Pattern for ConquestSmith, George O. (George Oliver)
Science
Pattern for Conquest
Smith, George O. (George Oliver)
Science fiction
Cliff bade them a proper good-by and herded them back into the car.
It started and rolled slowly away amid feminine calls. Its course was
erratic, for the driver was handling the car by instinct; her head
being turned back over the front seat to watch Lane, too. Had she been
on a road instead of a broad, shining expanse of tarmacadam, trouble
would have met her more than half-way.
Cliff waved a last good-by and turned to face a group of
kine-photographers. "Hi, Hal. Hello, fellers."
"Hey, Cliff, will you wipe your puss or don't you care if Venus sees
their Favorite Son in lipstick?"
Lane laughed and wiped. "On me it doesn't look good," he agreed.
"What'll you have?"
"We'd like shots of you giving the last order, entering the ship, and
then wait until we can get set up on the edge of the field. We want a
pan shot of the command hitting the ether."
"O.K. That we can do."
He turned to the group of unit commanders and said, "The usual,
fellows. Straight up and away. Hey, Hal, pan the gang, will you? As a
hotshot I'm slightly cool if they aren't behind me."
"Great stuff," grinned Hal. The kinephotogs spread out, took their
shots, and then closed up for the final order. As the space door
clanged shut, they raced for the edge of the field and waited.
With an instantaneous rush, the lead ship, bearing the green triangle
of Venus surrounded by the five stars of the flight commander, took off
in a slight swirl of airswept dust. Then at a separation of exactly
three tenths of a second, the other twenty-four ships leaped into the
sky and formed a long spiral in space.
The specks that were lost in the sky were Clifford Lane and his command
heading for Terra.
II.
The Little Man had a name. Once in his own tiny spacecraft and
surrounded by his cohorts, he was addressed in his own semi-speech,
semimental means of communications.
"You have succeeded, Toralen Ki?"
"As best I can."
"Not perfect?" asked Hotang Lu.
"As long as the lack of communications exists, there can be no transfer
of real detailed intelligence between the two races. They have no
mental power of communication at all, of course, and since we use our
mental power when we wish to carry over a plan or abstract thought, we
fail when we are confronted as we are now. There are no words in our
audible tongue that have the proper semantic meaning."
"But you did succeed in part?"
"I have succeeded so far as gaining their co-operation. They will
assign to me or to us, rather, the necessary personnel and material to
complete the task."
"Then we have succeeded."
"In a sense. To carry this concept over was most difficult. As long as
we have their consent, everything will work out in time."
"You have succeeded in convincing them that the Opposites must be used?"
Toralen Ki smiled. "The Opposites we picked are violent enemies."
"Good!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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