Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl [Pohl, Frederik]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781466826441
Google: O7uk_WWWt5wC
Amazon: B008YHUTNY
Publisher: Orb Books
Published: 2005-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

The watchers for the Arrogating Ones, hiding inside the pebbly core of the comet named after the two amateur astronomers who had simultaneously discovered it, studied the results of their radarlike scan of the Earth. This was routine. They were not aware that their scanning had damaged mankind’s communications, but that was not their problem. Their only task was to spray out a shower of particles and catch the returning ones to study—this they did, and what their study told them was that the planet Earth had reached redpoint status. It was now well into a technological age and was thus an active, rather than merely a potential, threat to their masters.

The Arrogating Ones were no longer quite as effectively arrogant as they had once been. They had been creamed rather frequently in their millennia-long struggle against the insectoids. The score was, roughly, Arrogating Ones 53, Insectoids 23,724. The watchers, knowing this, were aware that at least their task would not under these circumstances involve the actual physical conquest of the Earth. It would simply be destroyed.

This was no big deal. Plenty of mechanisms for wiping out a populated planet were stockpiled in the arsenals of the Arrogating Ones. They had not worked very well against the insectoids, unfortunately, but they would be plenty powerful enough to deal with, say, mankind. The weapons for accomplishing this were readily available at any time, but not to the watchers, who were far too low in the hierarchy of authority to be trusted with anything like that.

Their task was much simpler. They were only required to report what they saw and then to soften up the human race so that it would not be able to offer resistance, even ineffectual resistance, to the cleanup teams when they arrived with their planet-busters.

Softening up was a technical problem of some magnitude, but it had been solved long ago. The abducted humans had died messily but not in vain. At least, from the point of view of the Arrogating Ones their deaths had not been in vain, for in their dying agonies they had supplied information about themselves which had enabled the Arrogating Ones to devise appropriate softening-up mechanisms. The watchers had been equipped with these on a standby basis ever since.

Of course, from the point of view of the abducted humans the question of whether their deaths had been in vain might have had a different answer. No one had troubled to ask them.

At any rate, the watchers now energized the generators which would soften up mankind for its destruction.

While they were waiting for a charge to build up they looked up the coordinates and call signal for the nearest cruising superdreadnaught of the Arrogating Ones and transmitted a request for it to come in and finish up the job with a core-bomb. They then discussed among themselves the prospects of what their next assignment would be. It was not a fruitful discussion. Core-bombs are messy and there was not much chance that Comet Ujifusa-McGinnis’s orbit would get them far enough away to be out of its range when it went off.

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