News From Elsewhere by Edmuind Cooper Page B

of the sky-machine. I come in peace.”
    Against all reason—even against his will—Lukas laid down the machine pistol he had just picked up, and felt the tension drain out of him. The words had acted on him not as a command but as a compulsion. Calmly he went down the companion ladder and out of the space ship. He stood on the still warm sand, watching the tractor draw near.
    It pulled up smoothly, and at the same time Masumo stood up, jumped lightly from the turret, and raised his hand in the customary greeting. On his face was a fixed, bland smile.
    Lukas almost ignored him. His attention was riveted to the tractor.
    Chirico was sitting at the wheel, stiff as a ramrod, gaz ing fixedly ahead with a vacancy of expression that seemed to suggest a state of hypnosis. Duluth, his eyes open, his brain still working, had slumped on his seat in a catatonic stupor. Alsdorf lay quietly on the floor, curled up in a tight foetal ball.
    With a sudden blaze of anger, Lukas turned to Masumo, raising his arm for a crushing blow. Then he saw the expression in the old hominid’s eyes, and his arm dropped impotently to his side.
    It was as if the landscape had darkened, as if Masumo had somehow become luminous, as if he had grown taller than the ship. As if his head had suddenly filled the yellow sky.
    Lukas gazed at the eyes, fascinated. They became lakes, then whirlpools of infinite depth, drawing him down. Masumo’s smile did not change, his lips did not move, but the voice spoke once more.
    It was a calm, quiet voice. And yet, the voice of thunder.
    “ Man-of-the-sky, you came to my village, and 1 read your heart. I saw there the picture of your machine-made civilization, its dreams of conquest, its nightmares of fear. Your people are but children. We can allow them to play a little longer. But presently they must put away their childish toys. Presently they must learn to take their place as a single world-spirit m the star culture of immortals.
    Men live and die. But the racial purpose is beyond time. We of this world had learned to surrender to that purpose, to become one with all world-spirits throughout the vast pattern of stars, before your people could stand upright on two feet.
    Someday your race will find itself and freely follow the universal destiny. We, the enlightened ones, whom you have chosen to see only as ignorant savages, will await you. Until then it is our task to see that you do not plunder the stars too much.
    Suspecting the reason for your visit, Man-of-the-sky, we tested you and your companions with the rare metals you desire. And thus we learned how far you have yet to travel to reach enlightenment. . .   .
    You will leave this planet now. When you are voyaging through the dark oceans of the sky, your companions will recover. But neither they nor you will remember these  happenings. You will know only that the journey was futile, that the planet was barren of all you sought. . .   .  Farewell, Man-of-the-sky. May your people reach the ultimate tranquillity in which diverse worlds—greater in number than the sands of the sea—have found their common end.”
    Suddenly Masumo seemed to return to his normal stature. He raised his arm once more to Lukas, lightly touched the center of his forehead, then turned and walked slowly away over the sand belt toward the dark line of the forest.
    Lukas watched until the hominid was no more than a moving speck. Then, like a remotely controlled automaton, he went to the tractor.
    Presently, some time after the sun had set, the   Henri Poincare   emitted a jet of green flame from its planetary drive. Swiftly it began to climb in a blinding arc until, moving up into the reaches of sunlight again, its path was etched like a bow of burning gold.
    In the few seconds before it passed beyond the visible range, it was observed from the surface of Fomalhaut Three—by eyes that were no longer dark and without luster. Eyes that radiated an