though theirtechnology was advanced enough to exterminate man with little or noloss to themselves, combat and slaughter must be repulsive to them. Ithad to be. With their telepathic minds they would necessarily have apathologic horror of suffering. They were so highly evolved that theysimply couldn't fight--at least not with the weapons of humanity. Butthey could use the subtler weapon of altruism!
And even more important--uncontrolled emotions were poison to them. Infact Ixtl had admitted it back in Seattle. The primitive psi waves ofhumanity's hates, lusts, fears, and exultations must be unbearabletorture to a race long past such animal outbursts. That was--mustbe--why they were moving so fast. For their own safety, emotion had tobe damped out of the human race.
Matson had a faint conception of what the aliens must have sufferedwhen they first surveyed that crowd at International Airport. Nowonder they looked so strangely immobile at that first contact! Theraw emotion must have nearly killed them! He felt a reluctant stir ofadmiration for their courage, for the dedicated bravery needed to facethat crowd and establish a beachhead of tranquility. Those first fewminutes must have had compressed in them the agonies of a lifetime!
Matson grinned coldly. The aliens were not invulnerable. If Mankindcould be taught to fear and hate them, and if that emotion could befocussed, they never again would try to take this world. It would besheer suicide. As long as Mankind kept its emotions it would be safefrom this sort of invasion. But the problem was to teach Mankind tofear and hate. Shock would do it, but how could that shock be applied?
The thought led inevitably to the only possible conclusion. The alienswould have to be killed, and in such a manner as to make humanity fearretaliation from the stars. Fear would unite men against a possibleinvasion, and fear would force men to reach for the stars to forestallretribution.
Matson grinned thinly. Human nature couldn't have changed much thesepast years. Even with master psychologists like the Aztlans operatingupon it, changes in emotional pattern would require generations. Hesighed, looked into the anxious face of Seth Winters, and returned tothe reality of the desert night. His course was set. He knew what hehad to do.
* * * * *
He laid the rifle across his knees and opened the little leather boxsewn to the side of the guncase. With precise, careful movements heremoved the silencer and fitted it to the threaded muzzle of the gun.The bulky, blue excrescence changed the rifle from a thing of beautyto one of murder. He looked at it distastefully, then shrugged andstretched out on the mattress, easing the ugly muzzle through the holein the brickwork. It wouldn't be long now....
He glanced upward through the window above him at the Weather Bureauinstruments atop a nearby building. The metal cups of the anemometerhung motionless against the metallic blue of the sky. No wind stirredin the deep canyons of the city streets as the sun climbed in blazingsplendor above the towering buildings. He moved a trifle, shifting themuzzle of the gun until it bore upon the sidewalks. The telescopicsight picked out faces from the waiting crowd with a crystal clarity.Everywhere was the same sheeplike placidity. He shuddered, the sightsjumping crazily from one face to another,--wondering if he hadmisjudged his race, if he had really come too late, if he hadunderestimated the powers of the Aztlans.
Far down the avenue, an excited hum came to his ears, and the watchingcrowd stirred. Faces lighted and Matson sighed. He was not wrong.Emotion was only suppressed, not vanished. There was still time!
The aliens were coming. Coming to cap the climax of their pioneerwork, to drive the first nail in humanity's coffin! For the first timein history man's dream of the brotherhood of man was close to reality.
And he was about to destroy it! The irony bit into Matson's soul, andfor a moment he hesitated, feeling the wave of tolerance and good willrising from the street below. Did he have the right to destroy man'sdream? Did he dare tamper with the will of the world? Had he the rightto play God?
The parade came slowly down the happy street, a kaleidoscope of colorand movement that approached and went past in successive waves andmasses. This was a gala day, this eve of world union! The insigne ofthe UN was everywhere. The aliens had used the organization to furthertheir plans and it was now all-powerful. A solid bank of UN flags ledthe van of delegates, smiling and swathed in formal dress, sittingerect in their black official cars draped with the flags of nativelands that would soon be furled forever if the aliens had their way.
And behind them came the Aztlans!
They rode together, standing on a pure white float, a bar of dazzlingwhite in a sea of color. All equal, their inhumanly beautiful facescalm and remote, the Aztlans rode through the joyful crowd. There wassomething inspiring about the sight and for a moment, Matson felt awave of revulsion sweep through him.
He sighed and thumbed the safety to "off", pulled the cocking leverand slid the first cartridge into the breech. He settled himselfdrawing a breath of air into his lungs, letting a little dribble outthrough slack lips, catching the remainder of the exhalation withclosed glottis. The sights wavered and steadied upon the head of thecenter alien, framing the pale noble face with its aureole of goldenhair. The luminous eyes were dull and introspective as the alien triedto withdraw from the emotions of the crowd. There was no awareness ofdanger on the alien's face. At 600 yards he was beyond their esperrange and he was further covered by the feelings of the crowd. Thesights lowered to the broad chest and centered there as Matson'sspatulate fingers took up the slack in the trigger and squeezed softlyand steadily.
A coruscating glow bathed the bodies of three of the aliens as theirtall forms jerked to the smashing impact of the bullets! Theirmetallic tunics melted and sloughed as inner fires ate away thefragile garments that covered them! Flexible synthetic skin crackedand curled in the infernal heat, revealing padding, wirelike tendons,rope-like cords of flexible tubing and a metallic skeleton that meltedand dripped in white hot drops in the heat of atomic flame--
"Robots!" Matson gasped with sudden blinding realization. "I shouldhave known! No wonder they seemed inhuman. Their builders would neverdare expose themselves to the furies and conflicts of our emotionallyuncontrolled world!"
One of the aliens crouched on the float, his four-fingered handspressed against a smoking hole in his metal tunic. The smoke thickenedand a yellowish ichor poured out bursting into flame on contact withthe air. The fifth alien, Ixtl, was untouched, standing with handswidestretched in a gesture that at once held command and appeal.
Matson reloaded quickly, but held his fire. The swarming crowdsurrounding the alien was too thick for a clear shot and Matson, withsudden revulsion, was unwilling to risk further murder in a causealready won. The tall, silver figure of the alien winced andshuddered, his huge body shaking like a leaf in a storm! His buildershad never designed him to withstand the barrage of focussed emotionthat was sweeping from the crowd. Terror, shock, sympathy, hate,loathing, grief, and disillusionment--the incredible gamut of humanfeelings wrenched and tore at the Aztlan, shorting delicate circuits,ripping the poised balance of his being as the violent discordantblasts lanced through him with destroying energy! Ixtl's classicfeatures twisted in a spasm of inconceivable agony, a thin curl ofsmoke drifted from his distorted tragic mask of a mouth as hecrumpled, a pitiful deflated figure against the whiteness of thefloat.
The cries of fear and horror changed their note as the aliens' truenature dawned upon the crowd. Pride of flesh recoiled as the swarminghumans realized the facts. Revulsion at being led by machines swelledinto raw red rage. The mob madness spread as an ominous growl beganrising from the streets.
A panicky policeman triggered it, firing his Aztlan-built shock tubeinto the forefront of the mob. A dozen men fell, to be trampled bytheir neighbors as a swarm of men and women poured over the strugglingofficer and buried him from sight. Like wildfire, pent-up emotionsblazed out in a flame of fury. The parade vanished, sucked into themaelstrom and torn apart. Fists flew, flesh tore, men and womenscreamed in high bitter agony as the mob clawed and trample
d in asurging press of writhing forms that filled the street from one lineof buildings to the other.
Half-mad with triumph, drunk with victory, shocked at the terribleform that death had taken in coming to Ixtl, Matson raised hisclenched hands to the sky and screamed in a raw inhuman voice, a cryin which all of man's violence and pride were blended! The spasmpassed as quickly as it came, and with its passing came exhaustion.The job was done. The aliens were destroyed. Tomorrow would bringreaction and with it would come fear.
Tomorrow or the next day man would hammer out a true world union,spurred by the thought of a retribution that would never come. Yet allthat didn't matter. The important thing--the only important thing--waspreserved. Mankind would have to unite for survival--or so men wouldthink--and he would never disillusion them. For this was man's world,and men were again free to work out their own destiny for better orfor worse, without interference, and without help. The
Assassin Page 6
