“I’m the one,” Gus began again, half to Paul and half to himself. “The one with all the autonomic weapons the Ganys gave me to fight Percy X. And I’m the one, now, who has all those crazy mental weapons Percy had, too. I’m the man—“and here he paused to burp—“with the power.” Again, all at once, his voice cleared into focus; his eyes ceased to show their usual glaze. “I’m going to go on TV, prime time. When the Ganys pull out the people won’t know what to do; they’ll be looking for a leader, somebody to take the place of the worms. They’ll be thirsting for solid American-human leadership from someone they know and trust, someone who knows them and is one of them.”
After an interval Paul said, “That’s not a bad pitch.”
“I know,” Gus said.
The Man on Horseback, Paul thought, replacing the Thing on Horseback; Gus is right—this is the time for him to appear. Gus would be the familiar replacing the alien. Humanity incarnate, with all its limitations and faults, but indubitably real.
“I can see it now,” Gus said thickly, his eyes once more filmed over, his head wagging unsteadily. “The TV show begins; I put in my appearance while the announcer reads a little something I scratched out ahead of time—informing them as to my victory over the Neeg-parts, a victory even the Ganys couldn’t achieve.” He belched once again and had to cease talking; his face, red and large, seemed to swell to even greater proportions. “Hey, you leaving, Doc?” He blinked.
It isn’t every day, Paul thought, that I get to talk to the future emperor of Earth. But if I don’t get out of here and do something, and fast, there may not be any Earth left to rule over.
Ten minutes later Paul Rivers, with Joan beside him, skimmed over starlit fields toward the mountains. He placed the ionocraft on full automatic pilot and got out Ed Newkom’s thought amplifier.
“Why are you doing that?” Joan asked, with mild curiosity.
Paul said, “I have a nagging fear, which I can’t get rid of, that Percy X is still alive.”
“If he wants to use his hell-weapon,” Joan said, “let him. What difference does it make, really?”
Can it be true, Paul asked himself, that the possible extinction of most of the human race is a matter of complete indifference to her? Maybe that’s what she wants: final, complete oblivion for everyone.
“You need to save the world,” she said remotely. She glanced then at him, as if he were a retarded child.
Ignoring the look—he could not answer it—he set to work with the amplifier, trying to tune in on Percy X.
“Hello, Paul,” came Percy’s thought, almost immediately.
“Percy, I want—” he began, but Percy X cut him off.
“I know. You want me to hold off on the hell-weapon.”
“That’s right.”
Percy X’s thought came through heavy with weariness. “I almost wish I could. But I can’t; it’s our last chance to defeat the worms. My little so-called ‘army’ got wiped out and they damn near finished off me. I simply have nothing left to fight with but the hell-weapon, and I’m not going to give up, man; I’m not going to give up!”
“But,” Paul transmitted, “the worms are leaving.”
“For how long?” demanded Percy X bitterly. “They’ll be back. And meanwhile we’ll know they’re up there, ready to return and take over whenever they feel like it.”
“You can’t prevent that even if you use the hell-weapon; it’ll only get the Ganys here on Earth. The others who are still on Ganymede won’t be harmed, and, like you say, they can launch a new attack against Earth any time they want to.”
A wave of glee rushed from Percy’s mind to his own. “That’s not so. Before I turn on the machine my good buddy Mekkis is going to key his own mind into the group mind of the Ganymedian Great Common. Anything that happens to the mind of Mekkis, here on Earth, will happen to the entire Ganymedian ruling class at the same time—and the ruling class does all the thinking on Ganymede. Without them the Creeches will be lucky if they can avoid slipping back to the level of the Stone Age; what can a body do when you cut off its head, Doctor?”
“But the human race,” Paul said. “You’ll destroy it, too.”
“Those Ganys are totally dependent on their Creeches; they’re weak. Men, who are more or less used to taking care of themselves, will eventually manage to pull out of it—but the Ganys won’t.” Percy paused, and Paul felt a wave of wistful accidental warmth flow from Percy to himself. “I hope, Doc, that you’re one of the strong ones. If so, I’ll be seeing you.”
“Yes,” Paul said, “you’ll be seeing me.” But nothing remained of Percy X’s thought pattern except the meaningless blur of an expert scramble pattern.
Marshal Koli drifted slowly through the control cabin of the flagship of the Ganymedian space fleet, the helmet on his head connecting him, through the ship’s encephalic amplifier, to the Great Common of the home world and to all other members of the ruling elite, wherever they might be.
An entire block of minds, the leaders of the clock faction, spoke in Koli’s mind as a single voice. “Is the evacuation complete?”
“With one exception,” Koli answered. “Mek-kis.”
“Mekkis? Mekkis?” The Great Common searched itself and found one missing mind. One and only one. Nobody wished to be left out of this vital operation; even the sick, who were sometimes excused, were here, adding their touch of yellow suffering to the rainbow of blended spirit. “What happened to him?” the porencephalic entity inquired.
“Went native,” Koli informed them—or rather it. “I, for one, will not miss him.”
“Nor will we,” came the massed voice of the Council.
“I will miss him,” said Major Cardinal Zency, dissenting.
The Electors at the bench bathed him in a wave of soothing condolence, to which he reacted, to their surprise, with resentment.
“Is the missile in readiness?” came the massed thought of the clock faction leaders again.
“I am checking it over now,” Marshal Koli answered; he drifted over the gleaming cylinder of destruction which now reposed before the airlock, ready to be moved forward into launching position. “Look through my eyes, fellow Ganymedians, and see for yourself.” Koli could feel a multitude of beings behind his eyes, watching everything he watched, feeling everything he felt. They would even taste what he tasted when his tongue touched the firing button that would launch the missile into space.
The flagship shifted slightly in space, its motion sending the crew including Koli, drifting slowly toward one side of it. Marshal Koli, well-accustomed to such things, paid no attention; his mind was busy reviewing once again, with good measure of satisfaction, the chain of events which would follow his touching the firing button. The missile, once launched, would move quickly to a point near the Earth but outside Earth’s atmosphere; there it would stabilize itself in an orbit that would keep it fixed directly between Earth and the Sun. Then, automatically, it would project an electromagnetic field in the aural spectrum which would cause the rays of the Sun to bend, to warp out of their normal path, so that not a single ray of sunlight would reach the Earth. The seas will freeze, Koli thought, right down to the bottom—and not only the seas but the atmosphere, the very air the Terrans breathe. The atmosphere will drift down like a pale snow until Earth is as bare of breathable gas as the planet Pluto.
Then, and only then, would the aural field within the missile be turned off and the rays of the Sun allowed once again to reach the surface of Earth. The atmosphere would melt, become first a liquid and then, once again, a gas. The seas would melt, the planet would slowly, over a period of almost a century, become habitable again; Ganymedians would return and colonize it, this time solely with imported life forms from the home world. It had certainly been a major mistake, reflected the Great Common, to allow the native life forms to live, in the vain hope that they might become useful creeches. The mistake, if they ever found other habitable worlds, would not be repeated.