The guards led him out of his cell. He said harshly:
‘I’d like to tell Limpy something.’ When they stared at him, he said impatiendy: ‘Limpy Gossett! In the deathhouse, here! I was given a reprieve so it’d be a double execution.’
One of the guards said:
‘You didn’t get a reprieve, fella. An’ there ain’t any Limpy Gossett here. Never was. I never heard of ’im.’
The green door opened. Rodney was badly shaken, now. Still, he had only to go back in time. But he gave a precious half-second to a raging hatred of Fellenden, who had written piety in with science in his instructions for Rodney’s escape. ‘The important thing,’ said Fellenden fatuously, ‘was to be rid of all ties to the time track you wanted to leave. Everything in it had not to matter to you—’ Rodney despised him.
There was the squat and horrible chair. Rodney began to listen to his own breathing. To his own heartbeat. Step by step, they marched him to the chair. Slow down time! Slow it! Watch everything! Cut the things that anchor you to this time track! With that and Fellenden’s equations it’s easy - but Fellenden’s a pious fool!
Time did not slow. He realized it in a surge of panic as they strapped him in the chair. Then he knew why. Fellenden held him in this time track! Fellenden mattered! The fact that he had escaped to here! The equations and the explanation he’d given Rodney could not dismiss them as meaningless! He hated Fellenden with a terrible, despairing hatred. But he had to stop hating him and put all his mind on slowing time—
He fought to achieve it with all the strength of one of the four best brains in the country. He was trying when they drew back from the chair and waited, white-faced, for the switch to be thrown.
He sobbed, then. But he was still trying when—
THE ETHICAL EQUATIONS
Space enigma. In the May, 194s, issue of Astounding Science Fiction appeared a novelette by Leinster entitled ‘First ContactIt dealt in an entirely new way with the meeting in space of humankind and aliens with an advanced technological background. The story made a great impact at the time: it has appeared in several anthologies, and the problems connected with its filming led to the development of the Jenkins Systems mentioned in the Introduction to this book. lThe Ethical Equations’ appeared in the very next issue of ASF. It covers a very similar situation - the first contact in deep space with an alien spaceship - but with a very different outcome.
It is very, very queer. The Ethical Equations, of course, link conduct with probability, and give mathematical proof that certain patterns of conduct increase the probability of certain kinds of coincidences. But nobody ever expected them to have any really practical effect. Elucidation of the laws of chance did not stop gambling, though it did make life insurance practical. The Ethical Equations weren’t expected to be even as useful as that. They were just theories, which seemed unlikely to affect anybody particularly. They were complicated, for one thing. They admitted that the ideal pattern of conduct for one man wasn’t the best for another. A politician, for example, has an entirely different code - and properly - than a Space Patrol man. But still, on at least one occasion—
The thing from outer space was fifteen hundred feet long, and upward of a hundred and fifty feet through at its middle section, and well over two hundred in a curious bulge like a fish’s head at its bow. There were odd, gill-like flaps just back of that bulge, too, and the whole thing looked extraordinarily like a monster, eyeless fish, floating in empty space out beyond Jupiter. But it had drifted in from somewhere beyond the sun’s gravitational field - its speed was too great for it to have a closed orbit - and it swung with a slow, inane, purposeless motion about some axis it had established within itself.
The little spacecruiser edged closer and closer. Freddy Holmes had been a pariah on the Amina all the way out from Mars, but he clenched his hands and forgot his misery and the ruin of his career in the excitement of looking at the thing.
‘No response to signals on any frequency, sir,’ said the communications officer, formally. ‘It is not radiating. It has a minute magnetic field. Its surface temperature is just about four degrees absolute.’
The commander of the Amina said, ‘HrrnnphP Then he said, ‘We’ll lay alongside.’ Then he looked at Freddy Holmes and stiffened. ‘No,’ he said, ‘1 believe you take over now, Mr. Holmes.’
Freddy started. He was in a very bad spot, but his excitement had made him oblivious of it for a moment. The undisguised hostility with which he was regarded by the skipper and the others on the bridge brought it back, however.
‘You take over, Mr. Holmes,’ repeated the skipper bitterly. 1 have orders to that effect. You originally detected this object and your uncle asked Headquarters that you be given full authority to investigate it. You have that authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?’
There was fury in his voice surpassing even the rasping dislike of the voyage out. He was a lieutenant commander and he had been instructed to take orders from a junior officer. That was bad enough. But this was humanity’s first contact with an extrasolar civilization, and Freddy Holmes, lieutenant junior grade, had been given charge of the matter by pure political pull.
Freddy swallowed.
‘I… I—’ He swallowed again and said miserably, ‘Sir, I’ve tried to explain that I dislike the present set-up as much as you possibly can. I… wish that you would let me put myself under your orders, sir, instead of—’
‘No!’ rasped the commander vengefully. ‘You are in command, Mr. Holmes. Your uncle put on political pressure to arrange it. My orders are to carry out your instructions, not to wet-nurse you if the job is too big for you to handle. This is in your lap! Will you issue orders?’
Freddy stiffened.
‘Very well, sir. It’s plainly a ship and apparently a derelict. No crew would come in without using a drive, or allow their ship to swing about aimlessly. You will maintain your present position with relation to it. I’ll take a spaceboat and a volunteer, if you will find me one, and look it over.’
He turned and left the bridge. Two minutes later he was struggling into a spacesuit when Lieutenant Bridges - also junior grade - came briskly into the spacesuit locker and observed:
‘I’ve permission to go with you, Mr. Holmes.’ He began to get into another spacesuit. As he pulled it up over his chest he added blithely: ‘I’d say this was worth the price of admission!’
Freddy did not answer. Three minutes later the little spaceboat pulled out from the side of the cruiser. Designed for expeditionary work and tool-carrying rather than as an escapecraft, it was not inclosed. It would carry men in spacesuits, with their tools and weapons, and they could breathe from its tanks instead of from their suits, and use its power and so conserve their own. But it was a strange feeling to sit within its spidery outline and see the great blank sides of the strange object draw near. When the spaceboat actually touched the vast metal wall it seemed impossible, like the approach to some sorcerer’s castle across a monstrous moat of stars.
It was real enough, though. The felted rollers touched, and Bridges grunted in satisfaction.
‘Magnetic. We can anchor to it. Now what?’
‘We hunt for an entrance port,’ said Freddy curtly. He added: ‘Those openings that look like gills are the drive tubes.
Their drive’s in front instead of the rear. Apparently they don’t use gyros for steering.’
The tiny craft clung to the giant’s skin, like a fly on a stranded whale. It moved slowly to the top of the rounded body, and over it, and down on the other side. Presendy the cruiser came in sight again as it came up the near side once more.
‘Nary a port, sir,’ said Bridges blithely. ‘Do we cut our way in?’
(Hm-m-m/ said Freddy slowly. Te have our drive in the rear, and our control room in front. So we take on supplies amidships, and that’s where we looked. But this ship is driven from the front. Its control room might be amidships. If so, it might load at the stem. Let’s see.’
&nbs
p; The litde craft crawled to the stem of the monster.
‘There!’ said Freddy.
It was not like an entrance port on any vessel in the solar system. It slid aside, without hinges. There was an inner door, but it opened just as readily. There was no rush of air, and it was hard to tell if it was intended as an air lock or not.
‘Air’s gone,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s a derelict, all right. You might bring a blaster, but what we’ll mostly need is light, I think.’
The magnetic anchors took hold. The metal grip shoes of the spacesuits made loud noises inside the suits as the two of them pushed their way into the interior of the ship. The spacecruiser had been able to watch them, until now. Now they were gone.
The giant, enigmatic object which was so much like a blind fish in empty space floated on. It swung aimlessly about some inner axis. The thin sunlight out here beyond Jupiter, smote upon it harshly. It seemed to hang motionless in mid-space against an all-surrounding background of distant and unwinking stars. The trim Space Patrol ship hung alertly a mile and a half away. Nothing seemed to happen at all.
Freddy was rather pale when he went back to the bridge. The pressure mark on his forehead from the spacesuit helmet was still visible, and he rubbed at it abstractedly. The skipper regarded him with a sort of envious bitterness. After all, any human would envy any other who had set foot in an alien spaceship. Lieutenant Bridges followed him. For an instant there were no words. Then Bridges saluted briskly:
^Reporting back on board, sir, and returning to watch duty after permitted volunteer activity.’
The skipper touched his hat sourly. Bridges departed with crisp precision. The skipper regarded Freddy with the helpless fury of a senior officer who has been ordered to prove a junior officer a fool, and who has seen the assignment blow up in his face and that of the superior officers who ordered it. It was an enraging situation. Freddy Holmes, newly commissioned and assigned to the detector station on Luna which keeps track of asteroids and meteor streams, had discovered a small object coming in over Neptune. Its speed was too high for it to be a regular member of the solar system, so he’d reported it as a visitor and suggested immediate examination. But junior officers are not supposed to make discoveries. It violates tradition, which is a sort of Ethical Equation in the Space Patrol. So Freddy was slapped down for his presumption. And he slapped back, on account of the Ethical Equations’ bearing upon scientific discoveries. The first known object to come from beyond the stars ought to be examined. Definitely. So, most unprofessionally for a Space Patrol junior, Freddy raised a stink.
The present state of affairs was the result. He had an uncle who was a prominent politican. That uncle went before the Space Patrol Board and pointed out smoothly that his nephew’s discovery was important. He demonstrated with mathematical precision that the Patrol was being ridiculous in ignoring a significant discovery simply because a junior officer had made it. And the Board, seething at outside interference, ordered Freddy to be taken to the object he had detected, given absolute command of the spacecruiser which had taken him there, and directed to make the examination he had suggested. By all the laws of probability, he would have to report that the hunk of matter from beyond the solar system was just like hunks of matter in it. And then the Board would pin back both his and his uncle’s ears with a vengeance.
But now the hunk of matter turned out to be a fish-shaped artifact from an alien civilization. It turned out to be important. So the situation was one to make anybody steeped in Patrol tradition grind his teeth.
‘The thing, sir,’ said Freddy evenly, ‘is a spaceship. It is driven by atomic engines shooting blasts sternward from somewhere near the bow. Apparently they steer only by hand. Apparently, too, there was a blow-up in the engine room and they lost most of their fuel out the tube vents. After that, the ship was helpless though they patched up the engines after a fashion. It is possible to calculate that in its practically free fall to the sun it’s been in its present state for a couple of thousand years.’ ‘I take it, then,’ said the skipper with fine irony, ‘that there are no survivors of the crew.’
‘It presents several problems, sir,’ said Freddy evenly, ‘and that’s one of them.’ He was rather pale. ‘The ship is empty of air, but her tanks are full. Storage spaces containing what look like supplies are only partly emptied. The crew did not starve or suffocate. The ship simply lost most of her fuel. So it looks like they prepared the ship to endure an indefinite amount of floating about in free space and’ - he hesitated - ‘then it looks like they went into suspended animation. They’re all on board, in transparent cases that have - machinery attached. Maybe they thought they’d be picked up by sister ships sooner or later.’ The skipper blinked.
‘Suspended animation? They’re alive?’ Then he said sharply: ‘What sort of ship is it? Cargo?’
‘No, sir.’ said Freddy. ‘That’s another problem. Bridges and I agree that it’s a fighting ship, sir. There are rows of generators serving things that could only be weapons. By the way they’re braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and - there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. By the size of the cables that lead to them, those tubes handle amperages up in the thousands. You can figure that one out, sir.’
The skipper paced two steps this way, and two steps that. The thing was stupendous. But his instructions were precise.
‘I’m under your orders,’ he said doggedly. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to work myself to death, I suppose,’ said Freddy unhappily, ‘and some other men with me. I want to go over that ship backwards, forwards, and sideways with scanners, and everything the scanners see photographed back on board, here. I want men to work the scanners and technicians on board to direct them for their specialties. I want to get every rivet and coil in that whole ship on film before touching anything.’
The skipper said grudgingly:
‘That’s not too foolish. Very well, Mr. Holmes, it will be done.’
‘Thank you,’ said Freddy. He started to leave the bridge, and stopped. The men to handle the scanners,’ he added, ‘ought to be rather carefully picked. Imaginative men wouldn’t do. The crew of that ship - they look horribly alive, and they aren’t pretty. And… er… the plastic cases they’re in are arranged to open from inside. That’s another problem still, sir.’
He went on down. The skipper clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the bridge furiously. The first object from beyond the stars was a spaceship. It had weapons the Patrol had only vainly imagined. And he, a two-and-a-half striper, had to stand by and take orders for its investigation from a lieutenant junior grade just out of the Academy. Because of politics! The skipper ground his teeth—
Then Freddy’s last comment suddenly had meaning. The plastic cases in which the alien’s crew lay in suspended animation opened from the inside. From the inside!
Cold sweat came out on the skipper’s forehead as he realized the implication. Tractor and pressor beams, and the ship’s fuel not quite gone, and the suspended-animation cases opening from the inside—
There was a slender, coaxial cable connecting the two spacecraft, now. They drifted in sunward together. The little cruiser was dwarfed by the alien giant.
The sun was very far away; brighter than any star, to be sure, and pouring out a fierce radiation, but still very far from a warming orb. All about were the small, illimitably distant lights which were stars. There was exactly one object in view which had an appreciable diameter. That was Jupiter, a new moon in shape, twenty million miles sunward and eighty million miles farther along its orbit. The rest was emptiness.
The spidery little spaceboat slid along the cable between the two craft. Spacesuited figures got out and clumped on magnetic-soled shoes to the air lock. They went in.
Freddy came to the bridge. The skipper said hoarsely:
‘Mr. Holmes, I would like to make a request. You are, by orders of the Board, in command of this
ship until your investigation of the ship yonder is completed.’
Freddy’s face was haggard and worn. He said abstractedly: ‘Yes, sir. What is it?’
‘I would like,’ said the Amina’s skipper urgently, ‘to send a complete report of your investigation so far. Since you are in command, I cannot do so without your permission.’
‘I would rather you didn’t, sir,’ said Freddy. Tired as he was his jaws clamped. ‘Frankly, sir, I think they’d cancel your present orders and issue others entirely.’
The skipper bit his lip. That was the idea. The scanners had sent back complete images of almost everything in the other ship, now. Everything was recorded on film. The skipper had seen the monsters which were the crew of the extrasolar vessel. And the plastic cases in which they had slumbered for at least two thousand years did open from the inside. That was what bothered him. They did open from the inside!
The electronics technicians of the Arnina were going about in stilly rapture, drawing diagrams for each other and contemplating the results with dazed appreciation. The gunnery officer was making scale, detailed design-drawings for weapons he had never hoped for, and waking up of nights to feel for those drawings and be sure that they were real. But the engineer officer was wringing his hands. He wanted to take the other ship’s engines apart. They were so enormously smaller than the Amina’s drive, and yet they had driven a ship with eighty-four times the Amimfs mass - and he could not see how they could work.
The alien ship was ten thousand years ahead of the Amina. Its secrets were being funneled over to the little Earthship at a rapid rate. But the cases holding its still-living crew opened from the inside.
‘Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes,’ the skipper said feverishly,1 must ask permission to send that report.’
‘But I am in command,’ said Freddy tiredly, ‘and I intend to stay in command. I will give you a written order forbidding you to make a report, sir. Disobedience will be mutiny.’
Murray Leinster Page 3
