Eric Frank Russell - And Then There Were None, Angielskie [EN](4)(2)
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And Then There Were None
Eric Frank Russell
The battleship was eight hundred feet in diameter and slightly more than one mile long.
Mass like that takes up room and makes a dent. This one sprawled right across one field and
halfway through the next. Its weight was a rut twenty feet deep which would be there for
keeps.
On board were two thousand people divisible into three distinct types. The tall, lean,
crinkly-eyed ones were the crew. The crophaired, heavy-jowled ones were the troops.
Finally, the expressionless, balding and myopic ones were the cargo of bureaucrats.
The first of these types viewed this world with the professional but aloof interest of people
everlastingly giving a planet the swift once-over before chasing along to the next. The
troops regarded it with a mixture of tough contempt and boredom. The bureaucrats peered
at it with cold authority. Each according to his lights.
This lot were accustomed to new worlds, had dealt with them by the dozens and reduced
the process to mere routine. The task before them would have been nothing more than
repetition of well-used, smoothly operating technique but for one thing: the entire bunch
were in a jam and did not know it.
Emergence from the ship was in strict order of precedence. First, the Imperial
Ambassador. Second, the battleship’s captain. Third, the officer commanding the ground
forces. Fourth, the senior civil servant.
Then, of course, the next grade lower, in the same order: His Excellency’s private
secretary, the ship’s second officer, the deputy commander of troops, the penultimate pen
pusher.
Down another grade, then another, until there was left only His Excellency’s barber, boot
wiper and valet, crew members with the lowly status of O.S.—Ordinary Spaceman—the
military nonentities in the ranks, and a few temporary ink-pot fillers dreaming of the day
when they would be made permanent and given a desk of their own. This last collection of
unfortunates remained aboard to clean ship and refrain from smoking, by command.
Had this world been alien, hostile and well-armed, the order of exit would have been
reversed, exemplifying the Biblical promise that the last shall be first and the first shall be
last. But this planet, although officially new, unofficially was not new and certainly was not
alien. In ledgers and dusty ifies some two hundred light-years away it was recorded as a
cryptic number and classified as a ripe plum long overdue for picking. There had been
considerable delay in the harvesting due to a superabundance of other still riper plums
elsewhere.
According to the records, this planet was on the outermost fringe of a huge assortment of
worlds which had been settled immediately following the Great Explosion. Every school child
knew all about the Great Explosion, which was no more than the spectacular name given to
the bursting outward of masses of humanity when the Blieder drive superseded atomic-
powered rockets and practically handed them the cosmos on a platter.
At that time, between three and five hundred years ago, every family, group, cult or
clique that imagined it could do better some place else had taken to the star trails. The
restless, the ambitious, the malcontents, the eccentrics, the antisocial, the fidgety and the
just plain curious, away they had roared by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands.
Some two hundred thousand had come to this particular world, the last of them arriving
three centuries back. As usual, ninety per cent of the mainstream had consisted of friends,
relatives or acquaintances of the first-comers, people persuaded to follow the bold example
of Uncle Eddie or Good Old Joe.
If they had since doubled themselves six or seven times over, there now ought to be
several millions of them. That they had increased far beyond their original strength had been
1
evident during the approach, for while no great cities were visible there were many medium
to smallish towns and a large number of villages.
His Excellency looked with approval at the turf under his feet, plucked a blade of it,
grunting as he stooped. He was so constructed that this effort approximated to an athletic
feat and gave him a crick in the belly.
“Earth-type grass. Notice that, captain? Is it just a coincidence, or did they bring seed
with them?”
“Coincidence, probably,” said Captain Grayder. “I’ve come across four grassy worlds so
far. No reason why there shouldn’t be others.”
“No, I suppose not.” His Excellency gazed into the distance, doing it with pride of
ownership. “Looks like there’s someone plowing over there. He’s using a little engine
between a pair of fat wheels. They can’t be so backward. Hm-m-m!” He rubbed a couple of
chins. “Bring him here. We’ll have a talk, find out where it’s best to get started.”
“Very well.” Captain Grayder turned to Colonel Shelton, boss of the troops. “His
Excellency wishes to speak to that farmer.” He pointed to the faraway figure.
“The farmer,” said Shelton to Major Hame. “His Excellency wants him at once.”
“Bring that farmer here,” Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. “Quickly!”
“Go get that farmer,” Deacon told Sergeant Major Bidworthy. “And hurry—His Excellency
is waiting!”
The sergeant major, a big, purple-faced man, sought around for a lesser rank,
remembered that they were all cleaning ship and not smoking. He, it seemed, was elected.
Tramping across four fields and coming within haffing distance’ of his objective, he
performed a precise military halt and released a barracks-square bellow of, “Hi, you!” He
waved urgently.
The farmer stopped, wiped his forehead, looked around. His manner suggested that the
mountainous bulk of the battleship was a mirage such as are five a penny around these
parts. Bidworthy waved again, making it an authoritative summons. The farmer calmly
waved back, got on with his plowing.
Sergeant Major Bidworthy employed an expletive which—when its flames had died out—
meant, “Dear me!” and marched fifty paces nearer. He could now see that the other was
bushy-browed and leather-faced.
“Hi!”
Stopping the plow again, the farmer leaned on a shaft, picked his teeth.
Struck by the notion that perhaps during the last three centuries the old Earth-language
had been dropped in favor of some other lingo, Bidworthy asked, “Can you understand me?”
“Can any person understand another?” inquired the farmer, with clear diction. He turned
to resume his task.
Bidworthy was afflicted with a moment of confusion. Recovering, he informed hurriedly,
“His Excellency, the Earth Ambassador, wishes to speak with you at once.”
“So?” The other eyed him speculatively. “How come that he is excellent?”
“He is a person of considerable importance,” said Bidworthy, unable to decide whether
the other was being funny at his expense or alternatively was what is known as a character.
A good many of these isolated planet-scratchers liked to think of themselves as characters.
“Of considerable importance,” echoed the farmer, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. He
appeared to be trying to grasp an alien concept. After a while, he inquired, “What will
happen to your home world when this person dies?”
“Nothing,” Bidworthy admitted.
“It will roll on as usual?”
“Of course.”
“Then,” declared the farmer, flatly, “he cannot be important.” With that, his little engine
went
chuff-chufi
and the wheels rolled forward and the plow plowed.
2
Digging his nails into the palms of his hands, Bidworthy spent half a minute gathering
oxygen before he said, in hoarse tones, “I cannot return without at least a message for His
Excellency.”
“Indeed?” The other was incredulous. “What is to stop you?” Then, noting the alarming
increase in Bidworthy’s color, he added with compassion, “Oh, well, you may tell him that I
said”—he paused while he thought it over—“God bless you and good-by!”
Sergeant Major Bidworthy was a powerful man who weighed two-twenty pounds, had
hopped around the cosmos for twenty years, and feared nothing. He had never been known
to permit the shiver of one hair—but he was trembling all over by the time he got back to
the ship.
His Excellency fastened a cold eye upon him and demanded, “Well?”
“He won’t come.” Bidworthy’s veins stood out on his forehead. “And, sir, if only I could
have him in my field company for a few months I’d straighten him up and teach him to
move at the double.”
“I don’t doubt that, sergeant major,” soothed His Excellency. He continued in a whispered
aside to Colonel Shelton. “He’s a good fellow but no diplomat. Too abrupt and harsh voiced.
Better go yourself and fetch that farmer. We can’t sit here forever waiting to find out where
to begin.”
“Very well, your excellency.” Colonel Shelton trudged across the fields, caught up with the
plow. Smiling pleasantly, he said, “Good morning, my man!”
Stopping his plow, the farmer sighed as if it were another of those days one has
sometimes. His eyes were dark-brown, aimost black, as they looked at the other.
“What makes you think I’m
your
man?” he inquired.
“It is a figure of speech,” explained Shelton. He could see what was wrong now.
Bidworthy had fallen foul of an irascible type. Two dogs snarling at one another, Shelton
went on, “I was only trying to be courteous.”
“Well,” meditated the farmer, “I reckon that’s something worth trying for.”
Pinking a little, Shelton continued with determination. “I am commanded to request the
pleasure of your company at the ship.”
“Think they’ll get any pleasure out of my company?” asked the other, disconcertingly
bland.
“I’m sure of it,” said Shelton.
“You’re a liar,” said the farmer.
His color deepening, Colonel Shelton snapped, “I do not permit people to call me a liar.”
“You’ve just permitted it,” the other pointed out.
Letting it pass, Shelton insisted, “Are you coming to the ship or are you not?”
“I am not.”
“Why not?”
“Myob!” said the farmer.
“What was that?”
“Myob!” he repeated. It smacked of a mild insult.
Colonel Shelton went back.
He told the ambassador, “That fellow is one of these too-clever types. All I could get out
of him at the finish was ‘myob,’ whatever that means.”
“Local slang,” chipped in Captain Grayder. “An awful lot of it develops over three or four
centuries. I’ve come across one or two worlds where there’s been so much of it that one
almost had to learn a new language.”
“He understood your speech?” asked the ambassador, looking at Shelton.
“Yes, your excellency. And his own is quite good. But he won’t come away from his
plowing.” He reflected briefly, then suggested, “If it were left to me, I’d bring him in by
force, under an armed escort.”
3
“That would encourage him to give essential information,” commented the ambassador,
with open sarcasm. He patted his stomach, smoothed his jacket, glanced down at his glossy
shoes. “Nothing for it but to go speak to him myself.”
Colonel Shelton was shocked. “Your excellency, you can’t do
that!”
“Why can’t I?”
“It would be undignified.”
“I am aware of it,” said the ambassador, dryly. “Can you suggest an alternative?”
“We can send out a patrol to find someone more co-operative.”
“Someone better informed, too,” Captain Grayder offered. “At best we wouldn’t get much
out of one surly hayseed. I doubt whether he knows a quarter of what we require to learn.”
“All right.” His Excellency abandoned the notion of doing his own chores. “Organize a
patrol and let’s have some results.”
“A patrol,” said Colonel Shelton to Major Hame. “Nominate one immediately.”
“Call out a patrol,” Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. “At once.”
“Parade a patrol forthwith, sergeant major,” said Deacon. Bidworthy went to the ship,
climbed a ladder, stuck his head in the lock and bawled, “Sergeant Gleed, out with your
squad, and make it snappy!” He gave a suspicious sniff and went farther into the lock. His
voice gained several more decibels. “Who’s been smoking? By the Black Sack, if I catch—”
Across the fields something quietly went
chuff-chuff
while balloon tires crawled along.
The patrol formed by the right in two ranks of eight men each, turned at a barked
command, marched off noseward. Their boots thumped in unison, their accoutrements
clattered and the orangecolored sun made sparkles on their metal.
Sergeant Gleed could not have to take his men far. They had got one hundred yards
beyond the battleship’s nose when he noticed a man ambling across the field to his right.
Treating the ship with utter indifference, the newcomer was making toward the farmer still
plowing far over to the left.
“Patrol, right wheel!” yelled Gleed. Marching them straight past the wayfarer, he gave
them a loud about-turn and followed it with the high-sign.
Speeding up its pace, the patrol opened its ranks, became a double ifie of men tramping
at either side of the lone pedestrian. Ignoring his suddenly acquired escort, the latter
continued to plod straight ahead like one long convinced that all is illusion.
“Left wheel!” Gleed roared, trying to bend the whole caboodle toward the waiting
ambassador.
Swiftly obedient, the double ifie headed leftward, one, two, three, hup! It was neat,
precise execution, beautiful to watch. Only one thing spoiled it: the man in the middle
maintained his self-chosen orbit and ambled casually between numbers four and five of the
right-hand ifie.
That upset Gleed, especially since the patrol continued to thump ambassadorwards for
lack of a further order. His Excellency was being treated to the unmiitary spectacle of an
escort dumbly boot-beating one way while its prisoner airily mooched another. Colonel
Shelton would have plenty to say about it in due course, and anything he forgot Bidworthy
would remember.
“Patrol!” hoarsed Gleed, pointing an outraged finger at the escapee, and momentarily
dismissing all regulation commands from his mind. “Get that yimp!”
Breaking ranks, they moved at the double and surrounded the wanderer too closely to
permit further progress. Perforce, he stopped.
Gleed came up, said somewhat breathlessly, “Look, the Earth Ambassador wants to speak
to you—that’s all.”
The other said nothing, merely gazed at him with mild blue eyes. He was a funny looking
bum, long overdue for a shave, with a fringe of ginger whiskers sticking out all around his
pan. He resembled a sunflower.
“Are you going to talk with His Excellency?” Gleed persisted.
“Naw.” The other nodded toward the farmer. “Going to talk with Zeke.”
“The ambassador first,” retorted Gleed, toughly. “He’s a big noise.”
“I don’t doubt that,” remarked the sunflower.
4
“Smartie Artie, eh?” said Gleed, pushing his face close and making it unpleasant. He gave
his men a gesture. “All right—shove him along. We’ll show him!”
Smartie Artie sat down. He did it sort of solidly, giving himself the aspect of a statue
anchored for aeons. The ginger whiskers did nothing to lend grace to the situation. But
Sergeant Gleed had handled sitters before, the only difference being that this one was cold
sober.
“Pick him up,” ordered Gleed, “and carry him.”
They picked him up and carried him, feet first, whiskers last. He hung limp and
unresisting in their hands, a dead weight. In this inauspicious manner he arrived in the
presence of the Earth Ambassador where the escort plonked him on his feet.
Promptly he set out for Zeke.
“Hold him, darn you!” howled Gleed.
The patrol grabbed and clung tight. His Excellency eyed the whiskers with well-bred
concealment of distaste, coughed delicately, and spoke.
“I am truly sorry that you had to come to me in this fashion.”
“In that case,” suggested the prisoner, “you could have saved yourself some mental
anguish by not permitting it to happen.”
“There was no other choice. We’ve got to make contact somehow.”
“I don’t see it,” said Ginger Whiskers. “What’s so special about this date?”
“The date?” His Excellency frowned in puzzlement. “Where does that come in?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“The point eludes me.” The ambassador turned to Colonel Shelton. “Do you get what he’s
aiming at?”
“I could hazard a guess, your excellency. I think he is suggesting that since we’ve left
them without contact for more than three hundred years, there’s no particular urgency
about making it today.” He looked at the sunflower for confirmation.
That worthy raffled to his support by remarking, “You’re doing pretty well for a half-wit.”
Regardless of Shelton’s own reaction, this was too much for Bidworthy purpling nearby.
His chest came up and his eyes caught fire. His voice was an authoritative rasp.
“Be more respectful while addressing high-ranking officers!”
The prisoner’s mild blue eyes turned upon him in childish amazement, examined him
slowly from feet to head and all the way down again. The eyes drifted back to the
ambassador.
“Who is this preposterous person?”
Dismissing the question with an impatient wave of his hand, the ambassador said, “See
here, it is not our purpose to bother you from sheer perversity, as you seem to think.
Neither do we wish to detain you any longer than is necessary. All we—”
Pulling at his face-fringe as if to accentuate its offensiveness, the other interjected, “It
being you, of course, who determines the length of the necessity?”
“On the contrary, you may decide that yourself,” said the ambassador, displaying
admirable self-control. “All you need do is tell—”
“Then I’ve decided it right now,” the prisoner chipped in. He tried to heave himself free of
his escort. “Let me go talk to Zeke.”
“All you need do,” the ambassador persisted, “is to tell us where we can find a local
official who can put us in touch with your central government.” His gaze was stem,
commanding, as he added, “For instance, where is the nearest police post?”
“Myob!” said the other.
“The same to you,” retorted the ambassador, his patience starting to evaporate.
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to do,” assured the prisoner, enigmatically. “Only you
won’t let me.”
“If I may make a suggestion, your excellency,” put in Colonel Shelton, “let me—”
5
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And Then There Were None
Eric Frank Russell
The battleship was eight hundred feet in diameter and slightly more than one mile long.
Mass like that takes up room and makes a dent. This one sprawled right across one field and
halfway through the next. Its weight was a rut twenty feet deep which would be there for
keeps.
On board were two thousand people divisible into three distinct types. The tall, lean,
crinkly-eyed ones were the crew. The crophaired, heavy-jowled ones were the troops.
Finally, the expressionless, balding and myopic ones were the cargo of bureaucrats.
The first of these types viewed this world with the professional but aloof interest of people
everlastingly giving a planet the swift once-over before chasing along to the next. The
troops regarded it with a mixture of tough contempt and boredom. The bureaucrats peered
at it with cold authority. Each according to his lights.
This lot were accustomed to new worlds, had dealt with them by the dozens and reduced
the process to mere routine. The task before them would have been nothing more than
repetition of well-used, smoothly operating technique but for one thing: the entire bunch
were in a jam and did not know it.
Emergence from the ship was in strict order of precedence. First, the Imperial
Ambassador. Second, the battleship’s captain. Third, the officer commanding the ground
forces. Fourth, the senior civil servant.
Then, of course, the next grade lower, in the same order: His Excellency’s private
secretary, the ship’s second officer, the deputy commander of troops, the penultimate pen
pusher.
Down another grade, then another, until there was left only His Excellency’s barber, boot
wiper and valet, crew members with the lowly status of O.S.—Ordinary Spaceman—the
military nonentities in the ranks, and a few temporary ink-pot fillers dreaming of the day
when they would be made permanent and given a desk of their own. This last collection of
unfortunates remained aboard to clean ship and refrain from smoking, by command.
Had this world been alien, hostile and well-armed, the order of exit would have been
reversed, exemplifying the Biblical promise that the last shall be first and the first shall be
last. But this planet, although officially new, unofficially was not new and certainly was not
alien. In ledgers and dusty ifies some two hundred light-years away it was recorded as a
cryptic number and classified as a ripe plum long overdue for picking. There had been
considerable delay in the harvesting due to a superabundance of other still riper plums
elsewhere.
According to the records, this planet was on the outermost fringe of a huge assortment of
worlds which had been settled immediately following the Great Explosion. Every school child
knew all about the Great Explosion, which was no more than the spectacular name given to
the bursting outward of masses of humanity when the Blieder drive superseded atomic-
powered rockets and practically handed them the cosmos on a platter.
At that time, between three and five hundred years ago, every family, group, cult or
clique that imagined it could do better some place else had taken to the star trails. The
restless, the ambitious, the malcontents, the eccentrics, the antisocial, the fidgety and the
just plain curious, away they had roared by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands.
Some two hundred thousand had come to this particular world, the last of them arriving
three centuries back. As usual, ninety per cent of the mainstream had consisted of friends,
relatives or acquaintances of the first-comers, people persuaded to follow the bold example
of Uncle Eddie or Good Old Joe.
If they had since doubled themselves six or seven times over, there now ought to be
several millions of them. That they had increased far beyond their original strength had been
1
evident during the approach, for while no great cities were visible there were many medium
to smallish towns and a large number of villages.
His Excellency looked with approval at the turf under his feet, plucked a blade of it,
grunting as he stooped. He was so constructed that this effort approximated to an athletic
feat and gave him a crick in the belly.
“Earth-type grass. Notice that, captain? Is it just a coincidence, or did they bring seed
with them?”
“Coincidence, probably,” said Captain Grayder. “I’ve come across four grassy worlds so
far. No reason why there shouldn’t be others.”
“No, I suppose not.” His Excellency gazed into the distance, doing it with pride of
ownership. “Looks like there’s someone plowing over there. He’s using a little engine
between a pair of fat wheels. They can’t be so backward. Hm-m-m!” He rubbed a couple of
chins. “Bring him here. We’ll have a talk, find out where it’s best to get started.”
“Very well.” Captain Grayder turned to Colonel Shelton, boss of the troops. “His
Excellency wishes to speak to that farmer.” He pointed to the faraway figure.
“The farmer,” said Shelton to Major Hame. “His Excellency wants him at once.”
“Bring that farmer here,” Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. “Quickly!”
“Go get that farmer,” Deacon told Sergeant Major Bidworthy. “And hurry—His Excellency
is waiting!”
The sergeant major, a big, purple-faced man, sought around for a lesser rank,
remembered that they were all cleaning ship and not smoking. He, it seemed, was elected.
Tramping across four fields and coming within haffing distance’ of his objective, he
performed a precise military halt and released a barracks-square bellow of, “Hi, you!” He
waved urgently.
The farmer stopped, wiped his forehead, looked around. His manner suggested that the
mountainous bulk of the battleship was a mirage such as are five a penny around these
parts. Bidworthy waved again, making it an authoritative summons. The farmer calmly
waved back, got on with his plowing.
Sergeant Major Bidworthy employed an expletive which—when its flames had died out—
meant, “Dear me!” and marched fifty paces nearer. He could now see that the other was
bushy-browed and leather-faced.
“Hi!”
Stopping the plow again, the farmer leaned on a shaft, picked his teeth.
Struck by the notion that perhaps during the last three centuries the old Earth-language
had been dropped in favor of some other lingo, Bidworthy asked, “Can you understand me?”
“Can any person understand another?” inquired the farmer, with clear diction. He turned
to resume his task.
Bidworthy was afflicted with a moment of confusion. Recovering, he informed hurriedly,
“His Excellency, the Earth Ambassador, wishes to speak with you at once.”
“So?” The other eyed him speculatively. “How come that he is excellent?”
“He is a person of considerable importance,” said Bidworthy, unable to decide whether
the other was being funny at his expense or alternatively was what is known as a character.
A good many of these isolated planet-scratchers liked to think of themselves as characters.
“Of considerable importance,” echoed the farmer, narrowing his eyes at the horizon. He
appeared to be trying to grasp an alien concept. After a while, he inquired, “What will
happen to your home world when this person dies?”
“Nothing,” Bidworthy admitted.
“It will roll on as usual?”
“Of course.”
“Then,” declared the farmer, flatly, “he cannot be important.” With that, his little engine
went
chuff-chufi
and the wheels rolled forward and the plow plowed.
2
Digging his nails into the palms of his hands, Bidworthy spent half a minute gathering
oxygen before he said, in hoarse tones, “I cannot return without at least a message for His
Excellency.”
“Indeed?” The other was incredulous. “What is to stop you?” Then, noting the alarming
increase in Bidworthy’s color, he added with compassion, “Oh, well, you may tell him that I
said”—he paused while he thought it over—“God bless you and good-by!”
Sergeant Major Bidworthy was a powerful man who weighed two-twenty pounds, had
hopped around the cosmos for twenty years, and feared nothing. He had never been known
to permit the shiver of one hair—but he was trembling all over by the time he got back to
the ship.
His Excellency fastened a cold eye upon him and demanded, “Well?”
“He won’t come.” Bidworthy’s veins stood out on his forehead. “And, sir, if only I could
have him in my field company for a few months I’d straighten him up and teach him to
move at the double.”
“I don’t doubt that, sergeant major,” soothed His Excellency. He continued in a whispered
aside to Colonel Shelton. “He’s a good fellow but no diplomat. Too abrupt and harsh voiced.
Better go yourself and fetch that farmer. We can’t sit here forever waiting to find out where
to begin.”
“Very well, your excellency.” Colonel Shelton trudged across the fields, caught up with the
plow. Smiling pleasantly, he said, “Good morning, my man!”
Stopping his plow, the farmer sighed as if it were another of those days one has
sometimes. His eyes were dark-brown, aimost black, as they looked at the other.
“What makes you think I’m
your
man?” he inquired.
“It is a figure of speech,” explained Shelton. He could see what was wrong now.
Bidworthy had fallen foul of an irascible type. Two dogs snarling at one another, Shelton
went on, “I was only trying to be courteous.”
“Well,” meditated the farmer, “I reckon that’s something worth trying for.”
Pinking a little, Shelton continued with determination. “I am commanded to request the
pleasure of your company at the ship.”
“Think they’ll get any pleasure out of my company?” asked the other, disconcertingly
bland.
“I’m sure of it,” said Shelton.
“You’re a liar,” said the farmer.
His color deepening, Colonel Shelton snapped, “I do not permit people to call me a liar.”
“You’ve just permitted it,” the other pointed out.
Letting it pass, Shelton insisted, “Are you coming to the ship or are you not?”
“I am not.”
“Why not?”
“Myob!” said the farmer.
“What was that?”
“Myob!” he repeated. It smacked of a mild insult.
Colonel Shelton went back.
He told the ambassador, “That fellow is one of these too-clever types. All I could get out
of him at the finish was ‘myob,’ whatever that means.”
“Local slang,” chipped in Captain Grayder. “An awful lot of it develops over three or four
centuries. I’ve come across one or two worlds where there’s been so much of it that one
almost had to learn a new language.”
“He understood your speech?” asked the ambassador, looking at Shelton.
“Yes, your excellency. And his own is quite good. But he won’t come away from his
plowing.” He reflected briefly, then suggested, “If it were left to me, I’d bring him in by
force, under an armed escort.”
3
“That would encourage him to give essential information,” commented the ambassador,
with open sarcasm. He patted his stomach, smoothed his jacket, glanced down at his glossy
shoes. “Nothing for it but to go speak to him myself.”
Colonel Shelton was shocked. “Your excellency, you can’t do
that!”
“Why can’t I?”
“It would be undignified.”
“I am aware of it,” said the ambassador, dryly. “Can you suggest an alternative?”
“We can send out a patrol to find someone more co-operative.”
“Someone better informed, too,” Captain Grayder offered. “At best we wouldn’t get much
out of one surly hayseed. I doubt whether he knows a quarter of what we require to learn.”
“All right.” His Excellency abandoned the notion of doing his own chores. “Organize a
patrol and let’s have some results.”
“A patrol,” said Colonel Shelton to Major Hame. “Nominate one immediately.”
“Call out a patrol,” Hame ordered Lieutenant Deacon. “At once.”
“Parade a patrol forthwith, sergeant major,” said Deacon. Bidworthy went to the ship,
climbed a ladder, stuck his head in the lock and bawled, “Sergeant Gleed, out with your
squad, and make it snappy!” He gave a suspicious sniff and went farther into the lock. His
voice gained several more decibels. “Who’s been smoking? By the Black Sack, if I catch—”
Across the fields something quietly went
chuff-chuff
while balloon tires crawled along.
The patrol formed by the right in two ranks of eight men each, turned at a barked
command, marched off noseward. Their boots thumped in unison, their accoutrements
clattered and the orangecolored sun made sparkles on their metal.
Sergeant Gleed could not have to take his men far. They had got one hundred yards
beyond the battleship’s nose when he noticed a man ambling across the field to his right.
Treating the ship with utter indifference, the newcomer was making toward the farmer still
plowing far over to the left.
“Patrol, right wheel!” yelled Gleed. Marching them straight past the wayfarer, he gave
them a loud about-turn and followed it with the high-sign.
Speeding up its pace, the patrol opened its ranks, became a double ifie of men tramping
at either side of the lone pedestrian. Ignoring his suddenly acquired escort, the latter
continued to plod straight ahead like one long convinced that all is illusion.
“Left wheel!” Gleed roared, trying to bend the whole caboodle toward the waiting
ambassador.
Swiftly obedient, the double ifie headed leftward, one, two, three, hup! It was neat,
precise execution, beautiful to watch. Only one thing spoiled it: the man in the middle
maintained his self-chosen orbit and ambled casually between numbers four and five of the
right-hand ifie.
That upset Gleed, especially since the patrol continued to thump ambassadorwards for
lack of a further order. His Excellency was being treated to the unmiitary spectacle of an
escort dumbly boot-beating one way while its prisoner airily mooched another. Colonel
Shelton would have plenty to say about it in due course, and anything he forgot Bidworthy
would remember.
“Patrol!” hoarsed Gleed, pointing an outraged finger at the escapee, and momentarily
dismissing all regulation commands from his mind. “Get that yimp!”
Breaking ranks, they moved at the double and surrounded the wanderer too closely to
permit further progress. Perforce, he stopped.
Gleed came up, said somewhat breathlessly, “Look, the Earth Ambassador wants to speak
to you—that’s all.”
The other said nothing, merely gazed at him with mild blue eyes. He was a funny looking
bum, long overdue for a shave, with a fringe of ginger whiskers sticking out all around his
pan. He resembled a sunflower.
“Are you going to talk with His Excellency?” Gleed persisted.
“Naw.” The other nodded toward the farmer. “Going to talk with Zeke.”
“The ambassador first,” retorted Gleed, toughly. “He’s a big noise.”
“I don’t doubt that,” remarked the sunflower.
4
“Smartie Artie, eh?” said Gleed, pushing his face close and making it unpleasant. He gave
his men a gesture. “All right—shove him along. We’ll show him!”
Smartie Artie sat down. He did it sort of solidly, giving himself the aspect of a statue
anchored for aeons. The ginger whiskers did nothing to lend grace to the situation. But
Sergeant Gleed had handled sitters before, the only difference being that this one was cold
sober.
“Pick him up,” ordered Gleed, “and carry him.”
They picked him up and carried him, feet first, whiskers last. He hung limp and
unresisting in their hands, a dead weight. In this inauspicious manner he arrived in the
presence of the Earth Ambassador where the escort plonked him on his feet.
Promptly he set out for Zeke.
“Hold him, darn you!” howled Gleed.
The patrol grabbed and clung tight. His Excellency eyed the whiskers with well-bred
concealment of distaste, coughed delicately, and spoke.
“I am truly sorry that you had to come to me in this fashion.”
“In that case,” suggested the prisoner, “you could have saved yourself some mental
anguish by not permitting it to happen.”
“There was no other choice. We’ve got to make contact somehow.”
“I don’t see it,” said Ginger Whiskers. “What’s so special about this date?”
“The date?” His Excellency frowned in puzzlement. “Where does that come in?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“The point eludes me.” The ambassador turned to Colonel Shelton. “Do you get what he’s
aiming at?”
“I could hazard a guess, your excellency. I think he is suggesting that since we’ve left
them without contact for more than three hundred years, there’s no particular urgency
about making it today.” He looked at the sunflower for confirmation.
That worthy raffled to his support by remarking, “You’re doing pretty well for a half-wit.”
Regardless of Shelton’s own reaction, this was too much for Bidworthy purpling nearby.
His chest came up and his eyes caught fire. His voice was an authoritative rasp.
“Be more respectful while addressing high-ranking officers!”
The prisoner’s mild blue eyes turned upon him in childish amazement, examined him
slowly from feet to head and all the way down again. The eyes drifted back to the
ambassador.
“Who is this preposterous person?”
Dismissing the question with an impatient wave of his hand, the ambassador said, “See
here, it is not our purpose to bother you from sheer perversity, as you seem to think.
Neither do we wish to detain you any longer than is necessary. All we—”
Pulling at his face-fringe as if to accentuate its offensiveness, the other interjected, “It
being you, of course, who determines the length of the necessity?”
“On the contrary, you may decide that yourself,” said the ambassador, displaying
admirable self-control. “All you need do is tell—”
“Then I’ve decided it right now,” the prisoner chipped in. He tried to heave himself free of
his escort. “Let me go talk to Zeke.”
“All you need do,” the ambassador persisted, “is to tell us where we can find a local
official who can put us in touch with your central government.” His gaze was stem,
commanding, as he added, “For instance, where is the nearest police post?”
“Myob!” said the other.
“The same to you,” retorted the ambassador, his patience starting to evaporate.
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to do,” assured the prisoner, enigmatically. “Only you
won’t let me.”
“If I may make a suggestion, your excellency,” put in Colonel Shelton, “let me—”
5
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