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'We won't give you time to build areconstructor .
'Within a few minutes our ship will start dropping bombs. It is possible you will be able to prevent
explosions in your vicinity. We will start, accordingly, on the other side of the planet. If you stop us there,
then we will assume we need help.
'In six months oftraveling at top acceleration, we can reach a point where the nearestGanae planet would
hear our messages. They will send a fleet so vast that all your powers of resistance will be overcome. By
dropping a hundred or a thousand bombs every minute we will succeed in devastating every city, so that
not a grain of dust will remain of the skeletons of your people.
'That is our plan.'
'So it shall be.'
'Now, do your worst to us who are at your mercy.'
The man shook his head. 'I shall do nothing - now!' he said. He paused, then thoughtfully, 'Your
reasoning is fairly accurate.-Fairly. Naturally, I am not all powerful, but it seems to me you have forgotten
one little point.
'I won't tell you what it is.
'And now,' he said, 'good day to you. Get back to your ship, and be on your way. I have much to do.'
Enashhad been standing quietly, aware of the fury building up in him again. Now, with a hiss, he sprang
forward, suckers outstretched. They were almost touching the smooth flesh -when something snatched at
him.
He was back on the ship.
He had no memory of movement, no sense of being dazed or harmed. He was aware ofVeed andYoal
and CaptainGorsid standing near him as astonished as he himself.Enash remained very still, thinking of
what the man had said:
'. . .Forgotten one little point.' Forgotten? That meant they knew. What could it be? He was still
pondering about it whenYoal said:
'We can be reasonably certain our bombs alone will not work.'
They didn't.
Forty light-years Out from Earth,Enashwas summoned to the council chambers.Yoal greeted him wanly:
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'The monster is aboard.'
The thunder of that poured throughEnash , and with it came a sudden comprehension. 'That was what he
meant we had forgotten,' he said finally, aloud and wonderingly, 'that he can travel through space at will
within a limit - what was the figure he once used - of ninety light-years.'
He sighed. He was not surprised that theGanae , who had to use ships, would not have thought
immediately of such a possibility. Slowly, he began to retreat from the reality. Now that the shock had
come, he felt old and weary, a sense of his mind withdrawing again to its earlier state of aloofness.
It required a few minutes to get the story. A physicist's assistant, on his way to the storeroom, had
caught a glimpse of a man in a lower corridor. In such a heavily manned ship, the wonder was that the
intruder had escaped earlier observation.Enash had a thought.
'But after all we are not going all the way to one of our planets. How does he expect to make use of us
to locate it if we only use video-' He stopped. That was it, of course. Directional video beams would
have to be used, and the man would travel in the right direction the instant contact was made.
Enashsaw the decision in the eyes of his companions, the only possible decision under the circumstances.
And yet - it seemed to him they were missing some vital point.
He walked slowly to the great video plate at one end of the chamber. There was a picture on it, so vivid,
so sharp,so majestic that the unaccustomed mind would have reeled as from a stunning blow. Even to
him, who knew the scene, there came a constriction, a sense of unthinkable vastness. It was a video view
of a section of themilky way . Four hundred million stars as seen through telescopes that could pick up
the light of a red dwarf at thirty thousand light-years.
The video plate was twenty-five yards in diameter - a scene that had no parallel elsewhere in the plenum.
Other galaxies simply did not have that many stars.
Only one in two hundred thousand of those glowing suns had planets.
That was the colossal fact that compelled them now to an irrevocable act. Wearily,Enash looked around
him.
'The monster had been very clever,' he said quietly. 'If we go ahead, he goes with us - obtains a
reconstructor and returns by his method to his planet. If we use the directional beam, he flashes along it,
obtains areconstructor and again reaches his planet first. In either event, by the time our fleets arrived
back there, he would have revived enough of his kind to thwart any attack we could mount.'
He shook his torso. The picture was accurate, he felt sure, but it still seemed incomplete. He said slowly:
'We have one advantage now. Whatever decision we make, there is no language machine to enable him
to learn what it is. We can carry out our plans without his knowing what they will be. He knows that
neither he nor we can blow up the ship. That leaves us one real alternative.'
It was- CaptainGorsid who broke the silence that followed. 'Well, gentlemen, I see we know our minds.
We will set the engines, blow up the controls - and take him with us.'
They looked at each other, race pride in their eyes.Enash touched suckers with each in turn.
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An hour later, when the heat was already considerable,Enash had the thought that sent him staggering to
the communicator, to call Shun, the astronomer.
'Shun,' he yelled, 'when the monster first awakened - remember CaptainGorsid had difficulty getting your
subordinates to destroy the locators. We never thought to ask them what the delay was. Askthem. . . ask
them-'
There was a pause,thenShun's voice came weakly over the roar of static:
'They.. . couldn't. . . get. . . into. . . the. . . room. The door was locked.'
Enashsagged to the floor. They had missed more than one point, he realized. The man had awakened,
realized the situation; and, when he vanished, he had gone to the ship, and there discovered the secret of
the locator and possibly the secret of thereconstructor - if he didn't know it previously. By the time he
reappeared, he already had from them what he wanted. All the rest must have been designed to lead
them to this act of desperation.
In a few moments, now, he would be leaving the ship secure in the knowledge that shortly no alien mind
would know his planet existed. Knowing, too, that his race would live again, and this time never die.
Enashstaggered to his feet; clawed at the roaring communicator, and shouted his new understanding into
it. There was no answer. It clattered with the static of uncontrollable and inconceivable energy.
The heat was peeling hisarmored hide, as he struggled to the matter transmitter. It flashed at him with
purple flame. Back to the communicator he ran shouting and screaming.
He was still whimpering into it a few minutes later when the mighty ship plunged into the heart of a
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