Cercy nodded, although he hadn’t been aware of the fact.
“When we find such a planet, we land, as I did, and prepare the inhabitants for their part in our organization.”
“How will your people know that you have found intelligent life?” Cercy asked.
“There is a sending mechanism that is part of our structure,” the Ambassador answered. “It is triggered when we reach an inhabited planet. This signal is beamed continually into space, to an effective range of several thousand light-years. Follow-up crews are continually sweeping through the limits of the reception area of each Ambassador, listening for such messages. Detecting one, a colonizing team follows it to the planet.”
He tapped his cigarette delicately on the edge of an ash tray. “This method has definite advantages over sending combined colonization and exploration teams obviously. It avoids the necessity of equipping large forces for what may be decades of searching.”
“Sure.” Cercy’s face was expressionless. “Would you tell me more about this message?”
“There isn’t much more you need know. The beam is not detectable by your methods and, therefore, cannot be jammed. The message continues as long as I am alive.”
Darrig drew in his breath sharply, glancing at Cercy.
“If you stopped broadcasting,” Cercy said casually, “our planet would never be found.”
“Not until this section of space was resurveyed,” the diplomat agreed.
“Very well. As a duly appointed representative of the President of the United States, I ask you to stop transmitting. We don’t choose to become part of your empire.”
“I’m sorry,” the Ambassador said. He shrugged his shoulders easily. Cercy wondered how many times he had played this scene on how many other planets.
“There’s really nothing I can do.” He stood up.
“Then you won’t stop?”
“I can’t. I have no control over the sending, once it’s activated.” The diplomat turned and walked to the window. “However, I have prepared a philosophy for you. It is my duty, as your Ambassador, to ease the shock of transition as much as possible. This philosophy will make it instantly apparent that—”
As the Ambassador reached the window, Cercy’s gun was out of his pocket and roaring. He squeezed six rounds in almost a single explosion, aiming at the Ambassador’s head and back. Then an uncontrollable shudder ran through him.
The Ambassador was no longer there!
Cercy and Darrig stared at each other. Darrig muttered something about ghosts. Then, just as suddenly, the Ambassador was back.
“You didn’t think,” he said, “that it would be as easy as all that, did you? We Ambassadors have, necessarily, a certain diplomatic immunity.” He fingered one of the bullet holes in the wall. “In case you don’t understand, let me put it this way. It is not in your power to kill me. You couldn’t even understand the nature of my defense.”
He looked at them, and in that moment Cercy felt the Ambassador’s complete alienness.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said.
* * * *
Darrig and Cercy walked silently back to the control room. Neither had really expected that the Ambassador would be killed so easily, but it had still been a shock when the slugs had failed.
“I suppose you saw it all, Malley?” Cercy asked, when he reached the control room.
The thin, balding psychiatrist nodded sadly. “Got it on film, too.”
“I wonder what his philosophy is,” Darrig mused, half to himself.
“It was illogical to expect it would work. No race would send an ambassador with a message like that and expect him to live through it. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he had a pretty effective defense,” the psychiatrist finished unhappily.
Cercy walked across the room and looked at the video panel. The Ambassador’s suite was very special. It had been hurriedly constructed two days after he had landed and delivered his message. The suite was steel and lead lined, filled with video and movie cameras, recorders, and a variety of other things.
It was the last word in elaborate death cells.
In the screen, Cercy could see the Ambassador sitting at a table. He was typing on a little portable the Government had given him.
“Hey, Harrison!” Cercy called. “Might as well go ahead with Plan Two.”
Harrison came out of a side room where he had been examining the circuits leading to the Ambassador’s suite. Methodically he checked his pressure gauges, set the controls and looked at Cercy. “Now?” he asked.
“Now.” Cercy watched the screen. The Ambassador was still typing.
Suddenly, as Harrison sent home the switch, the room was engulfed in flames. Fire blasted out of concealed holes in the walls, poured from the ceiling and floor.
In a moment, the room was like the inside of a blast furnace.
Cercy let it burn for two minutes, then motioned Harrison to cut the switch. They stared at the roasted room.
They were looking, hopefully, for a charred corpse.
But the Ambassador reappeared beside his desk, looking ruefully at the charred typewriter. He was completely unsinged.
“Could you get me another typewriter?” he asked, looking directly at one of the hidden projectors. “I’m setting down a philosophy for you ungrateful wretches.”
He seated himself in the wreckage of an armchair. In a moment, he was apparently asleep.
* * * *
“All right, everyone grab a seat,” Cercy said. “Time for a council of war.”
Malley straddled a chair backward. Harrison lighted a pipe as he sat down, slowly puffing it into life.
“Now, then,” Cercy said. “The Government has dropped this squarely in our laps. We have to kill the Ambassador—obviously. I’ve been put in charge.” Cercy grinned with regret. “Probably because no one higher up wants the responsibility of failure. And I’ve selected you three as my staff. We can have anything we want, any assistance or advice we need. All right. Any ideas?”
“How about Plan Three?” Harrison asked.
“We’ll get to that,” Cercy said. “But I don’t believe it’s going to work.”
“I don’t either,” Darrig agreed. “We don’t even know the nature of his defense.”
“That’s the first order of business. Malley, take all our data so far, and get someone to feed it into the Derichman Analyzer. You know the stuff we want. What properties has X, if X can do thus and thus?”
“Right,” Malley said. He left, muttering something about the ascendancy of the physical sciences.
“Harrison,” Cercy asked, “is Plan Three set up?”
“Sure.”
“Give it a try.”
While Harrison was making his last adjustments, Cercy watched Darrig. The plump little physicist was staring thoughtfully into space, muttering to himself. Cercy hoped he would come up with something. He was expecting great things of Darrig.
Knowing the impossibility of working with great numbers of people, Cercy had picked his staff with care. Quality was what he wanted.
With that in mind, he had chosen Harrison first. The stocky, sour-faced engineer had a reputation for being able to build anything, given half an idea of how it worked.
Cercy had selected Malley, the psychiatrist, because he wasn’t sure that killing the Ambassador was going to be a purely physical problem.
Darrig was a mathematical physicist, but his restless, curious mind had come up with some interesting theories in other fields. He was the only one of the four who was really interested in the Ambassador as an intellectual problem.
“He’s like Metal Old Man,” Darrig said finally.
“What’s that?”
“Haven’t you ever heard the story of Metal Old Man? Well, he was a monster covered with black metal armor. He was met by Monster-Slayer, an Apache culture hero. Monster-Slayer, after many attempts, finally killed Metal Old Man.”