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Updated: May 10, 2025
I'd just have the luck to be finishing a drink when our friend, the Nipe, popped in on us. And when I do meet him, I'm going to need every microsecond of reflex speed I can scrape up." They walked down a soft-floored, warmly-lit corridor to an elevator which whisked them up to the main level of the Neurophysical Institute Building.
Almost as an afterthought, one realized that the loot which the Nipe stole was seemingly unpredictable. Money, as such, he apparently had no use for. He had taken gold, silver, and platinum, but one raid for each of these elements had evidently been enough, except for silver, which had required three raids over a period of four years. Since then, he hadn't touched silver again.
It was the only thinkable thing. I saw you on the television, and it was only thinkable that you came for me." Stanton blinked, stunned. What was the Nipe thinking? But, of course, he knew. And he saw that even his brother's return had been a part of the plan. "I knew you were out in the asteroids," the Nipe went on. "But I had decided you had come to kill.
"The Nipe race must, of necessity, have had some similar ritualistic tests or they would not have become what they are. And we have already agreed that, once the Nipes adopted something of that kind, it remained with them, not so? Yes. "Also, it is extremely unlikely that the Nipe civilisation if such it can be called has any geriatric problem.
"That's been our problem all along," he said seriously. "Keeping the Nipe from knowing that he's being watched. In the tunnels, we've used only equipment that was already there, adding only what we absolutely had to small things, a few strands of wire, a tiny relay, things that can be hidden in out of the way places.
The Nipe rolled over and crouched on all eight limbs. His violet eyes watched Stanton, but the man could read no expression on that inhuman face. "You did not kill." For a moment, Stanton found it hard to believe that the hissing, guttural voice had come from the crouching monster. "You did not even try to kill." "I have no wish to kill you," Stanton said evenly. "I can see that.
That one exception was a long, purplish-black, roughened discoloration that ran along one side for almost half of the ship's seventeen meters of length. It was the only external sign that the ship was dying. Inside the ship, the Nipe neither knew nor cared about the discoloration. Had he thought about it, he would have deduced the presence of the burn, but it was the least of his worries.
Could those people down there, and the others like them all over the world, be made to understand that, by his own lights, the Nipe had been acting in a most civilized and gentlemanly way he knew? Would they see that, because of the priceless information stored in that alien brain, the Nipe's life had to be preserved at any cost? Dr.
Do you ... Are you...." He stopped, as if baffled. "There are not the proper words. Do you follow the Customs?" Stanton felt a surge of triumph. This was what George Yoritomo had guessed might happen! "If I must kill you," he said carefully, "I, myself, will do the honors. You will not go uneaten." The Nipe sagged a little, relaxing all over. "I had hoped it was so.
As if in obedience to the colonel's command, the Nipe seemed to shake himself a little and go about his business more briskly, and the air and gravity seemed to revert to those of Earth. "What's he doing?" Stanton asked. The Nipe was doing something with an odd-looking box that sat on the floor in front of him.
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