The Asses of Balaam Part 5

Dodeth did as he was told, without understanding at all.

"I still don't understand, sir," he said bewilderedly.

"Dodeth, what would happen if I told Arvam, here, to fire on you?"

"Why ... why, he'd _refuse_."

"Why should he?"

"Because I'm _human_! That's the most basic robot command."

"I don't know," the Eldest said, eying Dodeth shrewdly. "You might not be a human. You might be a snith. You _look_ like a snith."

Dodeth swallowed the insult, wondering what the Eldest meant.

"Arvam," the Eldest Keeper said to the robot, "doesn't he look like a snith to you?"

"Yes, sir," Arvam agreed.

Dodeth swallowed that one, too.

"Then how do you know he _isn't_ a snith, Arvam?"

"Because he behaves like a human, sir. A snith does not behave like a human."

"And if something does behave like a human, what then?"

"Anything that behaves like a human is human, sir."

Dodeth suddenly felt as though his eyes had suddenly focused after being unfocused for a long time. He gestured toward the clearing. "You mean those ... those _things_ ... are ... _human_?"

"Yes sir," said Arvam solidly.

"But they don't even _talk_!"

"Pardon me for correcting you sir, but they do. I cannot understand their speech, but the pattern is clearly recognizable as speech. Most of their conversation is carried on in tones of subsonic frequency, so your ears cannot hear it. Apparently, your voices are supersonic to them."

"Well, I'll be fried," said Dodeth. He looked at the Elder Keeper.

"That's why the robots reported they couldn't find any _animal_ of that description in the vicinity."

"Certainly. There weren't any."

"And we were so fooled by their monstrous appearance that we didn't pay any attention to their actions," said Dodeth.

"Exactly."

"But this makes the puzzle even _worse_," said Dodeth. "How could such a creature evolve?"

"Look!" interrupted one of the other Keepers, pointing. "Up there in the sky!"

All eyes turned toward the direction the finger pointed.

It was a silvery speck in the sky that moved and became larger.

"I don't think they're from our World at all," said the Eldest Keeper.

He turned to the patrol robot. "Arvam, go down and tell the pesticide robots that there is no danger to us. They're still confused, and I have a feeling that the humans in that ship up there might not like it if we are caught pointing guns at their friends."

As Arvam rolled off, Dodeth said "Another World?"

"Why not?" asked the Eldest. "The Moon, after all, is another World, smaller than ours, to be sure, and airless, but still another World.

We haven't thought too much about other Worlds because we have our own World to take care of. But there was a time, back in the days of the builders of the surface cities, when our people dreamed such things.

But our Moon was the only one close enough, and there was no point in going to a place which is even more h.e.l.lish than our Brightside.

"But suppose the Yellow Sun also has a planet--or maybe even one of the more distant suns, which are hardly more than glimmers of light.

They came, and they landed a few of their party to make a small clearing. Then the ship went somewhere else--to the dark side of our Moon, maybe, I don't know. But they were within calling range, for the ship was called as soon as trouble appeared.

"We don't know anything about them yet, but we will. And we've got to show them that we, too, are human. We have a job ahead of us--a job of communication.

"But we also have a great future if we handle things right."

Dodeth watched the ship, now grown to a silvery globe of tremendous size, drift slowly downward toward the clearing. He felt an inward glow of intense antic.i.p.ation, and he fidgeted impatiently as he waited to see what would happen next.

He rippled a stomp.

THE END