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The Marco Four, ports open, lay grounded outside.

* * * * *

Farrell could not have said, later, whether his next move was planned or reflexive. The whole desperate issue seemed to hang suspended for a breathless moment upon a hair-fine edge of decision, and in that instant he made his bid.

Without pausing in his stride he sprang out and through the port and down the steep plane of the ramp. The rough stone pavement of the square drummed underfoot; sore muscles tore at him, and weakness was like a weight about his neck. He expected momentarily to be blasted out of existence.

He reached the Marco Four with the startled shouts of his guide ringing unintelligibly in his ears. The port yawned; he plunged inside and stabbed at controls without waiting to seat himself. The ports swung shut. The ship darted up under his manipulation and arrowed into space with an acceleration that sprung his knees and made his vision swim blackly.

He was so weak with strain and with the success of his coup that he all but fainted when Stryker, his scanty hair tousled and his fat face comical with bewilderment, stumbled out of his sleeping cubicle and bellowed at him.

“What the hell are you doing, Arthur? Take us down!”

Farrell gaped at him, speechless.

Stryker lumbered past him and took the controls, spiraling the Marco Four down. Men swarmed outside the ports when the Reclamations craft settled gently to the square again. Gibson and Xavier reached the ship first; Gibson came inside quickly, leaving the mechanical outside making patient explanations to an excited group of Alphardians.

Gibson put a reassuring hand on Farrell’s arm. “It’s all right, Arthur. There’s no trouble.”

Farrell said dumbly, “I don’t understand. They didn’t shoot you and Xav down too?”

It was Gibson’s turn to stare.

“No one shot you down! These people are primitive enough to use metallic power lines to carry electricity to their hamlets, an anachronism you forgot last night. You piloted the helihopper into one of those lines, and the crash put you out for the rest of the night and most of today. These Alphardians are friendly, so desperately happy to be found again that it’s really pathetic.”

” Friendly? That torpedo–“

“It wasn’t a torpedo at all,” Stryker put in. Understanding of the error under which Farrell had labored erased his earlier irritation, and he chuckled commiseratingly. “They had one small boat left for emergency missions, and sent it up to contact us in the fear that we might overlook their settlement and move on. The boat was atomic powered, and our shield screens set off its engines.”

Farrell dropped into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction. He was suddenly exhausted, and his head ached dully.

“We cracked the communications problem early last night,” Gibson said. “These people use an ancient system of electromagnetic wave propagation called frequency modulation, and once Lee and I rigged up a suitable transceiver the rest was simple. Both Xav and I recognized the old language; the natives reported your accident, and we came down at once.”

“They really came from Terra? They lived through a thousand years of flight?”

“The ship left Terra for Sirius in 2171,” Gibson said. “But not with these people aboard, or their ancestors. That expedition perished after less than a light-year when its hydroponics system failed. The Hymenops found the ship derelict when they invaded us, and brought it to Alphard Six in what was probably their first experiment with human subjects. The ship’s log shows clearly what happened to the original complement. The rest is deducible from the situation here.”

Farrell put his hands to his temples and groaned. “The crash must have scrambled my wits. Gib, where
did they come from?”

“From one of the first peripheral colonies conquered by the Bees,” Gibson said patiently. “The Hymenops were long-range planners, remember, and masters of hypnotic conditioning. They stocked the ship with a captive crew of Terrans conditioned to believe themselves descendants of the original crew, and grounded it here in disabled condition. They left for Alphard Five then, to watch developments.

“Succeeding generations of colonists grew up accepting the fact that their ship had missed Sirius and made planetfall here–they still don’t know where they really are–by luck. They never knew about the Hymenops, and they’ve struggled along with an inadequate technology in the hope that a later expedition would find them. They found the truth hard to take, but they’re eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran assimilation.”

Stryker, grinning, brought Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled invitingly. “An unusually fortunate ending to a Hymenop experiment,” he said. “These people progressed normally because they’ve been let alone. Reorienting them will be a simple matter; they’ll be properly spoiled colonists within another generation.”

Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively.

“But I don’t see why the Bees should go to such trouble to deceive these people. Why did they sit back and let them grow as they pleased, Gib? It doesn’t make sense!”

“But it does, for once,” Gibson said. “The Bees set up this colony as a control unit to study the species they were invading, and they had to give their specimens a normal–if obsolete–background in order to determine their capabilities. The fact that their experiment didn’t tell them what they wanted to know may have had a direct bearing on their decision to pull out.”

Farrell shook his head. “It’s a reverse application, isn’t it of the old saw about Terrans being incapable of understanding an alien culture?”

“Of course,” said Gibson, surprised. “It’s obvious enough, surely–hard as they tried, the Bees never understood us either.”