Invaders From Earth

11

For a moment Kennedy stood frozen, listening to the fierce wind swirl around him, not knowing what to say. By revealing his knowledge of Ganymedean he had committed a major blunder.

“Well?” Gunther demanded. “How come you speak Ganny?”

“I…”

He stopped. Engel came to his rescue.

“That’s the only word he knows,” the tall linguist said. “Couple of days ago he was visiting me and when he left I said good-bye to him in Ganny. He wanted to know what I had just said, and I told him. There’s no harm in that, Gunther.”

Uncertainly the outpost chief released his grip on Kennedy’s arm. Kennedy realized Engel was saving his own skin as well as his by the lie; evidently it was out of bounds for him to speak the native tongue.

But he saw his advantage. “Look here, Gunther—I’m not a Corporation man and I’m only technically under your command. Where do you come off threatening to shoot me for saying good-bye to a Ganny in his own language? I could let Bullard know and he’d bounce you down to tenth-level for a stunt like that.”

In a short sharp sentence Gunther expressed his opinion of Corporation Executive Bullard. Then he said, “Let’s go back into the dome. This is no place to stand around having a chat.”

Without waiting for further discussion he signaled to have the lock opened. Kennedy was more than happy to turn his back on the bleakness of the open Ganymedean field.

They stripped off their spacesuits in silence, and racked them. Gunther said, “Suppose we go to my quarters, Kennedy. We can talk about things there.”

“Should I come too?” Engel asked.

“No, you get about your business. And watch out how much classified info you teach to visitors next time, Mr. Engel. Clear?”

“Clear,” Engel muttered, and turned away.

Gunther’s quarters proved to be considerably more auspicious than the other rooms under the dome. A wide window gave unrestricted view of the entire area, but could be opaqued at the touch of a button; the cot was general issue and ascetic, but extra ventilator controls and brighter room lights indicated to Kennedy that Gunther was no subscriber to the theory that a commanding officer should share every privation of his men.

He opened a closet and took out a half-empty bottle of liquor. The label had been removed and a new one substituted, reading Properly of Robert Gunther.

“Care for a drink?”

Kennedy did not, but he nodded deliberately. “Sure. Don’t mind if I do. Straight?”

“There’s ice,” Gunther said. He fixed the drink, handed it to Kennedy, and said, “I’m sorry I blew up over such a little thing out there. You have to understand what life’s like here, Kennedy. It’s not easy on the nerves. Not at all. I try to maintain discipline over myself as well as the others, but there are times when my nerves just pop. I’m sorry it had to happen to you, that’s all.”

Kennedy smiled. “You practically ordered me off to the firing squad because I knew a word of Ganny. How come the language’s so top-secret?”

It was a telling question. Gunther shifted uneasily and said, “It isn’t, really. It’s merely that we want to make sure all Earth-Ganymede negotiations take place through the Corporation. We wouldn’t want another outfit to set up shop here and try to cut in.”

“Meaning, presumably, that you suspect I’m going to learn the language, compile a dictionary of Ganny when I get back to Earth, and sell it for a fabulous sum to some as-yet-nonexistent competitor of the Extraterrestrial Development and Exploration Corporation, Ganymede Division? I assure you I’ve got no such sinister intentions. I’m just a hapless public relations man sent up here by his boss to get the feel of the territory.”

“I haven’t accused you of anything, Kennedy. But we have to take certain security precautions.”

“I understand that.”

“Good. In case you’re filing a report, I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d omit any mention of this incident. As a favor to me.”

“I guess I can manage that little thing,” Kennedy said lightly.

He left Gunther soon after, feeling greatly perplexed. The outpost chief’s real motivation seemed utterly transparent. Gunther was not fearing the advent of a rival corporation; it took years of legal work and billions in capital to build an organization the size of ED E. No wildcat operation was going to send a ship to Ganymede to whisk mining rights out from under Gunther’s sharp nose, making use of a Ganny dictionary prepared for them by Kennedy.

No, there could be only one possible reason why Gunther had reacted so violently when Kennedy had displayed a seeming understanding of Ganny. Gunther was afraid that Kennedy would overhear something the Corporation was trying to keep secret.

And that something, Kennedy suspected, was the fact that the Ganymedeans were hostile to the idea of having Earthmen settle on their world, and far from being willing to negotiate for mining rights were anxiously demanding that Gunther and his men get off.

That had seemed to be the drift of the conversation Kennedy had witnessed. And if that was the case, he thought, then the only way the Corporation was going to get what it wanted on Ganymede would be by a virtual extermination of the Gannys. No mere United Nations “police action,” as Kennedy and the other agency men had been led to believe, but a full-scale bitter war of oppression.

Sure, they would rationalize it. The Gannys were a non-technological people who owned a vast horde of valuable radioactive ores and had no intentions of using them; for the public good of the solar system, then, these ores should be taken from them.

A cold thought struck him: any rationalization would come through the agency. Once it became apparent that the Gannys would have to be forcibly hurled to the side, his job would be to sell the people of Earth on the proposition that this was a necessary and cosmically wise action.

It was a nasty business, and he had been drawn into it deeper than he suspected. Oh, he had never thought it was a lily-white enterprise, but despite Marge’s quiet opposition and Spalding’s bitter outbursts he had gone along with the agency unthinkingly. The agency mask had been his defense: the unthinking reservation of judgement that allowed him to enter into a contract with little concern for the questions of values tangential to it.

Well, now he was seeing it clearly and first-hand. He returned to his room, planning to study the Ganny dictionary more intently. Next week when the aliens returned he had to know more of the true position of things.

But his door was ajar when he reached his room, and the light was on. There were no locks on the doors, but he had hardly expected someone to just walk in. He pushed open the door.

Engel was sitting on the edge of his bed waiting for him.

Kennedy waved cheerily to him. “I guess I owe you thanks. That could have been a nasty business with Gunther out there if you hadn’t said what you did.”

“Yes. Look here, Kennedy—I have to have that booklet back. Immediately. Where is it?”

“Back? Why?”

“Gunther would have me flayed if he knew I gave it to you. It was really unpardonable on my part—but you seemed so interested, and I was so anxious to have you see my work and be impressed by it.” The linguist flushed and looked at his shoes. “Where is it now?”

Kennedy circled behind Engel and drew the dog-eared pamphlet out from under the pillow. Engel reached for it, but Kennedy snatched it quickly away.

“Give that to me! Kennedy, don’t you undersand that Gunther absolutely would execute me if he knew you had that? It’s classified!”

“Why?”

“That doesn’t matter. Give it to me.”

Kennedy tucked it under his arm. “I don’t intend to. I want to study it some more. It’s a very ingenious work, Engel. I am impressed.”

“If you don’t give that to me,” Engel said slowly, “I’ll tell Gunther that you entered my quarters when I wasn’t there and stole it from me. I know how many copies there are supposed to be. But I don’t want to have to do that, so hand it over, will you?” The linguist nibbled at his lip and flicked a globule of sweat from his forehead.

The room was very quiet a moment. Kennedy tightened his grip on the booklet under his arm. Staring levelly at Engel, he said, “You don’t want to do that. I’ll make a deal with you: you let me keep the dictionary, and I’ll make sure Gunther never has occasion to find out you gave it to me. And I’ll return it when I leave Ganymede. Otherwise, you try to tell Gunther I stole the dictionary and I’ll tell him you gave it to me of your own free will, and then lied to him outside the dome just now to keep your own nose clean. It’ll be my word against yours, but you’ll be in a tough way trying to explain just why you took my part out there.”

Engel knotted his hands nervously together. “It won’t work. Gunther trusts me—”

“Like hell he does. Gunther doesn’t even trust himself. Let me keep the dictionary or I’ll go to Gunther right now and tell him the whole story.”

Scowling, Engel said, “Okay. The dictionary’s yours— but keep your mouth shut the next time you’re around any Gannys. If you stop to ask a local chief the time of day, Gunther’ll roast us both.”

“I’ll keep quiet next time,” Kennedy promised.

But as it developed, “next time” did not look like too probable an event.

Three days slipped by, in Kennedy’s second week on Ganymede. He spent much of his time studying Engel’s little handbook of the Ganny language, and repeated phrases and sentences to himself each night in a muttered whisper that once had his next-door neighbor banging on the partition and telling him to shut up and go to sleep.

He went on jeep trips over the Ganymedean terrain; it was nighttime on Ganymede now, and would be for four more Earth-days; Jupiter hung broodingly massive in the sky, blotting out the stars. Kennedy noticed that he instinctively avoided looking up at the great swollen planet in the sky; it was too sickeningly big, too awesome, for easy viewing.

Moons danced in the sky, swimming in and out of sight with dizzy unpredictability; now lo, now Europa, now far-off Callisto came whirling by, and their orbits were a computer’s nightmare. Kennedy was impressed.

The terrain was monotonous, though—endless bluish ice-fields unbroken by sign of life. Once Kennedy asked his companion if they could visit a Ganny village for a change, instead of merely rolling on over icy wastes.

“You’ll have to ask Gunther about that. I don’t have authority to take you there.”

Kennedy asked Gunther. Gunther scowled and said, “I’m afraid not. The Ganny villages are restricted areas for visitors to the outpost.”

“Why?”

“You don’t ask why around here, Kennedy. You’ve been very cooperative up to now. Don’t spoil it.”

With a brusque gesture Gunther dismissed him. Kennedy turned away, his mind full of unanswered questions.

He studied his handbook. He waited impatiently for the Gannys to pay their next visit to the outpost; he wanted to listen to the conversation again, to find out exactly what the relationship was between Earthman and alien on this little world.

He asked questions of the other men—carefully guarded questions. He asked a mining engineer to take him to the main radioactives deposits. “I understand the Corporation expects to find transuranic elements in their natural state here on Ganymede,” he said.

The mining engineer scratched his heavy-bearded chin and laughed. “Where’d you hear a crazy thing like that? Transuranics on Ganny? Maybe on Jupiter, but not here unless everything we know about planetary cores is cockeyed.”

“But the data sheets we got implied it,” Kennedy persisted. “Part of the general abundance of radioactive ores on Ganymede may be due to the presence of natural transuranics.”

“You better check those data sheets again, Mister. There isn’t any general abundance of hot stuff on Ganny. You can track that snow for days with your gamma detector and not get a peep.”

That was interesting, Kennedy thought. Because if Ganymede was not as rich in radioactives as the Corporation publicity puffs had intimated, and if the natives were bluntly opposed to Terran operations on Ganymede, then the whole agency-nurtured maneuver was nothing more or less than a naked power grab on the part of the Corporation, a set-up maneuver that would drag the U.N. in to conquer Ganymede at no expense to the Corporation and then hand the little world over to Bullard and Company on a chrome-plated platter.

But he had to have more proof. He had to speak to the natives first-hand, preferably without any of Gunther’s men around.

The day before the expected visit of the Gannys, Kennedy happened to mention to Gunther that he was looking forward to seeing the aliens again.

“Oh? You haven’t heard? The visit’s been called off. It’s some sort of holy season in the village and they’ve decided not to see any Earthmen till it’s over.”

“And when will that be?”

“Five Ganny days from now. A little more than a month, Earth-time.”

That was interesting too, Kennedy thought. Because that meant he would have no further opportunity at all for seeing or listening to the Gannys. And this “some sort of holy season” sounded too slick, too patently contrived, to be convincing.

No. Gunther simply did not want him to penetrate Corporation activities on Ganymede any deeper than he already had. Evidently Dinoli and Bullard had misjudged Kennedy, thinking he was much less observant than he actually was, or they would never have let him go to Ganymede and possibly discover all manner of uncomfortable things.

There was only a week left to his stay now. He knew he would have to move quickly and efficiently in his remaining time, if he were to discover the underlying facts of the Ganymede operation.

He disliked blackmail. But in this case there was no help for it. He went to see Engel.