The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction MEGAPACK® Read Online Free PDF Page A

and behind that a gentle indictment of me for having done this to him. This world, I realized, was no place for Earthmen. What had happened was our fault—mine more than anyone else’s.
    “Will you take me with you?” he asked again. “If I stay here, Alaree will kill me.”
    I scowled wretchedly for a moment, fighting a brief battle within myself, and then I looked up. There was only one thing to do—and I was sure, once I explained on Earth, that I would not suffer for it.
    I took his hand. It was cold and limp; whatever he had just been through, it must have been hell. “Yes,” I said softly. “You can come with us.”
    And so Alaree joined the crew of the Aaron Burr. I told them about it just before blast-off, and they welcomed him aboard in traditional manner.
    We gave the sad-eyed little alien a cabin near the cargo hold, and he established himself quite comfortably. He had no personal possessions—“It is not their custom” he said—and promised that he’d keep the cabin clean.
    He had brought with him a rough-edged, violet fruit that he said was his staple food. I turned it over to Kechnie for synthesizing, and we blasted off.
    Alaree was right at home aboard the Burr . He spent much time with me—asking questions.
    “Tell me about Earth,” Alaree would ask. The alien wanted desperately to know what sort of a world he was going to.
    He would listen gravely while I explained. I told him of cities and wars and spaceships, and he nodded sagely, trying to fit the concepts into a mind only newly liberated from the gestalt. I knew he could comprehend only a fraction of what I was saying, but I enjoyed telling him. It made me feel as if Earth were coming closer that much faster, simply to talk about it.
    And he went around begging everyone, “Tell me about Earth.” They enjoyed telling him, too—for a while.
    Then it began to get a little tiresome. We had grown accustomed to Alaree’s presence on the ship, flopping around the corridors doing whatever menial job he had been assigned to. But—although I had told the men why I had brought him with us, and though we all pitied the poor lonely creature and admired his struggle to survive as an individual entity—we were slowly coming to the realization that Alaree was something of a nuisance aboard ship.
    Especially later, when he began to change.
    Willendorf noticed it first, twelve days out from Alaree’s planet. “Alaree’s been acting pretty strange these days, sir,” he told me.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “Haven’t you spotted it, sir? He’s been moping around like a lost soul—very quiet and withdrawn, like.”
    “Is he eating well?”
    Willendorf chuckled loudly. “I’ll say he is! Kechnie made up some synthetics based on the piece of fruit he brought with him, and he’s been stuffing himself wildly. He’s gained ten pounds since he came on ship. No, it’s not lack of food!”
    “I guess not,” I said. “Keep an eye on him, will you? I feel responsible for his being here, and I want him to come through the voyage in good health.”
    After that, I began to observe Alaree more closely myself, and I detected the change in his personality too. He was no longer the cheerful, childlike being who delighted in pouring out questions in endless profusion. Now he was moody, silent, always brooding, and hard to approach.
    On the sixteenth day out—and by now I was worried seriously about him—a new manifestation appeared. I was in the hallway, heading from my cabin to the chartroom, when Alaree stepped out of an alcove. He reached up, grasped my uniform lapel, and, maintaining his silence, drew my head down and stared pleadingly into my eyes.
    Too astonished to say anything, I returned his gaze for nearly thirty seconds. I peered into his transparent pupils, wondering what he was up to. After a good while had passed, he released me, and I saw something like a tear trickle down his cheek.
    “What’s the trouble, Alaree?”
    He shook his