Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  The vote was reluctant but unanimous. For war.

  ~ * ~

  The Kennessee sent off the torp from the aft communications room. It was not an impressive device, the torp, merely a cigar-shaped object some six feet long. After leaving the Kennessee it would drive away at thirty-five gravities’ acceleration for fifteen minutes and then go into overdrive—when it would cease to exist, as far as normal space was concerned. Its disappearance would be marked by the emission of a monstrous surge of energy—a “whango wave”—which could be detected at hundreds of millions of miles. Near home base it would come out of overdrive with the emission of another, similar, wave. The second wave was useful. From Masa Gamma to the Kennessee’s home base was some eighty light-years. A space-radio message transmitted by tight beam would reach home base only in time to be of interest to the crew’s great-grandchildren. But the torp would arrive within days, its reappearance wave would be picked up by a far-flung net of communications ships, and they would receive and forward the torp’s automatically transmitted messages, and later pick it up for the recovery of written data and physical specimens.

  Buck was not allowed to be present at the launching. He was a large dog, and the aft communications room was in the tapering, slender tail of the Kennessee. It would be crowded. Holden ordered him out. And Buck was far too well assured, both of Holden’s affection for him and of his own worth, to be sensitive about such a matter. He knew there were times when he couldn’t be underfoot. But he also knew that he was welcome anywhere else on the ship. He went trotting sedately in search of inferior, but still human, company until his master could allow him around again.

  He found crew members stocking a lifeboat for its special mission. He went companionably into the lifeboat with the working party. He wriggled into the control cubicle with the man sent to remove its records—and observed. Presently other men arrived, the work party left, and there were sundry heaving movements of the lifeboat. Buck blinked from where he lay more or less curled up on the floor. Stars shone in the lifeboat portholes. There was a glaring bright light. Unshielded sunshine from Masa Gamma came in a forward port and made a patch of incandescence on the back wall. Junior Lieutenant Maynard walked into the control cubicle and flipped the phone switch.

  “Lifeboat in launching position, blister removed, ready to take off,” he said briskly.

  “All right,” said Holden’s voice from the speaker. It sounded gloomy. “Take off when the whango wave hits. It may jam their scanner and get you out of the beam unobserved. Luck.”

  Buck knew loud-speakers. But also he knew his master’s voice. He wagged his tail. It thumped. Maynard jerked his head around and yelled: “Buck! Here’s Buck! Behind me!”

  An instant’s silence. Then Holden’s voice, more gloomy still.

  “No time to get him back on board. He’ll have to go along. Sorry, Maynard.”

  “No harm,” said Maynard cheerfully. “Maybe he’ll mascot us. How much time?”

  “Twenty seconds,” said Holden’s voice. “You have all the luck! I was high man for this job until you drew that ace!”

  Maynard chuckled. The Kennessee rode into a very probably hostile solar system. If it was the home of the race that had been sniping off Earth ships and had massacred the colonists of Capella Three, there was not much chance that the cruiser would ever get away again. But its junior officers had played a hand of stud poker for the privilege of making a dare-landing on the system’s largest planet.

  The speaker suddenly emitted a sound so savage and so loud that the diaphragm jangled musically only once, and then made strangled, rasping noises. That was the whango wave of the message torp. It was a blast of untuned and untunable radiation which would jam every receiver in range while it lasted.

  There was a crushing feeling of weight. Buck slid back against the back rest of the seat on which he now lay. He was pressed hard against the upholstery. He wriggled and panted. His eyes grew plaintive. Buck did not like acceleration. In fact, he did not like lifeboat travel. But he had his fill of it in the next eighteen hours, anyhow.

  ~ * ~

  A message arrived at the hastily improvised Department of War on Masa Four. The Department of War was being feverishly organized to coordinate every erg of energy in the entire solar system into synchro-phased power beams which at a given moment would stab out from four planets at once—all of them on the same side of the local sun— and converge terribly upon the pseudo comet. There would be no material weapon for the ship’s detectors to note in time for any maneuver of escape. This weapon would strike at the speed of light. An object in the focus of the combined beams would experience the interior temperature of a sun. It was unthinkable that any possible relay could operate before it was volatilized. The weapon was irresistible— as against a single ship. But the computation of phase relationships for the moving planetary projectors, so that the separate beams would reinforce instead of partially canceling one another, was a matter of terrifying complexity. This weapon could destroy one ship of known course and speed, or one ship on the ground, if enough time could be had for calculations. But it would be useless against a fleet. Days or weeks were required for the adjustment of the multitude of beams for a hit on a predetermined spot. Against ships of changing course and speed, the weapon was useless.

  A message arrived at the Department of War.

  small space craft detached itself from invading vessel at instant of strong untuned wave disturbance. small craft making guided flight toward planet four. will land on dark side northern area first continent. request orders.

  The Department of War was newly organized and had not time to acquire traditions of pomposity and bureaucratic delay. Within minutes its orders went back:

  evacuate all population from area in question. have ground vehicles atmosphere fliers ready to test armament of craft. broadcast appeal for volunteers, giving due warning of probable death. no space craft to be used. no hint of adequate defenses must be given to enemy until full-scale operation by entire system.

  The population of the Masa Four had had one experience of invaders from beyond. Some twenty-five million citizens began a swift, orderly evacuation—as a precaution against the landing of an unarmed lifeboat.

  ~ * ~

  Buck waked from an uneasy doze when the lifeboat descended to the planet’s dark side. Every observation device known to man was at work to gather information, but Buck was not interested in technicalities. He yawned elaborately, even as scanner beams were noted. He stretched as the scanner beams cut off abruptly. He shook himself comfortably as the analyzers reported the atmosphere to be Earth-type, with a considerable excess of the inert gases but well inside the comfort range of oxygen-nitrogen mixtures.

  The lifeboat went down carefully, feeling for dangers. Infrared equipment reported the shore of a sea and oddities that could be the equipment of a harbor. Maynard sheered the tiny craft away. He actually neared ground only a hundred-odd miles away. It was his job to get himself killed if the local population could manage it, but it was not his job to make them. If they knew the seeming comet out in space was a spaceship, they’d be on the alert. If they were the race that had murdered the Capellan colonists, they’d try to keep him from getting back to his ship. If they weren’t—

  The lifeboat grounded with infinite caution in what the scanners declared was a jungle of feathery-leaved vegetation. For long, long minutes Maynard sat tense, prepared to fling the little craft skyward at any sign of action against it. Nothing happened. The outside microphones transmitted noises, to be sure, but they were the random sounds of wild jungle life. After a long time Maynard cracked a port. Still nothing.

  “If anybody wants to volunteer to get biological specimens,” said Maynard, “he can step out. In case of alarm, though, I’m going to take this boat up and try to wriggle back—to find out what they’ll try to use to stop us.”

  Voices answered. There was the clanking of an unlocking door. Buck trotted back to it. Fascinating smell
s came in the opening. Men stepped out—armed and cautious. The exit door stayed open. One man stood by to shut and dog it if the lifeboat shot skyward.

  It took courage for men to venture out, knowing that they might have to be abandoned so the lifeboat’s mission of drawing enemy fire —if this race was inimical—could be carried out. But Buck was fascinated by the smells. He would have liked to get back to Holden, of course, but these men were his friends, too. If they went out into this place of innumerable novel smells—

  He jumped lightly to the ground. His nose was instantly busy. The ground had a different smell from that of Earth. The plants were new. There were scents which must be animals, but not any animals Buck had ever scented before. He heard a man moving nearby, taking samples of vegetation. Very much could be inferred from the types of starch and cellulose this planet’s vegetation contained. But Buck could have told much more, from what his nose discovered. Here a little carnivore had trailed a skittering small thing which periodically darted up into overhanging vegetation, and as periodically darted down again. There a small herbivore had made a vast, terrified leap for no apparent reason—which meant that a flying thing had made a swoop at it, and missed. And here a thing which had almost the smell of a snake moved in distinctive hops, while there was the definite smell of a warm-blooded animal in something which left a completely continuous trail by traveling on its belly.

  Buck explored, utterly absorbed in this world of literally new smells. From time to time he heard the sounds made by the men, and was reassured. But he strayed farther and farther from the grounded lifeboat —only sometimes he stopped and listened to it—and he had found the burrow of some living creature and was sniffing absorbedly at its entrance when the really significant noises began.

  One noise began at the horizon and swept toward the zenith. It was a dull, humming rumble, like the motors of atmosphere fliers Buck had heard back on Earth. It was mechanical and, therefore, of man, and, therefore, not to be feared or suspected. At the same time there came distant clankings. And they were like bulldozers and other machines of men, and they were not to be feared, either. Buck sniffed fascinatedly at the burrow.

  Men’s voices called sharply. Had Holden called him, Buck would have gone bounding instantly. But he owed a lesser obedience to other men. He sniffed again and again, lingeringly. Then, as he trotted unhurriedly in response to the call, he heard the zooming roar of a lifeboat drive in atmosphere. It shot toward the sky. It did not occur to Buck that he might have had to be left behind—as a man would have been abandoned under like circumstances—because the lifeboat had to test out the deadliness of armaments on this planet, but had to be aloft to test them fully.

  When he got back to the place where the lifeboat had been, though, it was gone.

  Buck was simply bewildered. The droning above grew to a thunderous, circling roar. There were many flying things overhead, and they cruised back and forth in the darkness in a pattern which would have made it difficult indeed for the lifeboat to have escaped without coming under radar-aimed fire. At the same time, the clanking mechanical noises came closer from at least three directions.

  Buck smelled incredulously at the place where the lifeboat had been but where it was no longer. He ran uneasily along the scent trails left by the men who had gathered biological specimens. It was completely unthinkable that the men had deserted him. He came back again and again to the place where the lifeboat had rested. He was unhappy, of course, but it was not possible for him to imagine himself abandoned. He waited uncomfortably for the men to notice that he’d been left behind and to come back after him.

  Roarings circled in the overcast sky above him. Clankings approached in the encircling dark. Those were things of men—not his men, perhaps, but certainly men who would be friendly to a large, brown, well-mannered dog with a collar around his neck which said he belonged to Holden. They might even help him get back to Holden. But meantime he trotted uneasily about the place to which the lifeboat had not returned. The noises and clankings grew louder.

  When the noises were very near, a blindingly bright white light abruptly shone down from a low-flying plane which spun in dizzy tight circles overhead. The light showed everything with a pitiless clarity, and Buck blinked dazedly. But he was not alarmed. Machines and bright lights and flying things meant men. And a self-respecting dog has a perfectly comfortable relationship with all men, though it is a special relationship with the crew of his ship, and his tie to his master is unique.

  Buck moved prudently out of the way as machines with glaring lights came clanking through the jungle, thrusting aside the feathery trees with a powerful violence. He moved out of their path, but he did not dodge into the shadows. He blinked and wagged his tail abstractedly and prepared to greet the men in the machines with due courtesy. Of course they would help him get back to Holden!

  A machine stopped, and something got out of it. But the figure was not a man. Buck sniffed incredulously. Then his hackles rose. It was not possible! Machines were handled by men! Only by men! The Masan moved toward him. Buck growled warningly. Unbearable light smote upon him. He growled again, bristling, a big brown dog growling in warning that members of a mere race which might have been sniping Earth ships and massacring Earth colonies had better not bother him! Buck, of course, knew nothing of missing ships or massacres. He was a dog, a man’s dog, and he could imagine no creature which was not inferior to man and which a man’s dog could not reasonably defy.

  It was an extraordinary picture. Alien and unlikely jungle trees rising toward an overcast sky in which a bright white light whirled in dizzying circles. Huge, gleaming machines with lights—very bright lights—stabbing through the jungle’s feathery leafage and casting innumerable sharp shadows. The Masans, inhabitants of the fourth planet of Masa Gamma—not too much unlike men, to be sure—staring at a place in the jungle where a ship’s lifeboat had landed and where a big brown dog stood warningly at bay and growled at them of the wrath of his masters.

  There was a pause. A race which has space radios, and interplanetary ships, and radar, is not likely to be altogether stupid. And there were scanners in the ground vehicles, too, which carried back to record rooms everything the machines saw. The best brains of the race watched this meeting. And perhaps it was back where the scanned picture of the event was seen that someone realized that Buck’s paws were not made for the handling of machinery or the making of spaceships. Or perhaps something more subtle—

  There were sounds which Buck somehow knew were language, though he could not understand them as words. He turned sedately from the first figure, which had halted at his growl. He blinked dignifiedly at the surrounding lights. None advanced toward him. Buck emitted sundry small, confident, admonitory rumblings. His men had been here. They had gone away. They would come back for him. Of course. He was going to wait for them. He was not arbitrary about it. He would allow the machines to pass as they pleased. Men probably wished the machines to do thus and so, and he would not interfere. But he would wait here.

  He deliberately turned himself around twice and lay down on the ground. But his head stayed erect and he blinked at the lights. He calmly and confidently settled down for men to notice that he’d been left behind and to come back for him.

  But he hoped desperately that Holden would be with them.

  ~ * ~

  A report went to the Department of War on Planet Four. It was a highly accurate report, covering the landing of a small space craft on the northern area of the First Continent. The footprints of men were accurately transmitted, as well as the impression left by the spaceboat in the soil. There were motion pictures of Buck. Most of the report, naturally, was about him.

  “. . . Limited but definite intelligence,” said the report. “Is aware of social relationships neither hostile nor friendly, but tolerant. Is familiar with machines and regards them without fear but without interest. Has an extraordinary air of self-confidence and seems justified in opposing the wishes of more intellig
ent beings, though offering no hostility unless an attempt is made to force it to comply . . . Appears to be a member of a subject species to the makers of the space craft, though its utility is not clear, since it has neither prehensile claws nor any apparent technical aptitude for the supervision of machines . . . We are setting up psychoscanning devices to attempt to extract information from its memories, of course without its awareness of the process. Meanwhile we are making every effort to leave it emotionally undisturbed...”

  ~ * ~

  A later report:

  “. . . Psychoscanners have been able to secure excellent pictures and sound memories from the animal. It is of a species which lives in symbiosis with the creatures operating the space craft. Its utility to the superior race is not yet clear, but its subservience to them—they are not much unlike us—is proven by the records forwarded with this report. The animal’s vision appears to be comparatively poor, but its hearing and smell are excellent. Its memories of smells, in particular, are especially vivid. We have vision-memory records of various members of the spaceship’s crew, but smell-memories of every individual. Apparently, however, little or no technical information can be had from the animal because of the disinterest of the ‘Buck’—this is the auditory memory of the animal’s name for itself—in such matters. Memories of the naval base and of the presumed home planet of the invaders are concerned almost exclusively with smells. It is extremely concerned with trees and posts and the smells associated with them. . . . We regret that no useful technical information can be had. . . .”