Husting’s mind wandered off. A big thing, yes, maybe the biggest thing in all history. Earth a member planet of the Galactic Federation! All the stars open to us! It was good to be alive in this year when anything could happen… hm. To start with, you could have some rhinestones put in fancy settings and peddle them as gen-yu-wine Tardenoisian sacred flame-rocks, but that was only the beginning—
He grew aware that the muted swish of electrocars and hammering of shoes in the street had intensified. From several blocks away came a positive roar of excitement. What the devil? He left his beer and sauntered to the door and looked out. A shabby man was hurrying toward the crowd. Husting buttonholed him. «What’s going on, pal?»
«Ain’t yuh heard? Galactics! Half a dozen of ’em. Landed in duh street uptown, some kinda flying belt dey got, and went inna Macy’s and bought a million bucks’ wortha stuff! Now dey’re strolling down dis-a-way. Lemme go!»
Husting stood for a while, drawing hard on his cigarette. There was a tingle along his spine. Wanderers from the stars, a million-year-old civilization embracing the whole Milky Way! For him actually to see the high ones, maybe even talk to them… it would be something to tell his grandchildren about if he ever had any.
He waited, though, till the outer edge of the throng was on him, then pushed with skill and ruthlessness. It took a few sweaty minutes to reach the barrier.
An invisible force-field, holding off New York’s myriads—wise precaution. You could be trampled to death by the best-intentioned mob.
There were seven crewmen from the Galactic ship. They were tall, powerful, as handsome as expected: a mixed breed, with dark hair and full lips and thin aristocratic noses. In a million years you’d expect all the human races to blend into one. They wore shimmering blue tunics and buskins, webby metallic belts in which starlike points of light glittered—and jewelry! My God, they must have bought all the gaudiest junk jewelry Macy’s had to offer, and hung it on muscular necks and thick wrists. Mink and ermine burdened their shoulders, a young fortune in fur. One of them was carefully counting the money he had left, enough to choke an elephant. The others beamed affably into Earth’s milling folk.
Joe Husting hunched his narrow frame against the pressure that was about to flatten him on the force screen. He licked suddenly dry lips, and his heart hammered. Was it possible—could it really happen that he, insignificant he, might speak to the gods from the stars?
Elsewhere in the huge building, politicians, specialists, and vips buzzed like angry bees. They should have been conferring with their opposite numbers from the Galactic mission—clearly, the sole proper way to meet the unprecedented is to set up committees and spend six months deciding on an agenda. But the Secretary-General of the United Nations owned certain prerogatives, and this time he had used them. A private face-to-face conference with Captain Hurdgo could accomplish more in half an hour than the councils of the world in a year.
He leaned forward and offered a box of cigars. «I don’t know if I should,» he added. «Perhaps tobacco doesn’t suit your metabolism?»
«My what?» asked the visitor pleasantly. He was a big man, running a little to fat, with distinguished gray at the temples. It was not so odd that the Galactics should shave their chins and cut their hair in the manner of civilized Earth. That was the most convenient style.
«I mean, we smoke this weed, but it may poison you,» said Larson. «After all, you’re from another planet.»
«Oh, that’s OK,» replied Hurdgo. «Same plants grow on every Earth-like planet, just like the same people and animals. Not much difference. Thanks.» He took a cigar and rolled it between his fingers. «Smells nice.»
«To me, that is the most astonishing thing about it all. I never expected evolution to work identically throughout the universe. Why?»
«Well, it just does.» Captain Hurdgo bit the end off his cigar and spat it out onto the carpet. «Not on different-type planets from this, of course, but on Earth-type it’s all the same.»
«But why? I mean, what process—it can’t be coincidence!»
Hurdgo shrugged. «I don’t know. I’m just a practical spaceman. Never worried about it.» He put the cigar in his mouth and touched the bezel of an ornate finger ring to it. Smoke followed the brief, intense spark.
«That’s a… a most ingenious development,» said Larson. Humility, yes, there was the line for a simple Earthman to take. Earth had come late into the cosmos and might as well admit the fact.
«A what?»
«Your ring. That lighter.»
«Oh, that. Yep. Little atomic-energy gizmo inside.» Hurdgo waved a magnanimous hand. «We’ll send some people to show you how to make our stuff. Lend you machinery till you can start your own factories. We’ll bring you up to date.»
«It—you’re incredibly generous,» said Larson, happy and incredulous.
«Not much trouble to us, and we can trade with you once you’re all set up. The more planets, the better for us.»
«But… excuse me, sir, but I bear a heavy responsibility. We have to know the legal requirements for membership in the Galactic Federation. We don’t know anything about your laws, your customs, your—»
«Nothing much to tell,» said Hurdgo. «Every planet can pretty well take care of itself. How the hell you think we could police fifty million Earth-type planets? If you got a gripe, you can take it to the, uh, I dunno what the word would be in English. A board of experts with a computer that handles these things. They’ll charge you for the service—no Galactic taxes, you just pay for what you get, and out of the profits they finance free services like this mission of mine.»
«I see,» nodded Larson. «A Coordinating Council.»
«Yeh, I guess that’s it.»
The Secretary-General shook his head in bewilderment. He had sometimes wondered what civilization would come to be, a million years hence. Now he knew, and it staggered him. An ultimate simplicity, superman disdaining the whole cumbersome apparatus of interstellar government, freed of all restraints save the superman morality, free to think his giant thoughts between the stars!
Hurdgo looked out the window to the arrogant towers of New York. «Biggest city I ever saw,» he remarked, «and I seen a lot of planets. I don’t see how you run it. Must be complicated.»
«It is, sir.» Larson smiled wryly. Of course the Galactics would long ago have passed the stage of needing such a human ant hill. They would have forgotten the skills required to govern one, just as Larson’s people had forgotten how to chip flint.
«Well, let’s get down to business.» Hurdgo sucked on his cigar and smacked his lips. «Here’s how it works. We found out a big while back that we can’t go letting any new planet bust its way into space with no warning to anybody. Too much danger. So we set up detectors all over the Galaxy. When they spot the, uh, what-you-call-’ems—vibrations, yes, that’s it, vibrations—the vibrations of a new star drive, they alert the, uh, Coordinating Council and it sends out a ship to contact the new people and tell ’em the score.»
«Ah, indeed. I suspected as much. We have just invented a faster-than-light engine… very primitive, of course, compared to yours. It was being tested when—»
«Uh-huh. So me and my boys are supposed to give you the once-over and see if you’re all right. Don’t want warlike peoples running around loose, you know. Too much danger.»
«I assure you—»
«Yes, yes, pal, it’s OK. You got a good strong world setup and the computer says you’ve stopped making war.» Hurdgo frowned. «I got to admit, you got some funny habits. I don’t really understand everything you do… you seem to think funny, not like any other planet I ever heard of. But it’s all right. Everybody to his own ways. You get a clean bill of health.»