It was a race between man and alien to
rule the stars. Scientifically, the aliens
were decades ahead—but their real
advantage was their incredible elusiveness!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Romm Parmay stepped into the Interstellar Communications Central andeased the door shut behind him.
Nobody paid much attention to him; the five hundred ICC men at theboards were talking in quiet, well-modulated voices that filled theroom with a fluctuating murmur of unintelligible sound.
At Number One board, Kerrman was staring moodily at the dead screen,blowing clouds of cigarette smoke at the control panel and watching thesmoke writhe and flow down around the pilot lights and switch plates.Parmay walked across the room quietly, and stopped a few feet behindKerrman.
"Boo!"
Kerrman jerked, inhaled a cloud of smoke, coughed, and turned around,glaring.
"Romm! Dammit, if you weren't my boss, I'd kick you where it would dothe most good!"
Parmay turned solemnly, presenting his gluteal region for assault.
"Go ahead," he said sorrowfully, "I'm not the boss any more."
"All right, you're asking—what? What did you say?"
Parmay turned back to face Kerrman. The grin on his face threatened tobreak into laughter.
"Let you be the first to congratulate me. You are gazing at the Chiefof Psychological Contact."
"Contact!" Kerrman grinned back. "You mean you're going out with thefleet?"
"Right. They just told me. I've got to get myself a group together,one for each hypersee ship. So far, I am the head cheese of a totallynonexistent group; I'm nobody's boss."
"Need a good assistant?" Kerrman asked hopefully.
"No, I need a good contact here. You've got my job now, and more. Thereisn't room on a ship to carry a complete psych analyzer, much less asynthesizer, so, for anything I dig up, you'll have to do most of themath."
"Good enough. I have—" Kerrman stopped suddenly and looked at hiswatch. "Wow! Almost talked too long. There's an Ancestor due in fiveminutes."
He sat down again at the board, cutting in the instruments. A shadowpointer moved slowly up a dial, then stopped.
"Not early, at any rate," he commented.
Better than four hundred light years away, a hypersee communicatorfired out its carrier; at vast multiples of the velocity of light,that disturbance radiated in all directions through space. Less thana thousandth of a second after leaving its origin, the carrier wasnudging the receptors on Earth.
On Kerrman's panel the shadow pointer began a smoothly oscillatingdance. Kerrman touched three switch plates in swift succession. A voicecame from the speaker.
"Expedition Seven Nine Six calling Earth. Seven Nine Six calling Earth.Come in, Earth."
The accent was odd, and most people would have had troubleunderstanding it, but Kerrman was used to handling the changes that hadtaken place in the language in four centuries.
"Communications Central, Earth," he replied. "We're in, Seven Nine Six."
"Seven Nine Six in," said the speaker definitely. "We've been heretwenty-four hours. How long have we been gone?"
"You're four minutes late; not bad correlation at all. You left Earthfour hundred thirteen years, seventy-one days, two hours, thirtyseconds as of now." He touched a button to produce a ting! "What'syour subjective time?"
"Eleven years, sixty-two days, twelve hours, five minutes even as ofnow." A similar s