Which it can be, if we the people of the United States learn for sure that the Federation exists.

  How? The galactics, including those Injuns, understand how to keep us blindfolded. They didn’t even bother to silence me. Who’d listen?

  Maybe, momentarily, the chance had existed. In 1950, or whenever the flying saucer craze started, human civilization had advanced to the point where it could imagine extraterrestrial visitors; and it had not yet gotten the idea of plasmoids, or rather, it was denying that any such thing could be. So the standard spaceship disguise had been ineffective for a decade or two. Unfortunately, though, no one had happened to catch a sitting spaceship during those years. At least, not enough people had happened to do so, and their unsupported word was insufficient. Now research had established that flying saucers could be plasmoids. Therefore, humankind concluded, they were plasmoids. As the galactics had foreseen.

  Today no one would believe the crazy truth. Except maybe some pathetic remnants of the discredited saucer cults. They might. But what could they do, except invite the narrator into their mutual admiration society?

  What…could…they…do?

  Sean Lindquist leaped to his feet. His table went over, scattering beer and broken glass. His pipe fell to the floor. “Eureka!” he bellowed.

  The bartender approached. “You had enough, buster,” he said ominously. “Start taking off your clothes and I call a cop.”

  The Reverend Jaxton Muir, pastor of the First United Church of the Cosmic Brotherhood, was a surprise. Though Lindquist had done considerable research beforehand, he had expected someone more, well, far out. Reverend Muir was soft-spoken, self-contained, and conventionally dressed—for Los Angeles, at least. He lived with his wife in an apartment near the shop that earned him his daily bread. The place could have belonged to any middle-class, middle-aged couple. Only the books were unusual. They formed probably as complete a library of sauceriana as existed anywhere on Earth.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Lindquist,” he invited. “Would you care for some coffee? Smoke if you wish. It’s bad for the health, but until the Elder Brethren see fit to raise us to the next rung of evolution’s ladder, we can’t much help our frailties. Pardon me. I didn’t intend to preach at you. You came to tell me something, not vice versa.”

  Lindquist wondered what his best gambit was. From what he could learn of the C. B. Church, its few score active members, and its influence on several hundred saucerists of other kinds, he didn’t believe that he could be entirely truthful. Muir’s credo held that the extraterrestrials were the benevolent, well-nigh omnipotent agents of a civilization which was the chosen instrument of God. That wouldn’t fit so well with a rusty old tramp ship, pinchpenny owners, and so forth. Would it?

  “I’ve had an Experience,” he said.

  “Really?” Muir’s tone did not alter. “Do you know, I never have been vouchsafed one. Few who were are left alive: and the last confirmed report of a talk with Them was fifteen years ago.” His gaze was quite steady. Traffic noises came through the window to underscore his voice with muted thunder. “Hoaxes are not unheard of.”

  Lindquist achieved a smile. “You’re skeptical, Reverend?”

  “Well, let us say I’m open-minded. I’ve often stated, in sermons and articles, that I think the Elders have abandoned us for a while because we grew too skeptical. They will come back when faith has come back. But—forgive me—there have been deliberate frauds, and there have been far more honest mistakes. For your sake as well as ours, we must sift your story carefully—whatever you tell.”

  “You’re very tactful, sir.” Lindquist’s lanky frame relaxed in the armchair. As he felt his way into the situation, he gained confidence. “And I might as well confess at the outset, I want money. Furthermore, I haven’t a scrap of physical evidence. Only the recent sighting over Colorado Springs, which thousands of people saw.” He drew a breath. “However, if I can get financing, your auditors will keep track of every nickel. What we need is to build and transport a certain device which the Elders have described to me. For this, we’ll have to buy materials and hire expensive technicians. We’ll have to do a little R&D, perhaps, because the Elders didn’t give me any blueprint, only a general verbal account. We’ll have to do this on the QT until we’re ready to roll, or you can imagine what a field day the news media will have.”

  Muir opened his mouth. Lindquist hurried on:

  “In earnest of my sincerity, as well as to help, I can mortgage what little I own and toss several thousand dollars into the kitty. If you can double that, I believe we’ll have the necessary. I checked on your people before I phoned you. They’re not rich by a long shot. But between your congregation and, uh, its sympathizers—if you launch an appeal yourself—a few dollars contributed per person—the thing can be swung financially without hurting any individual except me if it fails.”

  He paused. “I do not guarantee success,” he finished.

  Muir sat quiet for a long time. His eyes never left his visitor. Finally he whispered, “You’re not a con artist. You may be a crank, but you’re honest. Go on, in God’s name.”

  Lindquist saw tears. However noble his purpose, he felt a touch guilty as he gave his doctored account. The benevolent Elders had returned. They found Earth in dire straits. Disaster was imminent. Yet they could not destroy the human spirit by acting as dictators. They could only work through such persons as had faith in them.

  Nor could they linger here. Other planets also needed their attention. But if enough humans had faith—if the veritable mustard seed existed upon Earth—then they could manifest themselves at last, and lead mankind to salvation. To this end, let the faithful build a communication device such as they demonstrated and explained to Sean F. X. Lindquist. In time, they would receive its message and they would come.

  Did no such call reach them, they would sadly know that man was beyond redemption.

  Passing through the ship’s observation verandah—an elegant phrase for a crummy little cabin outfitted with an exterior visiscreen and a few seats adjustable to most species—Urgo the Red saw Klak’t’klak. The sector inspector stood hunched before the view that slid beneath. The scene was of high desert, raw mineral hues under a blazing sun. His winged shape was etched in black by contrast. And yet he looked so frail, bowed, utterly tired and discouraged, that Urgo’s equivalent of a heart went out to him. The engineer supercargo had grumbled at length during the past tedious weeks. Nevertheless, against his will, he had come to like the official passenger. It hurt him, now. to see the little Ittatikan stand thus alone. He went and joined him.

  “You’re really quittin’, huh?” he asked inanely.

  Klak’t’klak uttered a mournful whistle. “Yes. Not that the natives have no potential. They seem about average, insofar as any such concept is meaningful. But I could not justify a recommendation that missions be sent to elevate them.”

  “Troublemakers. Yeh, I could’a told you that right off,” Urgo rumbled.

  “No. Not really.” Klak’t’klak spread his wings and folded them again. “They would not be a detriment to the Federation. But neither would they be an outstanding asset, as far as I can judge on the basis of my examinations. They would, in short, be…merely one more member species. Therefore, as long as they remain in happy ignorance of us, I cannot honestly say that the Federation taxpayer should be burdened with the cost of incorporating them. Let them invent the hyperdrive for themselves, in a thousand or two years.”

  Urgo belched, which out of him corresponded to a sigh of relief. “That’s the spirit, Inspector! I knew you’d decide right. But how come are you lookin’ so down in the chops you haven’t got?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Klak’t’klak said. “Depression, I suppose. So much time, effort, expense, inconveniencing you and Navigator Pilot Finnison—you’ve been extraordinarily kind, you two, and I won’t forget it when I write my official report—but for nothing.”

  Urgo spread his mighty arms. “Ah, don’t worry. The job was a drag, sure, but it’s over with now. We’ll stop off at the pueblo to snatch a rest and some trade goods. Then go to the Rim!”

  At that moment, the buzzer sounded. Pazilliwheep’s voice followed. “Attenta!” He had amused himself by acquiring a few 143an phrases as Grumdel Castle prowled around the globe. “Pericolo! All hands to stations!”

  “What the blazes?” Urgo was already loping for the engine room. Klak’t’klak flapped and hopped toward his quarters, where he would at least be out of the way. You don’t argue when someone calls emergency on a hypership. The deck gonged to the engineer supercargo’s footfalls. “What’s’a matter?” he roared.

  “I don’t know,” Pazilliwheep said tautly over the intercom. “Electromagnetic field…variable…registered a few seconds ago. Might be a natural plasmoid, but we’d better have a look.”

  Urgo felt relieved. The news could have been something nasty, like the bottom dropping out of this hull. “Where are we, anyhow?” he asked.

  “About fifty miles west of Wuwucimti. Which is to say, the emanations could be from a galactic ship in distress—a little ways beyond mind-detector range from the pueblo.” Pazilliwheep swung his craft through a ninety-degree turn. The acceleration compensators were so badly out of phase that Urgo slipped on the deck and hit his nose.

  Nevertheless, the engineer supercargo confined his remarks to a muttered “S nagabagabartbats!” That was cruel country below, especially for beings who had not evolved on this planet. A vessel grounded helpless in those arid mountains and canyons might soon be crewless. And that—aside from every moral consideration—invited the disaster of discovery by non-Hopi autochthons. It was well that Grumdel Castle had happened by in time.

  Once in the engine room, Urgo activated his own visiscreen. He saw a wild landscape, heat shimmers and dust devils…and, yes, a saucer shape on a small mesa. Its outlines were blurred by a weak camouflage field, and neither he nor Pazilliwheep could identify the make of ship. But with millions of different makes—

  “Why aren’t they transmitting?” Pazilliwheep wondered.

  “Transmitter busted, I guess,” Urgo said. “They could’a lain here for, comet-fire, days or weeks, you know. Aimin’ to land at Wuwucimti but not makin’ it. Expectin’ somebody else’d come by eventually, and keepin’ their field goin’ so’s they’d be detectable at a distance.”

  “But not daring to strike out on foot for the pueblo,” Pazilliwheep added. “Right you are. Let’s get down.”

  Grumdel Castle descended to the mesa and cut her own camouflage and her engines. The galactics emerged into brilliant, silent, sagebrush-pungent air. Hulking Urgo, graceful Pazilliwheep, broadwinged Klak’t’klak moved across the sand toward the beached hypership.

  Only, now that they were close, it looked less and less like a hypership. It looked more like—

  “Surprise, surprise!” caroled a native voice. Sean F. X. Lindquist’s lean form sprang from the false hull. He ran to meet them, arms spread in welcome, face wide open in a silly grin. “Am I glad to see you! Two weeks waiting! And you turn out to be the very same guys who—Come on and have a cold beer!”

  Klak’t’klak had brought his translator machine, which was keyed to several Federation as well as 143an languages. But it was his pomander behind which he retreated. His eyes rolled. He gasped. Urgo bawled, “Oh, no!” and Pazilliwheep looked ill.

  Other humans emerged. So did a television camera on a dolly. “We alerted the news services,” Lindquist said happily. “Of course they thought this was a lunatic-fringe project, but they did agree to stand by, in case we came up with anything good for laughs. Smile, you’re on candid camera! Now we better break the news gently to my assistants, that you aren’t quite the godlike beings most of them think you are.” He stopped, blushed through his stubble, and beckoned to a companion. “Pardon me. I was so excited I forgot. Here’s Professor Rostovtsev from Colorado U. He speaks Hopi.”

  Klak’t’klak had already adjusted his machine to English. He turned it off for a minute, while he expressed himself in his own tongue. Then he closed the circuit again.

  “Never mind,” he said resignedly. “Welcome to the Galactic Federation.”

  UNTITLED LIMERICK

  The jury was out all the day.

  Next lunchtime, the foreman did say:

  “Bring us five ham-on-ryes,

  four chicken pot pies,

  two pastramis, and one bale of hay.”

  EVE TIMES FOUR

  Arsang talked on. And on. And on.

  “It is indeed a pity,” he said, “though, of course, long ago foreseeable, through the diversity of protein structures and the consequent development of mutually poisonous biochemistries—not to mention the basic variations in stellar and planetary types—it is, I say, regrettable that the percentage of worlds suitable for any given species is so small. And then, to be sure, this is reduced still further by those planets which already have autochthonous, intelligent species. These would hardly welcome alien colonists.”

  Teresina Fabricant gazed in despair out of that viewport which formed one whole wall of the lounge. Space glittered with suns and suns; but she stood in an almost visible fog of shrill platitudes, and there was no escape. How had she ever been trapped into this? By being kind to Arsang, she decided, by not cutting him off the first time his fingers closed about her arm and his voice began to pipe. But how could she have known? This was her first deep-space voyage. More experienced passengers, aware that every ship has its bore, recognized the dread tokens at once and gave Arsang a wide orbit.

  “So the colonies planted by any given race, such as your own, are scattered thinly through that small portion of the galaxy we know,” he continued, as importantly as he had earlier informed her that she was, of course, a graduate student of mathematics, bound for a year of study on a newly autonomous human-settled planet as part of an exchange program. “The distance between Earth and Xenophon, 154 light-years approximately, is not an unusual hop for a liner such as this. But the round-trip cruise on which most of our fellow passengers are embarked must necessarily zigzag so much between the systems it visits, that side trips to the less important places lying more or less along our route become impractical. One would not add an extra week of travel time merely to spend a single day looking at the Great Mud Mountain of New Ganymede, the double planet Holmes-Watson, the satellite system of Kepler, or the craters on Jotunheim, even though these are all terrestroid worlds with human colonies and do not lie very far off our path. You see, they are such new colonies: one tiny settlement on each, with little entertainment to offer, and otherwise a nearly unexplored wilderness. Having seen the one spectacular sight, what would our tourists do with their evening? Whereas Xenophon, where you get off, or my own Tau Ceti Two, Numa, which the ship will reach on the homeward arc of its circuit and where, of course, I disembark to report to my colleagues in the diplomatic service of His Awe-Inspiring Refulgence Pipp XI, Supreme Overlord of the United States of Korlaband—”

  The high-pitched lecture began to take on a chanting quality. Bemused, half asleep, Teresina had a dreamlike feeling that she stood in the anteroom of eternity and heard a cantor or priest hold some unending ceremony…

  She grew conscious that another human had entered the lounge. For a moment her heart fluttered in the hope of deliverance. Even if it was John Jacob Newhouse—fighting off his attentions was better than being talked at by Arsang XXXIII, Lord High Gongbeater to the Prideful Court of His Awe-Inspiring Refulgence Pipp XI—anything was better. She was suffering a fate worse than death and hadn’t even been offered an apartment, jewels, money.

  The third mate checked his stride an instant. He was a good-looking young man, with dark wavy hair and regular features. His uniform, blue tunic, white pants, peaked cap, didn’t hurt those looks a bit. Of all this he was thoroughly cognizant. A moment his eyes lingered on her, frankly admiring.

  Teresina was of the tall and willowy persuasion, with long blonde hair and large blue eyes, snub nose and slightly parted lips. Her black kirtle and white mantle had childlike connotations on Earth, protective coloration for a shy girl who didn’t know quite what to do when a man spoke to her in any language but mathematics. The trouble was, as Newhouse had quickly observed, such an outfit looked remarkably sexy on a space liner.

  But then Arsang had cornered her, and Arsang could out-chaperone any Spanish duenna. Not that the Tau Cetian was unprepossessing. He had a certain elfin quality, big dome of a head and small torso poised on four spidery legs, two slender arms waving in time with his fronded ears, hairless pale-gold skin, the face quasi-human but with great green eyes, the clothing a filmy shimmer of veils. His size, below one meter, added to the charm. However, he talked.

  “Ah, Miss Fabricant.” Newhouse swept a bow in her direction. “I hope you’re enjoying yourself?”

  Teresina gritted her teeth. “Yes, thank you!” she said.

  Newhouse raised one brow, threw her an outrageous wink, and continued on his way. Teresina stared after him with smoldering eyes. Really, he was inexcusable! Not that she was cold or…or anything…of course she wanted to get married some day, and so on (here she blushed, and even diverted her attention back to Arsang for a moment)…but that scene on the promenade deck, near the start of the voyage, well, after all, a man might wait a little while after being introduced before mauling a girl around.

  With a certain malicious pleasure, Teresina saw Hedwig Trumbull rise hastily from her cocktail, to seize the mate’s arm. Undoubtedly: “Oh dear Mr. Newhouse—or may I call you Jack?—” But the officer seemed to claim urgent business; at any rate, Hedwig Trumbull returned to her table and he went out the other side of the lounge.

  “I think,” said Teresina, grasping at straws, “I want a before-dinner drink myself.”