’s exaggerated look of chagrin; it was one of the few standing jokes that had survived the long cruise in space—the psychologist’s desire to find a non-human intelligent race.
When Luss could speak with a straight face again, he went on. “Dirty jokes aside,” he said, “the bio-detectors confirm Ketil’s report; no sign of photon conversion. I won’t give you technical details now, but I have soil, air, water and protoplasm samples. Gravity is a bit low. The atmosphere is high in oxygen; pending a professional report from Alath, I’d hazard a careful guess that the civilization would be mildly euphoric, potentially unstable, with a high level of intuitive intelligence and a very low level of decadent or primitive morality.”
Rudan nodded, slowly and carefully. “A cautious report,” he said mildly, “but a satisfactory one. Still, everything depends on the report from the surface crew.”
Ketil frowned with impatience; Rudan always staged this slow, carefully impressive, suspenseful build-up. Were they, or weren’t they, going to invade? That was what was important!
“Fordill,” Rudan said, “You went down to the surface with the mission of securing artifacts. Did you…”
Fordill nodded. He was a cocky young man, to whom dangerous missions were the breath of life, but he looked a little subdued, a little pallid. “Captain,” he said, “With your permission—I’m afraid we won’t be able to invade.”
* * * *
Rudan scowled and looked with curt impatience at Fordill, but Ketil, watching, knew that Fordill was enjoying this, even more than Rudan. He would tell his story in his own way, and he wouldn’t be hurried.
“We had no trouble in landing,” Fordill reported, “and without attracting any undue attention, we made our way to what appeared to be a city…” then, to everybody’s astonishment, Fordill suddenly sighed, broke off, and held out a thin bundle of sheets, loosely bound together. “Here, Captain, look at these,” he said tiredly, “We managed to secure some of what appear to be a primitive form of fact-accumulators; they resemble the old fact-books which predated the modern micros.”
Rudan held the alien artifacts limply in his hand. Ketil could see, from where he was, that they were covered with pictures and fine alien printing. Fordill spoke with only a shadow of his usual cocky self.
“Naturally, without report from Luss and Ketil, we didn’t dare to stay down too long. You could almost say that we grabbed these artifacts and ran. But I’m afraid they speak for themselves.”
Rudan, in bewilderment, fingered the thin pages. He turned and caught Ketil’s eye. “Here,” he said. “You’re our technical expert—what is this stuff?”
Ketil leaned over the captain’s shoulder and peered closely at one of the fact-books. “I believe it’s a plastic preparation of some pulped wood-fabric. Their civilization can’t be at a very high level, or they wouldn’t be using anything as fragile as this for fact-accumulation.” He shredded the edge of a page between his fingers.
“Their civilization is higher than it appears,” warned Fordill. “Don’t take a chance on Error, Ketil.”
Alath took one of the fact-books from the Captain. “With your permission,” he said, and riffled the pages.
“Pity we can’t invade,” he muttered, just loud enough for the rest of the crew to hear, “Look at these women! Luss, you were quite right—the place is biologically favorable!”
“Let me see…” Luss bent to look, and emitted a sharp whistle at the pictures on the pulp-wood stuff. “I’d give a sizable fraction of my pay,” he said, “to be able to inspect the women of this planet!”
“I wouldn’t stop at inspecting,” Ketil jeered, relieved at the change in conversation. But Luss, with a scientist’s preoccupation, was still puzzling over the painted likenesses. “They are quite—quite emphatically super-mammals,” he remarked pedantically, “I shall regret it if we cannot explore this planet at greater length.”
“If you’ve quite finished,” Fordill reproached, and Luss fell into an embarrassed silence, handing
