Alan E. Nourse - Peacemaker

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PEACEMAKER

BY ALAN E. NOURSE

ILLUSTRATED BY EBEL

All Flicker wanted was a chance to make the aliens understand. All the aliens wanted was a

chance to kill him while they could. But there were things about Flicker that they hadn't counted

on...

Flicker's mind fought silently and desperately to maintain its fast-receding control, to master his frantic

urge to writhe and scream in agony at the burning light. The fetid animal stench of the aliens filled his

nostrils, gagging him; the heat of the place seared his skin like a thousand white-hot needles, and seeped

into his throat to blister his lungs. It didn't matter that his arms and legs were bound tightly to the pallet,

for he knew he dared not move them. The maddening off-and-on of the scorching light set his mind afire,

twisted his stomach into a hard knot of fear and agony, but his body lay still as death, relaxed and

motionless. He knew that the instant he betrayed his' tortured alertness by so much as a single tremor, his

chance for contact would be totally gone.

"The only sensible thing to do is to kill it!"

It was not repetition but a constant, powerful force, crashing into his mind, hateful, cold. He heard no

sound but the muffled throb of spaceship engines far back in the ship, but the thought was there,

adamant and uncompromising. It burst from the garbled, thought-patterns of the others and struck his

mind like an electric shock. One of the aliens wanted to kill him.

Thought contact. It was a paralyzing concept to Flicker. The aliens couldn't possibly realize it

themselves; they were using sound communication with one another, on a sonic level beyond the

sensitivity of Flicker's ears. He could hear no sound—but the thought patterns that guided the

sound-talking of the aliens came through to sledge-hammer his brain, coherent, crystal clear.

"But why kill it? We have it sedated almost to death-level now. It's completely unconscious, it's

securely bound, and we can keep it that way until we reach home. Then it's no longer our worry."

The first thought broke out again with new overtones of anger and fear. "I say we've got to kill it! We

had no right picking it up in the first place. What is it? How did it get there? Where was the ship that

brought it?" The alien mind was venomous. "Kill it now, while we can!"

Flicker tried desperately to tear his mind from the agonizing rhythm of the light, to catch and hold the

alien thoughts. Confusion rose in his mind, and for the first time he felt a chill of fear. His people knew

that these aliens were avaricious and venal—a dozen drained and pillaged star-systems which they had

overrun bore witness to that—but he had never even considered, before he started on this mission, that

they might kill him without even attempting communication. Why must they kill him? All he wanted was a

chance—one brief moment to convey his message to them. Five years of planning, and his own life, had

been risked just to get the message to them, to gain their confidence and make them understand, but all

he found in these alien minds was fear and suspicion and hate, which had become a single

ever-developing crescendo: "Kill it now, while we can!"

There were only three of them with him now, but he knew, from some corner of the alien minds, that

five others were sleeping in a forward chamber of the ship. He saw himself clearly, alone on an unknown

spacecraft with eight alien creatures, gliding through interstellar space at unthinkable speed, bound for

that nebulous and threatening somewhere they called home. Their home. He caught a brief mind-picture

from one of them of an enormous city, teeming with these alien creatures, watching him, picking at him,

trying to question him, deciding how to kill him

And through everything else came the intermittent burning glare of that terrible white light—

Then suddenly the three aliens were leaving the cabin. Flicker sensed their indecision, felt them

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