The Greks Bring Gifts

6

The FBI man pulled rank on them and got Hackett back to the buildings under the grandstand from which the work on the garbage pit was being directed. The police hadn't been told what was going on in the cradle from which the ship had lifted. The FBI didn't tell them now. Eventually, though, the FBI agent-in-charge said very confidentially that a crackpot had made a bomb intended to blow sky high some of the dignitaries attending the Greks' departure. The bomb had been seized, and Hackett was to have carried it to a proper bomb-disposal site, but it had detonated from the vibration of his car. It was desirable that nobody know how careless a would-be assassin had been in making a bomb for political use.

The police were partly mollified, But there was resentment later when they checked that story with the crater and the completely fragmented car, and realized that if Hackett and the FBI man had been in it when the bomb went off, they'd have been scattered all over the landscape.

In the garbage pit headquarters the discussion following the exit of the local police was grim. Someone from the State Department took charge. It was self-evident that no Grek or Aldarian could have placed the explosive in Hackett's car. On this day, of all days, a member of either race moving about outside his ship would instantly have been mobbed by his admirers.

Actually, it was the discoveries made in the garbage pit which had kept Lucy and Hackett from going away in their car like anybody else. They'd have been blown to atoms when they essayed to start. But the bomb was more than a narrow escape for Hackett. Humans had placed it, and someone had stayed nearby to make sure the bomb wasn't wasted on a mere car thief or someone of that sort.

"I don't think that matters," said Hackett. "They tried to kill us and failed. It doesn't much matter who they were. We should get that object given to Doctor Thale. We should get it examined and find out what it is, what it does; why the Aldarian didn't want it found on him; why it apparently made the Greks torture and kill a number of Aldarians. The connection isn't certain, but it's possible. I'd say likely."

The State Department man said heatedly that some humans were apparently ready to commit murders by arrangement with the Greks.

"If things are really tied together as they seem to be," Hackett pointed out. "The Greks didn't know they wanted to kill Doctor Thale and me until they got the Aldarian back to the ship. Then they found out something. But they didn't know the names of the people they wanted killed until the police gave them the names from the accident report. So—what humans did they talk to between that time and the lift-off ?"

The agent-in-charge nodded. "Good idea. We'll check it." He spoke to one of his subordinates, giving him instructions. "What kind of explosive was it?"

Hackett grew impatient. The man who'd been with him discussed the explosive. He hadn't recognized the smell. It was a new kind of explosive to him.

"The Greks may have supplied it," said the FBI agent-in-charge. "No handy amount of TNT would have pulverized the car the way I'm told it was."

Hackett became more impatient. The important thing was not who had tried to kill him on behalf of the Greks, but why the Greks wanted him killed. The small, watch-sized object. . . .

Clark intervened. He explained that the object should be X-rayed with the smallest X-ray source possible, so there would be sharp shadows of the internal works on the X-ray film. It should be X-rayed from every possible angle, so it could be reconstructed if anything happened to the object itself. Then it could be opened; not before. This was standard practice when a mysterious artifact showed up in a dig. It should be a valid precaution now.

The FBI approved. Then Hackett mentioned the terrestrial vegetation samples that had been found. Arctic tundra grass. Dwarf willows. Kidney ferns. All cold-climate plants. The Greks must have some sort of flying device which didn't reflect radar beams. They'd been exploring.

"And if they were especially interested in arctic areas," said Hackett, "that would account for lack of observations by Johnson detectors. There's practically nobody up under the north pole scanning the sky for objects warmer than the air."

The FBI man who had been sent to check what humans had talked to the Greks between such-and-such times came back. There'd been ambassadors and prime ministers. . . . But at a late hour the Greks asked to talk to one particular ambassador. The farewell party was on its last legs when they requested his presence. But they'd talked to him earlier. Why again? Hackett said drily that it was after the broadcasts had failed to turn up either himself or Lucy.

"You mean," demanded the State Department man, "that they expected you to come forward, and when you didn't they figured you'd found out something undesirable and that they'd have to kill you?"

"There weren't many people who didn't know us by name," Hackett pointed out, "and who didn't know that we were wanted by the Greks. So if we didn't appear, it would look to the Greks as if we knew too much. We didn't, but it would look that way."

The State Department man said savagely, "As if we didn't have enough troubles, without the Greks having human partners in whatever they plan!"

Somebody said, "But what do they plan?"

"We don't know," snapped the State Department man, "but we know we don't want them to carry out their plan!"

The ranking FBI man said, "The ambassador who talked last to the Greks is still here. At last reports he was still chatting with the Ghanian prime minister. I think we can work this out, if Mr. Hackett will take a certain amount of risk."

Hackett nodded. It seemed to him that nothing was being done. There was too much talk. As a physicist he naturally considered that the important thing was to make an immediate, concentrated, all-out attempt to learn as much as possible of what the Greks hadn't wanted humans to know. They'd dismissed him because he said that their teaching in advanced physics seemed nonsense. It probably was, because they didn't want humans to understand such things as broadcast-power receivers—already supplying a lot of power, and due to supply much more—or space-ship drives, or in fact anything at all of Grek manufacture. But Hackett wanted to work in his own field, and fast! A breakthrough there—

"Of course I'll do anything possible, but I can't see that it matters who tried to kill me! The important thing is to get to work on Lucy's gadget and every other one available, to make a pinhole in our ignorance so we can get ready to do something practical We're wasting time."

Of all times since time began, this was not the one to waste in indignation over the treason of a fellow human —or so it seemed to Hackett. He made an irritated gesture. The FBI man said confidently, "I'll fix this!"

He moved to one side. He called his subordinates into conference, one at a time. One by one they left. Hackett wanted to grind his teeth.

Lucy moved closer to him and said in a low tone, "Everybody's shocked, Jim. They're confused. With time to think things over, something sensible will be done."

"There aren't too many precedents for that," said Hackett.

It did not look promising. Hackett himself was dazed by the completeness of the evidence that the Greks had lied about themselves, the Aldarians, their purposes, their intentions and, in effect, everything they'd told the people of Earth. And all Earth was rejoicing deliriously because the Greks had made mankind rich and Earth would presently be a paradise for the indolent and unambitious, and everybody had inherited a million dollars. . . .

Presently the FBI man came to Hackett with a road map. "We're giving you a car. Found the same model you had. Took it away from the man it belongs to. Emergency. You and Miss Thale—Doctor Thale—will get in it. You'll take this route. If a car seems to be trailing you—and it will—remember that we'll be behind. Also ahead. You'll turn off here. . . ."

He gave more instructions. Specific ones. Hackett said skeptically, "How do you know they'll follow?"

The FBI man said mildly, "Haven't you ever heard of a double agent? It's being arranged now. Remember, you're in the middle of something that's had the lid down on it, tight. This will work! And if it doesn't, there's no harm done."

"But if it does, Lucy—"

"She'll be safe," insisted the FBI man. "She'll be safe! Until the last two or three minutes there'll be traffic all around you. If we had time we could take still more precautions, but this will work."

Lucy said quietly, "Don't be silly, Jim! And don't say you don't want me to go along. Nobody else would do. And if this does work out, we may get all sorts of information."

"From them?" Hackett said sardonically. "They'll have been lied to, too."

"But we've already learned more than we expected, or they suspect," said Lucy. "Come along, Jim."

Hackett and Lucy had to show themselves. They had to do this and that. It was a task of some complexity to make sure that someone who'd been consulted not less than twice by the Greks the evening before knew who they were and knew that they were about to leave the lift-off site. But presently they got into a car which would almost have deceived Hackett himself. It was the same make and year and color, and very nearly in the same state of needing a paint job, as his own. Lucy got in beside him, and he drove away. Nobody said goodbye. If anyone noticed that they were apparently departing, there was nothing to prove it.

Certainly there was nothing to show that they'd had any part in the uncovering of evidence of Grek bad faith toward the human race. It was improbable, as a matter of fact, that anybody except the specialists called in within the past few hours knew anything about that. If the Greks didn't think of their garbage pit as revealing information they wanted unknown, it wasn't likely that any human allies they'd found would think of it. The only weakness in the plan Hackett and Lucy were to carry out was that somebody —the man who'd said he owned a Daimler—had seen Hackett approach his car and might have seen the explosion. But Hackett, indisputably alive, driving what seemed to be the same car, and matter-of-factly leaving the lift-off site with Lucy beside him.... Under such circumstances the report of his death would seem to be in error, somehow, and measures would be taken to make it come true.

He drove across many dusty acres which had been parking fields the day before and today, and would someday become a cornfield again. There were lights to guide departing cars toward the permanent highways of this part of the country. They went over a quarter-mile of horribly bumpy dirt road. When they came to a single-lane hard-surfaced highway they headed west, as instructed.

They overtook other traffic. Someone in the car next before Hackett winked a flashlight at him. That assured him of an escort ahead. A truck came up from behind and was content not to pass him, but to trail. A flashlight winked from the seat beside the driver. That was assurance, too.

He drove. Presently, at a left-hand curve, he could see another car, and yet others behind it to his rear. The moon was rising now. The car next behind the truck was a limousine. The flashlight winked three times in the truck cab. That verified that the situation was developing as expected.

They drove and drove and drove. Twenty miles west, a panel truck came down a side road and eeled in ahead of the larger, heavy truck. Two road intersections farther on, the big truck turned left and trundled away. A flashlight blinked from the panel truck. It could not be seen, of course, from the limousine. A car behind it turned off. Other cars appeared.

"It's being handled well," said Hackett grudgingly. "The limousine must figure the bomb didn't fire, or that it was put in the wrong car and the wrong man was blown up. They can't figure we're escorted, because our escort's changing all the time. And since everything seems to be going like clockwork, we'll probably pull it off."

Presently Lucy said in a steady voice, "I think we turn left here."

Two cars out of a half dozen before them turned left where a filling station made the road as bright as day for a little space. Hackett turned left. The panel truck behind him turned left after him.

"The others have gone on ahead," said Hackett, again grudgingly. "And it looks quite natural."

The limousine followed the panel truck in Hackett's wake. A motorcycle and sidecar left the gaspump at the filling station. Roaring, it passed the limousine, the panel truck, and Hackett. It went on ahead.

"If that wasn't the limousine we're supposed to bait," said Hackett, "the motorcycle wouldn't have passed us. So we've been informed that everything proceeds according to plan. We've a few miles more to go. Are you getting uneasy, Lucy?"

She shook her head, but he felt that she was tense.

"This is well handled," admitted Hackett again, a mile or so farther on. "We humans can get very much messed up before we decide what to do; but once we've figured out what must be done, sometimes we're pretty good at doing it."

The car went rolling along the up-and-down minor road. Lucy said in a level voice, "Not much traffic here, Jim."

"Still too much for things to be spoiled. It would be logical for them to pull up alongside and blast us as they went by. But that panel truck will block them if they show any signs of trying it. Or they might shoot out one of our tires and stop as if to help us, then do something entirely different. But they'd have to get ahead of the panel truck to do that." He added irrelevantly, "I wonder why they think they're killing us?"

Lucy said nothing.

Miles down this lesser highway the car immediately before them turned right. That was the signal that they were to turn off at the next side road. Hackett did so. The new road went between fields and through a patch of woodland that was plainly visible in the now full moonlight. Hackett pulled something out of his pocket.

"Did they give you a pistol too?" he asked.

She nodded, as if she could not quite trust herself to speak. The panel truck did not follow them in this turn. The car that had been ahead went away. But the limousine did make the last turn Hackett had made. Suddenly the world seemed empty and menacing. For the moment there were only two cars visible anywhere —Hackett's and the limousine which followed it two hundred yards behind. There was no fight except that from the moon and stars. The fields to right and left showed low-growing crops—cabbage, probably—and ahead there was pinewood on either side of the narrow road, which was practically only a track.

The limousine began to close up the distance between the two cars.

"Everybody's left us," said Hackett sourly. "We look like a burnt offering just waiting for a match to be set to it. They've probably decided to take their measures inside the woods yonder. That is, to kill us there."

He drove on. Lucy turned once to look behind.

"Don't do that!" commanded Hackett. "I can tell how far back they are by their headlights shining in."

The car went into the woodland. Straight pine trunks rose on either hand, with a minimum of brushwood at the roadside.

There was a crumpled newspaper in the center of the road. Hackett braked. He came to a stop exactly over the newspaper.

The limousine stopped just five yards back. Doors opened with a rush and men seemed to pour out of it. Then there was sudden, intolerable brightness. A pitiless glare made all the pine boles seem to glitter. There was a very harsh, rasping roar which was most inappropriate to the scene. The echoes of a pine forest give a remarkable quality to the sound of a tommy-gun aimed skyward.

A voice said, "Stop it! Stand still! And you don't need those guns. Drop them, fast!"

There were men moving out from among the pine trees. It was a really perfect ambush. The men from the limousine were completely at the mercy of those who'd waited for them here. Blinded by light, with the rasp of an automatic weapon to inform them what they faced in the way of armament, anything short of complete surrender would be suicide. They did not commit suicide. They dropped their weapons.

The ambassador from an iron curtain country gasped. He protested vehemently that if he were robbed—

"We're not robbing you," said an icy voice. "We're not arresting you, either. But the Greks wanted you to arrange a couple of murders. Remember? We're taking you somewhere to show you something. If you complain too much, as private citizens we can always turn into a lynch mob."

There was no confusion after that. None whatever— unless it was the confusion felt by the owner of a farmhouse who saw the brightest possible glare among the trees of his wood lot and came to find out what had happened. He was bewildered when he was taken aside and soothed, and kept from telephoning the local sheriff until no less than six cars came out of his wood lot—one of them a very expensive limousine—and seemed to be welcomed at the main highway by an odd assemblage of private cars, a truck, a motorcycle, and a panel truck. All the ill-assorted vehicles moved off together, with the limousine in the center. The farmer thought, too, that he saw various peculiarly inactive figures passed into the various motor vehicles. But he didn't know what had happened. He never found out.

In fact, there was never any public knowledge of the fact that an ambassador of a foreign country, sacrosanct by international agreement, had been carried bodily back to the place from which a space ship had risen less than twelve hours earlier. Nobody ever heard, officially, what he was shown there. But there is no question that he decided the Greks had been less than candid with his government—even in the act of making a highly special arrangement for the very special benefit of that nation.

Hackett noticed that the ambassador was very pale when he'd seen what was to be seen. He was nearly as gray-faced as a Grek. He had members of his entourage brought there and shown what was to be seen. And they became skeptical—and afraid—of the actual purposes that moved the visitors from space.

Not reasonably, but very naturally, the ambassador was particularly convinced by a discovery just made, while his limousine was following Hackett and Lucy.

Someone at an autopsy table beside the pit noticed two small scars behind the ear of an Aldarian corpse. They wouldn't be visible ordinarily, because of the furry covering of the skin, but these just happened to catch his eye. The scars matched exactly. So they were examined. It developed that something like a scalpel had made a small, deep, long-healed incision at those two places and had severed thick nerve bundles leading to the Aldarian's ears. And every other Aldarian whose body could be examined had had the same surgical operation.

They'd been deliberately and artificially made deaf. Obviously, by the Greks. These particular Aldarians had been killed and their carcasses thrown out with the ship's waste matter. Obviously, by the Greks. So the standing of Aldarians in Grek eyes was specific. To the Greks they were domestic animals, subject to any enormity their owners might choose to inflict.

By some miracle of intelligence, somebody happened to use the word "serfs" in the ambassador's hearing, referring to the status of the Aldarians. And that word had a very strong impact on the ambassador. It evoked traditions and a bitter hate. It may be that the one word had much influence on the future policy of a great nation which believed it had made a private deal with the Greks.

But this discovery, and all the information gotten from the garbage pit, was kept from the general public There was little enough hope for humanity anyhow, considering what the Greks could do, and our strictly primitive means of defense. But there would be no hope at all if everyone in the world went crazy with panic, or if the public revolted bloodily against losing its illusions. Some few officials in a few countries were let in on the facts. Certain scientific men were informed. But those whom the Greks rated highest in understanding Grek science....

Those illustrious nitwits joined the rest of us in gloating over the happy prospects we believed in. True, these was much unemployment at the moment, but that would soon be ended. True, even people who were employed tended to stay home and loaf instead of working, because soon they'd hardly have to work at all. But—why shouldn't they loaf? In the United States there were enormous stores of surplus food. The Greks had showed us a sinter field which made the mineral fertilising elements in topsoil beautifully available to growing things. We wouldn't really have to work at farming, hereafter. Make a hole and drop in a seed, and that would be that. And we'd have free power and practically free food, and retirement at forty, with everybody owning everything he'd ever envied anybody else.

To a later generation our reactions may be hard to understand. But we weren't inherently stupid. The intention to murder Lucy and Hackett, for example, had been handled beautifully. We were quite capable of acting rationally. But not many of us did.

Even now we can act like idiots. Everybody. Of all generations now alive. It's quite possible that we may do so.

But if we do, we'll deserve what happens.