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Title: Farewell message
Author: David Mason
Release date: June 19, 2024 [eBook #73869]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1958
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL MESSAGE ***
FAREWELL MESSAGE
By DAVID MASON
_V'gu found Earth primitive and crude._
_Its hydrogen bombs, for instance...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Science Fiction Adventures April 1958
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was the alien spaceship. It squatted in the middle of the
airfield's main runway, in the way of every plane landing and taking
off, to the complete confusion of traffic control.
The airport people had asked V'gu, politely, to move it. He had looked
at them with blank indifference, and gone on making notes on Terran
marriage rites.
Nobody had suggested _forcing_ V'gu to move his ship. The ship looked
as heavy as a battle cruiser--it probably was armed--and it did not
look as if it could be moved by anything short of a hydrogen bomb.
V'gu, when told about hydrogen bombs, had smiled and implied that such
weapons were about on par with stone axes.
The governments of the world treated V'gu with respect, and informed
their peoples that he was merely a visiting student, with no intention
of harming them, and should be given every courtesy, according to the
best traditions of hospitality to strangers. So far, he had not become
angry at anyone.
It was not too difficult to be courteous to V'gu. He looked reasonably
pleasant: the standard number of arms and legs, one head, and only
a slight tint of green to the skin. The green tint had caused one
restaurant in the southern United States some debate before they would
permit him a table, but V'gu had not been angered; he had merely
smiled and noted it down in his notes about taboos.
In fact, the only thing that made it slightly difficult to be courteous
to V'gu was his air of superiority. He paid for services and sample
objects and information by trading strange gadgets which could do
fabulous things, and which were immediately patentable by the lucky
owners, but he passed out the priceless gadgets with the air of a
civilized man handing out glass beads and useless gimcracks to savages.
It was a question how long before someone felt enough insulted by this
air of superiority to lose his temper and kill the alien being. The
governments of the world were nervously protective of V'gu, trying to
postpone and prevent any such murder. They were afraid of a space fleet
or police force that might come to inquire what had happened to him, if
he came to harm.
At last, to the relief of governments, and to the joy of the traffic
control department of the airport where his ship still obstructed
traffic, V'gu was about to go home. His ship was filled with
photographs, notes and souvenirs. He announced that he had spent
enough years in a tour of strange planets to complete his course of
study. He announced a farewell speech.
Photographers brought cameras to focus on him standing on the lowered
gangplank of his ship, and color TV projected his image to the screens
of the world--a tallish person, only a little strange and ugly, with a
smooth greenish tint to his skin. The photographers finished flashing
stills, and the TV sound booms moved in to pick up his voice.
* * * * *
The oldest reporter there was named McCann, and experience had made him
leathery and cynical. He already knew what V'gu would say--the alien's
superior attitude had made it only too clear.
Someone reminded V'gu respectfully that he had promised a speech.
"Yes indeed," he replied sonorously. His English was perfect. He had
spent all of three hours in learning to speak it.
"You may write in your history books that I think Earth is a pleasant
little planet," he went on, "but sadly backward and primitive in many
respects. I believe that this is caused by the numerous wars, and the
generally quarrelsome behavior of your species." He said this without
anger, and looked at the crowd and the cameras with a kind of superior
pity and compassion in his gaze. "If you could only stop this bickering
among yourselves, with a planet as green and pleasant as this you
could attain a harmony and pleasure of life equal to any of the truly
civilized worlds of the galaxy. My home world, for example, abolished
wars generations ago. We learned a philosophy of cooperation."
He paused, and gestured up dramatically at the starry night sky, and
again looked at the crowd with contempt. "Yes there are many worlds out
there which are peaceful, productive and cooperative. But there are
also worlds which are dead and shrunken cinders where there had been
green planets and thriving races of people who could not give up war.
For your sake I hope that you will be able to change your path, but I
think that you do not have the ability, and that at last you will reach
the end of the path you are on, and destroy each other and perhaps
your world also. Each nova that you see in the sky marks the suicide
of a race. Our knowledge of these matters is certain: there is never a
nova caused simply by accident; power sources cannot fail this way.
Each nova tells us of a war, of the death of a culture which probably
thought of itself as civilized, and yet could not subdue its innate
savagery."
The reporters scribbled and the cameras whirred. McCann closed his
notepad, bored, and gazed at the sky, prepared to suffer through the
rest of the speech. His paper could get the words of the speech from
the TV. McCann had no comment to add; he had heard such ideas before.
To the east in the sky was the distant glare of the landing lights
of an oncoming aircraft.... No. Not a plane, a star. A star almost
fantastically brilliant, brighter than the others, brighter than Mars.
"Mr. V'gu!" a young reporter said excitedly. "Isn't that a nova,
there?" He pointed and everyone looked.
V'gu turned, his hand on the gangway rail. They waited and fidgeted as
he stood without moving, looking up. After a time long enough for him
to have memorized the entire star region, his eyes came down again, and
he looked at them blankly, as if he had forgotten why they were there.
McCann felt a sudden electric thrill of recognition. He had seen a
similar paralyzed lack of expression on the faces of men who had just
learned that they had made some terrible mistake. He turned abruptly
and pushed through the crowd, heading for a phone.
* * * * *
The other reporters didn't understand. Not yet.
"This nova," one of them said. "What was it from?"
V'gu looked up at it. "A sun blew up," he muttered. "Five years ago.
The light took five years to get here." The microphones barely picked
up his voice.
"Do you know anything about the people who lived there, Mr. V'gu?"
V'gu opened his mouth as if to answer. Then he closed it again. He
looked over his shoulder into his spaceship's entrance.
A reporter asked, "What about the nova, Mr. V'gu?"
"I was--I was very well acquainted with the people who caused it," V'gu
said slowly. "Very well acquainted. I--cannot imagine why it happened."
"It was a war, wasn't it, Mr. V'gu?"
"A war?" V'gu looked up again and hesitated. "Yes, I suppose it was."
A moment later he added, apparently without reason, "I've been away
from home a long time."
"How long will it take you to get back home, Mr. V'gu?"
"Get back?" V'gu looked around vaguely, his shoulders slumped. He
looked less alien, somehow, and more like the men around him, and more
likeable. He looked back to his questioner. "Oh. Oh yes, I'm ... I've
changed my mind. You may tell your papers that I've--ah--decided to
extend my stay with you. For--for some time, I think."
The youngest reporter asked suddenly, "Did the nova have anything to do
with you changing your mind? With this decision, I mean."
The tall greenish man in the odd clothes came down the gangplank and
entered the crowd, peering about as if he had forgotten the microphones
and the cameras he was supposed to be speaking to. Then he saw his
object and went through the crowd to him. It was an airfield official.
"Sir," said V'gu to the official, humbly--and suddenly everyone
watching knew how well V'gu had known the people of the nova world.
"Sir, I believe this spaceship is in your way. Where would you like me
to park it?"
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAREWELL MESSAGE ***
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