The Edge of Tomorrow by Howard Fast Page A

instruments. Have them taken apart!”
    â€œWe have.”
    â€œThen what have you found out?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œDo you mean to tell me,” I said, “that you can find out nothing about these instruments—what they are, how they work, what their purpose is?”
    â€œExactly,” Hopper nodded. “Nothing, Mr. Morgan. They are meaningless to the finest engineers and technicians in the United States. You know the old story—suppose you gave a radio to Aristotle? What would he do with it? Where would he find power? And what would he receive with no one to send? It is not that these instruments are complex. They are actually very simple. We simply have no idea of what they can or should do.”
    â€œBut they must be a weapon of some kind.”
    â€œWhy?” Lieberman demanded. “Look at yourself, Mr. Morgan—a cultured and intelligent man, yet you cannot conceive of a mentality that does not include weapons as a prime necessity. Yet a weapon is an unusual thing, Mr. Morgan. An instrument of murder. We don’t think that way, because the weapon has become the symbol of the world we inhabit. Is that civilized, Mr. Morgan? Or is the weapon and civilization in the ultimate sense incompatible? Can you imagine a mentality to which the concept of murder is impossible—or let me say absent. We see everything through our own subjectivity. Why shouldn’t some other—this creature, for example—see the process of mentation out of his subjectivity? So he approaches a creature of our world—and he is slain. Why? What explanation? Tell me, Mr. Morgan, what conceivable explanation could we offer a wholly rational creature for this—” pointing to the thing on his desk. “I am asking you the question most seriously. What explanation?”
    â€œAn accident?” I muttered.
    â€œAnd the eight jars in my cupboard? Eight accidents?”
    â€œI think, Dr. Lieberman,” Fitzgerald said, “that you can go a little too far in that direction.”
    â€œYes, you would think so. It’s a part of your own background. Mine is as a scientist. As a scientist, I try to be rational when I can. The creation of a structure of good and evil, or what we call morality and ethics, is a function of intelligence—and unquestionably the ultimate evil may be the destruction of conscious intelligence. That is why, so long ago, we at least recognized the injunction, ‘thou shalt not kill!’ even if we never gave more than lips service to it. But to a collective intelligence, such as this might be a part of, the concept of murder would be monstrous beyond the power of thought.”
    I sat down and lit a cigarette. My hands were trembling. Hopper apologized. “We have been rather rough with you, Mr. Morgan. But over the past days, eight other people have done just what you did. We are caught in the trap of being what we are.”
    â€œBut tell me—where do these things come from?”
    â€œIt almost doesn’t matter where they come from,” Hopper said hopelessly. “Perhaps from another planet—perhaps from inside this one—or the moon or Mars. That doesn’t matter. Fitzgerald thinks they come from a smaller planet, because their movements are apparently slow on earth. But Dr. Lieberman thinks that they move slowly because they have not discovered the need to move quickly. Meanwhile, they have the problem of murder and what to do with it. Heaven knows how many of them have died in other places—Africa, Asia, Europe.”
    â€œThen why don’t you publicize this? Put a stop to it before it’s too late!”
    â€œWe’ve thought of that,” Fitzgerald nodded. “What then—panic, hysteria, charges that this is the result of the atom bomb? We can’t change. We are what we are.”
    â€œThey may go away,” I said.
    â€œYes, they may,” Lieberman nodded. “But if