The Long Result Read Online Free PDF

expert to explain the Starhomer design factors to me. As my car pulled to a halt, I glanced around. Asprey and Kubishev were perfectly capable of preparing the wagon for their passengers, and as yet the landing elevator hadn’t arrived on its lumberingtracked base, to suckle up leech-fashion to the ship’s main lock.
    He’d do,
I told myself, spotting a man in spacecrew red, with navigation officer’s star and sextant gleaming on his lapels. I went over and called to him.
    ‘Excuse me, friend. This ship was built on Starhome, isn’t that right?’
    He glanced at me. He was frowning. ‘Yes, that’s right. We’ve been expecting her for some while.’
    ‘Can you tell me how she’s different from our own? I can’t pin the changes down.’
    ‘Nor can I,’ the spaceman muttered. ‘I was expecting something radically unconventional – the grapevine has been humming for months with rumours of a major design break-through. But her lines are ordinary enough. Very clean, but orthodox.’
    He resumed his own scrutiny of the vessel, obviously preferring to ignore me. I shrugged, and went over to the base of the passenger elevator which by now had reached the ship and lifted its telescopic cab-arm to the level of the locks.
    The wait for the cab seemed interminable. It had dragged on for a subjective eternity when the note of the elevator’s turbine changed and I tautened. Any moment now, I was due to come face to face with the first Tau Cetians to set foot on Earth.
    In a way, it was a disappointment. My immediate reaction was to think how much they resembled men in their protective suits. Then I started to take in the differences: the disproportionately long arms, the discoloration of their face-plates thanks to the mixture of gases behind them, their slenderness – allowing for the suits – in comparison with their height.
    The cab was large. There were a number of human beings in it with the aliens – among them, presumably, the courier,Kay Lee Wong. I stepped forward hesitantly, scanning faces and seeing several sufficiently Asiatic to match the name.
    ‘Ah – I’m Roald Vincent from BuCult,’ I said. ‘Which of you is the courier, Kay Lee Wong?’
    ‘I am,’ said a clear voice, and a girl pushed forward – a girl so tiny she barely reached my elbow. ‘And what the hell do
you
want?’

5
    For the next few seconds I could only think of one thing: absurdly, it was that she couldn’t have done too bad a job, since she had obviously got over the first hurdle facing a courier. The aliens – there were five of them – could tell her from other human beings, for all their faceplates were turned to gaze at her. If the Starhomers had picked her for her small size, deliberately giving the aliens a physical characteristic by which to identify her more easily, they’d shown unusual good sense.
    Then I was overcome by a sensation of rootless terror, and for a moment thought it was genuine before remembering that the file on the Tau Cetians had warned me: they spoke below the human auditory range, and subsonics frequently engender futile alarm-reactions. They were simply discussing me among themselves.
    I mastered myself with an effort. I was about to curse Tinescu for not letting me know that the courier was a woman; then I realized the Starhomers might well not have mentioned the fact, and anyway it was irrelevant.
    I gave her a second and closer look. Now, I saw that her face showed extreme tension and weariness; her eyes were unnaturally bright, probably from some reaction-speedingdope such as chronodrin. This was confirmed by her movements – quick, but contrasted with periods of utter rigidity, like the darting head-movements of a bird.
    Hoping that my tact was enough to insure against the anticipated Starhomer resentment of Earthmen muscling in, I said, ‘I have a wagon waiting for the visitors, and accommodation for them has been arranged at the Ark – the Alien Accommodation Centre. Perhaps you’d like