the end; there wasn’t any use talking further. He had given his word to Admiral Sutherland that he would obey orders to the letter.
“That is right,” said the voice. “We are both doomed, Donross, and it does not matter what we tell you. We cannot get through the cordon of your ships; we have lost half our race trying.”
“Half! Do you mean—?”
“Yes. There were only a thousand of us. We built ten ships, each to carry a hundred. Five ships have been destroyed by Earthmen; there are only five ships left, the ones you see, the entire race of us. Would it interest you, even though you are going to die, to know about us?”
He nodded, forgetting that they could not see him, but the assent in his mind must have been read.
“We are an old race, much older than you. Our home is—or was—a tiny planet of the dark companion of Sirius; it is only a hundred miles in diameter. Your ships have not found it yet, but it is only a matter of time. We have been intelligent for many, many millennia, but we never developed space travel. There was no need and we had no desire.”
“Twenty of your years ago an Earth ship passed near our planet and we caught the thoughts of the men upon it. And we knew that our only safety, our only chance of survival, lay in immediate flight to the farthest limits of the galaxy. We knew from those thoughts that we would be found sooner or later, even if we stayed on our own planet, and that we would be ruthlessly exterminated upon discovery.”
“You did not think of fighting back?”
“No. We could not have, had we wished—and we did not wish. It is impossible for us to kill. If the death of one single Earthman, even of a lesser creature, would ensure our survival, we could not bring about that death.”
“That you cannot understand. Wait—I see that you can. You are not like other Earthmen, Donross. But back to our story. We took details of space travel from the minds of members of that ship and adapted them to the tiny scale of the ships we built.”
“We built ten ships, enough to carry our entire race. But we find we cannot escape through your patrols. Five of our ships have tried, and all have been destroyed.”
Don Ross said grimly, “And I did a fifth of that: I destroyed one of your ships.”
“You merely obeyed orders. Do not blame yourself. Obedience is almost as deeply rooted in you as hatred of killing is in us. That first contact, with the ship you were on, was deliberate; we had to be sure that you would destroy us on sight.”
“But since then, one at a time, four of our other ships have tried to get through and have all been destroyed. We brought all the remaining ones here when we learned that you were to contact us with an unarmed ship.”
“But even if you disobeyed orders and returned to Earth, wherever it is, to report what we have just told you, no orders would be issued to let us through. There are too few Earthmen like you, as yet. Possibly in future ages, by the time Earthmen reach the far edge of the galaxy, there will be more like you. But now, the chances of our getting even one of our five ships through is remote.”
“Goodby, Donross. What is this strange emotion in your mind and the convulsion of your muscles? I do not understand it. But wait—it is your recognition of perceiving something incongruous. But the thought is too complex, too mixed. What is it?”
Don Ross managed finally to stop laughing. “Listen, my alien friend who cannot kill,” he said, “I’m getting you out of this. I’m going to see that you get through our cordon to the safety you want. But what’s funny is the way I’m going to do it. By obedience to orders and by going to my own death. I’m going to outer space, to die there. You, all of you, can come along and live there. Hitchhike. Your tiny ships won’t show on the patrol’s detectors if they are touching this ship. Not only that, but the gravity of this ship will pull you along and you won’t have to waste fuel until you are well through the cordon and beyond the reach of its detectors. A hundred thousand parsecs, at least, before my fuel runs out.”
There was a long pause before the voice in Don Ross’s mind said, “Thank you.” Faintly. Softly.
He waited until the five ships had vanished from his visiplate and he had heard five tiny sounds of their touching the hull of his own ship. Then he laughed once more. And obeyed orders, blasting off for space and death.
* * * *
On a tiny planet of a far, faint star, invisible from Earth, and at the farther edge of the galaxy, five times as far as man has yet penetrated into space, there is the statue of an Earthman. It is a tremendous thing, ten inches high, exquisite in workmanship.
Bugs crawl on it, but they have a right to; they made it, and they honor it. The statue is of very hard metal. On an airless world it will last forever—or until Earthmen find it and blast it out of existence. Unless, of course, by that time Earthmen have changed an awful lot.
ALL GOOD BEMS
The spaceship from Andromeda II spun like a top in the grip of mighty forces. The five-limbed Andromedan strapped into the pilot’s seat turned the three protuberant eyes of one of his heads toward the four other Andromedans strapped into bunks around the ship.
“Going to be a rough landing,” he said.
It was.
* * * *
Elmo Scott hit the tab key of his typewriter and listened to the carriage zing across and ring the bell. It sounded nice and he did it again. But there still weren’t any words on the sheet of paper in the machine.
He lit another cigarette and stared at it. At the paper, that is, not the cigarette. There still weren’t any words on the paper.
He tilted his chair back and turned to look at the sleek black-and-tan Doberman pinscher lying in the mathematical middle of the rag rug. He said, “You lucky dog.” The Doberman wagged what little stump of tail he had. He didn’t answer otherwise.
Elmo Scott looked back at the paper. There still weren’t any words there. He put his fingers over the keyboard and wrote: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” He stared at the words, such as they were, and felt the faintest breath of an idea brush his cheek.
He called out “Toots!” and a cute little brunette in a blue gingham house dress came out of the kitchen and stood by him. His arm went around her. He said, “I got an idea.”
She read the words in the typewriter. “It’s the best thing you’ve written in three days,” she said, “except for that letter renewing your subscription to the Digest. I think that was better.”
“Button your lip,” Elmo told her. “I’m talking about what I’m going to do with that sentence. I’m going to change it to a science-fiction plot idea, one word at a time. It can’t miss. Watch.”
He took his arm from around her and wrote under the first sentence: “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of the party.” He said, “Get the idea, Toots? Already it’s beginning to look like a science-fiction send-off. Good old bug-eyed monsters. Bems to you. Watch the next step.”
Under the first sentence and the second he wrote. “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of—” He stared at it. “What shall I make it, Toots? ‘The galaxy’ or
