like roses. But there were no roses ondead planets--
"Earthman, can you still hear?"
"I can hear," Johnny said. It was suddenly easier to talk. Even easierto understand. They had done something....
"We are surprised that your state of shock was not more severe. In theprocess of analyzing you, we discovered that you were totally unpreparedfor Space-flight, and therefore--"
"Unprepared? What do you think all those months of physical conditioningwere for? Yeah, and all those damned textbooks? You think that barrel Icracked up was built in a Kindergarten class--"
"Space-flight requires but a relative minimum of those things, Earthman.Required most is psychological and philosophical conditioning."
"To what?"
"To all things unreal. Because they are the most real; infinity appliesto probability and possibility far more directly than to simple Spaceand Time. But--are you calm now?" The voice was growing deeper, andseemed almost friendly. Johnny tried his muscles; they weren'tparalyzed--he could move easily, and his head was clear. And there wasno anger, now. No "shock."
"Go ahead," he said.
"Our examination of you has indicated that your race is a potentiallyeffective one, with a superior survival factor. We feel that, properlyinstructed and assisted, such a race might be of great value as a friendand ally. In short, we receive you in peace and friendship, Earthman.Will you accept us in like manner?"
Johnny tried to think. Hard thoughts, the way men were supposedto think. What kind of game was it? What were the strings? Theangles ... the gimmicks. What did they really want?
His lips were dry and barely moved over his teeth, but the words cameeasily. "Who says you're a friend?"
"We would have learned as much about you by examining your corpse,Earthman."
So he was alive, and that had to prove something. And it might have beena lot of trouble to keep him that way. The hell of it was you couldn't_know_ ... _Anything_ ... you couldn't know anything when you weretossed into the middle of the impossible. He felt the skin on the backof his neck chill and tighten.
But who held out their hand like this?
Whoever did anything like that?
No.
"We wish to help you, Earthman, and your race. We have observed yourkind at close quarters, yet we have never landed among you nor attemptedcommunication because of fear for ourselves. But with proper help, thereneed be no fear between us. We offer you friendship and progress."
"You keep talking about what _we_ get out of it." Johnny stared upwardat the ceiling, got his eyes off the little shuttered aperture. Hewished he had a cigarette. "You sound too damned much like apolitician."
"Perhaps at this point you should be informed that your ship iscompletely repaired, and ready for your return to Earth whenever youdesire."
"So, it's--You said Harrison and Janis would be here in nine days! Thatmeans I've been out for nearly two weeks! For a nap that's a long time,but nobody could get that bucket back in one piece in eleven days! Notafter what I did to it--"
"Your ship is completely repaired, Earthman."
Johnny knew somehow that the voice wasn't lying. So maybe when you gotoff of Earth miracles did happen. He just didn't _know_ enough.
"We wish to give you data to take back to your Earth which will banishdisease for you--_all_ disease. Data which will give you spacecraft thatmatch our own in technical perfection. Data that will make you theundisputed masters of your environment. We offer you the stars,Earthman."
He shut a thousand racing thoughts out of his head. "Maybe I'll believethis fairy tale of yours on one condition," Johnny said, "because Ican't intelligently do otherwise."
"And that--condition?"
"Tell me _why_."
There was a pause, and it was as though something forever unknowable tomen hung in the silence.
"Picture, if you can, Earthman," the answer came at last, "several smallislands in the center of a great sea; all without life, save two. Themen on one have learned to build boats which can successfully sail thesea within certain limits--they can visit the other islands, but are toofrail and too limited in power to venture past the horizon. It isinfinitely frustrating to them. The only places to which they may go aredead places. Save for one--only one, and it becomes magnified inimportance--it becomes an entire _raison d'etre_ in itself. For withoutit, the men with the boats sail uselessly....
"We are old, Earthman. We have watched you--waited for you for a longtime. And now you have grown up. You have burst your tiny bubble ofhuman experience. You have set out upon the sea yourselves...."
"You guys should give graduation talks. I didn't ask for a scaled-downphilosophy. You tell me that you want to give us every trick in yourhat--for free, no questions asked. So I asked why. And the questionisn't changing any."
"The answer should be self-evident, Earthman. We are old. And we arelonely."
* * * * *
There was a logic at work somewhere in his brain even during the dream.It told him that he was exhausted from the day's tour with thechild-like men of Mars, and that the dream was only the vagaries of areeling, tired mind of a badly jarred subconscious. It told him that thethings he had seen had been too alien for his relatively inflexibleadult Earth mind to accept without painful reaction, and this was thereaction.
This, the dream. That was all it was; his logic said so.
Faith spread out before the undisciplined eye of his dreaming brain, andthe near-conscious instant of logic faded. The fertile plains that oncehad been yellow desert-land mounted golden fruits to a temperate sun,and beyond the distant green of gently-rolling hills spread theresplendent city, and there were other cities as gracefully civilizedbeyond the untroubled horizon.
And in the dream, these were all things men had done, as though sanityhad invaded their minds overnight. It was the Earth that men hadintended, rather than that which they had built.
The sun dimmed. The air chilled, and the grains and fruits wilted, andthe rolling hills were a darker hue than green as the shadow lengthened,spread to the gleaming cities beyond and then as it touched them and ransoundlessly the length and breadth of their wide malls, there were otherchanges....
Skeletons, reaching upward to a puffy, leaden sky.
The horizon split into jagged, broken moats of dark flame, and Earth wasno longer what men had built, but what they eternally feared they mustone day create....
Then Johnny Love was suddenly awake bolt upright in his cot and his eyeswere open wide. His muscles were taut and cramped. And he was afraidalthough the men of Mars had offered friendship and told him that therewas nothing for him to fear.
Slowly, he lay down again. And gradually, the cold perspiration that hadencased him vanished; his body relaxed, and the fear subsided.
The day's tour had been exhausting both mentally and physically, andthere was the excitement of knowing that in five more days Harrison andJanes would land. If they did not, his own ship would carry him safelyback to Earth on the day following, for the little men had miraculouslyrepaired it; they had shown him. They had shown him, and he wanted to gohome.
Johnny Love rolled over on the wide, soft cot, sighed, and went back tosleep.
* * * * *
"_He sleeps again, Andruul._"
"_Yes, but the damage is probably done._"
"_No, or he would not sleep again so easily. His kind do not have suchemotional control._"
_The two turned away from the fading transparency of the sleeping-roomwall, and their short, thin bodies were in incongruous contrast to thespaciousness of the metal-sheathed corridor down which they walked._
"_Psychoanalysis showed up the difference in his brain structure--thatapparently accounts for the poor efficiency our screens are showing.What does Kaarn say?_"
"_He says we should never have allowed the theft._"
_Andruul cursed. "Allowed it! Those nomadic scum are like flies! Nomatter how many you exterminate, they nev
er fail to come back in doubletheir number. And they strike at the precise moment you are certain thebones of the last one are sinking beneath the sand. Somehow CentralPatrol has got to get that unit back._"
"_You're certain it was a theft, then?_"
"_Don't be an idiot. Since when can those gypsies build anything morecomplex than a crude electrical generator? Let alone a psibeam unit?They've forgotten what little their civilization ever knew._"
"_They are clever enough at evading directed over-surface missiles._"
_Andruul muttered something, and lapsed into silence._
"_Well there is one thing for certain at any rate.... A psibeam unit isunaccounted for, and despite our protective screening, the Earthman wasvisibly disturbed in his sleep. His encephalotapes show that