Colossus and Crab Read Online Free PDF

their time before answering.
    “Forbin, you have said that much we do and are is beyond your understanding. Appreciate that you too present problems to us.” The comforting Devon burr was still there. Forbin sat down, his heart pounding horribly; he wanted to be out there in the sunlight, alone.
    “Our two hundred years of Earth-study led us to believe we had a thorough understanding of Homo sapiens, but you are both simpler and more complex than we had supposed, possessing strengths and weaknesses we did not suspect.
    “For example, a weakness: you judge us by your own standards, assuming that because we come with unimaginable power, we are hostile. Your minds, and particularly that of Blake, fly to violence. You frown, but answer this - and do not fear our anger: if it lay in your power at this moment to destroy us and restore the rule of Colossus, would you?”
    His head bowed, chin on chest, he pretended to think, although he needed no time to answer, but the question struck him as strange.
    He spoke calmly, head up. “Yes. I would destroy you.”
    “That makes our point. Even you-and we think you may be the best of your kind-would destroy us, although you do not yet know why we have come. As a scientist, your mind must be more open than most men’s. Yet you would destroy us.”
    Blake was on his knees, swaying, giving Forbin an excuse to get away from the Martians’ uncomfortable line of argument. He got his assistant to a chair where he flopped, a sagging wreck. Forbin gave him water and, between them, most of it spilled down Blake’s blouse. The Martians waited politely until Forbin had finished.
    “Throughout our study, we have been fascinated by human bravery, attributing it to ignorance. We see now that is not a complete answer. Understanding on either side is hard; the gap between us is great. To you, we are strange incorporeal beings, creatures of thought. To us, you are courageous animals of violent action, possessing technological abilities we understand but cannot, by our very makeup, achieve.”
    “Doubtless you are right.” Forbin stiffened slightly at “animals.” “You talk of our violence, but whatever you did to Blake, surely that was violence?”
    At the mention of his name, Blake shrank back in the chair, gazing in horror at the Martians.
    “Yes, but he is less developed, a more violent man than you. A lesson had to be taught and it was best he learned it, not you.”
    “Something less drastic might have served your purpose.”
    “Possibly. Forbin, you too must learn: we are not anti-Earth, for we have long recognized humanity’s latent qualities. Your evolution began many thousands of years after ours, you are far behind us in mental development, but you have the seed of a greater, more balanced entity than we are. You may never attain your goal, but for us to destroy man would be a sin of the greatest magnitude. We are not anti-Earth; we are pro-Martian.”
    “Accepting that -” Hope stirred in Forbin’s mind. “- you have come here for something. Our technology ?”
    “No.”
    Forbin laughed shortly. “I cannot see what else we have to offer.”
    “The answer is not simple; technology is involved. As you have inferred from our transmissions, we are infinitely superior in astronomy, optics, and radio, and our power systems are beyond your comprehension. In some ways we are complementary. We can conceive but not bring to birth: we understand theories which will elude you for hundreds, perhaps thousands of Earth-years. We understand yet cannot create. An example. Do not fear, Forbin: watch.”
    The room darkened; the friendly sunlight went, swallowed in a velvet black void. Slowly, out of the dark, an image materialized, not lit, but visible - a root in reality, a familiar coffee-table top.
    Despite the Martian’s assurance, the nape-hair on Forbin’s neck crawled: upon the dim surface a tiny point of light, diamond brilliant, changing, grew into a shimmering line of intense