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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alien Offer, by Al Sevcik
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Alien Offer
+
+Author: Al Sevcik
+
+Illustrator: Llewellyn
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26956]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALIEN OFFER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ _In space, a vengeful fleet waited.... Then
+ the furred strangers arrived with a plan to
+ save Earth's children. But the General wasn't
+ sure if he could trust an_
+
+
+ALIEN OFFER
+
+By AL SEVCIK
+
+
+ILLUSTRATOR LLEWELLYN
+
+
+"You are General James Rothwell?"
+
+Rothwell sighed. "Yes, Commander Aku. We have met several times."
+
+"Ah, yes. I recognize your insignia. Humans are so alike." The alien
+strode importantly across the office, the resilient pads of his broad
+feet making little plopping sounds on the rug, and seated himself
+abruptly in the visitor's chair beside Rothwell's desk. He gave a sharp
+cry, and another alien, shorter, but sporting similar, golden fur,
+stepped into the office and closed the door. Both wore simple, brown
+uniforms, without ornamentation.
+
+"I am here," Aku said, "to tell you something." He stared impassively at
+Rothwell for a minute, his fur-covered, almost human face completely
+expressionless, then his gaze shifted to the window, to the hot runways
+of New York International Airport and to the immense gray spaceship
+that, even from the center of the field, loomed above the hangars and
+passenger buildings. For an instant, a quick, unguessable emotion
+clouded the wide black eyes and tightened the thin lips, then it was
+gone.
+
+Rothwell waited.
+
+"General, Earth's children must all be aboard my ships within one week.
+We will start to load on the sixth day, next Thursday." He stood.
+
+[Illustration: The aliens supervised the loading as anguished parents
+looked on.]
+
+Rothwell locked eyes with the alien, and leaned forward, grinding his
+knuckles into the desk top. "You know that's impossible. We can't select
+100,000 children from every country and assemble them in only six days."
+
+"You will do it." The alien turned to leave.
+
+"Commander Aku! Let me remind you ..."
+
+Aku spun around, eyes flashing. "General Rothwell! Let _me_ remind you
+that two weeks ago I didn't even know Earth existed, and since
+accidentally happening across your sun system and learning of your
+trouble I have had my entire trading fleet of a hundred ships in orbit
+about this planet while all your multitudinous political subdivisions
+have filled the air with talk and wrangle.
+
+"I am sorry for Earth, but my allegiance is to my fleet and I cannot
+remain longer than seven more days and risk being caught up in your
+destruction. Now, either you accept my offer to evacuate as many humans
+as my ships will carry, or you don't." He paused. "You are the planet's
+evacuation coordinator; you will give me an answer."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rothwell's arms sagged, he sunk back down into his chair, all pretense
+gone. Slowly he swung around to face the window and the gray ship,
+standing like a Gargantuan sundial counting the last days of Earth. He
+almost whispered. "We are choosing the children. They will be ready in
+six days."
+
+He heard the door open and close. He was alone.
+
+Five years ago, he thought, we cracked the secret of faster-than-light
+travel, and since then we've built about three dozen exploration ships
+and sent them out among the stars to see what they could see.
+
+He stared blankly at the palms of his hand. I wonder what it was we
+expected to find?
+
+We found that the galaxy was big, that there were a lot of stars, not so
+many planets, and practically no other life--at least no intelligence to
+compare with ours. Then ... He jabbed a button on his intercom.
+
+"Ed Philips here. What is it Jim?"
+
+"Doc, are you sure your boys have hypo'd, couched, and hypno'd the _Leo_
+crew with everything you've got?"
+
+The voice on the intercom sighed. "Jim, those guys haven't got a memory
+of their own. We know everything about each one of them, from the hurts
+he got falling off tricycles to the feel of the first girl he kissed.
+Those men aren't lying, Jim."
+
+"I never thought they were lying, Doc." Rothwell paused for a minute and
+studied the long yellow hairs that grew sparsely across the back of his
+hand, thickened to a dense grove at his wrist, and vanished under the
+sleeve of his uniform. He looked back at the intercom. "Doc, all I know
+is that three perfectly normal guys got on board that ship, and when it
+came back we found a lot of jammed instruments and three men terrified
+almost to the point of insanity."
+
+"Jim, if you'd seen ..."
+
+Rothwell interrupted. "I know. Five radioactive planets with the fresh
+scars of cobalt bombs and the remains of civilizations. Then radar
+screens erupting crazily with signals from a multi-thousand ship space
+fleet; vector computers hurriedly plotting and re-plotting the
+fast-moving trajectory, submitting each time an unvarying answer for the
+fleet's destination--our own solar system." He slapped his hand flat
+against the desk. "The point is, Doc, it's not much to go on, and we
+don't dare send another ship to check for fear of attracting attention
+to ourselves. If we could only be _sure_."
+
+"Jim," over the intercom, Philips' voice seemed to waver slightly,
+"those men honestly saw what they say. I'd stake my life on it."
+
+"All of us are, Doc." He flipped the off button. Just thirty days now,
+since the scout ship _Leo's_ discovery and the panicked dash for home
+with the warning. Not that the warning was worth much, he reflected,
+Earth had no space battle fleet. There had never been any reason to
+build one.
+
+Then, two weeks ago, Aku's trading fleet had descended from nowhere,
+having blundered, he said, across Earth's orbit while on a new route
+between two distant star clusters. When told of the impending attack,
+Aku immediately offered to cancel his trip and evacuate as many humans
+as his ships could hold, so that humanity would at least survive,
+somewhere in the galaxy. Earth chose to accept his offer.
+
+"Hobson's choice," Rothwell growled to himself. "No choice at all."
+After years of handling hot and cold local wars and crises of every
+description, his military mind had become conditioned to a complete
+disbelief in fortuitous coincidence, and he gagged at the thought of Aku
+"just happening by." Still frowning, he punched a yellow button on his
+desk, and reviewed in his mind the things he wanted to say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jim! Isn't everything all right?"
+
+Chagrined, Rothwell scrambled to his feet, the President had never
+answered so quickly before. He faced the screen on the wall to his right
+and saluted, amazed once again at how old the man looked. Sparse white
+hair criss-crossed haphazardly over the President's head, his face was
+lined with deep trenches that not even the most charitable could call
+wrinkles, and the faded eyes that stared from deep caverns no longer
+radiated the flaming vitality that had inspired victorious armies in the
+African war.
+
+"Commander Aku was just here, sir. He demands that the children be
+ready for evacuation next Thursday. I told him that it would be damned
+difficult."
+
+The face on the screen paled perceptibly. "I hope you didn't anger the
+commander!"
+
+Rothwell ground his teeth. "I told him we'd deliver the goods on
+Thursday."
+
+Presidential lips tightened. "I don't care for the way you said that,
+General."
+
+Rothwell straightened. "I apologize, sir. It's just that this whole
+lousy setup has me worried silly. I don't like Aku making like a
+guardian angel and us having no choice but to dance to his harp." His
+fingers clenched. "God knows we need his help, and I guess its wrong to
+ask too many questions, but how come he's only landed one of his ships,
+and why is it that he and his lieutenant are the only aliens to leave
+that ship--the only aliens we've ever even seen? It just doesn't figure
+out!" There, he thought, I've said it.
+
+The President looked at him quietly for a minute, then answered softly,
+"I know, Jim, but what else can we do?" Rothwell winced at the shake in
+the old man's voice.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "But Aku's got us in a hell of a spot."
+
+"Uh, Jim. You haven't said this in public, have you?"
+
+Rothwell snorted. "No, _sir_, I don't care for a panic."
+
+"There, there, Jim." The President smiled weakly. "We can't expect the
+aliens to act like we do, can we?" He began to adopt the preacher tone
+he used so effectively in his campaign speeches. "We must be thankful
+for the chance breeze that wafted Commander Aku to these shores, and for
+his help. Maybe the war fleet won't arrive after all and everything will
+turn out all right. You're doing a fine job, Jim." The screen went
+blank.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rothwell felt sick. He felt sorry for the President, but sorrier for the
+Western Democratic Union, to be captained by such a feeble thing.
+Leaning back in his chair, he glared at the empty screen. "You can't
+solve problems by wishing them away. You knew that once."
+
+His mind wandered, and for a minute he thought he could actually feel
+the growing pressure of three billion people waiting for the computers
+of Moscow Central to make their impartial choice from the world's
+children. Trained mathematicians, the best that could be mustered from
+every major country, monitored each phase of the project to insure its
+absolute honesty. One hundred thousand children were to be picked
+completely at random; brown, yellow, black, white, red; sick or well;
+genius or moron; every child had an equal chance. This fact, this fact
+alone gave every parent hope, and possibly prevented world-wide rioting.
+
+But with the destruction of the planet an almost certainty, the
+collective nervous system was just one micron away from explosion.
+There was nothing else to think about or talk about, and no one tried to
+pretend any different.
+
+Rothwell's eyes moved involuntarily to the little spherical tri-photo on
+his desk, just an informal shot he'd snapped a few months back of Martha
+and her proudest possessions, their rambunctious, priceless off-spring:
+Jim, Jr., in his space scouts uniform, and Mary Ellen with that crazy
+hair-do she was so proud of then, but had already forgotten.
+
+"Damn!" he said aloud. "Dammit to hell!" In one quick movement, he spun
+his chair around and jabbed at the intercom. "Get the heli!" His voice
+crackled.
+
+Grabbing his hat, he yanked open the door and strode into the sudden
+quiet of the small office. He turned right and went out through a side
+entrance to a small landing ramp, arriving just as his personal heli
+touched down. He climbed in. "To the ship."
+
+As he settled back in the hard seat, Rothwell offered a silent thanks
+that, instead of asking which ship, Sergeant Johnson promptly lifted and
+headed for the gray space vessel that dominated the field.
+
+A few hundred yards from the craft he said, "You'd better set her down
+here, Sarge, and let me walk in. Our friends might get nervous about
+something flying in at them."
+
+He jumped out, squinting against the hot glare off the concrete, and
+then, with a slight uneasiness, stepped into the dark shadow that
+pointed a thousand feet along the runway, away from the setting sun. He
+walked towards the ship.
+
+A few seconds later, his eye caught a small, unexplained flash and he
+threw himself flat just as a section of pavement exploded, a dozen feet
+ahead.
+
+Cursing, Rothwell picked himself off the ground, brushed the dust off
+his uniform, and stood quietly. He didn't have long to wait.
+
+A small cubicle jutted out from the ship and lowered itself along a
+monorail running down to the ground. The side nearest him opened
+revealing, as Rothwell expected, Commander Aku and his lieutenant who
+both hurried over to where he was standing, as if to keep him from
+coming forward to meet them--and in so doing coming nearer the ship. As
+the commander trotted rapidly towards him, Rothwell noted that he was
+still buttoning his jacket and that the shirt underneath looked
+suspiciously as if it hadn't been buttoned at all. Funny, he thought,
+that my presence should cause such a panic.
+
+"General, what a pleasure." The commander's disconcerted look belied his
+words, but even as he spoke he began to regain his composure and assume
+the poker face that Rothwell had come to expect.
+
+"I do hope," said Rothwell, "that my visit hasn't inconvenienced you."
+
+Aku and his lieutenant traded swift glances, neither said anything.
+
+"Well," Rothwell began again, "I am here to convey to you the good
+wishes of the President of our country and to submit a request from him
+and from the other governments of the Earth."
+
+Aku straightened. "Though merely the commander of a poor trading fleet,
+I feel sure I speak for my empire when I wish your President good
+health. The request?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rothwell spoke evenly, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
+"Commander, when the attack comes we expect that Earth with all its life
+will be annihilated. But your offer to transport a hundred thousand
+children to your own home worlds has prevented despair, and has at least
+given us hope that if we will not see the future our children will."
+
+Aku nodded slightly, avoiding his eyes. "You take it well."
+
+"But it takes more than hope, Commander. We need some assurance, also,
+that our children will be all right." He took an involuntary step nearer
+the alien, whose facial muscles never moved, and who turned away
+slightly, refusing to meet Rothwell's eyes.
+
+"Commander, you and your lieutenant are the only members of your race
+that we have ever seen, and then only on official business. We would
+like very much to meet the others. Why don't you land your ships and
+give the crews liberty, so that we can meet them informally and they can
+get to know us, also? That way it won't seem as if we are giving our
+kids over to complete strangers."
+
+Without turning his head, Aku said flatly, "That is impossible. Do you
+want reasons?"
+
+"No," Rothwell said quietly. "If you don't want to do something, it's
+easy enough to think up reasons." He ached to reach out and grab the
+alien neck, to shake some expression into that frozen face. "Look,
+Commander, surely the friendship of a doomed race can't bring any harm
+to your crew!"
+
+Aku faced him now. "What you ask is impossible."
+
+Ashamed of the desperate note that crept inadvertently into his voice,
+Rothwell said, "Commander, will you let me, alone, briefly enter your
+ship, so that I can tell my people what it is like?"
+
+Aku and the lieutenant traded a long, silent look, then the lieutenant
+almost imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders. Without moving, turned
+partly away from Rothwell, Aku said, simply, "No." The two started to
+walk back to the ship.
+
+"Commander!"
+
+They stopped, but didn't turn.
+
+"Commander Aku, if you have any sort of God in your empire, or any sort
+of honor that your race swears by, please tell me one thing--tell me
+that our children will be safe, I won't ask you anything else."
+
+The two aliens stood still, facing away from him, towards their ship.
+Minutes passed. Rothwell stood quietly, looking at their backs, human
+appearing, but hiding unguessable thoughts. Neither of them moved, or
+said a word. Finally, he turned and walked away, back towards his heli.
+
+He leaned back in the little heli's bucket seat and ran a large hand
+through unruly yellow hair that was already flecked with white. The
+first evening lights of Brooklyn and Queens and, off to the left,
+Manhattan, moved unseen beneath him as the craft headed towards his
+home. Dammit, he thought, is it that Aku just doesn't care what we
+think, or that he cares very much what we would think if we knew
+whatever it is he's hiding?
+
+He banged his fists together in frustration. How the hell can anyone
+guess what goes on in an alien mind? His whole damn brain is probably
+completely different! Maybe to him a poker face is friendly. Maybe he's
+honestly not hiding anything at all. He looked out as the heli slowly
+started its descent. No evidence, he thought. Not a shred, except a
+suspicious mind and, he glanced at the dirt on his trousers, and a shell
+exploding in my face.
+
+He slapped his hat back on and whirled to the surprised pilot. "Dammit,
+I don't make the decisions, I'm just in charge of loading, and if the
+President says it's okay, then it's okay with me!" He stepped out onto
+the grass of his yard, and quashed a little shriek of conscience
+somewhere in the back of his mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Blinding lights pinned him in mid-stride. A familiar voice sprang out of
+the glare, "Here he is now viewers, General James Rothwell, commander of
+the western armies, and head of the Earth evacuation project. General,
+International-TV cameras have been waiting secretly in your yard for
+hours for your return."
+
+As his eyes adjusted, Rothwell distinguished a camera crew, their small
+portable instrument, and a young, smooth-talking announcer that he had
+seen several times on television. He forced the annoyance out of his
+eyes. This, he thought, is all I need.
+
+"What the general doesn't know," the announcer went on, "is that earlier
+this evening it was announced by Moscow Central that the computers had
+picked his son as one of the evacuees!"
+
+The shock was visible on 150,000,000 TV sets. Completely unexpected, the
+surprise of the announcement hit Rothwell like a physical blow; his eyes
+widened, his chin dropped, and for an instant the world's viewers read
+in his face the frank emotions of a father, unshielded by military
+veneer. Then years of training took command, and he faced the camera,
+apparently calm, though churning internally. The odds, he thought
+confusedly, the odds must be at least ten thousand to one! Then he
+realized that someone was talking to him, waving a microphone.
+
+"Er, I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch ..." he mumbled at the camera.
+
+The announcer laughed amiably. "Certainly can't blame you, this must be
+a really big night! How does it feel, General, for your son to be one of
+the evacuees?"
+
+Something in the back of his mind twisted the question. How does it
+feel, General, to turn your only son over to a poker-faced alien who
+shoots when you walk near his ship? "I'm not sure," he said, "how I
+feel."
+
+Talking excitedly, the announcer drew closer. "To think that your name
+will live forever in the vast star clusters of the galaxy!" He lowered
+his voice. "General, speaking now unofficially, as a parent, to the
+thousands of other parents whose children may also be selected, and to
+the rest of us who ..." he seemed to stumble for a word, and for an
+instant Rothwell saw him, too, as a man worried and afraid, instead of
+as part of a television machine. "Well, General, _you've_ had contact
+with the aliens, are you glad your son is going?"
+
+Rothwell looked at the strained face of the announcer, at the camera
+crew quietly eyeing him, and at the small huddled group of neighbors
+hovering in the background, and he knew that his next words might be the
+most critical he would ever use in his life. In a world strained
+emotionally almost beyond endurance, the wrong words, a hint of a
+suspicion, could spark the riots that would kill millions and bring
+total destruction.
+
+He faced the camera and said calmly, "I am glad my son is going. I wish
+it could happen for everyone. Commander Aku has assured me that
+everything will turn out all right." Mentally he begged for forgiveness,
+there was nothing else he could say. Sweat glistened on his forehead as
+he tried to fight down the memory of Aku turning his back on the plea
+that echoed in his brain--"tell me that our children will be safe."
+
+The front door of the house banged open and all at once Martha was in
+his arms, crying, laughing. "Oh, Jim, I'm so glad, so very glad!"
+Rothwell blinked his eyes as he put his arm around her and waved the
+camera away. Tears sparkled on his cheeks; but neither Martha nor the
+viewers knew why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning Aku and his ever-present lieutenant were waiting when
+Rothwell's heli set him down in front of the administration building, a
+few minutes later than usual. They followed him into his office.
+
+"Coffee?" Rothwell held out a paper cup.
+
+"No, thank you," said Aku, as expressionless as ever. "We are here to
+make final arrangements for the evacuation."
+
+"I see. Well," said Rothwell, "Thursday will be a very painful day for
+us and we will want to expedite things as much as possible."
+
+Aku nodded.
+
+Rothwell went on. "I have made arrangements to have a hundred air fields
+cleared at various population centers around the world. That way your
+ships can land simultaneously, one at each field, and the loading can be
+finished in very little time. Now," he opened a desk drawer, "here is a
+list, of ..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aku held up a fur-covered hand. "That will not be possible."
+
+Rothwell looked down at his desk and closed his eyes briefly. I knew it,
+he thought, I knew this would happen, sure as hell. He raised his head.
+"Impossible?"
+
+"We will first land twenty ships. These twenty must be fully loaded and
+back in orbit before the next will land. We will use the first twenty
+air fields on your list."
+
+Rothwell took a deep breath. "But I thought you wanted to get away as
+soon as possible! It will take at least an extra day to load according
+to your scheme."
+
+"Will it?" Aku moved to go, his lieutenant reached to open the door.
+
+On an impulse, Rothwell stepped forward. "Commander, if you had a son
+would you send him away like this?"
+
+Aku stopped, and looked directly at him with even, black eyes; then the
+gaze moved through and past him, to the window and the ship beyond. For
+a minute his expression altered, changing almost to one of pain. When
+he spoke, it was almost to himself. "My father loved his children more
+than ..." He started as his lieutenant suddenly clapped a hand on his
+shoulder. The expression vanished. They left together, without looking
+at Rothwell or saying another word.
+
+For several minutes Rothwell stared frowning at the closed door. He
+walked thoughtfully back to his desk, and lowered himself slowly into
+the chair.
+
+He sat for a long time, trying to puzzle through the picture. Finally
+he stood and paced the room. "Suppose," he said to himself, "just
+suppose that not all of those hundred ships up there are really cargo
+ships. Suppose that, say, only twenty are. Then, after those twenty were
+loaded ..." He swung around to look again at the long, slim silhouette
+poised high against the main runway. "With ocean vessels, it's the
+fighting ships that are lean and slender."
+
+Bending over his desk, he nudged an intercom button with his finger.
+"Doc, how would one go about trying to understand an alien's
+reactions?"
+
+Philips' voice shot right back. "Well, Jim, the very first thing, you'd
+have to be sure they weren't exactly the same as a human's reactions."
+
+Rothwell paused, startled. "It can't be, Doc. Why, if Aku was a human
+I'd say ..." He stiffened, feeling the hair rise at the back of his
+neck. The short, curt answers, the refusal to meet his eyes, the frozen
+expression clicked into pattern. "Doc ... I'd say he was being forced to
+do something he hated like hell to do."
+
+Tensely, he straightened and contemplated the lean, gray spaceship. Then
+he whirled around and slapped every button on the intercom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thursday. The sun pecked fitfully at the low overcast while a sullen
+crowd watched a squat alien ship descend vertically, to finally settle
+with a flaming belch not far from the first. Similar crowds watched
+similar landings at nineteen other airports around the world, but the
+loading was to start first in New York.
+
+An elevator-like box swung out from the fat belly of the ship and was
+lowered rapidly to the ground. Two golden-hued aliens, in uniforms
+resembling Aku's, stepped out and walked about a thousand feet towards
+the crowd. Only children actually being loaded were to go beyond this
+point; parents had to stay at the airport gates.
+
+"When do I go, Dad?"
+
+"Shortly, son." Rothwell laid his hand on the lean shoulder. "You're in
+the second hundred." There was a brief, awkward silence. "Martha, you'd
+better take him over to the line." He held out his hand. "So long, son."
+
+Jim, Jr., shook his hand gravely, then, without a word, suddenly threw
+his hands tight around his younger sister. He took his mother's hand,
+and they walked slowly over to the sad line that was forming beyond the
+gate.
+
+Rothwell turned to his daughter. "You going over there too, kitten?" The
+words were gruff in his tight throat.
+
+She wiped a hand quickly across her cheek. "No, Dad, I guess I'll stay
+here with you." She stood close beside him.
+
+Aku, forgotten until now, cleared his throat. "I think the loading
+should start, General."
+
+Raising his hand in a half-salute, Rothwell signaled to a captain
+standing near the gate who turned and motioned to a small cordon of
+military police. Shortly, a group of fifty of the first youngsters in
+the line separated from the others and moved slowly out onto the
+concrete ribbon towards the waiting ship. The rest of the line
+hesitated, then edged reluctantly up to the gate, to take the place of
+the fifty who had left. They waited there, the children of a thousand
+families, suddenly dead quiet, staring after the fifty that slowly moved
+away.
+
+They walked quietly, in a tight group, without any antics or horseplay
+which, in itself, gave the event an air of unreality. Approaching the
+ship, they seemed to huddle even closer together, forming a pathetically
+tiny cluster in the shadow of the towering space cruiser. The title of a
+book that he had read once, many years before, flashed unexpectedly in
+Rothwell's memory, _The Story of Mankind_. He looked sadly after the
+fifty, then back at the silent line. Were these frightened kids now
+writing the final period in the last chapter? He shook himself, work to
+be done, no time now for daydreams.
+
+As the fifty reached the ship and started to enter the elevator,
+Rothwell turned and beckoned to some technicians standing out of sight
+just inside the entrance to the control tower. Three of them ran out and
+set up what looked like a television set, only with three screens. One
+ran back, unreeling a power cable, while a fourth flicked on a bank of
+switches, making feverish, minute adjustments. Rothwell felt the sweat
+in his hands. "Is it okay, Sergeant?"
+
+The back of the sergeant's shirt was wet though the air was cool. "It's
+got to be, sir!" His fingers played across the knobs. "All that metal,
+the whole thing is critical as ... Ah!" He jumped back. The screens
+flashed into life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aku stiffened. His lieutenant gasped audibly, made a jerky movement
+towards the screens, then suddenly became aware of three MPs standing
+beside him, hands nonchalantly cradling blunt-nosed weapons.
+
+All three receivers showed similar scenes, the milling youngsters and
+the ship, but from up close, the pictures jerking and swaying
+erratically as if the cameras were somehow fastened to moving human
+beings. Then the scenes condensed into a cramped, jostling blackness as
+the fifty crowded into the elevator and were lifted up the side of the
+ship.
+
+Next, were three views of a large room, bare except for what appeared to
+be overhead cranes and other mechanical paraphernalia of a military shop
+or warehouse. For a while the fifty moved about restlessly, then the
+cameras swung about simultaneously to face a wall that slowly slid
+apart.
+
+Rothwell froze. "Good Lord!"
+
+Six murky _things_ moved from the open wall towards the cameras, which
+fell back to the opposite side of the room. Each was large, many times
+the size of a man, but somehow indistinct, for the cameras didn't convey
+any sense of shape or form. For an instant, one of the screens flashed a
+picture of a terrified human face, and arms raised protectively as the
+shadowy things moved in upon the group.
+
+A projection snapped out from one, grabbed two of the humans, and
+hurled them into a corner. Then it motioned a dozen or so others over to
+the same spot. With similar harsh, sweeping movements, the group of
+humans was quickly broken up into three roughly equal segments. One of
+the groups seemed to be protecting someone who appeared seriously hurt.
+A black tentacle lashed out and one of the screens went blank. Then
+another.
+
+The third showed a small group pushed stumbling through a narrow door,
+down a short passageway, and abruptly into blackness. Something that
+looked like bars flashed across the screen, then a dark liquid trickled
+across the camera lens, blotting out the view.
+
+Eyes blazing, Rothwell whirled on Aku. "Throughout our history,
+Commander, humans have had one thing in common, our blasted pride! We
+will not turn over our young to slavery, and by hell if we die, we'll
+die fighting!" He jerked up his coat sleeve, barked an order into a
+small transmitter on his wrist, and, grabbing his daughter, threw
+himself flat on the concrete.
+
+Hesitating only an instant, Aku, his lieutenant, and the MPs hit the
+ground as both spaceships vanished in a cataclysmic eruption of flame
+and steel.
+
+Raising his head, Rothwell grinned crazily into the exploding debris,
+imagining nineteen other ships suddenly disintegrating under the rocket
+guns of nineteen different nations. He saw Earth, like a giant
+porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from
+hundreds of submarines and secret bases--the war power of the great
+nations, designed for the ruin of each other, united to destroy the
+alien fleet.
+
+He turned to Aku, "Midgets, volunteers with miniature TV cameras ..." he
+stopped.
+
+The commander and his lieutenant had flung their arms about each other
+and were crying like babies. Tentatively, Aku reached towards him.
+"Those things, the _Eleele_, from another galaxy." He struggled for
+words. "They captured your scout crew and implanted memories of
+thousands of ships to create fear and make it easier to take slaves
+before blasting you." He glanced up at the flashes in the sky. "This was
+their only fleet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rothwell glared. "You helped them."
+
+Aku nodded miserably. "We had to. They thought you'd trust us because we
+look almost human. It was a trick that worked before." Tears streamed
+across his face, matting the golden fur. "You see, the radioactive
+planets your men reported, one of them was--home."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ January 1959.
+    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+    typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alien Offer, by Al Sevcik
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALIEN OFFER ***
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