The Alien Way by Gordon R. Dickson

Author:Gordon R. Dickson [Dickson, Gordon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627934589
Publisher: Start Science Fiction
Published: 2013-12-02T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

“…I tell you,” Swanson was saying, “we know they’ve landed. On the far side of the moon. Why didn’t you tell us?”

Jase swayed a little with weariness and decided to sit down. He dropped into one of the heavy, carved-wood armchairs that belonged around the meeting table in the library room, but which was now scattered , back away from it. In the library room now, Coth was seated at that table, as was the man from the United | Nations. Swanson was standing in front of the table, talking to Jase. Neither Mele nor any of the members of the original Board were present. Somehow they had ceased to be part of the discussions—arguments rather—between Jase and Swanson’s associates. Their place had been taken by several unidentified individuals—men in business suits of various ages—who sat around, listening intently but not intruding on the verbal duel between Swanson and Coth on one side and Jase on the other.

“—Didn’t I tell you?” Jase passed a hand over his jaw. He needed a shave. Even Alan Creel had disappeared, to be replaced by some physician with what sounded like a trace of French accent and a neck thick with the fat of middle age. “I’ve been so busy in the stacks…” He searched his memory, sorting it out from the Kator-memories that competed for attention in his head. “I must have forgotten.”

“Don’t forget,” said Coth from the table. "That’s what makes you valuable, your not forgetting to tell us everything.”

Jase looked exhaustedly at him.

"Don’t threaten me,” Jase said. “I’m too worn out to be threatened. Let me keep my strength for necessary things.”

“Yes,” said Swanson, without turning around. “Perhaps we’d better be gentle, Bill. Jase does look shaky. But Jase—that’s because you’re wearing yourself out in those library stacks. Why don’t you give that up for a while?”

“It’s our only chance,” said Jase, leaning his head back against the top of the backrest of his chair and closing his eyes for a second. What Swanson was saying became a meaningless jumble of words as sleep plucked at him, trying to drag him down into unconsciousness. He opened his eyes and Swanson’s voice came clear again. “—What have you learned, anyway?”

“A lot,” said Jase. “A lot.”

“Such as?”

“I’m on the track,” said Jase, “of what it is—that wellspring that their instinctive reactions come from. It’s that we’ve got to understand. Not what they do, but why they do it.”

“Be reasonable!” broke in Coth, suddenly—almost angrily. “They’ve landed on the other side of the moon and dug in there somewhere. We’ll have them on top of us any day now. Is there time for that sort of scientific poking around and nonsense?”

“Nonsense!” Jase straightened up in the chair, taking his head away from the backrest. “It’s because the world didn’t have any time for what you call nonsense—yes, the same sort of nonsense, and the same sort of people like yourself having no use for it—that we’re in this spot. Our neck stuck out

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