Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 02 - Honorable Opponent.pdf

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Honourable Opponent
Cifford D Simak
The Fivers were late.
Perhaps they had misunderstood.
Or this might be another of their tricks.
Or maybe they never had intended to stick to their agreement.
"Captain," asked General Lyman Flood, "what time have we got now ?"
Captain Gist looked up from the chessboard. "Thirty-seveno-eight,
galactic, sir."
Then he went back to the board again. Sergeant Conrad had pinned his
knight and he didn't like it.
"Thirteen hours late !" the general fumed.
"They may not have got it straight, sir."
"We spelled it out to them. We took them by the hand and we went over it
time and time again so they'd have it clear in mind. They couldn't possibly
misunderstand." But they very possibly could, he knew.
The Fivers misunderstood almost everything. They had been confused about
the armistice--as if they'd never heard of an armistice before. They had been
obtuse about the prisoner e~xchange. Even the matter of setting a simple time
had involved acruciating explanation--as if they had never heard of the
measurement of time and were completely innocent of basic mathematics.
"Or maybe they broke down," the 'captain offered.
The general snorted. "They don't break down. Those ships of theirs are
marvels. They'd live through anything. They whipped us, didn't they ?"
"Yes sir," said the captain.
"How many of them, Captain, do you estimate we de stroyed ?"
"Not more than a dozen, sir."
"They're tough," the general said.
He went back across the tent and sat down in a chair.
The captain had been wrong. The right number was eleve~
And of those, only one had been confirmed destroyed. Th others had been no
better than put out of action.
And the way it figured out, the margin had been more tha ten to one in
favour of the Flyers. Earth, the general admitte to himself, had never taken
such a beating. Whole squadron had been wiped out; others had come fleeing
back to Base wi~ their numbers cut in half.
They came fleeing back to Base and there were no cripple
They had returned without a scratch upon them. And the shi1 that had been
lost had not been visibly destroyed--they h, simply been wiped out, leaving
not a molecule of wreckage.
How do you beat a thing like that, he asked himself. How you fight a
weapon that cancels out a ship in its entirety ?
Back on Earth and on hundreds of other planets in tZ
Galactic Confederacy, thousands of researchers were workh day and night in
a crash-priority programme to find an answ to the weapon--or at least to find
the weapon.
But the chance of success ran thin, the general knew, f there was not a
single clue to the nature of it. Which w understandable, since every victim of
the weapon had been lc irretrievably.
Perhaps some of the human prisoners would be able provide a clue. If there
had been no such hope, he knew, EaJ never would have gone to all the trouble
to make this prisor exchange.
He watched the captain and the sergeant hunched above t chessboard, with
the captive Fiver looking on.
He called the captive over.
The captive came like a trundling roly-poly.
And once again, watching him, the general had that strange, disturbing
sense of outrage.
 
For the Fiver was a droll grotesque that held no hint of the martial
spirit. He was round and jolly in every feature, expression and gesture,
dressed in a ribald clash of colours, as though designed and clad deliberately
to offend any military mall.
"Your friends are late," the general told him.
"You wait," the Fiver said and his words were more like whistling than
talk. One had to listen closely to make out what he said.
The general held himself in check.
No use in arguing.
No point blowing up.
He wondered if he--or the human race--would ever understand the Fivers.
Not that anyone really wanted to, of course. Just to get them combed out
of Earth's hair would be enough.
"You wait," the Fiver whistled. "They come in middle time from now."
And when in hell, the general wondered, would be middle time from now ?
The Fiver glided back to watch the game.
The general walked outside.
The tiny planet looked colder and more desolate and forbidding than it
ever had before. Each time he looked at it, the general thought, the scene was
more depressing than he had remembered it.
Lifeless, worthless, of no strategic or economic value, it had qualified
quite admirably as neutral territory to carry out the prisoner exchange.
Neutral mostly because it wasn't worth the trouble for anyone to grab it.
The distant star that was its sun was a dim glow in the sky.
The black and naked rock crept out to a near horizon. The icy air was like
a knife inside the general's nostrils.
There were no hills or valleys. There was absolutely nothing mjust the
smooth flatness of the rock stretching on all sides, for all the world like a
great space field.
It had been the Fivers, the general remembered, who had suggested this
particular planet and that in itself was enough to make it suspect. But Earth,
at that point in the negotiations, had been in no position to do much
haggling.
He stood with his shoulders hunched and he felt the cold breath of
apprehension blowing down his neck. With each passing hour, it seemed, the
place felt more and more like some gigantic trap.
But he must be wrong, he argued. There was absolutely nothing in the
Fivers' attitude to make him feel like that. They had, in fact, been almost
magnanimous. They could have laid down their termsmalmost any terms--and the
Confederacy would have had no choice but to acquiesce. For Earth must buy
time, no matter what the price. Earth had to be ready next time--five years or
ten or whatever it might be.
But the Fivers had made no demands, which was unthinkable.
Except, the general told himself, one could never know what they might be
thinking or what they might be planning.
The exchange camp huddled in the dimness~a few tents, a portable power
plant, the poised and waiting ship and, beside it, the little scouter the
captive Fiver had been piloting.
The scouter in itself was a good example of the gulf which separated the
Fivers and the humans. It had taken three full days of bickering before the
Fivers had been able to make clear their point that the scouter as well as its
pilot must be returned to them.
No ship in all the Galaxy had ever gotten so thorough a study as that tiny
craft. But the facts that it had yielded had been few indeed. And the captive
Fiver, despite the best efforts of the experts in Psych, had furnished even
fewer.
The area was quiet and almost deserted. Two sentries strode briskly up and
down. Everyone else was under cover, killing time, waiting for the Fivers.
The general walked quickly across the area to the medic tent.
He stooped and went inside.
 
Four men were sitting at a table, drearily playing cards. One of them put
down his hand and rose. "Any word, General ?"
The general shook his head. "They should be coming soon,
Doe. Everything all set ?"
"We've been ready for some time," said the psychiatrist.
"We'll bring the boys in here and check them over as soon as they arrive.
We've got the stuff all set. It won't take long."
"That's fine. I want to get off this rock as quickly as I can. I don't
like the feel of it."
"There's just one thing .... "
"What's that ?"
"ff we only knew how many they are handing back."
The general shook his head. "We never could find out.
They're not so hot on figures. And you'd think, wouldn't you, that math
would be universal ?"
"Well," said Doe resignedly, "we'll do the best we can."
"There can't be many," the general said. "We're only giving back one Fiver
and one ship. How many humans do you figure a ship is worth to them ?"
"I wouldn't know. You really think they'll come ?"
"It's hard to be certain that they understood. When it comes to sheer
stupidity .... "
ú "Not so stupid," Doe replied, quietly. "We couldn't learn their
language, so they learned ours."
"I know," the general said impatiently. "I realize all that.
But that armistice business--it took days for them to get what we were
driving at. And the time reckoning system still more days. Oood Lord, man, you
could do better using sign language with a Stone Age savage?'
"You should," said Doe. "The savage would be human."
"But these Fivers are intelligent. Their technology, in many ways, has us
beaten seven ways from Sunday. They fought us to a standstill."
"They licked us."
"All right, then, they licked us. And why not? They had this weapon that
we didn't have. They were closer to their bases.
They had no logistics problem to compare with ours. They licked us, but I
ask you, did they have the sense to know it ?
Did they take advantage of it ? They could have wiped us out.
They could have laid down peace terms that would have crippled us for
centuries. Instead, they let us go. Now how does that make sense ?"
"You're dealing with an alien race," said Doe.
"We've dealt with other aliens. And we always understood them. Mostly, we
got along with them."
"We dealt with them on a commercial basis," Doc reminded him. "Whatever
trouble we might have had with them came after a basic minimum of
understanding had been achieved.
The Fivers are the first that ever came out shooting."
"I can't figure it," the general said. "We weren't even heading for them.
We might have passed them by. They couldn't have known who we were. Point is,
they didn't care. They just came piling out and opened up on us. And it's been
the same with everyone else who came within their reach. They take on every
comer. There's never a time when they aren't fighting someone-sometimes two or
three at once."
"They have a defensive complex," said Doe. "Want to be left
alone. All they aim to do is keep others off their planets. As you say
they could have wiped us out."
"Maybe they get hurt real easy. Don't forget we gave them a bloody nose or
two--not as much as they busted us, but we hurt them some. I figure they'll
come out again, soon as they can cut it."
He drew a deep breath. "Next time, we have to be ready for them. Next
time, they may not stop. We have to dope them out."
It was tough work, he thought, to fight an enemy about which one knew next
 
to nothing. And a weapon about which one knew absolutely nothing.
There were theories in plenty, but the best no more than educated guesses.
The weapon might operate in time--hurling its targets back into unimagined
chaos. Or it might be dimensional. Or it might collapse the atoms in upon
themselves, reducing a spaceship to the most deadly massive dustmote the
universe had known.
One thing for certain--it was not disintegration, for there was no flash
and there was no heat. The ship just disappeared and that was the end of
itmthe end and all of it.
"There's another thing that bothers me," said Doc. "Those other races that
fought the Fivers before they jumped on us.
When we tried to contact them, when we tried to get some help from them,
they wouldn't bother with us. They wouldn't tell us anything."
"This is a new sector of space for us," lhe general said. "We are
strangers here."
"It stands to reason," argued Doe, "they should jump at the chance to gang
up on the Fivers."
"We can't depend on alliances. We stand alone. It is up to us."
He bent to leave the tent.
"We'll get right on it," said Doc, "soon as the men show up.
We'll have a preliminary report within an hour, if they're in any shape at
all."
"That's fine," the general said and ducked out of the tent.
It was a bad situation, blind and terrifying if one didn't manage to keep
a good grip on himself.
The captive humans might bring back some information, but even so, you
couldn't buy it blind, for there might be a gimmick in it as there was a
gimmick in what the captive Fiver knew.
This time, he told himself, the psych boys might hay managed to outsmart
themselves.
It had been a clever trick, all right--taking the captive Five on that
trip and showing him so proudly all the barren, no-goo, planets, pretending
they were the showplaces of the Co~ federacy.
Clever--if the Fiver had been human. For no human woul~ have fought a
skirmish, let alone a war, for the kind of planet he'd been shown.
But the Fiver wasn't human. And there was no way c knowing what kind of
planet a Fiver might take a fanc to.
And there always was the chance that those crummy plane' had given him the
hunch that Earth would be easy prey.
The whole situation didn't track, the general thought. Thel was a basic
wrongness to it. Even allowing for all the difference which might exist
between the Fiver and the human culture the wrongness still persisted.
And there was something wrong right here.
He heard the sound and wheeled to stare into the sky.
The ship was close and coming in too fast.
But even as he held his breath, it slowed and steadied an came to ground
in a perfect landing not more than a quarter › a mile from where the Earth
ship stood.
The general broke into a run toward it, then remembered an slowed to a
stiff military walk.
Men were tumbling out of tents and forming into lines. A order rang across
the area and the lines moved with perfec drill precision.
The general allowed himself a smile. Those boys of his weI good. You never
caught them napping. If the Flyers tm expected to sneak in and catch the camp
confused and thus ga: a bit of face, it was a horse on them.
The marching men swung briskly down the field. An a~ bulance moved out
from beneath its tarp and followed.
Drums began to roll and the bugles sounded clear and crisp in the harsh,
cold air.
It was men like these, the general told himself with pride, who held the
 
expanding Confederacy intact. It was men like these who kept the peace across
many cubic light-years. It'was men like these who some day, God willing, would
roll back the
Fiver threat.
There were few wars now. Space was too big for it. There were too many
ways to skirt around the edge of war for it to come anything but seldom. But
something like the Fiver threat could not be ignored. Some day, soon or late,
either Earth or Fiver must go down to complete defeat. The Confederacy could
never feel secure with the Fivers on its flank.
Feet pounded behind him and the general turned. It was Captain Gist,
buttoning his tunic as he ran. He fell in beside the general.
"So they finally came, sir."
"Fourteen hours late," the general said. "Let us, for the moment, try to
look our best. You missed a button, Captain."
"Sorry, sir," the captain said, fastening the button.
"Right, then. Get those shoulders back. Smartly, if you will.
Right, left, hup, hup !"
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Sergeant Conrad had his squad
moving out with precision, escorting the captive Fiver most correctly forward,
with all the dignity and smartness that anyone might wish.
The men were drawn up now in two parallel lines, flanking the ship. The
port was swinging open and the ramp was rumbling out and the general noted
with some satisfaction that he and Captain Gist would arrive at the foot of
the ramp about the time it touched the ground. The timing was dramatic and
superb, almost as if he himself had planned it down to the last detail.
The ramp snapped into position and three Fivers came sedately waddling
down it.
A seedy-looking trio, the general thought. Not a proper uniform nor a
medal among the lot of them.
The general seized the diplomatic initiative as soon as the reached the
ground.
"We welcome you," he told them, speaking loudly an slowly and as
distinctly as he could so they would undeJ stand.
They lined up and stood looking at him and he felt a b uncomfortable
because there was that round jolly expression i their faces. Evidently they
didn't have the kind of faces th~ could assume any other expression. But they
kept on looking' him.
The general plunged ahead. "It is a matter of great grati cation to Earth
to carry out in good faith our obligations agreed upon in the armistice
proceedings. It marks what sincerely hope will be the beginning of an era ....
"
"Most nice," one of the Flyers said. Whether he meant tl general's little
speech or the entire situation or was simply tryi~ to be gracious was not at
once apparent.
Undaunted, the general was ready to go on, but the spoke man Fiver raised
a short round arm to halt him.
"Prisoners arrive briefly," he whistled.
"You mean you didn't bring them ?"
"They come again," the Fiver said with a glorious disrega for preciseness
of expression.
He continued beaming at the general and he made a moti, with the arm that
might have been a shrug.
"Shenanigans," the captain said, close to the general's ca:
"We talk," the Fiver said.
"They're up to something," warned the captain. "It calls f
Situation Red, sir."
"I agree," the general told the captain. "Set it up quietl'
He said to the Fiver delegation: "If you gentlemen will co: with me, I can
offer you refreshments."
He had a feeling that they were smiling at him, but one could never tell.
 

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