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Read this in a hardcover or paperback anthology book in the public or university libraries back pre-1990.

The story is a human recounting how highly advanced aliens visited Earth and offered all sorts of wonderful miracles of technology and medicine, but the price of their miracle machinery was to strip Earth of all of its natural radioactive elements. Earth paid and the aliens left with their bounty, but as time passed after their departure their miracle machines began to break down. On close examination of the inner workings their machines were found to be powered by the same sorts of radioactive elements they had cleaned Earth out of, and humanity realized it had been ripped off.

The twist at the end came with the narrator talking about the aliens apparently not being knowledgeable in the creation of artificial radioactives, and it turns out the story is being told by a crewman on an Earth ship which has used the aliens' technology and artificially-created radioactives to track them back to their world. At the end of the story he exhorts the reader along the lines of, "Now get out there and tell the bastards that the bill is due." or something strongly to that effect.

TheLethalCarrot
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Chris
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1 Answers1

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That's William Tenn's excellent short story "Betelgeuse Bridge". It's just about a point-for-point match with the description.

It ends pretty much like you remembered:

Here we are. Explain the situation to them, Alvarez, just the way I told it to you, but with all the knee-bending and doubletalk that a transplanted Brazilian with twelve years’ Oriental trading experience can put into it. You’re the man to do it—I can’t talk like that. It’s the only language those decadent slugs understand, so it’s the only way we can talk to them. So talk to them, these slimy snails, these oysters on the quarter shell, these smart-alecky slugs. Don’t forget to mention to them that the supply of radioactives they got from us won’t last forever. Get that down in fine detail.

Then stress the fact that we’ve got artificial radioactives, and that they’ve got some things we know we want and lots of other things we mean to find out about.

Tell them, Alvarez, that we’ve come to collect tolls on that Brooklyn Bridge they sold us.

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Mark Olson
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