The Human Edge Read online

  There was an almost perceptible delay, and then a screen in front of Hank lit up with a pictured text.

  " . . . Let us amuse ourselves now, (commenced the pictured text) with a few speculations about the personality and nature of a space-going alien such as one of you might encounter . . ."

  Hank snorted and settled down to read.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later he had confirmed his remembrance of the fact that Breadon thought that an alien, such as must be in the ship opposite Hank right now, would react necessarily very similarly to a human. Because, Breadon's theory ran, of necessarily parallel environments and past stages of development.

  At this moment, the call bell on Hank's deep-space receiver rang loudly.

  "What's up?" he asked the library, keying it in.

  "The alien ship has evidently concluded that it can speak to you over normal communication equipment. It is calling the Andnowyoudont."

  "Fine," said Hank. "I wonder what the name of Breadon's opposite number is among the aliens."

  "I am sorry. I do not have that information."

  "Yeah. Well, stand by to translate." Hank keyed in the communicator board. A screen before him lit up with the image of a hairless individual, lacking even eyebrows; with pronounced bony brow ridges, a wide mouth, no chin to speak of, and what appeared to be a turtleneck sweater drawn high on a thick neck.

  This individual stared for a long second; and then began to gobble at him. Eventually he ran down and went back to staring again. Hank, his finger still off the send button, turned to the library.

  "What'd he say?"

  "I will need more referents. Possibly if you speak now, he will perhaps speak again."

  "Not on your life." Hank looked at the alien. The alien looked back. The staring match went on for some time. Abruptly the alien started gobbling again. He gobbled for some time, this time. He also waved a fist in the air. It was a rather slim fist considering the thickness of his neck.

  "Well?" demanded Hank of the library, after the figure in the screen had fallen silent a second time.

  "First message: 'You are under arrest.'"

  "That's all he said?"

  "Agglutination appears to be a prime characteristic of his language."

  "All right—" growled Hank. "Go on."

  "Second message: 'You have offended the responsible authorities and their immediate representative, in the person of I who address you. You are arrested and helpless. Submit therefore immediately or you will be utterly destroyed.'"

  Hank thought for a minute.

  "Translate," he said to the library. He pressed the send button. "Tut-tut!" he said to the alien.

  "I am unable to translate 'tut-tut,'" said the library.

  "Oh?" Hank grinned. His grin widened. He began to laugh. He laughed louder.

  "I am unable to translate laughter," said the library.

  Hank was rolling around in his seat and hiccuping with helpless merriment. He reached out with one hand and slapped the send button to off. The screen went dark before him as the still-blankly staring alien faded from view. Whooping, Hank pulled himself to an upright position. Abruptly he stopped.

  "What am I doing?" he muttered. "The set's off now." He wiped a damp forehead with the hairy back of one large hand and got up to totter over to one of the food compartments. He opened it and hauled out a large brown bottle.

  Liquor was not a normal part of the supply list on scout ships—for reasons of space, rather than those of sobriety, a drinking world scout being a sort of self-canceling problem. On the other hand, a closed cycle that reprocessed waste matter of an organic nature and started it around again to become food required efficient little manufactories that were quite as capable of turning out ersatz beer as ersatz steak. The result was that world scouts were beer drinkers if they were any sort of drinkers at all.

  They were also the despair of waiters, waitresses, and bartenders. A group of world scouts spending a social moment together would order a bottle apiece of cold beer; drain their bottles, when they came, in a couple of seconds; and then sit with the empty bottles before them, refusing to reorder until about forty-five minutes had passed. Then the whole process would be repeated.

  A world scout determined to get drunk merely shortened the interval between bottles. One determined to stay cold sober, while appearing to drink, lengthened it. A member of the laity, sitting in with them on these sessions, was normally destroyed—either by drink or frustration.

  In this particular case Hank flipped the seal off the top of the bottle in his hand, poured half a liter of beer down his throat, carefully resealed the bottle and put it back in its refrigerator compartment. He then carefully counted the remaining full containers of beer in the compartment and set the beer-producing controls on high.

  After this he was almost attacked by another spasm of laughter, but he fought it down. He went over to the desk of controls and flicked on an outside screen. It lit up with a view of the meadow with the afternoon sun beaming down on the soft grass and the tall gunmetal-colored shape of the alien ship.

  "A beautiful day," said Hank aloud, "for a picnic."

  "Do you wish me to make a note of that fact?" inquired the library, which had been left on.

  "Why not?" said Hank. He went cheerfully about the room, opening lockers and taking things out. A sudden thought occurred to him. He went across to the desk controls to check the readings on certain instruments concerned with the physical environment of the world outside—but these gave the meadow a clean bill of health. He added the full bottles of beer to his pile, enclosing them in a temperature bag, and headed out the air lock of his ship.

  Reaching the ground outside, he proceeded to a comfortable spot on the grass and about midway between his ship and that of the alien.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, he had a cheerful small fire going in the center of a small circle of stones, a hammock hung on wooden posts, and small conveniences such as a beer-cooler and an insulated box of assorted snacks within easy reach. He lay in the hammock and strummed his guitar and sang. He also swallowed a half liter of beer approximately every thirty-five minutes.

  The beer did nothing to improve his voice. There was a reason Hank Shallo sang while off on his lonely trips of exploration—no civilized community could endure the horrendousness of his vocal cords when these vibrated in song. By a combination of bribery and intimidation he had forced an indigent music instructor once to teach him how to stay in key. So, stay in key he did; but the result was still a sort of bass bray capable of penetrating six-inch walls and rattling windows.

  The alien ship showed no sign of life.

  As the sun began slowly to drown itself in twilight, however, Hank became aware to his pleasant surprise that the local inhabitants of this world did not seem to join most of the rest of the galaxy in its disdain for his singing. An assortment of small animals of various shapes and sizes had gathered around his camping spot and sat in a circle. He was not unduly surprised, what with the beer he had drunk and all, when after a little while one of the larger creatures—a sort of rabbit-shaped beast sitting up on its hind legs—began to harmonize with him.

  If Hank's voice had somewhat the sonority of a cross-cut saw, the beast's had the pure liquidity of an angel's. They were rendering a remarkable performance, albeit four octaves apart—and it had grown rather dark—when a blinding light burst suddenly into being from the top of the alien ship. It washed the meadow in a brilliance like that of an atomic flare; and the native animals took to their heels. Sitting up in the hammock and blinking, Hank saw the alien approaching him on foot. The alien was pushing a black box the size of a suitcase on two wheels. He trundled it up to the campfire, hitched up the floppy, black, bell-bottomed trousers which supplemented the turtle-necked upper garment Hank had remarked on the screen earlier, and gobbled at Hank.

  "Sorry, buddy," said Hank. "I haven't got my translator with me."

  The alien gobbled some more. Ha
nk idly strummed a few stray chords and regretted the fact that he hadn't gotten the native animal to harmonizing with him on "Love's Old Sweet Song," which would have been ideally suited to their two voices together.

  The alien stopped gobbling and jabbed one finger—somewhat angrily, it seemed to Hank, down on a button on top of the black box. There was a moment's hesitation; then he gobbled again and a curiously flat and unaccented English came out of the box.

  "You are under arrest," it said.

  "Think again," said Hank.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I refuse to be arrested. Have a drink?"

  "If you resist arrest, I will destroy you."

  "No, you won't."

  "I assure you I will."

  "You can't," said Hank.

  The alien looked at him with an expression that Hank took to be one of suspicion.

  "My ship," said the alien, "is armed and yours is not."

  "Oh, you mean those silly little weapons in your ship's nose?" Hank said. "They're no good against me."

  "No good?"

  "That's right, brother."

  "We are not even of the same species. Do not allow your ignorance to lead you into the error of insulting me. To amuse myself, I will ask you why you are under the illusion that the most powerful scientific weapons known have no power against you?"

  "I have," said Hank, "a greater weapon."

  * * *

  The alien looked at him suspiciously a second time.

  "You are a liar," the box said, after a moment.

  "Tut-tut," said Hank.

  "What was that last noise you made? My translator does not yet recognize it."

  "And it never will."

  "This translator will sooner or later recognize every word in your language."

  "Not a geepfleish word like tut-tut."

  "What kind of a word?" It might, thought Hank, be merely false optimism on his part; but he thought the alien was beginning to look a little uncertain.

  "Geepfleish—words dealing with the Ultimate Art-Science."

  The alien hesitated for a third time.

  "To get back to this fantastic claim of yours to having a weapon—what kind of weapon could be greater than a nuclear cannon capable of destroying a mountain?"

  "Obviously," said Hank. "The Ultimate Weapon."

  "The . . . Ultimate Weapon?"

  "Certainly. The weapon evolved on Ultimate Art-Science principles."

  "What kind of a weapon," said the alien, "is that?"

  "It's quite impossible to explain," said Hank, airily, "to someone having no understanding of the Ultimate Art-Science."

  "May I see this weapon?"

  "You ain't capable of seeing it, kid," said Hank.

  "If you will demonstrate its power to me," said the alien, after a pause, "I will believe your claim."

  "The only way to demonstrate it would be to use it on you," said Hank. "It only works on intelligent life forms."

  He reached over the edge of his hammock and opened another beer. When he set the half-empty bottle down again the alien was still standing there.

  "You are a liar," the alien said.

  "A crude individual like you," said Hank, delicately wiping a fleck of foam from his upper lip with the back of one hairy hand, "would naturally think so."

  The alien turned abruptly and trundled his translator back toward his ship. A few moments later, the overhead light went out and the meadow was swallowed up in darkness except for the feeble light of the fire.

  "Well," said Hank, getting up out of the hammock and yawning, "I guess that's that for today."

  He took the guitar and went back to his ship. As he was going back in through the air lock, he thought he felt something about the size of a mouse scurry over his foot; and he caught a glimpse of something small, black and metallic that slipped out of sight under the control desk as he looked at it.

  Hank grinned rather foolishly at the room about him and went to bed.

  * * *

  He woke once during the night; and lay there listening. By straining his ears, he could just occasionally make out a faint noise of movements. Satisfied, he went back to sleep again.

  Early morning found him out of bed and humming to himself. He flipped the thermostat on the coffee maker up for a quick cup, set up the cabin thermostat and opened both doors of the air lock to let in the fresh morning air. Then he drew his cup of coffee, lowered the thermostat on the coffee maker again and keyed in the automatic broom. The broom scurried about, accumulating a small heap of dust and minor rubble, which it dumped outside the air lock. In the heap, Hank had time to notice, were a number of tiny mobile mechanical devices—like robot ants. Still drinking his coffee, he went over to the drawer that held the operating manual for ships of the class of Andnowyoudont. Holding it up by the binding, he shook it. A couple more of the tiny devices fell out; and the automatic broom, buzzing—it seemed to Hank—reproachfully, scurried over to collect them.

  Hank was fixing himself breakfast, when the screen announced he was being called from the other ship. He stepped over and answered. The image of the alien lit up on the screen.

  "You have had the night to think things over," said the flat voice of the alien's translator. "I will give you twelve point three seven five nine of your minutes more in which to surrender you and your ship to me. If you have not surrendered by the end of that time, I will destroy you."

  "You could at least wait until I've had breakfast," said Hank. He yawned, and shut off the set.

  He went back to fixing his breakfast, whistling as he did so. But the whistle ran a little flat; and he found he was keeping one eye on the clock. He decided he wasn't hungry after all, and sat down to watch the clock in the control desk as its hands marked off the seconds toward the deadline.

  Nothing happened, however. When the deadline was a good several minutes past, he let out a relieved sigh and unclenched his hands, which he found had been maintaining quite a grip on the arms of his chair. He went back and had breakfast after all.

  Then he set the coffee maker to turn itself on as soon as he came in, got down some fresh reading material from the top shelf of his bookcase—giving his head a rather painful bang on the fire-control sprinkler overhead, in the process—and stopped to rub his head and swear at the sprinkler. He then comforted himself with the last cup of coffee that was still in the coffee maker, unplugged the emergency automatic controls so that the air-lock doors would stay open while he was out, loaded himself up with beer—but left the reading material roasting on top of the coffee maker—and went out to his hammock.

  * * *

  Forty minutes and a liter and a half of beer later, he was again in a good mood. He took an ax into the nearby woods and began chopping poles for a lean-to. By lunch-time his hammock was swinging comfortably in the shade of the lean-to, his guitar was in tune, and his native audience was gathering again. He sang for about an hour, the small, rabbitlike creature harmonizing with parrotlike faithfulness to the tune, and had lunch. He was just about to take a small nap in the hammock when he saw the alien once more trundling his translator in the direction of the camp.

  He reached the fireplace and stopped. Hank sat up with his legs over the edge of the hammock.

  "Let us talk," said the alien.

  "Fine," said Hank.

  "I will be frank.

  "Fine."

  "And I will expect you to be frank."

  "Why not?"

  "We are both," said the alien, "intelligent beings of a high level of scientific culture. In spite of the apparent differences between us, we actually have a great deal in common. We must consider first the amazing coincidence that caused us both to land on the same world at the same spot at the same time—"

  "Not so much of a coincidence," said Hank.

  "What do you mean?" The alien all but glowered at him.

  "It stands to reason," Hank leaned back comfortably in the hammock and caught hold of his knee with both hands t
o balance himself. "Your people and mine have probably been pretty close to bumping into each other all along. They've probably been close to each other a number of times before. But space is pretty big. Your ship and mine could easily zip right by each other a thousand times and never be noticed by one another. The most logical place to bump into each other is on a planet we both want. As for coming down in the same place—I set my equipment to pick out the most likely landing spot. I suppose you did the same?"

  "It is not my function," said the alien, "to give you information."

  "It isn't necessary for you to, either," grunted Hank. "It's pretty obvious your native star and mine aren't too far apart as galactic distances go—and exploratory ships have been getting closer to the opposing home worlds all the time. Instead of it being such a coincidence, you might say our meeting was close to inevitable." He cocked an eye at the alien. "And I'm sure you've already figured that out for yourself as well as I did."

  The alien hesitated for a moment.

  "I see," he said at last, "there is no point in my trying to deceive you."

  "Oh you can try if you like," said Hank, generously.

  "No, I will be absolutely frank."

  "Suit yourself."

  "You obviously have assessed the situation here as fully and correctly as I have myself. Here we stand, facing each other in an armed truce. There can be no question of either of us allowing the other to carry word of the other's civilization back to his own people. We cannot take the chance that the other's people are not inimical and highly dangerous. It becomes, therefore, the duty of each of us to capture the other." He cocked an eye at Hank. "Am I correct?"

  "You're doing the talking," said Hank.

  "At the present moment, we find ourselves at an impasse. My ship is possessed of a weapon which, by all the laws of science, should be able to destroy your ship utterly. Logically, you are at my mercy. However, illogically, you deny this."

  "Yep." said Hank.

  "You lay claim to an invisible weapon which you claim is greater than my own, and puts me at your mercy. For my own part I believe you are lying. But for the sake of my people I cannot put the matter to a test as things now stand. If I should do so and it should turn out I was wrong, I would be responsible for calamity."