I TAKE THIS EARTHMAN

Originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, Nov. 1950.

Within the womb the fetus stirred uneasily. It did not realize that it thought; its associations were too few. It knew only darkness, hunger, satisfaction of that hunger, and sleep.

Having never seen light, it did not realize that it did not see. Hunger it recognized as a want, sometimes a pain. It did not know what caused the pain or why it went away.

The body of the female was its warmth, its blanket, that often changed positions and sometimes moved. Now for the first time it understood that this blanket contained life. It was no longer alone, the only creature in its universe.

Weeks before it had felt strength come into its hitherto helpless limbs. Dully it wondered why. It had no need for the strength.

Now the flesh walls of its blanket contracted and lengthened. From somewhere came a new sensation—sound. Sound that rose to a high, shrill peak of agony.

For hours it was tossed about by the contortions of the suffering female. Abruptly now it was fighting a sharp constriction that ran the length of its body and then it was free. It cried once in fear and longing for its lost refuge and after that one time was quiet. Gradually its eyes focused and it saw the creature lying at its side.

“My son,” the woman said, as she lifted him in her wasted arms.

For months the doctors had fought the ravages of cancer and to keep life in the woman’s body, until the child could be born. The mother fought with them. The life she could not have for much longer she wanted to give to her child. Her blood would flow in its veins. It would live to fulfill the dreams that were now lost to her forever.

When it became apparent that the baby would live and be well, the mother slept—for the first time in two months—but forever!

The woman had not known sleep since the night she had stolen.

Vaguely she had understood what her father said about his, as yet unnamed, stimulant-essence. She knew that he had at last succeeded in isolating it from the alcohol spirits, where it had lain unsuspected for so many years, as had the vitamins in food. It was still an unknown quality, with unlimited possibilities, but practically untried.

Her father’s first expectations were that it would cure insanity not caused by physical defects. He had received permission to experiment on two of the hopelessly insane in the State Asylum.

The first had reacted with a momentary cure. Within two minutes, however, the man returned to his raving. An hour later he died. Brain concussion.

The mind of the second had been unchanged by the stimulant. The reaction came in the form of violent muscular exertion. Even when bound to his bed the insane man continued to twitch and jerk. Until death came every muscle in his body, as though possessing a life of its own, suffered a continuous spasm. Medical verdict: Death by extreme exhaustion.

She knew that she must have the stimulant-essence!

Like a suffering animal she had stolen—that she might die and kill the maddening pain with her death. When she found that, though the drug did not kill the pain, it gave her a fierce, hard courage with which to fight the pitiless agony, new hope came. Not hope that she would live; that hope had been blotted out, never to be resurrected; but possible hope that she would be able to bear her child.

The stimulant gave her the extension of life for which she prayed, but exacted its retribution from the tissues of her body. Her metabolism burned quickly and her corporal substance went to feed the greed of its flames.

She won the race with her dying body, and as little Arthur Gabriel was born, the pangs of childbirth changed almost imperceptibly into the last flutterings of death.

When Arthur was three weeks old he could understand the conversation about him, though the muscles of his throat were not sufficiently developed for them to form words of speech. He spoke twenty-seven days later.

Through the early years of his childhood his grandfather kept him from too much contact with the outside world. Only he had some understanding of the intellectual capacity this prodigy possessed.

At the age of five his grandfather died and just as suddenly Arthur stopped speaking. The seven-day wonder was over and the world soon forgot.

At irregular intervals it remembered again as some tabloid reporter revived its memory. When the hundredth year had come and gone, it wondered—idly and briefly—how long Gabriel would live. And if it was true, as the paper reported, that he had all the appearance of a lad of twenty.

By the time Gabriel was one hundred and fifty he had become the subject of much scientific conjecture. What was the secret of his longevity? Was he sane? Just how brilliant was he? Was there any way in which he could be induced to talk; if he could talk?

When he reached two hundred, and no contact of any endurance had ever been established, the attempts were given up as hopeless. By all except a few such as Robert Becklin. Becklin had developed the most successful method of curing dementia praecox and, though the accepted leader in the field, clearly understood how comparatively little was known.

With his friend, Aimer Carlson, he sat in the study of the Institute’s director, Edward Gallun.

“Have you ever been able to make mental contact with him?” Becklin asked.

“Very infrequently,” Gallun answered. “The last time we did, we used the occasion to give him several mental tests. He didn’t seem to mind taking them, after we got his interest.”

“What were the results of the tests?” asked Carlson.

“Although they were the best tests obtainable, they were too inadequate to measure his intellect.”

“How did you get his interest that particular time?” Becklin leaned forward intently.

“That was the occasion of an outbreak of virulent influenza,” Gallun replied. “He wrote a prescription and gave it to me. I used it on the patients and it cured them immediately.”

“I believe I remember the incident,” Becklin said. “Wasn’t a report of it written up in the AM A journal about twelve years ago?”

“That’s correct,” Gallun smiled. “I believe his formula is still standard treatment for the ailment.”

“Bob,” asked Aimer, “what would happen if we used duress, say in the form of steadily increasing pain, to force him to talk?”

“If he has an introverted mind, which we assume that he has,” said Becklin, “when the pain became unbearable his mind would seek refuge in a cataleptic stupor and no pain, not even the stab of a needle, would reach him.”

“Why not try a more radical treatment,” Carlson pressed, “such as electric shock or even prefrontal leuctomony?”

“If I might interject a word here,” said the Director, “I believe that you are losing sight of the fact that this man is not insane. Perhaps unsane, yes. But no more unbalanced than you or I.”

“That is true,” said Becklin, picking up a small package from the end table beside him. “May we see him now, Mr. Gallun? I have small hope of this experiment succeeding, but I’d like to try it, now that I have gone to the trouble of having it made.”

The three men walked through a long corridor and into a small room at the end. This room was lined with books, written in various languages. At a compact mahogany desk sat a white faced, long headed man whose youthful features expressed a calm, impenetrable serenity. He neither turned nor acknowledged their presence as they entered, and they stood silently. What secrets were concealed in that brain? What depths of knowledge had it delved?

After a moment Becklin spoke, “Mr. Gabriel, I know that our presence is immaterial to you and that our actions are probably irrational. But we would appreciate your attention while we talk. Perhaps we can interest you. Will you listen?”

Gabriel continued to gaze out the window.

“Your words are not reaching him,” said Gallun.

“Perhaps this will,” Becklin replied. “This may seem a bit childish to you, but I have given it quite some consideration and, if I understand anything about his thought processes, it will at least get his attention.”

He unwrapped his parcel and revealed a brown mechanical case that looked like a faceless clock. A dull irregular ticking fostered the resemblance. Gabriel’s head turned and he gazed down at the instrument.

Suddenly the ticking stopped, and the recording of a voice was heard from within.

“Gabriel,” the voice said, “I am a mechanical humpty-dumpty. In exactly one minute I will disintegrate into my five hundred and fifty-five component parts. A skilled clockmaker was able to put me together again in thirteen hours. Can you better that time? If you can, I will have a further message for you when your task is completed.”

The voice stopped and the ticking began again. Suddenly one loud tick came from the machine and it flew apart. A small inner spring flung its components out to a maximum two foot radius.

The suggestion of a tiny, pleased smile quirked Gabriel’s lips as he looked up at Becklin. There was interest and a flicker of admiration in the look.

For a moment he surveyed the field of pieces. Then he reached over, picked up one of the parts, picked up another, and began assembling. The completion of the operation required twenty-four minutes and six seconds.

The recorded voice began once more. “Congratulations. You must have finished in the allotted time or I would not be transcribing. I have given you an interesting little problem. Now in fairness, will you speak?”

For a long moment, while the captivated men actually held their breath, Gabriel glanced at the clocklike instrument, then he looked up and spoke.

* * * *

On the lone planet of a red sun, following in the tail of Earth’s galaxy through space, the Liieens accepted the fact that they had lost their struggle to remain on their world. Now their ship, built to receive the last few hundred of their race, was more than ample to hold all the survivors. They were ready to depart.

One billion years before, at the height of their culture, they had discovered that each day their world crept infinitesimally closer to their giant sun. The mental resources of their entire race went toward solving their problem of salvation.

For a hundred years they sought to find a method of reorbiting their planet. The impossibility of this, being proven beyond the slightest possibility of doubt, they turned to methods of counteracting the increasing heat that grew so very slightly greater each year.

When all mechanical defenses they needed had been readied, they turned to a newer and more hopeful field of study—themselves. Each generation adapted itself well: Few individuals experienced any discomfort because of the increasing heat. Its growth was too gradual. Nature eliminated the unfit at birth, and it cut down that rate of birth, until only those with the best chance of survival would be born.

Through the millenniums they studied their auto-subjects, aiding, urging, and anticipating nature wherever possible, and changing it from its natural course wherever necessary. The culmination of their transition was reached by such little steps through the generations, that it had been completed and they were working on the next phase of their problem before they even realized that they had succeeded in the first. Theirs was no abrupt discovery like the ancient earth chemists and men of enquiry had dreamed of in their search for the elixir of life.

When they had passed the edges of their first success and had started toward their second goal, they had developed the ability to change their bodies at will: Not only the form of their bodies, but its very molecules and atoms. So gradual and so long had been their assimilation that not even the oldest of them, now for all practical purposes immortal, remembered what form or shape their distant ancestors had been when their quest began.

The second step had taken them a relatively short time. Less than a thousand years after turning to the project of space flight, they had mastered it.

Many of the last survivors had been alive when the project started. So few had been born in the meantime that accidental and premediated death, the only kinds now, more than counterbalanced any gain in their numbers.

They were ready for their flight to a new world, and a new existence. A world where they could stop fighting the forces of their environment and work with it to build up their strain once more.

At the time Gabriel had been born they were finishing their last preparations for flight. The form of a liquid crystal had been decided upon as the ideal form for their Odyssey. Theirs was a fluid organism, instantly adaptable. They set their bodily mechanism to near stasis, to be reactivated when they reached their destination. Their vessel, entirely automatic, rose through the atmosphere of their planet and started its flight—clear out of their star group toward a tiny pinpoint of light that would not be visible to them for decades.

* * * *

“What do you wish to know?”asked Gabriel.

The moment had come and they found themselves unprepared, almost afraid to voice their thoughts.

“So many things, that we hardly know where to begin,” Becklin breathed softly.

“How do you manage to live so long, and stay so young?” Carlson asked eagerly.

“Quite simply explained,” Gabriel said. “I have succeeded in achieving almost perfect control of all my bodily functions, cellular as well as motor. Once that was done, it became very simple to renew infirm and worn out cells wherever and whenever needed.”

“Does that make you immortal?” asked Carlson.

“Immortal covers such a vast concept of time. But, as you mean it, yes.”

“I’d like to go further into that later, if you don’t mind,” said Becklin, “Why have you shut yourself off from contact with other men?”

“Before I answer that,” Gabriel replied thoughtfully, “I want you to keep in mind that we are discussing myself objectively. You will have to bear with me if I don’t measure up to the socially accepted standard of modesty. To adhere to it would hamper my answers.

“In reply to your question. I soon reached the point where I had so few interests in common with other humans that I could best achieve contentment by as complete an isolation as possible.”

“But you’re as human as we are,” said Carlson, “why should your interests differ so radically from ours?”

“The difference is in degree rather than in radius,” Gabriel answered. “Imagine yourself living in a world ruled and populated by fellow humans with the intellect of three year old children. How much would you have in common with them?”

“But,” Gallun spoke for the first time, “Why don’t you use your great intellect to aid them, instead of shutting yourself off from the world. Shouldn’t you help them, even against their will.”

“If I may use another simile.” Gabriel said, “and I’m afraid that I must use them to make myself clear: If you were born a monkey, with the intellect of a human, what would you do to help your fellow monkeys? Would they be happier if you forced or coerced them into living in houses, wearing clothes, perhaps tilling fields and working in factories, when their natural inclinations were to play and assume as little responsibility as possible?”

“Using your simile,” began Becklin, carefully searching for the correct phrasing, “despite the fact that you would be a very intelligent monkey> you would still be a monkey. Do you not feel any kinship with the rest of humanity?”

“Decidedly,” answered Gabriel. “Like a mother for her children.”

“Then why don’t you prevent wars,” Becklin continued, “or at least attempt to?”

“Possibly I could prevent wars,” Gabriel said. “However, the attaining of that goal would have ramifications which would entirely upset the normal flow of progress. As I explained before, I believe the result would be subdititious.”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Gallun, “why you never spoke to anyone, if only to escape boredom.”

“I am never bored,” Gabriel answered. “The brain is a wonderful organ. To illustrate: I have my mind divided into seven semi-autonomous units, six of them lightly controlled by the seventh unit, which I think of as my ego residence. These seven units carry on separate researches, discuss lines of thought, and have enough interests to keep me occupied and happy indefinitely.”

“Do you believe in God?” asked Becklin.

“I am as positive that there is a supreme being, which you know of as God, as I am of any fact. I am surer that there is a God than I am that I exist. I have found some slightest hint of evidence that I do not exist, but none whatsoever that there is not a supreme being. To my own satisfaction it is proven logically, mathematically, and in any form the question may be studied.”

“Do you understand anything more about God than we do?” asked Gallun.

“Nothing. That may be surprising at first thought,” answered Gabriel, “but I believe I can explain it with another simile. How much do you think the common black ant, in your back yard, understands about you? Do you think he knows anything about how you live, your sociological make-up, your sex life, or even what form you are? He probably knows of you only as a large object that crushes the grass about him, if he is even aware of you at all.

“This much I understand. God’s magnitude is so much infinitely greater, compared to us, than ours is to the ant, that there is no slightest hope of our ever understanding Him. All attempted explanations are futile.”

“Do you have no curiosity about what is happening on the outside?” asked Gallun. “The world may be dying for all you would know about it.”

“Not at all,” Gabriel smiled slightly. “You see, one of my faculties is telepathy.”

There was a short, startled silence. “I suspected as much,” Becklin murmured.

“I regret to say that our interview must soon close,” said Gabriel. “Now if you will permit me, I would like to assume the role of prompter as well as expostulator.

“Clever as your little contrivance was, Mr. Becklin, it was merely the incidental reason for my breaking my silence.

“I see by your mental reactions, that you men are intelligent, and conditioned properly to share in a secret which must be shared if we are to save the world.

“My telepathy is sufficiently developed to enable me to read thoughts originating at some distance, if they are powerful enough. Last night at four minutes past two, I intercepted the thoughts of alien beings who had just landed on our planet!”

“Holy God, man,” exclaimed Carlson, “can you be serious?”

“Not only am I serious,” answered Gabriel, “but they have the ability, and the intent, to kill every man on earth. I am not certain of their reason. Mostly their thought patterns were foreign to my mind.”

“I believe you,” Becklin said, after a moment’s thought. “Can we do anything to prevent it?”

‘Nothing positive,” Gabriel spoke purposefully. “We have only one small chance, as I see it. In approximately five hours they will obtain a specimen of the dominant life on this planet, to study, in order to determine the simplest means of exterminating the race. I must be that specimen!”

Gabriel walked for five minutes along the mountain road before he came to the party waiting for him. He had known their exact whereabouts and even their thoughts as he walked.

They had known of his movements also, but only because of the sounds made by his progress. On the scale weighing his chances he added that fact.

Tenseness galvanized his intricate nervous system as he came in sight of the five very ordinary men standing in the middle of the road, waiting for him. He focused the various sections of his mind in tune with the ultra-mundane aliens. Suddenly a pang of alarm smote his consciousness. They, too, could read minds and were reading his as he walked toward them. Quickly he locked a wall of will about the seventh portion of his mind. If he had not underestimated them, they would not be aware that it even existed.

He experienced a warm thrill of satisfaction when he perceived that at last he was meeting his intellectual equals. His next sensation was one of fear. Would they prove too formidable opponents in the coming battle of intellect? Would he survive it?

He was surprised to see that they readily accepted the fact that he could read their minds: They would have been unprepared if he had not been able to do so. So long had this been their means of communication, and so universal among themselves, that his ability was accepted as natural.

At first glance they had all the appearance of common enough earth-men, though he was aware of something odd about them. Finally he determined what the oddness was. They were not only dressed exactly alike, but their very features were identical.

Some feeling of outlandishness still persisted until he discerned that not only were they identical but were exact replicas of himself.

He read in their minds that they had assumed his appearance, because they could take any shape and form they wished. They had adopted this transformation as the simplest means of preventing any alarm on his part. Even their clothes, which matched his to the very wrinkle, were part of their bodies. He knew a moment of uncertainty, of wonder and doubt of himself. Could he cope with such beings as this?

So lightning fast had been these observations and exchanges of ideas that they had occurred on the instance; in the first half step he had taken toward them. From these small fragments of fact his logically reasoning mind with its split second reflexes constructed its picture of these aliens that it needed.

“You may call me Marie,” she said, breathing long and slowly on the white oval of her cigarette, Her red hair was cut short, to expose her beautiful neck, which curved gently into her bare, rounded shoulders and down into the dress line held up by the softly rising breasts.

The name, Marie, and the mannerism of letting the creamy, white smoke billow around in her mouth before she drew it down into her lungs, instantly brought to Gabriel’s mind the memory of the nurse he had loved deeply more than a hundred years before. He had appreciated their incompatibility and she had stayed at the Institute three years, never knowing of his affection.

The Liieen, he knew, had assumed the shape and form of the being it read in his mind would be most pleasing to him. It was imperative to them to solicit all the cooperation possible from their captured specimen.

Their studying of him in order to find the best means of eliminating his kind, he saw, was of secondary importance; they had so many ways of doing this. Primarily, their problem was to find all they could about the life of the dominant species of this world. They intended to take that shape when they assumed control. Logically the ruling species was supreme because it was most fitted to its environment. Later they would make changes as they saw fit.

“Am I beautiful, Gabriel?” she asked. Even her voice carried the lilt of Celtic melody which he had loved so well in the original Marie.

“You know that you are everything that is lovely to me.” For a moment he forgot that she was anything but the beautiful girl who sat before him. Then a morbid thought touched at his mind. What if she were not at all a female but only a neuter being in the form of a woman? Worse, perhaps her sex was male.

She smiled as she read his thoughts. “Our sex is always that of the form we assume, I am now as much a woman of your earth as though I were born one.”

He noted briefly that she spoke rather than projecting her thoughts in the accepted manner of her people.

That was probably done to enable her to synchronize her facial and bodily expressions with her speech. This was necessary if she were to depict the personality which he bore in his mind.

“If one of your companions were to assume the form of a human male, would it be possible for you to conceive a child?”

“As possible as it would be for us to conceive one in any other form. However, child bearing has become almost a biological oddity among us.”

“By choice?”

“No. Somewhere along the way we lost the greater part of our fertility. We hope our new environment and the opportunity to rest from our long quest will enable us to regain it.”

Gabriel turned to the other person in the room. His mind rejected the form of his friend Becklin, which the being assumed. In fascinated wonder he watched the stranger lose its individual identity of feature. Then slowly it became the replica of Francis Melzarek, famous law giver and Chief Justice of former years.

Gabriel had not been aware that he had been comparing the quiddity with Melzarek until the transformation.

“If you don’t mind,” Gabriel spoke to him, “I’ll call you Melzarek so that I may have some means of addressing you.” He had noted before that none of these people bore names. They were referred to by means of thought pictures.

“Please do,” replied the foreign one.

“As we are both aware,” said Gabriel, “your purpose is to destroy the people of my race. My intention is to attempt to persuade you not to do so. Am I correct in assuming that if I can convince you, as leader of your people, you can command their obedience to your decision?”

“I am only their leader insofar as I express the will of my folk. However, if I am convinced logically, and not by any mental trickery which you may possess, there can be no doubt but that the same arguments would be just as logical to them.”

“That is clear,” said Gabriel. “Let me start by bringing up this question: You are assuming that you have the ability to destroy my species. Are you positive that you can?”

“Our conclusions, as to the stage of cyclical history of your civilizations, which we have drawn; using your architecture, agriculture, and such, as criteria, leave no doubt in our minds of our ability.”

“Are you certain that you could so easily destroy men such as myself,” Gabriel asked.

“At first that puzzled us. We know now, however, that you are what your biologists name a “sport.”

Gabriel saw the futility of further argument along this line. “Do you not have a God to whom you would have to answer for the wanton destruction of billions of lives?”

“The fundamental belief of our race in regard to that question is similar to the philosophy expressed,” here Melzarek paused momentarily to swiftly probe Gabriel’s memory, “by one of your scholars as ‘it is just as easy for the strong to be strong as it is for the weak to be weak.’ If the act is bad, as your ethics would call it, then we are still fully justified in committing it because we are too weak to do good. If it is good, we do it because we are strong. Thus we know that we are justified in any act which we feel necessary to perform.”

“That is a form of fatalism, a theory which few of our men of wisdom accept. Surely it is beneath beings like yourselves.”

“Not at all. Fatalism is a do-nothing philosophy. Every act of ours has its logical consequences, which we do not accept as fore-ordained. We act only in the manner which we believe will be for the ultimate good of our people, with no inhibiting fear of punishment.”

“I am not sure that I am prepared to formulate my arguments against your reasoning,” replied Gabriel, “but I am positive that they are wrong, and that given time I can prove it to you. Will you grant me this time?”

“Certainly. Would you care to meet with me again tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow will be fine.”

* * * *

Somewhere, Gabriel was certain, there was a weakness in the aliens at which he could strike. He knew that the chink in their armor must be found in their lode. They were logical people and could only be dissuaded from their purpose by stronger logic. He pondered all through the night, letting only one part of his intellect slumber at a time. While he was certain that their philosophy was wrong, he did not think that it presented his best avenue of persuasion.

Suddenly he saw, not a complete solution, but the weak spot at which he could strike. He slept, knowing that he would be ready for the interview on the morrow.

* * * *

“I have been trying to ascertain why I have been feeling pity for you,” Gabriel began. “You are a mighty race, and your intellect is magnificent. You are about to massacre my people, yet you are committing a futile crime, the fruits of which you will never reap.”

“Will you explain what you mean by that?” Melzarek asked. Marie watched, with almost a hopeful look in her blue, blue eyes.

“You are a dying race,” Gabriel replied, “and I know why you are dying. I may even possess the solution.”

“Please continue.” He had Melzarek’s complete attention.

“I will attempt to explain by the method which we call Socratic. Do you mind answering the questions I will ask you?”

“Certainly not.”

“If you found that one of your people had developed a defect, say through an accident, would you destroy him?”

“If he were a liability to our cause, of course,” answered Melzarek. “That has been done many times in the past.”

“What if he were your best friend?”

“I see what you mean by ‘friend’,” Melzarek smiled. “None of us have ‘friends,’ except that we all help for the common Purpose.”

“If the defect developed in yourself, would you destroy yourself or permit yourself to be destroyed?”

“Certainly.” Melzarek was frankly puzzled by the questions.

“Would you be afraid to die?”

“Afraid? We have no fear.”

“I know you can feel pain,” Gabriel said. “If some disease, with which you were unable to cope, struck every member of your race, and you, and your children, and your children’s children, were doomed to suffer great pain all their lives, would you all allow yourselves to be destroyed?”

“All who willed would die.”

“If all chose to die, would you not be sad to have your race cease to exist?”

“No.”

“Then,” Gabriel drove home the thought suddenly, “why did your people bother to save themselves? Why have they spent the resources and the very existence of generations of lives to save their kind?”

Melzarek stopped, nonplussed. That great mind looked in on itself and wondered.

“That is the Purpose,” he said. “Our work. Our reason for existence.”

“Is it?” Gabriel pressed on relentlessly. “Are you existing only to exist? Surely you see the absurdity of that?”

“I am existing that others might live.” Desperately Melzarek fought Gabriel’s thought, as well as the first doubt he had ever known.

“But you do not care if others of you ever live!” Gabriel said.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Melzarek demanded.

“That you have lost instincts which are necessary to the survival of any race.”

“Instincts? Would it promote our welfare if we hated, feared, and envied as do your humans?” Melzarek asked.

“Those instincts which you mention are merely extrinsic results of an emotional nature,” Gabriel replied. “The basic instincts and impulses are love, instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of living. You no longer retain them.”

Desperately Melzarek reached for argument to hold his own in this struggle which he was slowly losing. “Your impulses engender acts which do not have a purpose. The results of the desires which we possess are activated by an estimate of the consequences of our acts. Surely they are superior to impulses?”

“Desire alone has exhausted your vitality and left you, in the end, indifferent to the very purpose which you have been trying to achieve. You, yourself, have admitted it.”

“And your conclusion?” Melzarek surrendered.

“In your dim past, your people loved, they were compassionate, and gave their lives that others might have a life to enjoy, and not just for the sterile satisfaction of living. Your race is dying now because their emotions are dead. Your only chance of survival is to revive those emotions which have become atrophied in your long struggle.”

Swiftly the thoughts coursed through that massive intellect. Gabriel saw that, if Melzarek could know the fear of frustration, he would have known it now. He watched the inevitable acceptance of his logic.

“You said that you have a possible solution?” Melzarek asked wearily.

“You need a reintegration of these emotions to make your growth full and vigorous once again,” said Gabriel. “I possess these emotions. Perhaps I can revive them for you, in exchange for the lives of mankind.”

“I’m afraid that I see the difficulties of that solution much more clearly than you can,” answered Melzarek. “Though I hope you will try. We intend to depopulate your earth one week from today. If you can give me proof of the emanation of one emotion in any member of the Liieens, before that time, we will leave the earth and indenizen another planet.”

“Good luck, Gabriel.” Marie pressed a warm little hand into his.

* * * *

Strong though his purpose, none knew better than Gabriel the difficulty of his task. The reproduction of emotions needed generations of breeding. A hundred years would be too short a time and he had but a week. The undertaking would have been hopeless except that he believed he would be able to find a basic emotion in one of the aliens which was not completely vitiated.

He had been given free access to all parts of the space vessel. Eagerly he studied the minds of its occupants, seeking an avenue of hope.

First, he sought out the last alien to bear an unfit child.

“Your lost child was flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood,” he addressed the Mother-being. “It’s little arms circled your neck, seeking your protection, and you let them destroy it. Do you not feel remorse?”

“It was incapable of furthering the Purpose,” the Mother-being replied, uncomprehending.

“Do you not hate those who destroyed your baby?” Gabriel asked.

“Why should I?” the Mother-being queried. “If they had not, I would have done it myself.”

Another alien Gabriel asked, “Do you not feel gratitude to the one who saved your life on Liieen-home?”

“I feel nothing. He did not help me; he helped our race by saving me. I contribute to the Purpose.”

Gabriel addressed a third: “You are trying to develop a means of transporting yourself without the aid of a vehicle. Would you like me to aid you?”

“It would further the Purpose,” answered the third-being.

“Would you be happy if we succeeded?”

“What is happy?” the third being asked. “I only know that it would give satisfaction to all of us.”

Thus Gabriel tried and thus he failed until the time of the final conference. His strongest hope he kept to the last.

As he walked into the conference room, Gabriel knew that this was the supreme crisis in the history of his world. He stopped where Marie sat. She looked up but said nothing as he bent down and pressed his lips to her sweet mouth. This was his final tribute and farewell to sentiment, and to his race, if he failed.

“Are you prepared to prove that you can revive our lost emotions?” Melzarek asked.

“I wish to make one last attempt,” Gabriel replied.

“Please proceed,” Melzarek said.

Gabriel turned to the alien which he had designated in his own mind as the “weak being.” He had been unable to find any definite evidence of a vestige of emotion in any of the Liieens. Therefore he had deliberately picked the one with the least strength of mind.

“Research-being,” Gabriel communicated with the weak one, “you contributed many vital items of aid to the Purpose. Never, however, have you ever completed the final step. Others have alwavs finished your work and been named for the work completed. You started as Research-being, and are still only Research-being. Do you not resent never achieving the glory of completion?”

“All my fellows know of the many contributions which I have made. I am content.”

“At one time you killed a fellow Liieen,” Gabriel pursued. “Do you never regret that action?” Unobtrusively he drove a thin worm of unrest into the creature’s mind, and there built up an abnormal tension.

“He was attempting to thwart the Purpose,” Research-being answered.

“You knew that he had suffered a grievous blow the day before you discovered his attempted thwarting of the Purpose. At the time you were undecided whether or not to report him, and perhaps have his defect remedied. But you killed him! With his defect corrected he would have contributed much more to the Purpose. You have often wondered about the justness of your decision. Furthermore he had the right to live!” Gabriel drove his thoughts with an ever increasing virility. He struck next with a thrust of savage intentness. “You did wrong! You are evil! You are damned!”

For an instant the alien hesitated, baffled by the thought and the terrific mind drive which Gabriel struck. None of the other Liieens interfered in any way.

“I have doubt no longer,” he answered. “I may have erred, but it is as easy for the strong to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.”

“Is it?” Relentlessly Gabriel pounded at the Liieens weakness of will. “That philosophy is the rock to which you cling. If it is disproved, your life will be empty. Nay, you will be a wanton thing, a hideous sight in the eyes of your very people.”

“Our philosophy is true; it has been proven and accepted by my fellows. I am only following the truth that has been shown to me.”

“But it was you who made the decision to accept it,” Gabriel pursued. “If you did not hide behind a blind philosophy, which you yourself doubt, you would admit that you killed your compatriot not because you were weak but because that way offered less risk to yourself. You are selfish, unjust. Your sin must be atoned!”

“Yes, I was unjust,” the creature quavered. “But my very unjustness is a weakness for which I cannot be blamed.”

Gabriel saw that though the alien wavered, he still held grimly to his philosophical peg. With a sickening feeling of futility, the knowledge crystallized that, though the philosophy was not true, it was valid, and could never be disproven by logic. Desperately he struck with his last weapon.

“You still cling to your conviction,” said Gabriel. “Because you expect to live, perhaps for eternity. But if you were to die? Now! Would you be certain that your life would stand the accounting you must give? Look at me, and see what I am going to do.”

“Don’t!” The creature had seen in Gabriel’s mind the terrific force necessary to end his life; and the certainty of death.

“Your philosophy is false. You are going to die!” Gabriel drove home a powerful jolt of devitalizing energy. “You are afraid!”

He watched as Research-being fought the prostrating force that punished him and the agony within. It grasped at its philosophy, doubted it, and floundered—alone. All inner certainties died. In desperate anticipation it swayed on the black verge of chaos. Another instant and devastating fear would come.

Now was the moment.

“You must meet your God, and be punished!” Gabriel screamed the mental cry at that lacerated intellect.

But the flaming pain paused, subsided, and was gone.

“You are wrong,” the creature said in a voice-thought of vast relief. “Because I am God.”

And Gabriel knew that he had lost his battle. Research-being had another rock of conviction to cling to; one from which he could never be shaken.

Gabriel bowed his head in defeat. He had tried and lost. Earth was doomed.

“Have you anything more to say?” Melzarek asked softly.

“Nothing,” Gabriel answered listlessly, weak from reaction.

“Wait!” It was Marie, and a vast stillness came as she spoke. “Can’t we spare Gabriel’s life? One human left alive can never defeat the Purpose.”

“Why?” Melzarek.

“I do not know why,” she answered. “I just want him to live.”

As the solid silence held, she pondered. Then slowly her face lifted, and she smiled. A smile of dawning wonder and joy. I want him to live because I love him.

The Liieens stood for a brief moment, in solemn awe. Then, as one, the great intellects joined in common purpose. The giant space vessel rose noiselessly up through the envelope of atmosphere and shot out toward a distant galaxy.

…and Gabriel went with them.