FAREWELL MESSAGE

There was the alien spaceship. It squatted in the middle of the airfield's main runway, in the way of every plane landing and taking off, to the complete confusion of traffic control.

The airport people had asked V'gu, politely, to move it. He had looked at them with blank indifference, and gone on making notes on Terran marriage rites.

Nobody had suggested forcing V'gu to move his ship. The ship looked as heavy as a battle cruiser—it probably was armed—and it did not look as if it could be moved by anything short of a hydrogen bomb. V'gu, when told about hydrogen bombs, had smiled and implied that such weapons were about on par with stone axes.

The governments of the world treated V'gu with respect, and informed their peoples that he was merely a visiting student, with no intention of harming them, and should be given every courtesy, according to the best traditions of hospitality to strangers. So far, he had not become angry at anyone.

It was not too difficult to be courteous to V'gu. He looked reasonably pleasant: the standard number of arms and legs, one head, and only a slight tint of green to the skin. The green tint had caused one restaurant in the southern United States some debate before they would permit him a table, but V'gu had not been angered; he had merely smiled and noted it down in his notes about taboos.

In fact, the only thing that made it slightly difficult to be courteous to V'gu was his air of superiority. He paid for services and sample objects and information by trading strange gadgets which could do fabulous things, and which were immediately patentable by the lucky owners, but he passed out the priceless gadgets with the air of a civilized man handing out glass beads and useless gimcracks to savages.

It was a question how long before someone felt enough insulted by this air of superiority to lose his temper and kill the alien being. The governments of the world were nervously protective of V'gu, trying to postpone and prevent any such murder. They were afraid of a space fleet or police force that might come to inquire what had happened to him, if he came to harm.

At last, to the relief of governments, and to the joy of the traffic control department of the airport where his ship still obstructed traffic, V'gu was about to go home. His ship was filled with photographs, notes and souvenirs. He announced that he had spent enough years in a tour of strange planets to complete his course of study. He announced a farewell speech.

Photographers brought cameras to focus on him standing on the lowered gangplank of his ship, and color TV projected his image to the screens of the world—a tallish person, only a little strange and ugly, with a smooth greenish tint to his skin. The photographers finished flashing stills, and the TV sound booms moved in to pick up his voice.

The oldest reporter there was named McCann, and experience had made him leathery and cynical. He already knew what V'gu would say—the alien's superior attitude had made it only too clear.

Someone reminded V'gu respectfully that he had promised a speech.

"Yes indeed," he replied sonorously. His English was perfect. He had spent all of three hours in learning to speak it.

"You may write in your history books that I think Earth is a pleasant little planet," he went on, "but sadly backward and primitive in many respects. I believe that this is caused by the numerous wars, and the generally quarrelsome behavior of your species." He said this without anger, and looked at the crowd and the cameras with a kind of superior pity and compassion in his gaze. "If you could only stop this bickering among yourselves, with a planet as green and pleasant as this you could attain a harmony and pleasure of life equal to any of the truly civilized worlds of the galaxy. My home world, for example, abolished wars generations ago. We learned a philosophy of cooperation."

He paused, and gestured up dramatically at the starry night sky, and again looked at the crowd with contempt. "Yes there are many worlds out there which are peaceful, productive and cooperative. But there are also worlds which are dead and shrunken cinders where there had been green planets and thriving races of people who could not give up war. For your sake I hope that you will be able to change your path, but I think that you do not have the ability, and that at last you will reach the end of the path you are on, and destroy each other and perhaps your world also. Each nova that you see in the sky marks the suicide of a race. Our knowledge of these matters is certain: there is never a nova caused simply by accident; power sources cannot fail this way. Each nova tells us of a war, of the death of a culture which probably thought of itself as civilized, and yet could not subdue its innate savagery."

The reporters scribbled and the cameras whirred. McCann closed his notepad, bored, and gazed at the sky, prepared to suffer through the rest of the speech. His paper could get the words of the speech from the TV. McCann had no comment to add; he had heard such ideas before. To the east in the sky was the distant glare of the landing lights of an oncoming aircraft.... No. Not a plane, a star. A star almost fantastically brilliant, brighter than the others, brighter than Mars.

"Mr. V'gu!" a young reporter said excitedly. "Isn't that a nova, there?" He pointed and everyone looked.

V'gu turned, his hand on the gangway rail. They waited and fidgeted as he stood without moving, looking up. After a time long enough for him to have memorized the entire star region, his eyes came down again, and he looked at them blankly, as if he had forgotten why they were there.

McCann felt a sudden electric thrill of recognition. He had seen a similar paralyzed lack of expression on the faces of men who had just learned that they had made some terrible mistake. He turned abruptly and pushed through the crowd, heading for a phone.

The other reporters didn't understand. Not yet.

"This nova," one of them said. "What was it from?"

V'gu looked up at it. "A sun blew up," he muttered. "Five years ago. The light took five years to get here." The microphones barely picked up his voice.

"Do you know anything about the people who lived there, Mr. V'gu?"

V'gu opened his mouth as if to answer. Then he closed it again. He looked over his shoulder into his spaceship's entrance.

A reporter asked, "What about the nova, Mr. V'gu?"

"I was—I was very well acquainted with the people who caused it," V'gu said slowly. "Very well acquainted. I—cannot imagine why it happened."

"It was a war, wasn't it, Mr. V'gu?"

"A war?" V'gu looked up again and hesitated. "Yes, I suppose it was."

A moment later he added, apparently without reason, "I've been away from home a long time."

"How long will it take you to get back home, Mr. V'gu?"

"Get back?" V'gu looked around vaguely, his shoulders slumped. He looked less alien, somehow, and more like the men around him, and more likeable. He looked back to his questioner. "Oh. Oh yes, I'm ... I've changed my mind. You may tell your papers that I've—ah—decided to extend my stay with you. For—for some time, I think."

The youngest reporter asked suddenly, "Did the nova have anything to do with you changing your mind? With this decision, I mean."

The tall greenish man in the odd clothes came down the gangplank and entered the crowd, peering about as if he had forgotten the microphones and the cameras he was supposed to be speaking to. Then he saw his object and went through the crowd to him. It was an airfield official.

"Sir," said V'gu to the official, humbly—and suddenly everyone watching knew how well V'gu had known the people of the nova world. "Sir, I believe this spaceship is in your way. Where would you like me to park it?"