“Sam Heideman, yeah,” I said. “But how about the da—the woman? She couldn’t have been in the memory of any of us because none of us knew her.”
“She was a composite—what you would call an idealization. That, however, doesn’t matter. By studying you we learned that your civilization concerns itself with things, ours with thoughts. Neither of us has anything to offer the other. No good could come through interchange, whereas much harm might come. Our planet has no material resources that would interest your race.
I had to agree with that, looking out over that monotonous rolling clay that seemed to support only those few tumble-weedlike bushes, and not many of them. It didn’t look like it would support anything else. As for minerals, I hadn’t seen even a pebble.
“Right you are,” I called back. “Any planet that raises nothing but tumbleweeds and cockroaches can keep itself, as far as we’re concerned. So—” Then something dawned on me. “Hey, just a minute. There must be something else or who the devil am I talking to?”
“You are talking,” replied the voice, “to what you call cockroaches, which is another point of incompatibility between us. To be more precise, you are talking to a thought-projected voice, but we are projecting it. And let me assure you of one thing—that you are more repugnant physically to us than we are to you.”
I looked down then and saw them, three of them, ready to pop into holes if I made a move.
Back inside the ship, I said, “Johnny, blast off. Destination, Earth.”
He saluted and said, ”
Yes, sir,” and went into the pilot’s compartment and shut the door. He didn’t cone out until we were on an automatic course, with Sirius dwindling behind us.
Ellen had gone to her room. Ma and I were playing cribbage.