The Human Edge

I

“Well? Are the ships joined—or not?” demanded Arthur Mial.

“Look for yourself!” said Tyrone Ross.

Mial turned and went on out of the room. All right, thought Ty savagely, call it a personality conflict. Putting a tag on it is one thing, doing something about it another. And I have to do something—it could just be the fuse to this nitrojelly situation he, I, and Annie are all sitting on. There must be some way I can break down this feeling between us.

Ty glanced for a moment across the spaceliner stateroom at the statistical analysis instrument, called Annie, now sitting silent and unimpressive as a black steamer trunk against a far wall.

It was Annie who held the hope of peace for thousands of cubic light years of interstellar space in every direction. Annie—with the help of Ty. And the dubious help of Mial. The instrument, thought Ty grimly, deserved better than the two particular human companions the Laburti had permitted, to bring her to them.

He turned back to the vision screen he had been watching earlier.

On it, pictured from the viewpoint of one of the tractor mechs now maneuvering the ship, this leviathan of a Laburti spaceliner he was on was being laid alongside and only fifty yards from an equally huge Chedal vessel. Even Ty’s untrained eye could see the hair-trigger risks in bringing those hundreds of thousands of tons of mass so close together. But with the two Great Races, so-called, poised on the verge of conflict, the Chedal Observer of the Annie Demonstration five days from now could not be simply ferried from his ship to this like any ordinary passenger.

The two ships must be faced, main airlock to main airlock, and a passageway fitted between the locks. So that the Chedal and his staff could stroll aboard with all due protocol. Better damage either or both of the giant craft than chance any suspicion of a slight by one of the Great Races to a representative of the other.

For the Laburti and the Chedal were at a sparking point. A sparking point of war that—but of course neither race of aliens was concerned about that—could see small Earth drafted into the armed camp of its huge Laburti neighbor; and destroyed by the Chedal horde, if the interstellar conflict swept past Alpha Centauri.

It was merely, if murderously, ironic in this situation that Ty and Mial who came bearing the slim hope of peace that was Annie, should be themselves at a sparking point. A sparking point willed by neither—but to which they had both been born.

Ty’s thoughts came back from the vision screen to their original preoccupation.

It happened sometimes, he thought. It just—happened. Sometimes, for no discernable reason, suddenly and without warning, two men meeting for the first time felt the ancient furies buried deep in their forebrains leap abruptly and redly to life. It was rapport between individuals turned inside out—anti-rapport. Under it, the animal instinct in each man instantly snarled and bristled, recognizing a mortal enemy—an enemy not in act or attitude, but simply in being.

So it had happened with Ty—and Mial. Back on Earth, thought Ty now, while there was still a chance to do something about the situation, they had each been too civilized to speak up about it. Now it was too late. The mistake was made.

And mistake it had been. For, practical engineer and reasonable man that Ty was, reasonable man and practical politician that Mial was, to the rest of mankind—to each other they were tigers. And common sense dictated that you did not pen two tigers alone together for two weeks; for a delicate mission on which the future existence of the human race might depend. Already, after nine days out—

“We’ll have to go meet the Chedal.” It was Mial, reentering the room. Ty turned reflexively to face him.

The other man was scarcely a dozen years older than Ty; and in many ways they were nearly alike. There could not be half an inch or five pounds of weight difference between them, thought Ty. Like Ty, Mial was square-shouldered and leanly built. But his hair was dark where Ty’s was blond: and that dark hair had started to recede. The face below it was handsome, rather than big-boned and open like Ty’s. Mial, at thirty-six, was something of a wonder boy in politics back on Earth. Barely old enough for the senatorial seat he held, he had the respect of almost everyone. But he had been legal counsel for some unsavory groups in the beginning of his career. He would know how, thought Ty watching him now, to fight dirty if he had to. And the two of them were off with none but aliens to witness.

“I know,” said Ty now, harshly. He turned to follow Mial as the other man started out of the room. “What about Annie?”

Mial looked back over his shoulder.

“She’s safe enough. What good’s a machine to them if no one but a human can run her?” Mial’s voice was almost taunting. “You can’t go up with the big boys, Ross, and act scared.”

Ty’s face flushed with internal heat—but it was true, what Mial had said. A midget trying to make peace with giants did well not to act doubtful or afraid. Mial had courage to see it. Ty felt an unwilling touch of admiration for the man. I could almost like him for that, he thought—if I didn’t hate his guts.

By the time they got to the airlock, the slim, dog-faced, and darkly-robed Laburti were in their receiving line, and the first of the squat, yellow-furred Chedal forms were coming through. First came the guards; then the Observer himself, distinguishable to a human eye only by the sky-blue harness he wore. The tall, thin form of the robed Laburti Captain glided forward to welcome him aboard first; and then the Observer moved down the line, to confront Mial.

A high-pitched chattering came from the Chedal’s lipless slit of a mouth, almost instantly overridden by the artificial, translated human speech from the black translator collar around the alien’s thick, yellow-furred neck. Shortly, Mial was replying in kind, his own black translator collar turning his human words into Chedal chitterings. Ty stood listening, half-self conscious, half-bored.

“—and my Demonstration Operator.” Ty woke suddenly to the fact that Mial was introducing him to the Chedal.

“Honored,” said Ty, and heard his collar translating.

“May I invite you both to my suite now, immediately, for the purpose of improving our acquaintance…” The invitation extended itself, became flowery, and ended with a flourish.

“It’s an honor to accept…” Mial was answering. Ty braced himself for at least another hour of this before they could get back to their own suite.

Then his breath caught in his throat.

“…for myself, that is,” Mial was completing his answer. “Unfortunately, I earlier ordered my Operator to return immediately to his device, once these greetings were over. And I make it a practice never to change an order. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course. Some other time I will host your Operator. Shall we two go?” The Chedal turned and led off. Mial was turning with him, when Ty stepped in front of him.

“Hold on—” Ty remembered to turn off his translator collar. “What’s this about your ordering me—”

Mial flicked off his own translator collar.

“You heard me,” he said. He stepped around Ty and walked off. Ty stood, staring after him. Then, conscious of the gazing Laburti all about him, he turned and headed back toward their own suite.

Once back there, and with the door to the ship’s corridor safely closed behind him, he swore and turned to checking out Annie, to make sure there had been no investigation or tampering with her innards while he was absent. Taking off the side panel of her case, he pinched his finger between the panel and the case and swore again. Then he sat down suddenly, ignoring Annie and began to think.

II

With the jab of pain from the pinched finger, an incredible suspicion had sprung, full-armed into his brain. For the first time he found himself wondering if Mial’s lie to the Chedal about an ‘order’ to Ty had been part of some plan by the other man against Ty. A plan that required Mial’s talking with the Chedal Observer alone, before Ty did.

It was, Ty had to admit, the kind of suspicion that only someone who felt as he did about Mial could have dreamed up. And yet…

The orders putting the Annie Demonstration Mission—which meant Annie and Ty—under the authority of Mial had been merely a polite fiction. A matter of matching the high rank and authority of the Laburti and Chedal officials who would be watching the Demonstration as Observers. Ty had been clearly given to understand that by his own Department chief, back on Earth.

In other words, Mial had just now stopped playing according to the unwritten rules of the Mission. That might bode ill for Ty. And, thought Ty now, suddenly, it might bode even worse for the success of the Mission. But it was unthinkable that Mial would go so far as to risk that.

For, it was one thing to stand here with Annie and know she represented something possessed by neither the Laburti nor the Chedal technologies. It was all right to remind oneself that human science was growing like the human population; and that population was multiplying at close to three per cent per year—as opposed to a fraction of a per cent for the older Chedal and Laburti populations.

But there were present actualities that still had to be faced—like the size of this ship, and that of the Chedal ship now parting from it. Also, like the twenty-odd teeming worlds apiece, the thousands of years each of post-atomic civilization, the armed might either sprawling alien empire could boast.

Mial could not—would not—be playing some personal game in the face of all this. Ty shook his head angrily at the thought. No man could be such a fool, no matter what basic emotional factor was driving him.

When Mial returned to their stateroom suite a couple of hours later, Ty made an effort to speak pleasantly to him.

“Well?” said Ty, “how’d it go? And when am I to meet him?”

Mial looked at him coldly.

“You’ll be told,” he said, and went on into his bedroom.

But, in the four days left of the trip to the Laburti World, where the Demonstration was to be given before a joint audience of Laburti and Chedal Observers, it became increasingly apparent Ty was not to meet the Chedal. Meanwhile, Mial was increasingly in conference with the alien representative.

Ty gritted his teeth. At least, at their destination the Mission would be moving directly to the Human Consulate. And the Consul in charge was not a human, but a Laburti citizen who had contracted for the job of representing the Earth race. Mial could hardly hold secret conferences with the Chedal under a Laburti nose.

Ty was still reminding himself of this as the spaceliner finally settled toward their destination—a fantastic metropolis, with eight and ten thousand foot tall buildings rising out of what Ty had been informed was a quarter-mile depth of open ocean. Ty had just finished getting Annie rigged for handling when Mial came into the room.

“Ready?” demanded Mial.

“Ready,” said Ty.

“You go ahead with Annie and the baggage—” The sudden, soft hooting of the landing horn interrupted Mial, and there was a faint tremor all through the huge ship as it came to rest in its landing cradle of magnetic forces; the main door to the suite from the corridor swung open. A freight-handling mech slid into the room and approached Annie.

“I’ll meet you outside in the taxi area,” concluded Mial.

Ty felt abrupt and unreasonable suspicion.

“Why?” he asked sharply.

Mial had already turned toward the open door through which the mech had just entered. He paused and turned back to face Ty; a smile, razor blade thin and cruel altered his handsome face.

“Because that’s what I’m going to do,” he said softly, and turned again toward the door.

Ty stared after him for a moment, jarred and irresolute at the sudden, fresh outbreak of hostilities, and Mial went out through the door.

“Wait a minute!” snapped Ty, heading after him. But the other man was already gone, and the mech, carrying Annie and following close behind him, had blocked Ty’s path. Cold with anger, Ty swung back to check their personal baggage, including their food supplies, as another mech entered to carry these to the outside of the ship.

When he finally got outside to the disembarkation area, and got the baggage, as well as Annie, loaded on to one of the flying cargo platforms that did taxi service among the Laburti, he looked around for Mial. He discovered the other man a short distance away in the disembarkation area, talking again with a blue-harnessed, yellow-furred form.

Grimly, Ty turned on his translator collar and gave the cargo platform the address of the human Consulate. Then, he lifted a section of the transparent cover of the platform and stepped aboard, to sit down on the luggage and wait for Mial. After a while, he saw Mial break off his conversation and approach the cargo platform. The statesman spoke briefly to the cargo platform, something Ty could not hear from under the transparent cover, then came aboard and sat down next to Ty.

The platform lifted into the air and headed in between the blue and gray metal of the towers with their gossamer connecting bridges.

“I already told it where to take us,” said Ty.

Mial turned to look at him briefly and almost contemptuously, then turned away again without answering.

The platform slid amongst the looming towers and finally flew them in through a wide window-opening, into a room set up with human-style furniture. They got off, and Ty looked around as the platform began to unload the baggage. There was no sign of the Laburti individual who filled the role of human Consul. Sudden suspicion blossomed again in Ty.

“Wait a minute—” He wheeled about—but the platform, already unloaded, was lifting out through the window opening again. Ty turned on Mial. “This isn’t the Consulate!”

“That’s right,” Mial almost drawled the words. “It’s a hotel—the way they have them here. The Chedal Observer recommended it to me.”

“Recommended—?” Ty stared. “We’re supposed to go to the Consulate. You can’t—”

“Can’t I?” Mial’s eyes were beginning to blaze. The throttled fury in him was yammering to be released, evidently, as much as its counterpart in Ty. “I don’t trust that Consulate, with its Laburti playing human Consul. Here, if the Chedal wants to drop by—”

“He’s not supposed to drop by!” Ty snarled. “We’re here to demonstrate Annie, not gabble with the Observers. What’ll the Laburti think if they find you and the Chedal glued together half of the time?” He got himself under control and said in a lower voice. “We’re going back to the Consulate, now—”

“Are we?” Mial almost hissed. “Are you forgetting that the orders show me in charge of this Demonstration—and that the aliens’ll believe those orders? Besides, you don’t know your way around here. And, after talking to the Chedal—I do!”

He turned abruptly and strode over to an apparently blank wall. He rapped on it, and flicked on his translator collar and spoke to the wall.

“Open up!” The wall slid open to reveal what was evidently an elevator tube. He stepped into it and turned to smile mockingly at Ty, drifting down out of sight. The wall closed behind him.

“Open up!” raged Ty, striding to the wall and rapping on it. He flicked on his translator collar. “Open up. Do you hear me? Open up!”

But the wall did not open. Ty, his knuckles getting sore, at last gave up and turned back to Annie.

III

Whatever else might be going on, his responsibility to her and the Demonstration tomorrow, remained unchanged. He got her handling rigging off, and ran a sample problem through her. When he was done, he checked the resultant figures against the answers to the problem already established by multiple statistics back on Earth. He was within a fraction of a per cent all the way down the line.

Ty glowed, in spite of himself. Operating Annie successfully was not so much a skill, as an art. In any problem, there were from fourteen to twenty factors whose values had to be adjusted according to the instincts and creativity of the Operator. It was this fact that was the human ace in the hole in this situation. Aliens could not run Annie—they had tried on Annie’s prototypes and failed. Only a few specially trained and talented humans could run her successfully… and of these, Ty Ross was the master Operator. That was why he was here.

Now, tomorrow he would have to prove his right to that title. Under his hands Annie could show that a hundred and twenty-five Earth years after the Laburti and Chedal went to war, the winner would have a Gross Racial Product only eight per cent increased over today—so severe would the conflict have been. But in a hundred and twenty-five years of peaceful co-existence and cooperation, both races would have doubled their G.R.P.s in spite of having made only fractional increases in population. And machines like Annie, with operators like Ty, stood ready to monitor and guide the G.R.P. increases. No sane race could go to war in the face of that.

Meanwhile, Mial had not returned. Outside the weather shield of the wide window, the local sun, a G5 star, was taking its large, orange-yellow shape below the watery horizon. Ty made himself something to eat, read a while, and then took himself to bed in one of the adjoining bedrooms. But disquieting memories kept him from sleeping.

He remembered now that there had been an argument back on Earth, about the proper way to make use of Annie. He had known of this for a long time. Mial’s recent actions came forcing it back into the forefront of his sleepless mind.

The political people back home had wanted Annie to be used as a tool, and a bargaining point, rather than a solution to the Laburti-Chedal confrontation, in herself. It was true. Ty reminded himself in the darkness. Mial had not been one of those so arguing. But he was of the same breed and occupation as they, reminded the little red devils of suspicion, coming out to dance on Ty’s brain. With a sullen effort Ty shoved them out of his mind and forced himself to think of something else—anything else.

And, after a while, he slept.

He woke suddenly, feeling himself being shaken back to consciousness. The lights were on in the room and Mial was shaking him.

“What?” Ty sat up, knocking the other man’s hand aside.

“The Chedal Observer’s here with me.” said Mial. “He wants a preview demonstration of the analyzer.”

“A preview!” Ty burst up out of bed to stand facing the other man. “Why should he get to see Annie before the official Demonstration?”

“Because I said he could.” Underneath, Mial’s eyes were stained by dark half-circles of fatigue.

“Well, I say he can wait until tomorrow like the Laburti!” snapped Ty. He added, “—And don’t try to pull your paper rank on me. If I don’t run Annie for him, who’s to do it? You?”

Mial’s weary face paled with anger.

“The Chedal asked for the preview,” he said, in a tight, low voice. “I didn’t think I had the right to refuse him, important as this Mission is. Do you want to take the responsibility of doing it? Annie’ll come up with the same answers now as seven hours from now.”

“Almost the same—” muttered Ty. “They’re never exact, I told you that.” He swayed on his feet, caught between sleep and resentment.

“As you say,” said Mial, “I can’t make you do it.”

Ty hesitated a second more. But his brain seemed numb.

“All right,” he snapped. “I’ll have to get dressed. Five minutes!”

Mial turned and went out. When Ty followed, some five minutes later, he found both the other man and the alien in the sitting room. The Chedal came toward Ty, and for a moment they were closer than they had been even in the spaceliner airlock. For the first time, Ty smelled a faint, sickening odor from the alien, a scent like overripe bananas.

The Chedal handed him a roll of paper-like material. Gibberish raved from his lipless mouth and was translated by the translator collar.

“Here is the data you will need.”

“Thank you,” said Ty, with bare civility. He took the roll over to Annie and examined it. It contained all the necessary statistics on both the Laburti and Chedal races, from the Gross Racial Products down to statistical particulars. He went to work, feeding the data into Annie.

Time flowed by, catching him up in the rhythm of his work as it went.

His job with Annie required just this sort of concentration and involvement, and for a little while he forgot the two watching him. He looked up at last to see the window aperture flushed with yellow-pink dawn, and guessed that perhaps an hour had gone by.

He tore loose the tape he had been handling, and walked with it to the Chedal.

“Here,” he said, putting the tape into the blunt, three-fingered hands, and pointing to the first figures. “There’s your G.R.P. half a standard year after agreement to co-exist with Laburti.—Up three thousandths of one per cent already. And here it is at the end of a full year—”

“And the Laburti?” demanded the translated chittering of the alien.

“Down here. You see…” Ty talked on. The Chedal watched, his perfectly round, black eyes emotionless as the button-eyes of a child’s toy. When Ty was finished, the alien, still holding the tape, swung on Mial, turning his back to Ty.

“We will check this, of course,” the Chedal said to Mial. “But your price is high.” He turned and went out.

Ty stood staring after him.

“What price?” he asked, huskily. His throat was suddenly dry. He swung on Mial. “What price is it that’s too high?”

“The price of cooperation with the Laburti!” snarled Mial. “They and the Chedal hate each other—or haven’t you noticed?” He turned and stalked off into the opposite bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Ty stood staring at the closed surface. He made a step toward it. Mial had evidently been up all night. This, combined with the emotional situation between them, would make it pointless for Ty to try to question him.

Besides, thought Ty, hollowly and coldly, there was no need. He turned back across the room to the pile of their supplies and got out the coffeemaker. It was a little self-contained unit that could brew up a fresh cup in something like thirty seconds; for those thirty seconds, Ty kept his mind averted from the problem. Then, with the cup of hot, black coffee in his hands, he sat down to decide what to do.

Mial’s answer to his question about the Chedal’s mention of price had been thoughtless and transparent—the answer of a man scourged by dislike and mind-numbed by fatigue. Clearly, it could not be anything so simple as the general price of cooperation with a disliked other race, to which the Chedal Observer had been referring. No—it had to have been a specific price. And a specific price that was part of specific, personal negotiations held in secret between the alien and Mial.

Such personal negotiations were no part of the Demonstration plans as Ty knew them. Therefore, Mial was not following those plans. Clearly, he was following some other course of action.

And this, to Ty, could only be the course laid down by those political minds back on Earth who had wanted to use Annie as a pawn to their maneuvering, instead of presenting the statistical analysis instrument plainly and honestly by itself to the Laburti and the Chedal Observers.

If this was the case, the whole hope of the Demonstration hung in the balance. Mial, sparked by instinctive hatred for Ty, was opposing himself not merely to Ty but to everything Ty stood for—including the straightforward presentation of Annie’s capabilities. Instead, he must be dickering with the Chedal for some agreement that would league humanity with the Chedal and against the Laburti—a wild, unrealistic action when the solar system lay wholly within the powerful Laburti stellar sphere of influence.

A moment’s annoyance on the part of the Laburti—a moment’s belief that the humans had been trying to trick them and play games with their Chedal enemy—and the Laburti forces could turn Earth to a drifting cinder of a world with as little effort as a giant stepping on an ant.

If this was what Mial was doing—and by now Ty was convinced of it—the other man must be stopped, at any cost.

But how?

Ty shivered suddenly and uncontrollably. The room seemed abruptly as icy as a polar tundra.

There was only one way to stop Mial, who could not be reasoned with—by Ty, at least—either on the emotional or the intellectual level; and who held the paper proofs of authority over Ty and Annie. Mial would have to be physically removed from the Demonstration. If necessary—rather than risk the life on Earth and the whole human race—he would have to be killed.

And it would have to look like an accident. Anything else would cause the aliens to halt the Demonstration.

The shiver went away without warning—leaving only a momentary flicker of doubt in Ty, a second’s wonder if perhaps his own emotional reaction to Mial was not hurrying him to take a step that might not be justified. Then, that flicker went out. With the Demonstration only hours away, Ty could not stop to examine his motives. He had to act and hope he was right.

He looked across the room at Annie. The statistical analysis instrument housed her own electrical power source and it was powerful enough to give a lethal jolt to a human heart. Her instruments and controls were insulated from the metal case, but the case itself…

Ty put down his coffee cup and walked over to the instrument. He got busy. It was not difficult. Half an hour later, as the sun of this world was rising out of the sea, he finished, and went back to his room for a few hours’ sleep. He fell instantly into slumber and slept heavily.

IV

He jerked awake. The loon-like hooting in his ears; and standing over his bed was the darkly robed figure of a Laburti.

Ty scrambled to his feet, reaching for a bathrobe.

“What…?” he blurted.

Hairless, gray-skinned and dog-faced, narrow-shouldered in the heavy, dark robes he wore, the Laburti looked back at him expressionlessly.

“Where is Demonstration Chief Arthur Mial?” The words came seemingly without emotion from the translator collar, over the sudden deep, harsh-voiced yammering from the face above it.

“I—in the bedroom.”

“He is not there.”

“But…” Ty, belting the bathrobe, strode around the alien, out of his bedroom, across the intervening room and looked into the room into which Mial had disappeared only a few hours before. The bed there was rumpled, but empty. Ty turned back into the center room where Annie stood. Behind her black metal case, the alien sun was approaching the zenith position of noon.

“You will come with me,” said the Laburti.

Ty turned to protest. But two more Laburti had come into the suite, carrying the silver-tipped devices which, Ty had been briefed back on Earth, were weapons. Following them came mechs which gathered up the baggage and Annie. Ty cut off the protest before it could reach his lips. There was no point in arguing. But where was Mial?

They crossed a distance of the alien city by flying platform and came at last into another tower, and a large suite of rooms. The Laburti who had woken Ty led him into an interior room where yet another Laburti stood, robed and impassive.

“These,” said the Laburti who had brought Ty there, “are the quarters belonging to me. I am the Consul for your human race on this world. This—” the alien nodded at the other robed figure, “is the Observer of our Laburti race, who was to view your device today.”

The word was, with all the implications of its past tense, sent a chill creeping through Ty.

“Where is Demonstration Chief Arthur Mial?” demanded the Laburti Observer.

“I don’t know!”

The two Laburti stood still. The silence went on in the room, and on until it began to seem to roar in Ty’s ears. He swayed a little on his feet, longing to sit down, but knowing enough of protocol not to do so while the Laburti Observer was still standing. Then, finally, the Observer spoke again.

“You have been demonstrating your instrument to the Chedal,” he said, “previous to the scheduled Demonstration and without consulting us.”

Ty opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was nothing he could say.

The Observer turned and spoke to the Consul with his translator switched off. The Consul produced a roll of paper-like material almost identical with that the Chedal had handed Ty earlier, and passed it into Ty’s hands.

“Now,” said the Laburti Observer, tonelessly, “you will give a previous Demonstration to me…”

The Demonstration was just ending, when a distant hooting called the Laburti Consul out of the room. He returned a minute later—and with him was Mial.

“A Demonstration?” asked Mial, speaking first and looking at the Laburti Observer.

“You were not to be found,” replied the alien. “And I am informed of a Demonstration you gave the Chedal Observer some hours past.”

“Yes,” said Mial. His eyes were still dark from lack of sleep, but his gaze seemed sharp enough. That gaze slid over to fasten on Ty, now. “Perhaps we’d better discuss that, before the official Demonstration. There’s less than an hour left.”

“You intend still to hold the original Demonstration?”

“Yes,” said Mial. “Perhaps we’d better discuss that, too—alone.”

“Perhaps we had better,” said the Laburti. He nodded to the Consul who started out of the room. Ty stood still.

“Get going,” said Mial icily to him, without bothering to turn off his translator collar. “And have the machine ready to go.”

Ty turned off his own translator collar, but stood where he was. “What’re you up to?” he demanded. “This isn’t the way we were supposed to do things. You’re running some scheme of your own. Admit it!”

Mial turned his collar off.

“All right,” he said, coldly and calmly. “I’ve had to. There were factors you don’t know anything about.”

“Such as?”

“There’s no time to explain now.”

“I won’t go until I know what kind of a deal you’ve been cooking up with the Chedal Observer!”

“You fool!” hissed Mial. “Can’t you see this alien’s listening and watching every change your face makes? I can’t tell you now, and I won’t tell you. But I’ll tell you this—you’re going to get your chance to demonstrate Annie just the way you expected to, to Chedal and Laburti together, if you go along with me. But fight me—and that chance is lost. Now, will you go?”

Ty hesitated a moment longer, then he turned and followed the Laburti Consul out. The alien led him to the room where Annie and their baggage had been placed, and shut him in there.

Once alone, he began to pace the floor, fury and worry boiling together inside him. Mial’s last words just now had been an open ultimatum. You’re too late to stop me now, had been the unspoken message behind those words. Go along with me now, or else lose everything.

Mial had been clever. He had managed to keep Ty completely in the dark. Puzzle as he would now, Ty could not figure out what it was, specifically, that Mial had set out secretly to do to the Annie Mission.

Or how much of that Mial might already have accomplished. How could Ty fight, completely ignorant of what was going on?

No, Mial was right. Ty could not refuse, blind, to do what he had been sent out to do. That way there would be no hope at all. By going along with Mial he kept alive the faint hope, that things might yet, somehow, turn out as planned back on Earth. Even if—Ty paused in his pacing to smile grimly—Mial’s plan included some arrangement not to Ty’s personal benefit. For the sake of the original purpose of the Mission, Ty had to go through with the Demonstration, even now, just as if he was Mial’s willing accomplice.

But—Ty began to pace again. There was something else to think about. It was possible to attack the problem from the other end. The accomplishment of the Mission was more important than the survival of Ty. Well, then, it was also more important than the survival of Mial—And if Mial should die, whatever commitments he had secretly made to the Chedal against the Laburti, or vice-versa, would die with him.

What would be left would be only what had been intended in the first place. The overwhelming commonsense practicality of peace in preference to war, demonstrated to both the Laburti and the Chedal.

Ty, pausing once more in his pacing to make a final decision, found his decision already made. Annie was already prepared as a lethal weapon. All he needed was to put her to use to stop Mial.

Twenty minutes later, the Laburti Consul for the human race came to collect both Ty and Annie, and bring them back to the room from which Ty had been removed, at Mial’s suggestion earlier. Now, Ty saw the room held not only Mial and the Laburti Observer, but one other Laburti in addition. While across the room’s width from these, were the Chedal Observer in blue harness with two other Chedals. They were all, with the exception of Mial, aliens, and their expressions were almost unreadable therefore. But, as Ty stepped into the room, he felt the animosity, like a living force, between the two groups of aliens in spite of the full moon’s width of distance between them.

It was in the rigidity with which both Chedal and Laburti figures stood. It was in the unwinking gaze they kept on each other. For the first time, Ty realized the need behind the emphasis on protocol and careful procedure between these two races. Here was merely a situation to which protocol was new, with a weaker race standing between representatives of the two Great Ones. But these robed, or yellow-furred, diplomats seemed ready to fly physically at each other’s throats.

V

“Get it working—” it was the voice of Mial with his translator turned off, and it betrayed a sense of the same tension in the air that Ty had recognized between the two alien groups. Ty reached for his own collar and then remembered that it was still turned off from before.

“I’ll need your help,” he said tonelessly. “Annie’s been jarred a bit, bringing her here.”

“All right,” said Mial. He came quickly across the room to join Ty, now standing beside the statistical analysis instrument.

“Stand here, behind Annie,” said Ty, “so you don’t block my view of the front instrument panel. Reach over the case to the data sorting key here, and hold it down for me.”

“This key—all right.” From behind Annie, Mial’s long right arm reached easily over the top of the case, but—as Ty had planned—not without requiring the other man to lean forward and brace himself with a hand upon the top of the metal case of the instrument. A touch now by Ty on the tape control key would send upwards of thirteen thousand volts suddenly through Mial’s body.

He ducked his head down and hastily began to key in data from the statistic roll lying waiting for him on a nearby table.

The work kept his face hidden, but could not halt the trembling beginning to grow inside him. His reaction against the other man was no less, but now—faced with the moment of pressing the tape control key—he found all his history and environmental training against what he was about to do. Murder—screamed his conscious mind—it’ll be murder!

His throat ached and was dry as some seared and cindered landscape of Earth might one day be after the lashing of a Chedal space-based weapon. His chest muscles had tensed and it seemed hard to get his breath. With an internal gasp of panic, he realized that the longer he hesitated, the harder it would be. His finger touched and trembled against the smooth, cold surface of the tape control key, even as the fingers of his other hand continued to key in data.

“How much longer?” hissed Mial in his ear.

Ty refused to look up. He kept his face hidden. One look at that face would be enough to warn Mial.

What if you’re wrong?—screamed his mind. It was a thought he could not afford to have, not with the future of the Earth and all its people riding on this moment. He swallowed, closed his eyes, and jammed sideways on the tape key with his finger. He felt it move under his touch.

He opened his eyes. There had been no sound.

He lifted his gaze and saw Mial’s face only inches away staring down at him.

“What’s the matter?” whispered Mial, tearingly.

Nothing had happened. Somehow Mial was still alive. Ty swallowed and got his inner trembling under control.

“Nothing…” he said.

“What is the cause of this conversation?” broke in the deep, yammering, translated voice of one of the Laburti. “Is there a difficulty with the device?”

“Is there?” hissed Mial.

“No…” Ty pulled himself together. “I’ll handle it now. You can go back to them.”

“All right,” said Mial, abruptly straightening up and letting go of the case.

He turned and went back to join the Laburti Observer.

Ty turned back to his work and went on to produce his tape of statistical forecasts for both races. Standing in the center of the room to explain it, while the two alien groups held copies of the tape, he found his voice growing harsher as he talked.

But he made no attempt to moderate it. He had failed to stop Mial. Nothing mattered now.

These were Annie’s results, he thought, and they were correct and undeniable. The two alien races could ignore them only at the cost of cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Whatever else would come from Mial’s scheming and actions here—this much from Annie was unarguable. No sane race could ignore it.

When he finished, he dropped the tape brusquely on top of Annie’s case and looked directly at Mial. The dark-haired man’s eyes met his, unreadably.

“You’ll go back and wait,” said Mial, barely moving his lips. The Laburti Consul glided toward Ty. Together they left and returned to the room with the baggage, where Ty had been kept earlier.

“Your device will be here in a moment,” said the Laburti, leaving him. And, in fact, a moment later a mech moved into the room, deposited Annie on the floor and withdrew. Like a man staring out of a daze, Ty fell feverishly upon the side panel of the metal case and began unscrewing the wing nuts securing it.

The panel fell away in his hands and he laid it aside. He stared into the inner workings before him, tracing the connections to the power supply, the data control key, and the case that he had made earlier. There were the wires, exactly as he had fitted them in; and there had been no lack of power evident in Annie’s regular working. Now, with his forefinger half an inch above the insulation of the wires, he traced them from the data control key back to the negative power lead connection, and from the case toward its connection, with the positive power lead.

He checked, motionless, with pointing finger. The connection was made to the metal case, all right; but the other end of the wire lay limply along other connections, unattached to the power lead. He had evidently, simply forgotten to make that one, final, and vital connection.

Forgotten…? His finger began to tremble. He dropped down limply on the seat-surface facing Annie.

He had not forgotten. Not just… forgotten. A man did not forget something like that. It was a lifetime’s moral training against murder that had tripped him up. And his squeamishness would, in the long run, probably cost the lives of everyone alive on Earth at this moment.

He was sitting—staring at his hands, when the sound of the door opening brought him to his feet. He whirled about to see Mial.

It was not yet too late. The thought raced through his brain as all his muscles tensed. He could still try to kill the other man with his bare hands—and that was a job where his civilized upbringing could not trip him up. He shifted his weight on to his forward foot preparatory to hurling himself at Mial’s throat. But before he could act, Mial spoke.

“Well,” said the dark-haired man, harshly, “we did it.”

Ty froze—checked by the single small word, we.

“We?” He stared at Mial, “did what?”

“What do you think? The Chedal and the Laburti are going to agree—they’ll sign a pact for the equivalent of a hundred and twenty-five years of peaceful cooperation, provided matters develop according to the instrument’s estimates. They’ve got to check with their respective governments, of course, but that’s only a formality—” he broke off, his face tightening suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you?” His gaze went past Ty to the open side of Annie.

“What’s wrong with the instrument?”

“Nothing,” said Ty. His head was whirling and he felt an insane urge to break out laughing. “—Annie just didn’t kill you, that’s all.”

“Kill me?” Mial’s face paled, then darkened. “You were going to kill me—with that?” He pointed at Annie.

“I was going to send thirteen thousand volts through you while you were helping me with the Demonstration,” said Ty, still light-headed, “—if I hadn’t crossed myself up. But you tell me it’s all right, anyway. You say the aliens’re going to agree.”

“You thought they wouldn’t?” said Mial, staring at him.

“I thought you were playing some game of your own. You said you were.”

“That’s right,” said Mial. Some of the dark color faded from his face. “I was. I had to. You couldn’t be trusted.”

“I couldn’t be trusted?” Ty burst out.

“Not you—or any of your bunch!” Mial laughed, harshly. “Babes in the woods, all of you. You build a machine that proves peace pays better than war, and think that settles the problem. What would have happened without someone like me along—”

“You! How they let someone like you weasel your way in—”

“Why, you don’t think I was assigned to this mission through any kind of accident, do you?” Mial laughed in Ty’s face. “They combed the world to find someone like me.”

“Combed the world? Why?”

“Because you had to come, and the Laburti would only allow two of us with the analyzer to make the trip,” said Mial. “You were the best Operator. But you were no politician—and no actor. And there was no time to teach you the facts of life. The only way to make it plain to the aliens that you were at cross purposes with me was to pick someone to head this Mission whom you couldn’t help fighting.”

“Couldn’t help fighting?” Ty stood torn with fury and disbelief. “Why should I have someone along I couldn’t help fighting—”

“So the aliens would believe me when I told them your faction back on Earth was strong enough so that I had to carry on the real negotiations behind your back.”

“What—real negotiations?”

“Negotiations,” said Mial, “to decide whose side we with our Annie-machines and their Operators would be on, during the hundred and twenty-five years of peace between the Great Races.” Mial smiled sardonically at Ty.

“Side?” Ty stood staring at the other man. “Why should we be on anyone’s side?”

“Why, because by manipulating the data fed to the analyzers, we can control the pattern of growth; so that the Chedal can gain three times as fast as the Laburti in a given period, or the Laburti gain at the same rate over the Chedal. Of course,” said Mial, dryly, “I didn’t ever exactly promise we could do that in so many words, but they got the idea. Of course, it was the Laburti we had to close with—but I dickered with the Chedal first to get the Laburti price up.”

“What price?”

“Better relationships, more travel between the races.”

“But—” Ty stammered. “It’s not true! That about manipulating the data.”

“Of course it’s not true!” snapped Mial. “And they never would have believed it if they hadn’t seen you—the neutralist—fighting me like a Kilkenny cat.” Mial stared at him. “Neither alien bunch ever thought seriously about not going to war anyway. They each just considered putting it off until they could go into it with a greater advantage over the other.”

“But—they can’t prefer war to peace!”

Mial made a disgusted noise in his throat.

“You amateur statesmen!” he said. “You build a better mousetrap and you think that’s all there is to it. Just because something’s better for individuals, or races, doesn’t mean they’ll automatically go for it. The Chedal and Laburti have a reason for going to war that can’t be figured on your Annie-machine.”

“What?” Ty was stung.

“It’s called the emotional factor,” said Mial, grimly. “The climate of feeling that exists between the Chedal and the Laburti races—like the climate between you and me.”

Ty found his gaze locked with the other man’s. He opened his mouth to speak—then closed it again. A cold, electric shock of knowledge seemed to flow through him. Of course, if the Laburti felt about the Chedal as he felt about Mial…

All at once, things fell together for him, and he saw the true picture with painfully clear eyes. But the sudden knowledge was a tough pill to get down. He hesitated.

“But you’ve just put off war a hundred and twenty-five years!” he said. “And both alien races’ll be twice as strong, then!”

“And we’ll be forty times as strong as we are now,” said Mial, dryly. “What do you think a nearly three percent growth advantage amounts to, compounded over a hundred and twenty-five years? By that time we’ll be strong enough to hold the balance of power between them and force peace, if we want it. They’d like to cut each other’s throats, all right, but not at the cost of cutting their own, for sure. Besides,” he went on, more slowly, “if your peace can prove itself in that length of time—now’s its chance to do it.”

He fell silent. Ty stood, feeling betrayed and ridiculed. All the time he had been suspecting Mial, the other man had been working clear-eyed toward the goal. For if the Laburti and the Chedal felt as did he and Mial, the unemotional calm sense of Annie’s forecast never would have convinced the aliens to make peace.

Ty saw Mial watching him now with a sardonic smile. He thinks I haven’t got the guts to congratulate him, thought Ty.

“All right,” he said, out loud. “You did a fine job—in spite of me. Good for you.”

“Thanks,” said Mial grimly. They looked at each other.

“But—” said Ty, after a minute, between his teeth, the instinctive venom in him against the other man rushing up behind his words, “I still hate your guts! Once I thought there was a way out of that, but you’ve convinced me different, as far as people like us are concerned. Once this is over, I hope to heaven I never set eyes on you again!”

Their glances met nakedly.

“Amen,” said Mial softly. “Because next time I’ll kill you.”

“Unless I beat you to it,” said Ty.

Mial looked at him a second longer, then turned and quit the room. From then on, and all the way back to Earth they avoided each other’s company and did not speak again. For there was no need of any more talk.

They understood each other very well.