As for the feed network, progress was slow. Ketteridge, the technician in charge, had tracked down the foul-up and was trying to repair it without building a completely new network.
Shortcuts again. He tinkered away for four days, setting up a tentative circuit, trying it out, watching it sputter and blow out, building another.
There was nothing I could do. But I sensed tension heightening among the crewmen. They were annoyed at themselves, at each other, at me, at everything.
On the fifth day, Ketteridge and Willendorf finally let their accumulated tenseness explode. They had been working together on the network, but they quarreled, and Ketteridge came storming into my cabin immediately afterward.
“Sir, I demand to be allowed to work on the network by myself. It’s my specialty, and Willendorf’s only snarling things up.”
“Get me Willendorf,” I said.
When Willendorf showed up I heard the whole story, decided quickly to let Ketteridge have his way—it was, after all, his specialty—and calmed Willendorf down. Then, reaching casually for some papers on my desk, I dismissed both of them. I knew they’d come to their senses in a day or so.
I spent most of the next day sitting placidly in the sun, while Ketteridge tinkered with the feed network some more. I watched the faces of the men. They were starting to smolder. They wanted to get home, and they weren’t getting there. Besides, this was a fairly dull planet, and even the novelty of Alaree wore off after a while. The little alien had a way of hanging around men who were busy scraping fuel deposits out of the jet tubes, or something equally unpleasant, and bothering them with all sorts of questions.
The following morning I was lying blissfully on the grass near the ship, talking to Alaree. Ketteridge came to me, and by the tightness of his lips I knew he was in trouble.
I brushed some antlike blue insects off my trousers and rose to a sitting position, leaning against the tall, tough-barked tree behind me. “What’s the matter, Ketteridge? How’s the feed network?”
He glanced uneasily at Alaree for a moment before speaking. “I’m stuck, sir. I’ll have to admit I was wrong. I can’t fix it by myself.”
I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder. “That’s a noble thing to say, Ketteridge. It takes a big man to admit he’s been a fool. Will you work with Willendorf now?”
“If he’ll work with me, sir,” Ketteridge said miserably.
“I think he will,” I said. Ketteridge saluted and turned away, and I felt a burst of satisfaction. I’d met the crisis in the only way possible; if I had ordered them to cooperate, I would have gotten no place. The psychological situation no longer allowed for unbending military discipline.
After Ketteridge had gone, Alaree, who had been silent all this time, looked up at me in puzzlement. “We do not understand,” he said.
“Not we,” I corrected. “I. You’re only one person. We means many people.”
“We are only one person?” Alaree said tentatively.
“No. I am only one person. Get it?”
He worried the thought around for a few moments; I could see his browless forehead contract in deep concentration.
“Look,” I said. “I’m one person. Ketteridge is another person. Willendorf is another. Each one of them is an independent individual—an I.”
“And together you make We?” Alaree asked brightly.
“Yes and no,” I said. “We is composed of many I’s—but we still remain I.”
Again he sank deep in concentration, and then he smiled, scratched the ear that protruded from one side of the thought-helmet, and said, “We do not understand. But I do. Each of you is—is an I.”
“An individual,” I said.
“An individual,” he repeated. “A complete person. And together, to fly your ship, you must become a We.”
“But only temporarily,” I said. “There still can be conflict between the parts. That’s necessary, for progress. I can always think of the rest of them as They.”
“I… They,” Alaree repeated slowly. “They.” He nodded. “It is difficult for me to grasp all this. I… think differently. But I am coming to understand, and I am worried.”
That was a new idea. Alaree worried? Could be, I reflected. I had no way of knowing. I knew so little about Alaree—where on the planet he came from, what his tribal life was like, what sort of civilization he had, were all blanks.
“What kind of worries, Alaree?”
“You would not understand,” he said solemnly and would say no more.
Toward afternoon, as golden shadows started to slant through the closely packed trees, I returned to the ship. Willendorf and Ketteridge were aft, working over the feed network, and the whole crew had gathered around to watch and offer suggestions. Even Alaree was there, looking absurdly comical in his copper-alloy thought-converter helmet, standing on tiptoe and trying to see what was happening.
About an hour later, I spotted the alien sitting by himself beneath the long-limbed tree that towered over the ship. He was lost in thought. Evidently whatever his problem was, it was really eating him.
Toward evening, he made a decision. I had been watching him with a great deal of concern, wondering what was going on in that small but unfathomable mind. I saw him brighten, leap up suddenly, and cross the field, heading in my direction.
“Captain!”
“What is it, Alaree!
He waddled up and stared gravely at me. “Your ship will be ready to leave soon. What was wrong is nearly right again.”
He paused, obviously uncertain of how to phrase his next statement, and I waited patiently. Finally he blurted out; “May I come back to your world with you?”
Automatically, the regulations flashed through my mind. I pride myself on my knowledge of the rules. And I knew this one.
ARTICLE 101A
No intelligent extraterrestrial life is to be transported from its own world to any civilized world under any reason whatsoever, without explicit beforehand clearance. The penalty for doing so is…
And it listed a fine of more money than was ever dreamt of in my philosophy.
I shook my head. “Can’t take you, Alaree. This is your world, and you belong here.”
A ripple of agony ran over his face. Suddenly he ceased to be the cheerful, roly-poly creature it was so impossible to take seriously, and became a very worried entity indeed. “You cannot understand,” he said. “I no longer belong here.”
No matter how hard he pleaded, I remained adamant. And when to no one’s surprise Ketteridge and Willendorf announced, a day later, that their pooled labors had succeeded in repairing the feed network, I had to tell Alaree that we were going to leave—without him.
He nodded stiffly, accepting the fact, and without a word stalked tragically away, into the purple tangle of foliage that surrounded our clearing.
He returned a while later, or so I thought. He was not wearing the thought-converter. That surprised me. Alaree knew the helmet was a valuable item, and he had been cautioned to take good care of it.
I sent a man inside to get another helmet for him. I put it on him—this time tucking that wayward ear underneath properly—and looked at him sternly. “Where’s the other helmet, Alaree?”
“We do not have it,” he said.
“We? No more I?”
“We,” Alaree said. And as he spoke, the leaves parted and another alien—Alaree’s very double—stepped out into the clearing.