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I expected a word from them. It hasn't come. Surely there must be a mistake?"
"I think it is impossible there should be a mistake in such a matter, Bruce."
"I see. Then it's a public disgrace." Ainson stood there looking at his friend. Or was he really a friend?
Was it not a gross misuse of the term, just because they had been acquainted for a number of years? He
had admired the many sides of Pasztor's character, had admired him for the success of his technidramas,
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had admired his leader-ship on the First Charon Expedition, had admired him for being a man of action.
Now he saw more deeply; he saw that this was merely a playboy of action, a dramatist's idea of a man of
action, an imitation that revealed its spurious-ness at last by the calmness with which, from his safe seat at
the Exozoo, he watched Ms friend's discomfiture.
"Mihaly, although I am a year older than you, I am not yet ready to accept a safe seat back on Earth;
I'm a man of action, and I'm still capable of action. I think I can say without false modesty that they still
have need of men like me at the frontiers of the known universe. I was the man who discovered the
ETA's, and I haven't for-gotten that, if others have. I should be on theGansas when she goes into TP
next week. You could still pull strings and get me on to her, if you wanted. I ask you - I beg you to do
this for me, and swear I will never ask you another favour. I just cannot bear the disgrace of being
passed over in a vital moment like this."
Mihaly pulled a wry face, cupped an elbow and rubbed his chin.
"Would you care for a drink, Bruce?"
"Certainly not. Why do you always insist on offering me one when you know I don't drink?"
"You must excuse me if I have a little one. It is not normally my habit at this early time of morning." As
he went over to a pair of small doors set in the wall, he said, "Perhaps you will feel better, or perhaps
worse, if I tell you that you are not alone in your disgrace. Here at the Exozoo we have our
disappointments. We have not made the progress in communication with these poor ETA'sthat we had
hoped to do."
"I thought that one of them had suddenly started spout-ing English?"
"Spouting is right. A series of jumbled phrases with amazingly accurate imitations of the various voices
that originally spoke them. I recognized my own voice quite clearly. Of course we have it all on tape. But,
unfortu-nately, this development did not come soon enough to save the axe from falling. I have received
word from the Minister for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs that all research with the ETA's is to close down
forthwith."
Unwilling though he was to be diverted from his own concerns, Ainson was startled.
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"By the Buzzardian universe! Theycan't just close it down! This - we've got here the most important
thing that has ever happened in the history of man. They - I don't understand. They can't close it down."
Pasztor poured himself a small whisky and sipped it.
"Unfortunately, the Minister's attitude is understand-able enough. I'm as shocked at this development
as you are, Bruce, but I see how it comes about. It is not easy to make the general public or even a
minister see that the business of understanding another race - or even deciding how its intelligence is to be
measured beside ours - is not something that can be done in a couple of months. Let me put it bluntly,
Bruce; you are thought to have been lax, and the suspicion has spread - just a feeling in the winds, no
more - that we are similarly at fault. That feeling has made the minister's job a little more easy, that is all."
"But he cannot stop the work Bodley Temple and the others are doing."
"I went to see him last evening. He has stopped it. This afternoon the ETA's are being handed over to
the Exo-biology Department."
"Exobiology! Why, Mihaly, why? There is a con-spiracy!"
"With an optimism I personally regard as unfounded, the Minister reasons like this. Within a couple of
months, theGansas will have located more ETA's - a whole planet full of them, in fact. Many of the basic
questions, such as how far advanced the creatures are, will then be answered, and on the basis of those
answers a new and much more effective attempt to communicate with them can be launched."
A sort of shaking took Ainson's body. This confirmed all he had ever suspected about the powers
ranged against him. Blindly, he took a lighted mescahale from Pasztor and sucked its fragrance into his
lungs. Slowly his vision cleared; he said, "Supposing all this were so; something more must lie behind the
minister's move."
The Director helped himself to another drink.
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"I inferred as much myself last evening. The minister gave me a reason which, like it or not, we must
accept."
"What was the reason?"
"The war. We are comfortable here, we are apt to forget this crippling war with Brazil that has
dragged on for so long. Brazil have captured Square 503, and it looks asif our casualties have been
higher than announced. What interests the government at present more than the pos-sibility of talking with
the ETA's is the possibility that they do not experience pain. If there is some substance circulating in their
arteries that confers complete analgesia, then the government want to know about it. It is obviously a
potential war weapon.
"So, the official reasoning goes, we must find out how these beings tick. We must make the best use of
them."
Ainson rubbed bis head. The war! More insanity! It had never entered his mind.
"I knew it would happen! I knew it would! So they are going to cut our two ETA's up," he said. His
voice sounded like a creaking door.
"They are going to cut them up in the most refined way.
They are going to sink electrodes into their brains, to see if pain can be induced. They will try a little
over-heating here, a little freezing there. In short, they will try to discover if the ETA's freedom from pain
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