The Arrogating Ones, as they called themselves and were called by their subjects, at once took up in their collective councils the question of whether or not to conquer Earth and add humanity to their vassals, now that they had discovered that humanity did exist. This was their eon-long custom. It had made them extremely unpopular over a large volume of the galaxy.
On balance, they decided not to bother at that particular time. What were a few heaped-up rocks, after all? Oh, some sort of civilization no doubt existed, but the planet Earth seemed too distant, too trivial, and too poor to be worth bothering to conquer.
Accordingly they contented themselves with routine precautionary measures. Item, they caused to be abducted in their disc-shaped vessels certain specimens of Earthly human beings and other fauna. These also died in great pain and in the process released much information about their body chemistry, physical structure, and modes of thought. Item, the Arrogating Ones dispatched certain of their servants with a waiting brief. They were instructed to occupy the core of a comet and from it to keep an eye on those endoskeletal, but potentially annoying, creatures who had discovered agriculture, fire, the city, and the wheel, but not as yet even chemical explosive weapons.
They then dismissed Earth from their collective soft-bodied minds, and returned to the more interesting contemplation of measures to be taken against a race of insect-like beings that lived in a steamy high-G planet in quite the other direction from Earth, toward the core of the galaxy. The insects had elected not to be conquered by the Arrogating Ones. In fact, they had destroyed quite a large number of war fleets sent against them.
Nearly a quarter of the collective intelligence of the Arrogating Ones was devoted to plans to defeat these insects in battle. Most of the rest of their intelligence was devoted to the pleasant contemplation of what they would do to the insects after the battle was won to make them wish they hadn't resisted so hard.
While the handsome white-haired gentleman was stalking Myron and Ellen, the second person who wanted, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, was about a hundred miles north of and 40,000 feet above Central Park. He was on board a four-engined jet aircraft with the American flag emblazoned on its prow and he was having a temper tantrum.
The President of the United States was gloomily running his fingers between the toes of his bare feet. "Shoot, Danny," he said, "you're getting yourself all hot about nothing. I'm not saying we can't bomb Venezuela. I'm only saying why do we want to bomb Venezuela? And I'm saying you ought to watch how you talk to me, too."
"Watch how you talk to me, Mr. President!" shouted the Secretary of State over the noise of the jets. "I'm pretty fed up with your procrastinations and delays and it wouldn't take much for me to walk right out and dump the whole thing back in your lap. Considering your track record—I am thinking of Iceland—I don't imagine you'd relish that prospect."
"Danny boy," snarled the President, "you've got a bad habit of digging up ancient history. Stick to the point. We've got to have oil, agreed. They have oil, everybody knows that. They don't want to sell it to us at a reasonable price, so you want me to beat on them until they change their minds. Right? Only what you don't see is, there's a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Why can't we just go in with some spooks and Tommy-guns, as usual?"
"But their insolence, Mr. President! The demeaning tone of this document they sent me. It isn't the oil, it is the national credibility of the country that is involved here."
"Right, Danny, right," groaned the President. "You can talk. You don't have Congress breathing down your neck at every little thing." He sighed heavily and opened another can of no-calorie soda. "What I don't see," he said, with a punctuation mark of gas, "is why we have to hit them tonight, with Congress still in session."
The Secretary said petulantly, "I have explained to you, Mr. President, that our communications system is malfunctioning. We've lost global coverage. There is strong dissipation of ionosphere scatter, due to interference from an unprecedentedly strong influx of radiation apparently emanating from—" ii
"Oh, cut it out," complained the President. "You mean it's that comet that's bollixed up our detection."
The Secretary pursed his lips. "Not precisely the comet, no, Mr. President. No such effect has ever been detected before, although it is possible that there is a connection. Doesn't matter. The situation before us is that we do not have total communication at this time. And so we have no way of knowing whether the Venezuelans are treacherously planning a sneak attack or not. Do you want to take a chance on the security of the Free World, Mr. President? I say preempt now!"
"Yes, you've made your point, Danny," said the President He swiveled his armchair and gazed out at the bright spray of white light across the eastern horizon where Comet Ujifusa-McGinnis lay. "I've heard worse excuses for starting a war," he mused, "but I can't remember exactly when. All right, Danny. We'll do what you say. Get me Charlie on the scrambler and I'll put in the attack in two hours."
The watchers for the Arrogating Ones, hiding inside the pebbly core of the comet named after the two amateur astronomers who had simultaneously discovered it, studied the results of their radar-like scan of the Earth. This was routine. They were not aware that their scanning had damaged mankind's communications, but that was not their problem. Their only task was to spray out a shower of particles and catch the returning ones to study—this they did, and what their study told diem was that the planet Earth had reached redpoint status. It was now well ino a technological age and was thus an active, rather than merely a potential, threat to their masters.
The Arrogating Ones were no longer quite as effectively arrogant as they had once been. They had been creamed rather frequently in their millennia-long struggle against the insectoids. The score was, roughly, Arrogating Ones 53, Insectoids 23,724. The watchers, knowing this, were aware that at least their task would not under these circumstances involve the actual physical conquest of the Earth. It would simply be destroyed.
This was no big deal. Plenty of mechanisms for wiping out a populated planet were stockpiled in the arsenals of the Arrogating Ones. They had not worked very well against the insectoids, unfortunately, but they would be plenty powerful enough to deal with, say, mankind. The weapons for accomplishing this were readily available at any time, but not to the watchers, who were far too low in the hierarchy of authority to be trusted with anything like that.
Their task was much simpler. They were only required to report what they saw and then to soften up the human race so that it would not be able to offer resistance, even ineffectual resistance, to the clean-up teams when they arrived with their planet-busters.
Softening up was a technical problem of some magnitude, but it had been solved long ago. The abducted humans had died messily but not in vain. At least, from the point of view of the Arrogating Ones their deaths had not been in vain, for in their dying agonies they had supplied information about themselves which had enabled the Arrogating Ones to devise appropriate softening-up mechanisms. The watchers had been equipped with these on a standby basis ever since.