Title: Last Night Out
Author: Gregor, Lee
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Last Night Out" ***


                            LAST NIGHT OUT

                             By LEE GREGOR

              They shoved through the hate-filled crowds
              of Terra, looking for a little pleasure, a
               little entertainment. For tomorrow Ensign
           Grey and his blue-furred space-mate, Canopus 43C,
              would go off to war--if tomorrow ever came.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Planet Stories September 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The unfriendly street stretched ahead of them, pouring bitter waves of
hostility through their nervous systems. They had ridden the bus from
the space-port into town, and now they stood on the pavement soaking
up the profusion of sensations which permeated the atmosphere of the
brawly town.

Joe, his iridescent fur registering a pale blue of distaste and his
antennae quivering in a controlled agitation, kept a warm tentacle
curled firmly in the hand of Jed Grey. Since his native name was
a soundless, telepathic abstraction, the records of the Solarian
Fleet labeled him Canopus 647-B-43C. To Ensign Jed Grey, his Terran
team-mate, he was Joe.

The blue of Grey's Space Fleet uniform matched, for the moment, the
evanescent hue of Joe's pelt, as, in a curious manner, the pattern
created by Joe's thoughts matched that of Grey.

The sky had created a raucous sunset, challenging the lurid glitter of
the neon signs which lined the main street of Selby, Texas. The light
reflected garishly from the multicolored and multishaped uniforms which
swarmed about the thoroughfare.

Terrans, scaly-headed Arcturians, spined Sirians, the dark and stocky
inhabitants of a strange planet which circled a star whose name to
Terran astronomers was only a number in the star catalogue--all of
these walked in small groups along the length of the street, seeking a
spot where they could relax for the evening and forget where they had
been or where they were going.

Jed Grey asked Joe, "Where are the rest of your boys?"

Joe allowed his perceptual sense to range through the town, his
sensitive antennae erect and rigid. Through the murky welter of
conflicting thought patterns he sought the familiar, gentle sensation
created by the furred Canopans.

"It's hard to find them," he transmitted to Grey. "I know they must be
in town somewhere. They came on the bus before ours. But there are too
many Terrans about and it is bad...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jed Grey knew precisely how bad it was. Habitually en rapport with his
Canopan partner, he sensed in every nerve the hostile atmosphere of the
street, tearing at the hard shell of defense which he had learned to
erect.

The Arcturians, habitually suspicious of strange planetary types, were
sufficiently unpleasant in their thought patterns. However, it was from
the native earthmen, whose blue uniforms vastly outnumbered all others,
that the bulk of the torment arose.

Grey could sense it even though he avoided observing their faces. He
could feel the alcoholic thoughts of the mechanic across the street:
"An earthman holding hands with a snake! Damned snake man!"

It was now months since Grey had learned what that meant. The pain with
which he had learned that was by now gone. He did not think that Joe's
tentacles looked like snakes, and he cared nothing for the opinions of
the others. Yet it was difficult to keep out of his mind the intruding
thoughts of the Fleetmen who glared at him with disgust on their faces.

"I have found the others," Joe thought to Grey. "They are in a small
bar at the other end of town called the Purple Claw. It seems to be an
interesting place."

There was no need for Joe to ask, "Shall we go there?" For there was
no place else to go. This was a repetition of the problem which always
occurred when the pair arrived at a new base or a new town. Where could
they spend an evening?

It never occurred to Grey that he might go off by himself.

Making their way through the crowded street was no longer the ordeal
which it had been when Jed Grey and Joe had first been assigned to
work together. By this time it no longer turned Grey sick when a
highly-painted female hysterically turned around and whined: "It's
reading my mind! The damn snake's reading my mind!"

"I see that the Arcturians hang out at the Zig Zag," Joe observed.
The Zig Zag's brilliant mercury-vapor sign made Grey's complexion a
virulent blue as they passed beneath it.

"And extra police floating around," Grey noticed. "This is a bad town.
Many transients here--on their way in or out. Coming to town for a big
time--either the last one or the first one in months."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Purple Claw was housed in a ramshackle building of ancient
vintage, and sported as publicity a modest violet lobster which glowed
erratically above the door.

Within, the air reeked of tobacco smoke, beer, tekla. It heaved
with the beat of something which was part American jazz, part
Sirian drum-music, with a flavor of strains from half a dozen other
star-systems.

Behind the bar was a monstrously fat character whose hair was white
as the clouds of Venus, and whose face was as black as space itself.
Elby Jones had a love for wine and women which was matched only by his
addiction to the music which the small band in the corner emitted.

He nodded to the pair as they entered, and waddled over to the small
table where they seated themselves.

"Evenin', Joe and Mister Grey," he greeted them. "You'll have Space
Punch and smokes?"

This, casually--even though never before had they been in this place.

Just as casual was Grey's reply, "Sure enough, Elby. Nice place you've
got."

No need to show surprise at the fact that Jones was, himself, a
telepath. The very fact that his place was the congregating point for
the Canopan crowd attested to that probability.

With a goblet of warm Space Punch between his hands, Grey leaned back
and absorbed the peace and relaxation which he had sensed within these
walls the moment he had stepped through the door. Joe, immune to
alcohol, took the first ecstatic drag from a long white cigarette--a
cigarette of very ordinary tobacco.

Through the dimly-lit, smoke-laden atmosphere of the room, Grey could
see the musicians at the far end, the small tables at which the Terrans
sat with their Canopan partners, the few Sirians who sat alone with
their tekla glasses.

Joe, performing an indescribable feat of mental recognition, happily
greeted a Sirian who sat across the room. To Grey the Sirians all
appeared identical, but he received the impression that this was the
one they'd gone on a tear with last month in Joplin. It had been a most
memorable occasion. He suddenly laughed uproariously as he recalled the
picture they'd made marching down Joplin's main thoroughfare singing
the Sirian national anthem in harmony--with Joe taking two of the parts
simultaneously--both mentally.

Joe, having no vocal apparatus, performed his music telepathically.
At times it was indescribable, and at other times it
was--well--magnificent.

Within the Purple Claw there was music permeating the smoky air,
coursing through the nerve channels of the listeners. It was slow and
hot, loose and tight at the same time.

Grey slipped down farther into his chair. A horn took a high passage,
and the chill began to pass up and down Grey's spine. He knew, then,
that he was in--that the night was good and the music right.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joe's antennae swayed quietly, in time with the beat, in time with
the antennae of the other Canopans who sat there, spreading a net
of rapport through the room. Imperceptibly there was produced an
augmentation of the music, a heightened receptivity, as though the
entire audience was in itself a musical instrument, guided by the band,
and in return leading the band ahead.

"Lawdy, that was good," Grey sighed when the spell finally broke and
the audience shuffled feet, scraped chairs, ordered fresh drinks, and
relit forgotten smokes.

These moments of complete retreat had become more and more rare during
the past few months.

The mobilization had been accelerating, and the training periods had
become more and more intense, in preparation for this day when they
were now assigned to a ship and were about to push off for a training
run, followed by the long trip to the battle sector.

It had been slightly more than a year ago that the first enigmatic
events had been noticed in a corner of the galaxy which was just newly
being explored and developed. Ships had failed to return--colonies had
ceased communicating with their prime bases.

To Jed Grey, a young man still in school on Terra, far within the
borders of the civilized galaxy, these events had seemed distant
and impersonal. They had been words in the newspapers, on the news
broadcasts. They had been vague events taking place on just another
of the many hundreds of habitable planets which by that time had been
discovered.

Then the knowledge had grown that the events taking place thousands of
light years distant were to have an impact on the life of Jed Grey and
the others living on Terra. Gradually it developed that the civilized
galaxy was rapidly becoming immersed in a struggle for existence
against an enemy whose character was initially somewhat obscure, but
whose unfriendly aims were quite definite.

Overnight, it seemed to Grey, Terra flew into a turmoil of
mobilization, manufacture of spaceships and weapons, research for the
creation of new weapons and new defenses against the strange attack
methods of the enemy. In the tiny circle of existence in which he
walked, that which he observed was the increased crowds of people on
their way to work in the factories, the increased difficulty of buying
various items, and inevitably the card which had ordered him to the
mobilization center.

Among the many classification tests which they gave Grey was a curious
one which seemed nonsensical until later on in the course of his
training its purpose became quite obvious. It was given by a young man
with very large and quiet eyes, who was seated beside an individual
with soft, silky fur that changed color from moment to moment, and
whose antennae had a fascinating, restless mobility. The four tentacles
were brown and graceful, while the total attitude of the creature was
one of repose and dignity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Grey stared at this personage with curiosity, and with a slight chill.
From photographs he knew the form of the natives of the fourth planet
of Canopus, and from rumors and bar-room tales he had heard sufficient
concerning them to ring a note of alarm in his brain.

Yet, as he sat there for a moment, the alarm died away for although to
his untrained eyes the Canopan was practically featureless, there was
an aura of pleasantness about it appearing from a source which at that
time he was not able to identify.

Into his mind the thought came, "What if they _can_ read my mind, like
everybody says? He doesn't look like he would hurt me. But...."

The voice of the examiner cut his thoughts short.

"Here are ten cards lying face down on the table. Tell me what markings
are on the front of these cards."

"But how can I tell you if the cards are face down?"

The man smiled. "Just try, anyway."

Grey wanted to snort and laugh in the man's face; but then suddenly he
shivered, for actually he knew....

"Why there's a circle, a square, a triangle, another circle...."

Then there was a sealed box in which he identified a cube, a sphere, a
cylinder, and a more difficult object which turned out to be a key.

The examiner grinned at him and said, "That's fine. Welcome to the
fraternity of telepaths and perceptors."

And, amazingly, there came a thought of congratulation which was
unmistakably from the Canopan, who extended a tentacle and laid it for
a moment upon his arm.

A gate in his mind swung open. A flood of memories crowded into his
consciousness. Small items. Incidents in which he had known things
before he had seen them. Incidents so unaccountable that he had put
them out of his mind, had refused to consider them. Now they jigsawed
together into a pattern which revolved about the important fact that he
possessed the rare skill of perception coupled with telepathy.

How rudimentary this skill was he realized later when his training
began.

In a month, feeling drab in his work uniform and exhausted from the
preliminary training, he was brought face to face with the Canopan whom
he soon learned to call Joe, and who was to become his partner for as
long as should be necessary.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first meeting was stilted and formal. They sat in the small room
together with the Terran and Canopan training officers, and within Grey
there was the nervous sensation that the Canopans recognized every
one of his thoughts. There was the embarrassing realization that his
dislike of Canopans was as plain to them as the expression on his face,
and the embarrassment was intensified by the fact that he had not the
slightest idea why the dislike was there.

"Sure, Grey," the officer said, abruptly. "We know you don't like
Canopans. Nobody on earth does--except the people who actually know
them. We know the whole story. But you'll get over that. You're
going to spend the rest of this war working together with this fellow
here--since he doesn't talk a language, he doesn't have a verbal name.
You won't have trouble conversing with him, however, because he knows
what you think, and you will know what he thinks when he wants you to."

"Then they do read minds," Grey said.

"Sure. What of it? You can almost do it, yourself. Why do you think we
picked you for this job? Out of the thousands that we test, a few here
and there have the right kind of sensitivity. When the professors learn
more about the science of psychomechanics maybe we'll learn how it
works. Now all we know is that it works."

"What's wrong with them, then?" The question was involuntary, dropping
suddenly from Grey's mouth. Confused by his own frankness, he
stammered, "I--I mean, why don't people like them?"

"This is a question with many angles," the officer said, gravely.
"It's an old story. We had barely obtained a world government when
interstellar travel was on hand and we came into contact with strange
types of intelligent beings. Man was still trying to overcome distrust
between the slightly different groups within his own species. When he
came to deal with species of such strange shapes and psychologies as
those on the other planets, the distrust was intensified many times.

"Particularly, people fear the telepathic powers of the Canopans.
They fear the mysterious and the supernatural. Telepathy still seems
a supernatural thing to the ignorant and--I'm afraid--to some who are
not so ignorant. People are afraid of their minds being invaded. Their
sense of privacy is outraged.

"They cannot visualize the fact that the Canopans are completely
uninterested in what thoughts a Terran may have. The Canopan psychology
is sufficiently different from ours that our private thoughts may
be interesting, perhaps curious, but never the sort of thing upon
which they would put a moral judgment. Their sense of morality is too
different from ours for moral judgments to have meaning.

"You may accept this intellectually at the moment without absorbing
it into your system. In a short time you will really be convinced that
this is so. In the meantime, the two of you must become friendly enough
so that you can perform your jobs."

       *       *       *       *       *

Grey looked from the officer to his Canopan partner, and clearly
received the verification that all of this was really so. Inside Grey
there was an impression of relief, a loosening of tensions.

From that moment on, Grey and Joe were inseparable. They lived
together, ate together, and in their training they were as one
mentality.

"Doggone if you wouldn't think we were married," Grey kept saying.

Surely the extreme rapport, and the warm feeling of relaxation and
mental capability which Grey felt when in the presence of Joe,
indicated an intimacy which was the equal of any physical attraction.

With the extreme complexity of the control and communication equipment
in the great space vessels, there had arisen the need for something
radically different in maintenance technicians. The delay of testing
circuits for faults and breakdowns had to be eliminated. For this
purpose the peculiarly suited Canopans had been brought to Earth by the
thousands.

Even in the specialized branch of computing-machines to which Grey had
been assigned, the magnitude of the knowledge to be absorbed in a few
hasty months would ordinarily have made the task impossible. With the
two nervous systems of Grey and Joe acting as one, however, they were
able to absorb huge chunks of knowledge at one gulp, assort it, store
it away, and go on to the next item.

Carefully supervised by psychiatrists to ensure that no breakdowns
would occur from overloading of nervous connections, Grey advanced
from the status of an untrained youngster to that of a highly skilled
electro-technician.

"Joe, with all the brains that you fellows have," Grey remarked one
day, "it's a wonder that you haven't advanced any farther than you
have, as far as technical things are concerned. I don't know why you
need me around. You know all the stuff that I know, and maybe a lot
more. Why don't you Canopans just take over the whole works?"

"We're really not very interested in electronics and such things,"
Joe replied. "We put up with this as a rather unhappy necessity,
but our creative instincts do not lie in that direction. Since we
have developed without hands, and with a brain of capabilities which
are strange to you, our culture has become more introspective--more
interested in the being within than in the things without--more
interested in creating things of beauty to perceive rather than
machines of complexity for the control of nature."

"Very pretty," Grey sighed. "And just as well, for otherwise I would be
out of a job."

Even so, Grey felt little more useful than a soldering-iron or a
screw-driver in the hands of a master mechanic. For Joe, with his
ability to perceive without sight, with his capability of feeling
the very electric currents flowing through a machine--he was the
diagnostician, the one who squatted before a defunct piece of equipment
and without hesitation unerringly decided what was wrong with it and
directed Grey to the point where the repair had to be made. From that
point on Grey wielded the tools.

But there was no room for false pride. The two of them together
constituted a working team. The two of them made one mechanic.

In addition to learning the technical things required for maintenance
of machinery, both Jed Grey and the Canopan had to learn many other
things which inevitably went with their partnership.

They had to learn how it was to walk down a city street and feel the
ebb and flow of thoughts about them--thoughts concerning the race of
Canopans in general and concerning the type of Terran who would walk
down a street arm in arm with a Canopan.

They learned this quickly. Gradually the psychic hurts healed over
and in their place was a hard defense-mechanism compounded of wisdom,
mental toughness, and a contempt for the opinions of the others.

Actually, to Joe, the opinions of the Terrans were of no interest.
But as he once remarked to Grey: "It's an impersonal sort of
unpleasantness--like walking through a street filled with a bad odor,
like walking through a room filled with buzz-saws. It jars the nerves."

Grey presently came to feel in the same manner.

"I'm not quite a Terran any more," he said.

Joe assented. "You are a real cosmopolitan. You have the real
interstellar attitude. In time everybody will see it that way."

       *       *       *       *       *

Time--time. It went so rapidly. It swept them along through the several
stages of their training, and now it was their last night out before
stepping into the great battlewagon for the final and irrevocable
journey across space to the war, which up to now had been a hazy
background to their work.

Elby Jones brought Grey another drink. "It's a good night here tonight."

"I'm glad it is," said Grey.

Yes, it had to be a good night, because the last one had to be good.
There had to be that much to remember out there a thousand light-years
away.

The music started once more, and it brought to Grey the thought that it
was curious how the Canopans had taken to American Jazz and cigarettes
and had intensified their effects to a degree previously unknown. What
a group of characters they were. They could go on an intellectual jag
from a Bach Fugue as quickly as they could go on a nicotine binge.
Their entire psychology was geared to the obtaining of pleasure from
sensations of many different kinds.

"The Terrans do likewise, you know," Joe transmitted to him.

Grey grinned back at Joe. You couldn't keep a stray thought-wave away
from the guy.

"It's different the way you do it," he replied. "You don't get blind
stinkin' drunk when you go on a jag. You do it for exhilaration, for an
uplift."

"The process of getting stinking is ..." Joe broke off suddenly.

Simultaneously, Grey could sense that the other Canopans had shifted
their attentions, that the music, although it kept playing, echoed
hollowly between the walls, unsupported by the listeners.

Grey caught the faint jar of a commotion outside the door. A roar
of voices and heavy footsteps crescendoed suddenly as a mob in blue
uniforms burst into the place. As it seemed to Grey in the first
violent moment, each had a bottle in one hand and a brightly-painted
female in the other. There seemed to be a squadron of them. It turned
out, finally, that there were perhaps ten altogether.

From the insignia on their uniforms, Grey guessed that these were
combat men on their way back from the battle sector, ready to tear up
the first town that they hit on the first night out.

"Cripes! The place is full of snakes!" one of them shouted. "What're
snakes doing here when there's some good ol' earthmen lookin' for a
place to sit down?"

One of the girls pulled back. "Let's get out of here, Jack," she
whispered, nervously. "I'm afraid of them snakes."

"They ain't gonna hurt you, honey," Jack told her, hoarsely. "I always
wondered if them snakes grew together if you pulled them apart."

He walked a few paces inside the door. "If you snakes can read my mind,
you know what I'm gonna do if you don't clear outta here pronto. An'
readin' my mind ain't gonna help you against my good right arm."

       *       *       *       *       *

Grey felt sick. A brawl on the last night.... There was a stray thought
in his mind that he and Joe would make a good fighting team if the two
of them could coordinate fast enough.

"No," Joe's reply came to him instantly. "This isn't your fight. We'll
handle this."

"The hell you say!" Grey attempted to stand--found himself limp as a
rag. He could suddenly smell his own perspiration as he strained to
move, and as he looked about the room he saw that the other Terrans at
the tables were remaining there, their expressions startled and anxious.

The Canopans had risen, and were slowly making their way between the
tables to the front of the room. The band was still playing a slightly
mad background to the picture which consisted of the smoky room with
the dim lights, the Terrans sitting paralyzed at their tables, the
Canopans moving in on the Fleetmen at the door ... who stared in
disbelief, began to swing their bottles, and collapsed quietly on the
floor.

The girls, without time to shriek, collapsed just as quietly, and lay
there in an unmoving heap.

Grey abruptly was stone cold sober. He wanted out, as fast as possible.
The idea of going up for murder appealed to him not at all.

"Forget it," Joe flashed at him. "They're not dead. But we'll have to
get rid of them. We'll be back in a minute."

The Canopans silently carried the bodies outside the door, leaving Grey
sitting still at his table, performing a great quantity of furious
thinking.

[Illustration: _The Canopans silently carried the bodies outside._]

Joe was back quickly. He anticipated Grey's questions.

"They'll wake up, and they'll think somebody slipped them a Mickey. But
they won't remember what happened."

He hesitated, sat down, and lit another smoke. "You're okay, now, by
the way."

Grey tried, and found that the nervous impulses now went where they
were supposed to go. He stood up, shakily. Then he sat down again.
While he was searching for words to say something, Joe interrupted.

"Look," he transmitted. "This has to be kept under cover. Things are
bad enough for us without this sort of thing getting around. I didn't
even want you to know, but that couldn't be helped. I didn't feel like
getting bashed."

Grey accepted another glass gratefully from Elby Jones.

"Sure," he said. "I don't talk to anybody, anyway. But you have to tell
me. How much _can_ you do?"

Joe considered for a moment before replying.

"I don't know, really. Terran nervous systems are not like ours. We
have had only a short time to discover what we can do and what we
can't do. We don't have real control--although there are certain
possibilities with a modified hypnotic suggestion. At present we are
only able to introduce resistances temporarily in certain nerve paths,
so that inhibitions are produced."

"So for a while I was just inhibited against standing up, and they were
inhibited against being conscious. It that it?"

"Approximately."

Grey sipped from his glass, peering over the edge of it at Joe.
Precisely how much was there, he thought, hidden within the recesses of
that brain? Just how much did this innocent little character have on
the ball?

       *       *       *       *       *

Joe chose this moment to become taciturn. The music was riding once
more, and the place was settling down after the sudden disturbance. It
took Jed Grey several more minutes and another glass to throw off the
nervous tension which sat like a blanket over his shoulders. Gradually
he began to relax, and the warm spot within his belly proceeded to
creep up into his head.

"Tomorrow," he thought drowsily, "we will be taking off, and there will
be no more of this. No more music except from cans. No more...."

Abruptly he realized that the rapport had been broken off again by the
Canopans, and that at the other end of town there was the faint howl of
the police siren.

"There's a brawl down the street," Joe informed Grey. "Some of our
heroes back from the battle sector feel that they haven't had enough
fighting."

"I bet you a pack of smokes that the guys in the fight haven't been
within a light year of an actual battle," said Grey, dryly. "They're
the ones who always try to make like tough heroes when they get back."

Through the Canopan's sense of perception Jed Grey could catch faint
impulses of the tumult which filled the street a hundred yards away.
There was a violence in the thoughts projected from that area which
caused the colors of Joe's fur to shift erratically, nervously. In Grey
they caused a tightening of the stomach and a heavy feeling in the
chest.

"It hurts almost as much to listen in to a fight as it does to be right
in the middle of it," he remarked. "Why don't you just shut it off if
you can't take it?"

"As well try to shut off your sense of hearing," Joe snapped back.

The sirens down the street had wailed to a halt. Grey lit another
cigarette and tried what was left in his glass. It was flat. The warm
glow which had diffused through his body was gone, and in its place
there was a bitter taste and a burning sensation around the eyes.

Abruptly he mashed out his cigarette and stood up.

"The night's washed up," he growled. "Let's get out of here."

Joe, with a thought of regret, assented, and the two of them left.

It was bitter to end the last night upon such an uncompleted note.

       *       *       *       *       *

The two of them strolled back in the direction of the bus station. The
fresh night, bright with the blaze of stars and saloon signs, should
have exhilarated them; but the mental tension which filled the street
pressed hard on Joe's receptors, and, through him, against Grey.

A pair of police cars squatted at the corner. Fleet Police milled
through the crowds, shock sticks in hand. An ambulance helicopter
roaring in from the Fleet Base settled down in the center of the street.

The fight was over, but so keyed up were the Fleetmen in town that for
Grey and the Canopan to walk through the street was to walk through a
sticky, obscene glue of malevolence.

Joe's fur colors had faded to a dismal blue. Grey glanced at this with
alarm.

The thoughts in the crowd around them had been impersonal ones--fight
thoughts, pleasure thoughts, passion thoughts--violent and unnerving
to the pair who had to thread their way through this tumult, but yet
impersonal.

It began to change.

They began again with the snake thoughts and the thoughts about the
Terran who walked with the damn snake. They looked at the pair who
walked in their midst, and in their state of excitement with violence
not yet out of their minds, there was a redirection of passion from
the recent fight to the new center of attention.

Grey gasped as the force of this new agitation struck them.

The pair of Fleet Police ahead of them changed their direction of
motion and started walking towards them. Grey's face twitched as he
felt the increased tension within Joe's nervous system.

"Hold it, son," he cautioned. "Remember we're supposed to be tough.
Remember the nerves of steel we're supposed to have, like it says in
the books."

Joe's grip on Grey's arm tightened, and then relaxed.

"I thought I could take anything. Tonight has been almost too much."

The Fleet Police were directly in front of them. The one on the right
pointed at Grey with his stick and began to say something.

The door of the adjacent saloon swung open and a giant of a bearded
Fleetman roared out. The girl hanging to his arm caught a sudden sight
of Joe, and a burst of fright exploded in her empty little head,
shocking Joe with its intensity.

She screamed, "It's thinking about me!"

The big Fleetman clapped his hand to his hip. There was no gun
holstered there, but Joe reared back in a dismayed reflex.... In the
next moment the Fleetman slumped to the pavement, where he lay quite
still.

That was all--for a moment.

The Fleet Police looked at Joe and they looked down at the Fleetman.
Then they looked back at Joe. One of them stooped down and remained
there for a long minute. He rose, and his face was white.

"The guy's dead," he said, and his shock stick came up, pointing at
Joe. "You do that?" he snapped.

"He didn't touch the guy," Grey said.

"Maybe yes and maybe no. Guys don't just drop and die. I think both of
you'd better come."

       *       *       *       *       *

At the Fleet Police headquarters the medic turned pale when he examined
the body. A number of urgent calls were made. The Canopan liaison
officer arrived after a nasty fifteen minutes during which the doctor
and the Fleet Police Commandant argued violently and then stood staring
blackly at the floor.

Grey's eyes widened when behind the Canopan there stalked not only the
commanding officer of his ship, but the Commandant of the entire Fleet
Base.

"The joint's lousy with brass tonight," he flashed silently at Joe as
the two of them stood rigidly at attention. "I think you've become
notorious."

He caught a sense of amusement from an undetermined source, and in a
moment narrowed it down as coming from the Canopan liaison officer.

Good for our side, Grey thought in relief--at least Canopan officers
kept their minds unbound by brass. They'd stand behind Joe.

The Fleet Base Commandant knifed Joe with a rigid stare. He spoke
rapidly and bitingly. "It is difficult enough to keep harmony among the
various planetary groups at the base without it becoming know that the
Canopans can kill Terrans by their mental powers. You have been trained
in self-control. By this incident tonight you have jeopardized the
morale of all the troops in the region."

The Canopan officer put in gently, "This was clearly a case of
self-defense. The Fleetman was drawing a gun."

"Unfortunately for that argument," stated the Commandant, "the Fleetman
was not carrying a gun."

"But this 34C could not see in the first instant. His attention was
on the thoughts which the Fleetman transmitted at that moment. The
Fleetman forgot he was not wearing a sidearm, and in his mind there was
the distinct picture of drawing his gun and shooting 34C. To 34C this
was the reality of the moment. In his extreme nervousness he misjudged
the force needed, and projected a lethal thought."

"A pretty legality," the Base Commandant growled. "Is it self-defense
when you kill a person for _thinking_ that he is about to kill you?"

"I know nothing of your law," the Canopan replied. "We have warned that
an incident such as this was bound to occur sooner or later in the
tense atmosphere of this town. May I suggest...."

"I know, I know." The Commandant passed a hand through his hair in
disgust. "Your ideas about orienting the entire fleet. Subconscious
psychological training ... still sounds like hypnotism to me. But if we
must, then we must."

"And you, Jeffreys." He turned to Grey's ship-commander. "You're taking
off tomorrow. You wouldn't want to lose a team, would you?"

"Certainly not, sir." Grey caught the relief in the commander's mind.
"They're a good team."

"Then as far as anybody is concerned there has been no incident
tonight." The Commandant turned to the medic. "Get that?"

Commander Jeffreys motioned to Joe and Grey. "You two will return to
the base with me."

Grey nodded mutely and began to follow the commander out of the
door, his attention focussed upon an idea which had sprung into his
consciousness during the past minute.

"Look, Joe," he thought. "If you can do that to a Terran, what could
you do to one of the enemy?"

Joe began, "If I knew what the enemy was like...."

A blast of thought broke into their minds. It blazed a warning
signal in vivid, incandescent pictures, and in roaring sound. It
said, in numerous and tumultuous manners, Stop where you are--keep
out--restricted, confidential, top-secret territory!

Grey jerked his head around. He stared for one astounded moment at the
Canopan officer.

Then he was walking out to the waiting helicopter, the palm of his hand
moist as he tightly held one of Joe's tentacles.

The people who ran a war were not always the obvious ones, he thought.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Last Night Out" ***

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