“So don’t.”

  “No, as long as we have captured this being, I feel my duty is to examine him for whatever information he can give. And, too, I should endeavor to allay his fears. To this poor unsophisticated semi-savage, we must resemble veritable demons. Consider how he staggered to his aircraft for that bottle of tranquilizing medication he now clutches so tightly.”

  Urgo waved a massive blue hand. Pazilliwheep trotted over, using his nose-tendrils in turn to summon one of the Indians. “I don’t speak this barbarian’s jabber,” the navigator pilot explained, “but Sikyabotoma does.” Urgo passed on the datum.

  The galactics, including the Pueblo man, formed a semicircle confronting Lindquist. The rest of the village watched aloofly. Klak’t’klak lifted one gaunt arm. “Greeting to you, O native.” he said in Interlingo-12. “Rest assured that you are in the grasping organs of civilized and benevolent entities who intend you no harm; who may, indeed, prove to be the promoters of a benign revolution upon your planet. Whether this eventuality materializes or not is dependent upon my official judgment as to whether a general announcement of the existence of a galaxy-wide Federation of technologically and sociologically advanced races will serve the larger good, including your own good. Hence the outcome is to a small extent dependent upon what you yourself, individually, today, choose to give me in the way of information. May I therefore initially request—request, mind you; we shall not compel you—and advise that you relate to me in circumstantial detail what I wish to be apprised of, beginning with the events which led to your untoward arrival.”

  “He wants to know how the bum got here,” Urgo said in Interlingo-7.

  “The honorable envoy of the Federation’s guiding council asks what gods led hither the stranger’s path,” Pazilliwheep said in Hopi.

  “The pterodactyl character is a kind of inspector,” Sikyabotoma said in English. “He won’t hurt you, but he would like to know a few things, like how come you stopped by.”

  Lindquist took another pull on his bottle. “I…I saw the flying saucer…and followed it,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, sure. Look, pal, I don’t believe you can tell him a thing that I can’t. But let’s go through with the game and make him happy, O.K.? The other two are plain merchant sailors. Old buddies of mine; I even made a voyage with ’em once, to help establish an outplanet market for our local handicrafts. But Beak-and-Wings, he’s come to find out whether the galactics ought to let the rest of Earth know about them; whether they should invite every country to join their Federation. In other words, he’s one of those do-gooder types.”

  “You…don’t think…we should join?” Lindquist got forth.

  “Frankly, no.” Sikyabotoma shrugged. “Not that this pueblo is selfish, or holds a deep grudge against the white man, or anything. However, you can’t expect we’ll fall over ourselves to do the white man a favor, can you? Especially when that’d end our own comfortable monopoly on trade and services with the galaxy. We’re not ostentatious about it, and, of course, we’re pretty small potatoes in the Federation…but you’d be surprised at some of the stuff we keep in our adobes.”

  Lindquist braced himself. “I look at the matter differently,” he said. “Can I trust you to give him my side of the story?”

  “Sure. I may be prejudiced, but I’m honest. Besides, he figures to study the whole planet. Don’t loft your hopes, though. One dollar gets you ten that he turns thumbs down.”

  “How can he?” Lindquist cried.

  Sikyabotoma looked closer. “I’ll be damned, you’re right. He has thumbs on both sides of his palms…Oh. You mean how can he refuse the U.S.A., and the U.S.S.R., and France, and Britain, and China, and—Well, it’s easy. They haven’t anything unique to offer. Not in a galaxy loaded with civilizations. All that Wuwucimti has, really, is a convenient location, and people who don’t swarm over every ship that lands, stealing things and asking stupid questions. You start letting in the riffraff, and first you’ve got to disestablish institutions like war, and then you’ve got to give them technical assistance, and then—Anyhow, it’s a mess. That’s why secrecy is preserved, you know. If you guys ever found out the truth, collectively, you’d have to be invited to join. Otherwise, the do-gooders say, your precious little egos would be so bruised that what culture you have would fall to pieces.” The Hopi checked himself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound smug. Or malicious. It’s just the way the ball bounces.”

  “How about my ego?” Lindquist demanded, close to tears.

  Sikyabotoma patted his shoulder. “Nothing personal, Charlie,” he said. “Individual humans who got interviewed in the past don’t seem to’ve suffered harm. Look at it this way: you won’t be any worse off than you were. Huh?”

  “I’ll tell the world!” Lindquist said furiously. “I’ll call in the F.B.I., the news reporters, the—”

  “For both our sakes,” the Indian answered, “I wish you wouldn’t. You’d only make a fool of yourself. At most, you’d bring in somebody else, and the village ’ud have to go through the same old cover up as before. You wouldn’t do that to us, would you, now? A nice guy like you?”

  “No, I’ll keep watch—” Lindquist snapped his mouth shut.

  “Till another ship arrives, eh?” Sikyabotoma chuckled. “You’d wait a mighty long time, podner.”

  “Not many come?”

  “Well, it varies. With thousands of shipping outfits plying these lanes, we can expect several craft per year to stop by, though we never know in advance. However, what we do know is if anybody’s within twenty-thirty miles. A little gadget that detects thoughts. So you can’t monitor us unbeknownst. We can warn off ships: they do radio us from orbit before landing. Chances are they’d come down anyway, but maintain camouflage. All you’d observe, or photograph, would be a colored blur like ordinary ball lightning. If worst comes to worst, a bunch of us can deal with a spy. Nothing violent, understand. We’ll kind of escort him away, no more. If we have to break his camera, we’ll pay him full value. You see, we’re Federation members, so we live by Federation rules.”

  The inspector spoke words which went along the chain of interpreters. Sikyabotoma nodded and sat down on his haunches. “You might as well relax,” he said. “Over here, in the shade. You’re about to be interviewed.”

  Time passed. Shadows lengthened. The Pueblo women cooked dinner. They brought some to Lindquist. It was Hopi food, based on cornmeal tortillas, but the filling was like nothing on Earth. Quite literally so. Sikyabotoma explained that a lot of interstellar trade was in spices.

  When the sun went below the mountains, stars leaped arrogantly forth. Coyotes yipped across a gigantic silence. Lindquist stared heavenward, shivering in the cold.

  Sikyabotoma rose, yawning. “That’s that,” he said. “They’ll fly you out now, to make sure you don’t hang around. Any special place you’d like to go?”

  “Colorado Springs?” Lindquist faltered.

  “I wouldn’t. NORAD headquarters, remember. If they spot your plane on their radars without any flight plan filed, they might get a little unpleasant.”

  “That’s my problem.” Lindquist could scarcely keep his tone level. He had not dared hope his precarious plan would work to this extent.

  “O.K., so ’tis. Hm-m-m, I think I’ll ride along. You might enjoy being shown around a genuine hypership. Something to tell your grandchildren, if you don’t mind ’em thinking you’re an awful liar.”

  The three aliens embarked. Lindquist and Sikyabotoma followed, after the village elders had bidden the former goodby with every ritual courtesy. A larger opening gaped elsewhere in the hull; the aircraft rose on some silent, invisible beam of force; it was stowed aboard. The great ship closed herself. Soundlessly, but swathed again in rainbow haze, she lifted and swung north.

  Inside, she was less impressive. In fact, she was grimy, battered, noisy, and ill-smelling. Sikyabotoma shrugged when Lindquist dared remark on it. “So what do you expect in an old tramp with cheapskate owners? Red plush toilet seats? C’mon, we better stash you in your plane. Be over Pike’s Peak soon.”

  When Lindquist was harnessed, the Hopi stuck a hand through the open cabin door of the aircraft. His brown face was bent in a wry smile. “Shake,” he offered. “I hope there aren’t any hard feelings. You’re a right guy. I could damn near wish Birdbrain does certify this whole planet for membership. But I know he won’t. So long, Charlie, and good luck to you.”

  He closed the door. For a minute Lindquist sat alone, in the thrumming, coldly lit cavern of the hold. The hull opened. Stars glittered in the aperture, brilliant against crystalline black. Air puffed outward, popping his eardrums, and cold flowed inward. He started his engine. But it was the impalpable force beam that carried him forth and released him.

  Town lights glittered far beneath. The spaceship hovered close, like a swirling, shifting, many-hued light-fog. She departed, gathering speed until no human-built rocket could have paced her. Night swallowed the vision.

  Lindquist shuddered. His radio earphones squawked with challenge. An interceptor jet winged toward him. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll come down. Any place you want.” Excitement torrented through him. “And then…take me to your leader!”

  In the morning they turned him over to Lieutenant Harold Quimby. Maybe that press officer could get rid of him.

  Sunlight slanted through a window, beyond which stretched the neat buildings and walked the neat personnel of a United States Air Force base. Light glowed on immaculate office furniture, on Quimby’s polished insignia and practiced toothpaste smile. Lindquist grew doubly aware of how unshaven, sweaty, and haggard he was. His eyes burned; the lids felt like sandpaper.

  “Cigarette?” Quimby invited. “Coffee?”

  “No,” Lindquist grated. “Some common sense. That’s all I ask. The common sense and common decency of listening to me.”

  “Why, surely our people—”

  “Yeah, they grilled me. For most of the night. Oh, polite enough. But they kept after me and after me.”

  “Well, you must realize, Mr. Lindquist, when you suddenly appear over a sensitive area like this, you must expect that men charged with the national defense will ask for details.”

  “Damn it, I gave them details! Every last stinking detail I could dredge up. Look, the fact that I did appear, without your fool radars registering me till I was there…doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “It means that the plasmoid blanketed your approach. Not unknown. An unusually fine plasmoid, wasn’t it?” Quimby leaned forward with a sympathetic air. “I can easily understand why you would follow such a beautiful and fascinating object. And, ah, how the interplay of colors…hypnotic, even epileptogenic effects…mistaking a vivid dream for reality—No, wait!” He lifted his hand. “The Air Force is not calling you a lunatic, Mr. Lindquist. What happened to you could happen to anyone. I talked with Major Williams of our psychiatric division before my appointment with you today. He assured me that illusion and confusion are the normal result of lengthy exposure to certain optical phenomena. We lodged you overnight precisely so that our intelligence officers could make a few phone calls, checking on your background and recent activities. I assure you, Mr. Lindquist, we are careful here. We have established that you are sane and well-intentioned. We appreciate the patriotism that led you to seek us out, even in your, ah, slightly delirious condition. You are free to go home, Mr. Lindquist, with the warmest thanks of the United States Air Force.” Quimby paused for breath.

  “But you saw the spaceship yourselves!” Lindquist groaned. “You radared the thing. You recorded electric and magnetic effects. Your technical man admitted as much to me. How can you call it an illusion?”

  “We don’t, sir, we don’t,” Quimby beamed. “It was absolutely real. The Air Force is not dogmatic; also the Air Force has been interested in this subject for many years. When the first so-called ‘flying saucer’ reports were made in the 1940s, the Air Force mounted its own official investigation. Here”—he handed Lindquist a glossy-paper pamphlet off a stack on his desk—“a brief summary of Project Blue Book. Certain people remained unsatisfied. They charged—quite wrongly, I assure you—distortion and suppression of evidence. Accordingly, to clear its good name, in the late 1960s the Air Force commissioned a new investigation by independent scientific organizations and reputable unaffiliated individuals. An unclassified project, mind you.” He gave Lindquist another pamphlet. “Here is a history of that effort. It was crowned by success. Here is a summary of the technical findings. Here is a somewhat more popular account, and here is a reprint of what proved to be the key physical data, and here is a—”

  Lindquist slumped. “I know,” he said. “They told me last night what they believe. Ball lightning.”

  “Well, no, not exactly that,” Quimby said. “The subject is pretty complicated. Yes, sir, pretty complicated, if I do say so myself. Flying saucer reports had many different sources. Early during the furore, it was shown that most were caused by sightings of weather balloons, or mirages, or reflections, or Venus, or any of several other things. There did remain a certain small percentage which could not be accounted for in that way. But then it was shown—about 1965 or ’70, as I recall—that nature can generate plasmoids in the atmosphere. You know, traveling masses of ionized gas, held together for a few hours by a kind of self-generated magnetic bottle. Ball lightning is one kind of plasmoid. There are others. Including the kind that shines, produces erratic magnetic and electric fields, reflects radar, shuttles about at incredible speed but with never a sound, and is roughly disk-shaped. In short, the classical flying saucer apparition. This was proven, Mr. Lindquist. It was observed, analyzed, and reproduced in the laboratory. By now, any good electrophysicist who wanted to take the trouble could fake his own flying saucer. Here, take this account by the Nobel Prize winner Dr.—”

  “Never mind,” Lindquist mumbled. “I don’t doubt there are natural neon signs zipping around. So the saucerians don’t need anything for camouflage except a false one.”

  “Well, Mr. Lindquist,” Quimby replied, the least bit severely, “don’t you believe it’s high time you looked at the matter like the reasonable man you are? You had a, ah, an involuntary psychedelic experience. You would not have had it if you had known the truth. Then you would have realized there was no point in chasing that plasmoid. Nobody does any more, you know. Because of your, ah, long foreign residence, you weren’t kept up to date. But the truth is that the flying-saucer hysteria vanished years ago. Once the clear light of science was thrown on this murky subject, the American people realized that everything had been due to an easily explainable natural phenomenon. They turned their attention to better topics. You won’t find anyone any longer who claims that flying saucers are, ah, spaceships crewed by little green men.”

  “Would you believe a surly blue giant?”

  “No, Mr. Lindquist, I would not. Nor, ah, pterodactyls and centaurs with arms on their noses. Least of all that a bunch of poverty-stricken, mostly illiterate Pueblo Indians are—Well, you have a very imaginative subconscious mind, sir, but I’m afraid no one cares to listen. So you had better settle for reality.”

  Lindquist raised eyes in which hope still struggled with exhaustion. “No one?” he asked. “Absolutely no one in the world?”

  “Oh, I suppose a few cranks are left, like in California,” Quimby laughed. “People to whom the outer-space-visitors idea became a sort of religion that they still can’t bear to give up.” His tone sharpened. “It would not be advisable to prey on their gullibility. Not that you would, Mr. Lindquist. But some confidence man who, ah, tried to squeeze a dollar from those poor deluded souls…yes, I think the authorities might deal rather harshly with him.”

  Lindquist rose. “I know when I’m licked,” he said bitterly. “I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “Well. thank you, that’s appreciated.” Quimby stood, too—with almost indecent haste. “We are rather busy at the moment, preparing press kits about General Robinson’s promotion to four-star rank.”

  Lindquist ignored the proffered hand and shambled toward the door. “Too busy to bring Earth into the Galactic Federation!” he spat.

  “That’s not the job of the Air Force,” Quimby reminded him. “Foreign relations belong to the State Department.”

  The bar which Lindquist found was noisy with college students. He didn’t mind that. For the most part he sat hunched over his beer. When his awareness did, occasionally, return from interstellar immensities—to order more beer—he got a little encouragement from the sight of coeds passing by. A universe which had produced girls couldn’t be all bad.

  Contrariwise, it must be a hell of a good universe. Rich, wonderful, various, exciting, mind-expanding, soul-uplifting: if only you could get out into it.

  “Rats!” Lindquist muttered around his pipestem. “Got to be some way to make a buck with what I know.”

  He wasn’t entirely cynical. The galactics were, he thought. They denied to the human race every marvel, opportunity, insight, help, comfort that a millennia-old science must have to give. Not that they were monsters. With—how many suns in the galaxy? A hundred billion? They rated intelligent species at a dime a dozen, and probably this was inevitable. Indeed, it was astonishing how altruistic they were. They could have conquered Earth in an afternoon. But instead, they slunk about in disguise for fear of what the knowledge of their presence might do to men…if, following the revelation, they did not promptly act to lift man to their own level.

  Sure, you can’t blame them. Why should they solve our problems for us? Especially when it’d be a lot of trouble and expense to them. What did we ever do for the galactics?

  Lindquist fumed smoke into the racketing, beer-laden air. That’s not the point, he thought grimly. The point as far as I’m concerned is that I and my whole ever-lovin’ species will keep on being poor, ignorant, war-plagued, tyrannized, restricted, short-lived, and I don’t know what else—unless the Federation can be forced to take us in.