Whitlow blinked. “Why-” he started angrily. Then he caught himself. “But I wasn’t asking you to do it for humanitarian reasons. I pointed out that there would be loot—”
“I very much doubt if your Earthlings have anything that would tempt us.”
Whitlow almost backed off his boulder. He started to splutter something, but again abruptly changed his tack. There was a flicker of shrewdness in his expression. “Is it possible you’re holding back because you’re afraid the Venusian molluscoids will attack you if you violate the perpetual truce by making a foray against another planet?”
“By no means,” thought the Chief harshly, revealing for the first time a certain haughtiness and racial pride bred of dry eons of tradition. “As I told you before, the molluscoids are a distinctly inferior race. Mere waterlings. We have seen nothing of them for ages. For all we know they’ve died out. Certainly we wouldn’t be bound by any outworn agreements with them, if there were a sound and profitable reason for breaking them. And we are in no sense—no sense whatever—afraid of them.”
Whitlow’s thoughts rumbled confusedly, his spatulate-fingered hands making unconsciously appropriate gestures. Driven back to his former argument, he faltered lamely. “But surely then there must be some loot that would make it worth your while to invade Earth. After all, Earth is a planet rich in oxygen and water and minerals and life forms, whereas Mars has to contend with a dearth of all these things.”
“Precisely,” thought the Chief. “And we have developed a style of life that fits in perfectly with that dearth. By harvesting the interplanetary dust in the neighborhood of Mars, and by a judicious use of transmutation and other techniques, we are assured of a sufficient supply of all necessary raw materials. Earth’s bloated abundance would be an embarrassment to us, upsetting our system. An increased oxygen supply would force us to learn a new rhythm of breathing to avoid oxygen-drowning, besides making any invasion of Earth uncomfortable and dangerous. Similar hazards might attend an over-supply of other elements and compounds. And as for Earth’s obnoxiously teeming life forms, none of them would be any use to us on Mars—except for the unlucky chance of one of them finding harborage in our bodies and starting an epidemic.”
Whitlow winced. Whether he knew it or not, his planetary vanity had been touched. “But you’re overlooking the most important things,” he argued, “the products of man’s industry and ingenuity. He has changed the face of his planet much more fully than you have yours. He has covered it with roads. He does not huddle savagely hi the open as you do. He has built vast cities. He has constructed all manner of vehicles. Surely among such a wealth of things you would find many to covet.”
“Most unlikely,” retorted the Chief. “I cannot see envisaged in your mind any that would awaken even our passing interest. We are adapted to our environment. We have no need of garments and housing and all the other artificialities which your ill-adjusted EarthTings require. Our mastery of our planet is greater than yours, but we do not advertise it so obtrusively. From your picture I can see that your Earthlings are given to a worship of bigness and a crude type of exhibitionism.”
“But then there are our machines,” Whitlow insisted, seething inwardly, plucking at his collar. “Machines of tremendous complexity, for every purpose. Machines that would be as useful to another species as to us.”
“Yes, I can imagine them,” commented the Chief cuttingly. “Huge, clumsy, jumbles of wheels and levers, wires and grids. In any case, ours are better.”
He shot a swift question to the Senior. “Is his anger making his mind any more vulnerable?” “Not yet.”
Whitlow made one last effort, with great difficulty holding his indignation in check. “Besides all that, there’s our art. Cultural treasures of incalculable value. The work of a species more richly creative than your own. Books, music, paintings, sculpture. Surely—”
“Mr. Whitlow, you are becoming ridiculous,” said the Chief. “Art is meaningless apart from its cultural environment. What interest could we be expected to take hi the fumbling self-expression of an immature species? Moreover, none of the art forms you mention would be adapted to our style of perception, save sculpture—and in that field our efforts are incomparably superior, since we have a direct consciousness of solidity. Your mind is only a shadow-mind, limited to flimsy two-dimensional patterns.”
Whitlow drew himself up and folded his arms across his chest. “Very well!” he grated out. “I see I cannot persuade you. But”—he shook his finger at the Chief—“let me tell you something! You’re contemptuous of man. You call him crude and childish. You pour scorn on his industry, his science, his art. You refuse to help him in his need. You think you can afford to disregard him. All right. Go ahead. That’s my advice to you. Go ahead—and see what happens!” A vindictive light grew in his eyes. “I know my fellow man. From years of study I know him. War has made him a tyrant and exploiter. He has enslaved the beasts of field and forest. He has enslaved his own kind, when he could, and when he couldn’t he has bound them with the subtler chains of economic necessity and the awe of prestige. He’s wrong-headed, brutal, a tool of his baser impulses—and also he’s clever, doggedly persistent, driven by a boundless ambition! He already has atomic power and rocket transport. In a few decades he’ll have spaceships and subatomic weapons. Go ahead and wait!
Constant warfare will cause him to develop those weapons to undreamed of heights of efficient destructiveness. Wait for that too! Wait until he arrives on Mars hi force. Wait until he makes your acquaintance and realizes what marvelous workers you’d be with your armored adaptability to all sorts of environments. Wait until he picks a quarrel with you and defeats you and enslaves you and ships you off, packed hi evil-smelling hulls, to labor in Earth’s mines and on her ocean bottoms, hi her stratosphere and on the planetoids that man will be desirous of exploiting. Yes, go ahead and wait!“
Whitlow broke off, his chest heaving. For a moment he was conscious only of his vicious satisfaction at having told off these exasperating beetle-creatures. Then he looked around.
The coleopteroids had drawn in. The forms of the foremost were defined with a hatefully spiderish distinctness, almost invading his sphere of light. Similarly their thoughts had drawn in, to form a menacing wall blacker than the encircling Martian night. Gone were the supercilious amusement and dispassionate withdrawal that had so irked him. Incredulously he realized that he had somehow broken through their armor and touched them on a vulnerable spot.
He caught one rapid thought, from the Senior to the Chief: “And if the rest of them are anything like this one, they’ll behave just as he says. It is an added confirmation.”
He looked slowly around, his hair-curtained forehead bent forward, searching for a clue to the coleopteroids’ sudden change hi attitude. His baffled gaze ended on the Chief.
“We’ve changed our minds, Mr. Whitlow,” the Chief volunteered grimly. “I told you at the beginning that we never hesitate about undertaking projects when given a sound and sufficient reason. What your silly arguments about humanitarianism and loot failed to provide, your recent outburst has furnished us. It is as you say. The Earth-lings will eventually attack us, and with some hope of success, if we wait. So, logically we must take preventive action, the sooner the better. We will reconnoiter Earth, and if conditions there are as you assert, we will invade her.”
From the depths of a confused despondency Whitlow was in an instant catapulted to the heights of feverish joy. His fanatical face beamed. His lanky frame seemed to expand. His hair nipped back.