You get up and thumb your nose at the port of the ship and then get. the cases and start toward, the dome, only forty yards away. You’re glad you’ve got the heavy cases to weight you down. ‘Even carrying them you weigh less than on Earth and you have to pick your way’ carefully over the rough-smooth igneous rock.
You reach the outer lock of the dome —-it’s a projection that looks like the passageway-door of an Eskimo igloo— and open the door and then you turn and wave and you can see them wave back.
You don’t waste time because you want to get inside while they’re still there. If the airlock should stick—not that they ever do, you’ve been assured—or if anything should be wrong inside, you want to get out again in time to wave to them or warn them. One of them will stay at the port until they take off, which will be in about ten minutes.
You take one more look at the dome from the outside—it’s a hemisphere i twenty feet high and forty feet across at the base. It looks big but it will seem small from the inside after you’ve been there a while. The supply cabinets and the hydroponic garden take up quite a bit of room and of what’s left half is living quarters and half workshop.
You enter the outer door and close it behind you. The little light that goes on automatically shows you the handle you turn to make it airtight. You pull the lever that starts air hissing into the lock. You watch a gauge until it shows air pressure normal and then you reach out and open the inner door that leads to the dome itself.
It’s all ready for you. The previous trip of the Relief brought and installed the Ogden and the other equipment you’ll need, made a thorough inspection of everything. You and your duffle are all the current trip had to bring.
You open the inner lock and step in. And for seconds you think you’re stark raving crazy.
There they are, three of them. And you don’t doubt, once you know they’re really there and that you’re not seeing things, that they’re Aliens with a capital A. They’re humanoid but they aren’t human. They’ve got the right number of arms and legs, even of eyes and ears, but the proportions are different. They’re about five feet tall with brown leathery skins and they don’t wear clothes. They’re all males —they’re near enough human so you can tell that.
You drop the cases you’re carrying and turn to rush back into the airlock. Maybe you can get out again in time to wave to the Relief. Good Lord, it can’t leave! These are the first extraterrestrial beings and this is the biggest news that ever happened. You’ve got to get the news back to Earth.
This is more important than the first landing on the Moon ten years before, more important than the A-bomb twenty years before that, more important than anything. Are they intelligent? A little, anyway, or they couldn’t have got through that airlock. You want to try to communicate with them, you want to do everything at once, but the’ Relief will be blasting off -in a minute or two so that comes first.
YOU whirl around and get halfway through the door. A voice in your mind says, “Stop!”
Telepathy—they’re telepathic! And that word was an order—but if you obey it or even stop to explain the Relief will be gone. You keep on going, trying to hurl a thought at them, a thought of hurry, of the fact that you’ll come back, that you welcome them, that you’re friendly but that a train is pulling out. You hope they can get that thought and unscramble it. Or that they won’t do anything about it even if they don’t understand.
You’re almost through the door, the inner door. Something stops you. You can’t move, you’re getting faint. Then the floor shakes under your feet and that’s the ship taking off. You’d have been too late anyway.
You try to turn back but you still can’t move. And you’re getting fainter. You black out and fall. You don’t feel yourself hit the floor.
You come to again and you’re lying on the floor. Your spacesuit has been taken off. You’re looking up into an inhuman face. Not necessarily an evil face but an inhuman one.
The thought enters your mind. “Are you all right?” It isn’t your own thought.
You try to find out if you’re all right. You think you are except that it’s a little hard to breathe—as though there isn’t enough oxygen in the air.
The thought, “We lowered the oxygen content to suit our own metabolism. I perceive that it is uncomfortable for you but will not be fatal. I perceive that otherwise you are unharmed.” The head turns—the thought is directed elsewhere but you still get it. “Camelon,” it says, “You owe me forty units on that bet. That reduces the total I owe you for today to seventy units.”
“What bet?” you think.
“I bet him you would require a greater amount of oxygen than we. You are free to stand and move about if you wish. We have searched you and this place for weapons.”
You sit up—you’re a little dizzy. “Who are you? Where-are you from?” you ask.
“You need not speak aloud,” comes the thought. “We can read your mind.
Your more limited mind can read ours when we wish to let it do so—as now. My name is Borl. My companions are Camelon and David. Yes, I perceive that the name David is common among you too. It is coincidence, of course. We are of the race of the Tharn. We come from a planet in a very distant system. For reasons of our own security I shall not tell you where or how far with relation to your own system. Your name is Bobthayer. You are from the planet Earth, of which this planetoid is a satellite.”
You nod, a useless gesture. You get to your feet, a bit wobbly, and look around. The largest of the three Aliens catches your eye and you get the thought, “I am Camelon. I am the leader.”
So you think, “Pleased to meet you, pal.” You look at the other and think, “You too, David.” You find you can tell them apart. Camelon is inches taller than either of the others. David has a crooked—well, you guess it’s his nose. Borl, the one who was bending over you when you came back to consciousness, has a much flatter face than either of the others. His skin is darker,, more weathered-looking.
Probably he is older than either of the others. “Yes, I am older,” the thought comes into your mind. It frightens you. You’ve got less privacy than you’d have in a Turkish bath.
“Ten units, David. You owe me ten units.” You recognize it as Camelon’s thought. How you can recognize a thought as easily as you recognize a voice you don’t know but you can. You j wonder why David owes Camelon ten units.
“I bet him that you would be friendly. And you are. You are a little repelled by our physical appearance, Bobthayer, but so are we by yours. However, you harbor no immediate thoughts of-.violence against us.”
“Why should I?” you wonder.
“Because we must kill you before we leave. However, since you seem harmless we shall be glad to let you live, until then that we may study you.”
“That’s nice,” you say.
“How odd, Camelon,” Borl thinks, “that he can say one thing aloud and I think another. We must remember that if by any chance we should ever speak to one of these people by any means of communication from a distance. They : lie like the primitives of the fourth planet of Centauri.”
“You don’t lie,” you think, “but you murder.”
“It is murder only to kill a Tharn.
Not one of the lesser beings. The universe was made for the Tharn. Lesser races serve them. You owe me ten more units, David. His fear of death is greater than ours despite the fact that our life time is a thousand times his. You felt it when he learned that we must kill him.