The Beachcomber acknowledged the introduction with effortless courtesy; Alice nearly beat herself to death with her eyelashes.
She managed to stumble very plausibly as they walked down to the water's edge, and put a hand on the giant's arm for support. He righted her casually with the flat of his hand on her back—at the same time giving a slight push that put her a step or two in advance—and went on talking to Maxwell.
They sat down by the water's edge, and Dai pumped Maxwell for the latest news on Earth. He seemed genuinely interested; Maxwell didn't know whether it was an act or not, but he talked willingly and well. The Beachcomber threw an occasional question Alice's way, just enough to keep her in the conversation. Maxwell saw her gathering her forces, and grinned to himself.
There was a pause and Alice cleared her throat. Both men looked at her politely. Alice said, "Dai, are there really man-eating animals in this jungle? Vernon says so, but we haven't seen a one, all the time we've been here. And—" Her gaze ran down the Beachcomber's smooth, naked torso, and she blushed very prettily. "I mean—" she added, and stopped again.
The Beachcomber said, "Sure, there are lots of them. They don't bother me, though."
She said earnestly, "You mean—you walk around, like that, in the jungle, and nothing can hurt you?"
"That's it."
Alice drove the point home. "Could you protect another person who was with you, too?"
"I guess I could."
Alice smiled radiantly. "Why, that's too good to be true! I was just telling Vernon, before we saw you down here, that I wished I could go into the jungle without the scooter, to see all the wild animals and things. Will you take me in for a little walk, Dai? Vernon can mind the scooters—you wouldn't mind, would you, Vernie?"
Maxwell started to reply, but the Beachcomber forestalled him. "I assure you, Miss Zwerling," he said slowly, "that it would be a waste, of your time and mine."
Alice blushed again, this time not so prettily. "Just what do you mean?" she demanded.
Dai looked at her gravely. "I'm not quite such a wild man as I seem," he said. "I always wear trousers in mixed company." He repeated, with emphasis, "Always."
Alice's lips grew hard and thin, and the skin whitened around them. Her eyes glittered. She started to say something to the Beachcomber, but the words stuck in her throat. She turned to Maxwell. "I think we’d better go."
"We just got here," Maxwell said mildly. "Stick around."
She stood up. "Are you coming?" "Nope," said Maxwell.
Without another word she turned, walked stiffly to her scooter, got in and soared away. They watched the tiny shining speck dwindle and disappear over the horizon.
Maxwell grinned and looked at the Beachcomber. "She had that coming," he said. "Not that she's out anything—she's got her return ticket." He put a hand behind him to hoist himself to his feet. "I'll be going now, Dai. Nice to have—"
"No, stay a while, Vern," said the giant. "I don't often see people." He looked moodily off across the water. "I didn't spoil anything special for you, I hope?"
"Nothing special," Maxwell said. "Only my current light o' love." The giant turned and stared at him, half-frowning.
"What the hell!" said Maxwell disgustedly. "There are plenty of other pebbles on the beach."
"Don't say that!" The Beachcomber's face contorted in a blaze of fury. He made a chopping motion with his forearm. Violent as it was, the motion came nowhere near Maxwell. Something else, something that felt like the pure essence of wrath, struck him and bowled him over, knocking the breath from him.
He sat up, a yard away from the giant, eyes popping foolishly. "Whuhh—" he said.
There was pain and contrition in the Beachcomber's eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. He helped Maxwell up. "I don't often forget myself that way. Will you forgive me?"
Maxwell's chest was still numb; it was hard to breathe. "Don't know," he said with difficulty. "What did you do it for?"
Sunlight gleamed dazzlingly on the Beachcomber's bare head. His eyes were in deep shadow, and shadows sketched the bold outline of his nose, marked the firm, bitter lines of his mouth. He said, "I've offended you." He paused. "I'll explain, Vernon, but there's one condition you must never tell anybody else, ever."
He put his big hand on Maxwell's wrist, and Maxwell felt the power that flowed from him. Almost hypnotically he knew he never would be able to. He was aware his mind was being schooled in what to remember.
"All right," said Maxwell. A curious complexity of emotions boiled inside him—anger and petulance, curiosity and something else, deeper down: a vague, objectless fear. "Go ahead."
The Beachcomber talked. After a few minutes he seemed almost to forget Maxwell; he stared out across the silver sea, and Maxwell, half hypnotized by the deep, resonant voice, watched his hawklike profile in silence.
Dimly, he saw the universe the Beachcomber spoke of: a universe of Men set free. Over that inconceivable gap of time that stretched between Maxwell’s time and theirs, they had purged themselves of all their frailties. Maxwell saw them striding among the stars, as much at home in the pitiless void as on the verdant planets they loved. He saw them tall and faultless and strong, handsome men and beautiful women, all with the power that glowed in the Beachcomber, but without a hint of his sadness.
He tried to imagine what the daily life of those people must be like, and couldn't; it was three million years beyond his comprehension. But when he looked at the Beachcomber's face, he knew that the last men were human beings like himself, capable of love, hate, and despair.
"We had mating customs that would seem peculiar to you," said the Beachcomber after a while. "Like elephants—because we were so long-lived, you know. We—married—late, and it was for life. My marriage was about to take place when we found the enemy."
"The enemy?" said Maxwell. "But—didn't you say you were the only dominant life-form in the whole universe?"
"That's right." The Beachcomber outlined an egg-shaped figure with a motion of his cupped hands, caressingly. "The universe; all of it. Everything that existed in this space. It was all ours. But the enemy didn't come from this universe."
"Another dimension?" Maxwell asked.
The Beachcomber looked puzzled. "Another—" he said, and stopped. "I thought I could say it better than that in English, but I can't. Dimension isn't right—call it another time-line; that's a little closer."
"Another universe like ours, co-existent with this one, anyhow," said Maxwell.
"No—not the same as ours, at all. Different laws, different—" he stopped again.
"Well, can you describe the enemy?"
"Ugly," said the Beachcomber promptly. "We'd been searching other—dimensions, if you want to use that word—for thousands of years, and this was the first intelligent race we found. We hated them on sight." He paused. "If I drew you a picture, it would look like a little spiny cylinder. But a picture wouldn't convey it. I can't explain." His mouth contracted with distaste.
"Go on," said Maxwell. "What happened? They invaded you?"
"No. We tried to destroy them. We broke up the crystal spiderwebs they built between their worlds;
we smashed their suns. But more than a quarter of them survived our first attack, and then we knew we were beaten. They were as powerful as we were, more so in some ways—"
"Wait, I don't get it," said Max: well unbelievingly. "You—attacked them—without provocation? Wiped out three-quarters of them, simply because—"
"There was no possible peace between us and them," said the Beachcomber. "And it was only a matter of time before they discovered us; it was simply chance that we made the contact first."
What would an unspoiled South Sea Islander have made of the first atomic war? Maxwell wondered. Morals of one society didn't apply to another, he knew. Still—was it possible that the Beachcomber's people, Maxwell's own descendants, still had a taint of the old Adam? And was it accident that they were the only dominant life-form in the entire universe, or had they eliminated all other contenders?
Not for him to judge, he decided; but he didn't like it. He said, "Then what—they counterattacked?"
"Yes. We had time to prepare, and we knew what they were going to do. The trouble was, there simply was no defense against it." He noticed Maxwell's wry smile. "Not like the planet-busters; there is a defense against those, you just haven't found it yet. But there actually was no defense whatever against their weapon. They were going to destroy our universe, down to the last quantum—wipe it right out of the series, make a blank where it had been."
"And—?" said Maxwell. He was beginning to understand why the Beachcomber had never told this story to anyone else; why the public at large must never know it. There was a feeling of doom in it that would color everything men did. It was possible, he supposed, to live with the knowledge that the end of it all was death, but fatalism was the mark of a dying culture.