The Admiral paused. "Well," he said, "I think that answers the questions and gives you a bit of homespun philosophy to go with it."
"Admiral," said the reporter, "you"ve given the public some facts it"s waited a long time to hear. Coming from you, sir, this is the greatest story that could have come out of this Reunion Day celebration. But there is one question more, if I may ask it. Can you tell me, Admiral, just how it was that you rejected what seemed to be prima facie proof of the story the Mancji told; that they were the lords of creation out there, and that humanity was nothing but a tame food animal to them?"
The Admiral sighed. "I guess it"s a good question," he said. "But there was nothing supernatural about my figuring that one. I didn"t suspect the full truth, of course. It never occurred to me that we were the victims of the now well-known but still inexplicable sense of humor of the Mancji, or that they were nothing but scavengers around the edges of the Federation. The original Omega ship had met them and seen right through them.
"Well, when this hive spotted us coming in, they knew enough about New Terra to realize at once that we were strangers, coming from outside the area. It appealed to their sense of humor to have the gall to strut right out in front of us and try to put over a swindle. What a laugh for the oyster kingdom if they could sell Terrans on the idea that they were the master race. It never occurred to them that we might be anything but Terrans; Terrans who didn"t know the Mancji. And they were canny enough to use an old form of Interlingua; somewhere they"d met men before.
"Then we needed food. They knew what we ate, and that was where they went too far. They had, among the flotsam in their hive, a few human bodies they had picked up from some wreck they"d come across in their travels. They had them stashed away like everything else they could lay a pseudopod on. So they stacked them the way they"d seen Terran frozen foods shipped in the past, and sent them over. Another of their little jokes.
"I suppose if you"re already overwrought and eager to quit, and you"ve been badly scared by the size of an alien ship, it"s pretty understandable that the sight of human bodies, along with the story that they"re just a convenient food supply, might seem pretty convincing. But I was already pretty dubious about the genuineness of our pals, and when I saw those bodies it was pretty plain that we were hot on the trail of Omega Colony. There was no other place humans could have come from out there. We had to find out the location from the Mancji."
"But, Admiral," said the reporter, "true enough they were humans, and presumably had some connection with the colony, but they were naked corpses stacked like cordwood. The Mancji had stated that these were slaves, or rather domesticated animals; they wouldn"t have done you any good."
"Well, you see, I didn"t believe that," the Admiral said. "Because it was an obvious lie. I tried to show some of the officers, but I"m afraid they weren"t being too rational just then.
"I went into the locker and examined those bodies; if Kramer had looked closely, he would have seen what I did. These were no tame animals. They were civilized men."
"How could you be sure, Admiral? They had no clothing, no identifying marks, nothing. Why didn"t you believe they were cattle?"
"Because," said the Admiral, "all the men had nice neat haircuts."
THE END