The Invaders Part 11

But it was a nagging and an unhappy business to know that they were watched and overheard everywhere save in that one unwired room. It could have made for tension between them. But there was another thought to hold them together. This was the knowledge that they were literally living on top of a bomb. If an Invader's flying ship descended at the villa, everything that happened would be heard and seen by microphones and concealed television cameras. If the Invaders were too arrogant, or if they were arbitrary, there would be a test to see if their ship could exist in the heart of an atom-bomb explosion.

Coburn and Janice, then, were happy after a fashion. But n.o.body could call their situation restful.

They had very few visitors. The Greek general came out meticulously every day. Hallen came out once, but he knew about the atomic bomb. He didn't stay long. When they'd been in residence a week, the General telephoned zestfully that he was going to bring out some company. His English was so mangled and obscure that Coburn wondered cynically if whoever listened to their tapped telephone could understand him. But, said the General in high good humor, he was playing a good joke. He had hunted up Helena, who was Coburn's secretary, and he had also invited Dillon to pay a visit to some charming people he knew. It would be a great joke to see Dillon's face.

There was a fire in the living room that night. The Greek servants had made it, and Coburn thought grimly that they were braver men and women than he'd have been. They didn't have to risk their lives. They could have refused this particular secret-service a.s.signment. But they hadn't.

A voice spoke from the living-room ceiling, a clipped American voice.

"Mr. Coburn, a car is coming."

That was standard. When the General arrived; when the occasional delivery of telephoned-for supplies came; on the one occasion when a peddler on foot had entered the ground. It lacked something of being the perfect atmosphere for a honeymoon, but it was the way things were.

Presently there were headlights outside. The Greek butler went to greet the guests. Coburn and Janice heard voices. The General was in uproarious good humor. He came in babbling completely uncomprehensible English.

There was Helena. She smiled warmly at Coburn. She went at once to Janice. "How do you do?" she said in her prettily accented English. "I have missed not working for your husband, but this is my fiance!"

And Janice shook hands with a slick-haired young Greek who looked pleasant enough, but did not seem to her as remarkable as Coburn.

Then Dillon stared at Coburn.

"The devil!" he said, with every evidence of indignation. "This is the chap--"

The General roared, and Coburn said awkwardly: "I owe you an apology, and the privilege of a poke in the nose besides. But it was a situation--I was in a state--"

Then the General howled with laughter. Helena laughed. Her fiance laughed. And Dillon grinned amusedly at Coburn.

"My dear fellow!" said Dillon. "We are the guests this whole villa was set up to receive! The last time I saw you was in Naousa, and the last time Helena saw you you stuck pins in her, and--"

Coburn stiffened. He went slowly pale.

"I--see! You're the foam-suit people, eh?" Then he looked with hot pa.s.sion at the General. "You!" he said grimly. "You I didn't suspect.

You've made fools of all of us, I think."

The General said something obscure which could have been a proverb. It was to the effect that n.o.body could tell a fat man was cross-eyed when he laughed.

"Yes," said Dillon beaming. "He is fat. So his eyes don't look like they're different. You have to see past his cheeks and eyebrows. That's how he pa.s.sed muster. And he slept very soundly after the airport affair."

Coburn felt a sort of sick horror. The General had pa.s.sed as a man, and he'd loaned this villa, and he knew all about the installation of the atomic bomb.... Then Coburn looked through a doorway and there was his Greek butler standing in readiness with a submachine-gun in his hands.

"I take it this is an official call," said Coburn steadily. "In that case you know we're overheard--or did the General cancel that?"

"Oh, yes!" said Dillon. "We know all about the trap we've walked into.

But we'd decided that the time had come to appear in the open anyhow.

You people are very much like us, incidentally. Apparently there's only one real way that a truly rational brain can work. And we and you Earth people both have it. May we sit down?"

Janice said: "By all means!"

Helena sat, with an absolutely human gesture of spreading her skirt beside her. The General plumped into a chair and chuckled. The slick-haired young man politely offered Janice a cigarette and lighted Helena's for her. Dillon leaned against the mantel above the fire.

"Well?" said Coburn harshly. "You can state your terms. What do you want and what do you propose to do to get it?"

Dillon shook his head. He took a deep breath. "I want you to listen, Coburn. I know about the atom bomb planted somewhere around, and I know I'm talking for my life. You know we aren't natives of Earth. You've guessed that we come from a long way off. We do. Now--we found out the trick of s.p.a.ce travel some time ago. You're quite welcome to it. We found it, and we started exploring. We've been in s.p.a.ce, you might say, just about two of your centuries. You're the only other civilized race we've found. That's point one."

Coburn fumbled in his pocket. He found a cigarette. Dillon held a match.

Coburn started, and then accepted it.

"Go on." He added, "There's a television camera relaying this, by the way. Did you know?"

"Yes, I know," said Dillon. "Now, having about two centuries the start of you, we have a few tricks you haven't found out yet. For one thing, we understand ourselves, and you, better than you do. We've some technical gadgets you haven't happened on yet. However, it's entirely possible for you to easily kill the four of us here tonight. If you do--you do. But there are others of our race here. That's point two."

"Now come the threats and demands," said Coburn.

"Perhaps." But Dillon seemed to hesitate. "Dammit, Coburn, you're a reasonable man. Try to think like us a moment. What would you do if you'd started to explore s.p.a.ce and came upon a civilized race, as we have?"

Coburn said formidably, "We'd study them and try to make friends."

"In that order," said Dillon instantly. "That's what we've tried to do.

We disguised ourselves as you because we wanted to learn how to make friends before we tried. But what did we find, Coburn? What's your guess?"

"You name it!" said Coburn.

"You Earth people," said Dillon, "are at a turning-point in your history. Either you solve your problems and keep on climbing, or you'll blast your civilization down to somewhere near a caveman level and have to start all over again. You know what I mean. Our two more spectacular interferences dealt with it."

"The Iron Curtain," said Coburn. "Yes. But what's that got to do with you? It's none of your business. That's ours."

"But it _is_ ours," said Dillon urgently. "Don't you see, Coburn?

You've a civilization nearly as advanced as ours. If we can make friends, we can do each other an infinite lot of good. We can complement each other. We can have a most valuable trade, not only in goods, but in what you call human values and we call something else. We'd like to start that trade.

"But you're desperately close to smashing things. So we've had to rush things. We did stop that Bulgarian raid. When you proved too sharp to be fooled, we grew hopeful. Here might be our entering wedge. We hammered at you. We managed to make your people suspicious that there might be something in what you said. We proved it. It was rugged for you, but we had to let you people force us into the open. If we'd marched out shyly with roses in our hair--what would you have thought?"

Coburn said doggedly: "I'm still waiting for the terms. What do you want?"

The General said something plaintive from his chair. It was to the effect that Coburn still believed that Earth was in danger of conquest from s.p.a.ce.

"Look!" said Dillon irritably. "If you people had found the trick of s.p.a.ce travel first, and you'd found us, would you have tried to conquer us? Considering that we're civilized?"

Coburn said coldly, "No. Not my particular people. We know you can't conquer a civilized race. You can exterminate them, or you can break them down to savagery, but you can't conquer them. You can't conquer us!"

Then Dillon said very painstakingly: "But we don't want to conquer you.

Even your friends inside the Iron Curtain know that the only way to conquer a country is to smash it down to savagery. They've done that over and over for conquest. But what the devil good would savages be to us? We want someone to trade with. We can't trade with savages. We want someone to gain something from. What have savages to offer us? A planet?

Good Heavens, man! We've already found sixty planets for colonies, much better for us than Earth. Your gravity here is ... well, it's sickeningly low."