Dark Benediction

The commander glanced through the doorway and jerked his head. A moment later, Talcwa Walkeka stepped proudly into the room, escorted by a burly guard. She gave him an icy glance and said nothing.

“Daleth—”

She made a noise like an angry cat and sat where the guard pushed her. They waited. The first signal suddenly screeched from the receiver: two series of short bleats of three different notes.

Involuntarily his hand leaped to the key. He bleated back the answering signal.

Daleth wore a puzzled frown. “Ilgen times ufneg is hork-segan,” she muttered in translation.

A slow grin spread across Hulgruv’s heavy face. He turned to look at the girl. “You’re trained in the Cophian number system?”

“Don’t answer that!” Roki bellowed.

“She has answered it, manthing. Are you aware of what your friend is doing, female?”

She shook her head. Hulgruv told her briefly. She frowned at Roki, shook her head, and stared impassively at the floor. Apparently she was either drugged or had learned nothing about the Solarians to convince her that they were enemies of the galaxy.

“Tell me, Daleth. Have they been feeding you well?” She hissed at him again. “Are you crazy—”

Hulgruv chuckled. “He is trying to tell you that we are cannibals. Do you believe it?”

Fright appeared in her face for an instant, then disbelief. She stared at the commander, saw no guilt in his expression. She looked scorn at Roki.

“Listen, Daleth! That’s why they wouldn’t stop. Human livestock aboard. One look in their holds and we would have known, seen through their guise of mercy, recognized them as self-styled supermen, guessed their plans for galactic conquest. They breed their human cattle on their home planet and make a business of selling the parts. Their first weapon is infiltration into our confidence. They knew that if we gained an insight into their bloodthirsty culture, we would crush them.”

“You’re insane, Roki!” she snapped.

“No! Why else would they refuse to stop? Technical secrets? Baloney! Their technology is still inferior to ours. They carried a cargo of hate, our hate, riding with them unrecognized. They couldn’t afford to reveal it.”

Hulgruv laughed uproariously. The girl shook her head slowly at Roki, as if pitying him.

“It’s true, I tell you! I guessed, sure. But it was pretty obvious they were taking their surgibank supplies by murder. And they contend they’re not men. They guard their ships so closely, live around them while in port. And he admitted it to me.”

The second signal came. Roki answered it, then began ignoring the girl. She didn’t believe him. Hulgruv appeared amused. He hummed the signals over to himself—without mistake.

“You’re using polytonal code for challenge, monotonal for reply. That makes it harder to learn.”

The Cophian caught his breath. He glanced at the Solarian’s huge, bald braincase. “You hope to learn some three or four hundred sounds—and sound-combinations within the time I allow you?”

“We’ll see.”

Some note of contempt in Hulgruv’s voice gave Roki warning.

“I shorten my ultimatum to one hour! Decide by then. Surrender, or I stop answering. Learn it, if you can.”

“He can, Roki,” muttered Daleth. “They can memorize a whole page at a glance.”

Roki keyed another answer. “I’ll cut it off if he tries it.”

The commander was enduring the tension of the stalemate superbly. “Ask yourself, Cophian,” he grunted with a smile, “what would you gain by destroying the ship—and yourself? We are not important. If we’re destroyed, our planet loses another gnat in space, nothing more. Do you imagine we are incapable of self-sacrifice?”

Roki found no answer. He set his jaw in silence and answered the signals as they came. He hoped the bluff would win, but now he saw that Hulgruv would let him destroy the ship. And—if the situation were reversed, Roki knew that he would do the same. He had mistakenly refused to concede honor to an enemy. The commander seemed to sense his quiet dismay, and he leaned forward to speak softly.

“We are a new race, Roki—grown out of man. We have abilities of which you know nothing. It’s useless to fight us. Ultimately, your people will pass away. Or become stagnant. Already it has happened to man on Earth.”

“Then—there are two races on Earth.”

“Yes, of course. Did apes pass away when man appeared? The new does not replace the old. It adds to it, builds above it. The old species is the root of the new tree.”

“Feeding it,” the Cophian grunted bitterly.

He noticed that Talewa was becoming disturbed. Her eyes fluttered from one to the other of them.