Humpty Dumpty

Barton approached Earth like a boy asking a girl for his first dance. He was dubious of his welcome, both in space and on the ground. Stalling, he took a course that kept the moon between his ship and his destination, while he tried to think his way through the situation.

The alien ship and its occupants were bound to be something of a surprise to the home folks, and it would take time for Barton to get his story across straight. He was braced for that necessity.

What' the locals would make of his companions was something else again. It would require a sharp observer, he thought, to tell them apart at first: the Demu, God rot their hypothetical souls, were remorselessly thorough in enforcing conformity of appearance. Barton was hit by a surge of belated relief: maybe he looked like the wrath of God and fresh out of thunderbolts, but at least he still carried all his normal appendages.

The moon approached and was past; Earth was ahead.

The blast of a warhead, a megaton at least, caught Barton off guard. The Demu shields blocked heat and other radi- ation, but the buffet dumped Barton out of his seat and slammed him against a wall, bad arm first. Cursing, he clawed his way back to the controls.

Evasive action was skittering zigzag toward Earth;

Barton did it, while fiddling frantically with the commu- nications controls. Not too much chance that Earth and Demu frequencies or modulation systems would match up, but worth trying.

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From outside the ship he could hear nothing but in- coherent noise. He figured it was probably the same at the other end, but he kept talking anyway.

"This is a captured alien ship. For Chrissakes don't blow it up; it wasnt all that easy to get God DAMmitI"- as another warhead went off near him-"I said I cap- tured this thing. I stole it; you need it. Lay off the stupid fireworks . . ." and so on. There was no sign that anyone was paying attention.

With artificial gravity, he didn't have to mess around with the gradual approach. Barton guessed that the shield-effect would keep him from getting fried; he hit air in a full dive. He scared himself by the narrow margin he had left when he pulled out level. But at least he was down where nobody could get a clear shot at him, and with enough speed to beat anything local that he knew about.

He was over the Pacific; that was all he could tell about the geography. It was either dawn or sunset; he'd lost orientation after that second blast. Barton bet on dawn because he didn't know how to fly the ship near the sur- face in the dark. He hoped he was right, because he didn't know how to speak Chinese, either.

Meanwhile he kept saying things like "All I want to do is land this bastard and let somebody look it over. My name is Barton and I used to live here." Somebody was hammering on the other side of the control-room door, wanting in. Somebody could go to hell, the way discipline seemed to have done around here. Out in space where he could leave the controls and move around, no one had bothered him. this way. Barton decided he'd make a lousy drill sergeant; his teachings didn't seem to stick very welL

A voice came over the comm-gear; someone on the ground (a computer, more likely) had decoded the Demu modulation pattern and matched it. Probably hit- ting every frequency band in reach. Barton suspected.

"Calling the human on the Raider ship," the voice said.

"Are you ia control of that ship?. Come in, please."

"Yeah, yeah." said Barton, "I got the ship; where do I put it?'* His relief was so great that the event hardly reg- istered: that this was the first contact he'd had with Earth since the Demu had taken him. How many years had it been? He had no idea.

A nervous laugh came from the other end. "You sound

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human enough, all right," the voice said. "Are you alone?"

"Hell no; I brought the Tenth Marines with me, band and all. What did you think, dummy?" Barton caught himself. "Sorry; I'm a little bent out of shape. No. I'm not alone, but I'm in charge. I have two of the Demu-the Raiders, you call them; I guess they've been back here some?-as prisoners. Take it easy on the little one; she's just a kid. Hasn't done anything, that I know of, to have taken out on her. The big one, her old man, was Director of the research station that carved up the other three on here, that used to look like us but don't any more. To him you can do any damn thing you want, except kill him:

that's my privilege; don't anybody forget it" Barton caught himself just short of fully raving.

"OK," he said, "will somebody talk me in to land this bucket someplace, please?"

"Are you low on fuel or anything?"

"No." Low on patience, maybe, but he didn't say it.

The voice talked him in. The Demu instruments he knew how to operate, lacking Demu ground-based loca- tor equipment, were no good to him. Local radar spotted his position and course so that he could be told how and when to turn, when to slow down, and what to look for at the designated landing site. He had guessed right on the dawn part; they brought him down somewhere in New Mexico. It was about noon there.

Barton sweat the landing, but the ship turned out to be practically foolproof; he was sure he was overcontrol- ling, but it touched ground gently. The Demu shield helped, he supposed. He felt the large muscles in his neck and shoulders relax almost explosively, and only then realized how tense he had been.

But maybe this was no time to relax. The outside viewer showed him a lot of tanks and artillery surround- ing him at close range, so he was in no hurry to chop the ship's protective field. "What the hell is all the hardware for?" he asked rather plaintively.

"Well, you must realize we can't take any chances, Barton."

Barton laughed right out loud; he couldn't help it.

"Buddy, you're taking chances right now you don't even know about. You don't have any choice, come to that. I can help your odds. And get this: I'm not taking any chances at all. I don't have to; I've done that bit." He

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thought a minute, aimed a device and briefly activated it.

"That big hunk of gun off to my left," he said. It was the largest of the lot, that he could see. "Tell 'em to point that at me; just to point it. And see what happens."

Barton waited. Nothing happened, because he had used the Demu unconsciousness weapon on that gun crew. He had to make his point, and sometimes it takes a while. Patiently he waited until the voice channel qui- eted.

"All right," he said finally, "somebody has to trust somebody and I will if you will. Can we can the crap now and get to it?"

"What do you want?" The voice was tense and a little shaky.

"Nothing much. Just get the hardware off me and I'll keep mine off you. There have to be some big wheels out there someplace who want to talk. I want to talk with them, too, because I damn well have news for them. So if they'll come here to this ship I'll come out and meet 'em, and bring my zoo with me. We can talk, and it's perfectly safe for everybody unless some damn fool tries to cross me."

"I don't understand that last part. Barton."

"Be your age." He was dealing with paranoias, he told himself, so he had to fit the part. As though he didn't, al- ready ... "I push one button and we have a three-hundred- mile crater around here. I'll have the button in my hand."

He heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Can we just talk now, . instead?"

Barton had no such button. But he knew that some- times a man has to bluff a little.

He shut off the voice channel: best to quit while he was ahead. Systematically he checked through the control assembly of switches, across and down, deactivating all but standby power to the ship. He was struck, wistfully, by the fact that he'd never learned the function of most of those switches-had never activated them, had never dared. Well, other people could tackle that job now, if things worked out.

Barton looked around the control room of his ship.

Hell, it was like leaving home. Not that there was anything he needed or wanted to take along. His snappy two-piece outfit, much smudged, was the lot. Barton turned abruptly and joined the others in the main compartment.

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There they sat, all in Demu robes. No way of knowing which had hammered on the control-room door at a cru- cial moment. Barton didn't ask; it made no difference.

"We're on Earth," he said. "We go out now, to meet the people. If you have anything you want to keep with you, bring it. Siewen, Linula: interpret."