Ears? Well … there were flaps on the sides of the head, probably capable of manipulation since the hologram showed one raised and one nearly flush with the grey and green flesh. A third flap, partly open, in what must be called the forehead and revealing under it an intricately shaped opening reminiscent of the outer ear, suggested all-round hearing with a capacity for blocking out sound and/or direction finding. A useful variation.
Hair there seemed to be none but on the crown of the bud-shaped skull sat a plain, yellowish lump like a skittish party hat, a fez six inches or so high and four wide. Yet it seemed to be part of the head, not a decoration. He could make nothing of it.
There remained the faintly purplish cape around the thing’s shoulders. Or was it a cape? It hung loosely over both shoulders and its lower edges fell below the rim of the vision slit, but it was parted at the throat and he had an impression that what he saw at the parting was dappled flesh rather than a garment. On closer examination he thought that the ‘cape’ was actually a huge flap of skin, perhaps growing from the back of the neck. He thought of an elephant’s ears, which serve as cooling surfaces.
An idea that had been knocking for expression came suddenly into the light and he said aloud, “The thing’s a plant!”
At once he was, however unwarrantably, certain that he looked on the portrait of a plant shaped in the caricature of a man. The ‘cape’ was a huge leaf, not for cooling but for transpiration. The seemingly boneless skull and tentacular hands made vegetable sense; the thing would be infinitely flexible in body, acquiring rigidity as and where needed by hydrostatic pressure. He pondered root systems and acquired mobility as an evolutionary problem without a glimmer of an answer, but his impression would not be shifted.
The thing from out there was a motile vegetable.
* * *
The setting up of ore refineries on asteroids which were usually worked out in a few years would have been prohibitively expensive, so the main refinery had been located on Phobos, and there the output of all Belt companies was handled without need for the scows to make planetfall. The saving in expensive fuel was most of what made the ventures profitable. Nor was there any waste of manpower on those lonely voyages; the scows were computer-directed from float-off to docking.
An empty scow, not slowed by several hundred tonnes mass of ore, could accelerate at a very respectable g-rate. Number Three scow from the Murri outfit caught its prey dead on time, forty-eight hours after float-off. Forty-eight hours of silent flight, accompanied by a probe which made no move, took toll of nerves. Fernix slept and wondered and theorized from too little knowledge and slept again. At the second waking he fed, sparsely, not knowing how long his supplies must stretch; he injected a bare minimum of trace elements into the mulch tray with just enough water to guarantee ingestion, and rested his feet in it. The splayed pads protruded their tubules like tiny rootlets as his system drew up the moisture. He preferred mouth feeding but in the pod he had no choice.
The brief euphoria of ingestion passed and his mood flickered between fear and hope. Did the probe accompany him for a purpose unknown or did its controllers watch and wait to see what he would do?
He would do nothing. The vacillations of mood rendered him unfit to decide with proper reason. He writhed internally but sat still, did nothing.
His people, slow-thinking and phlegmatic, did not slip easily into neurosis but he was muttering and twitching when new outside action came. He switched into calm observation and appraisal.
The alarm indicated a new presence in space, ahead of him but drawing close. He chanced a pinhole observation in the direction of the new mass but could see nothing. Whatever the thing was, either he was closing on it or it waited for him. His computer reported that the mass was losing some speed and he decided that it intended to match his course.
His instruments described it as long in body and large in diameter but not of a mass consistent with such size. An empty shell? Such as a cargo vessel with cleared holds?
Shortly he found that the probe had vanished and a quite monstrous ship was slipping back past him; the light of the system’s sun shone on its pitted, blue-painted nose. It was old in space and about the size of a raiding destroyer but showed no sign of armament.
It slipped behind him and took up a steady position uncomfortably close to him. He was tempted to discover what it would do if he accelerated or changed course, then thought of his thin-edge supply of fuel. Do nothing, nothing; pray for friendly beings.
He saw with a frisson of tension that it was moving swiftly up to him.
Looming close to collision point, it opened its forward hull in a vast black mouth and gullet, like the sea monsters of his baby tales.
Its forward surge engulfed his pod, swallowed it whole and closed about it as something (grasping bands?) thudded on the pod’s shell and held captor and prey to matched speeds. He was imprisoned in a vast, empty space, in darkness.
After a while he cleared the pod’s entire shell, turning it into a transparent seed hanging in a white space illuminated by his interior lights. White, he thought, for optimum lighting when they work in here.
The space was utterly vacant. At the far end, roughly amidships he calculated, vertical oblong outlines were visible against her white paint—entry hatches. So the entities stood upright; he had expected no less. Evolutionary observation and theory (formulated so long ago, so far away) suggested that an intelligent, land-based being must stand erect, that it should carry brain and major sensory organs at its greatest height, that it should possess strong limbs for locomotion and grasping in limited number according to the law of minimum replication, that it—
—a dozen other things whose correctness he should soon discover in fact.
He saw that his pod was clamped above and below in a vise powerful enough to hold it steady in a turbulent manoeuvre. It was, his instruments told him, basically iron, as was the hull of the ship.
He was not sure whether or not he should envy a race which could be so prodigal of metal. Their technologies would be very different from those of the Home World.
He waited for them but they did not come.
Could their ship be unmanned, totally remote-controlled? His people had a few such—had had a few such—but their radio-control techniques had been primitive and doubtful. Given unlimited iron and copper for experiment …
He waited.
Suddenly the pod was jerked backward as the captor vessel decelerated at a comfortable rate; he could have withstood twice as much.
Homing on a world nearby? He could not tell; his instruments could not penetrate the metal hull.
He thought, I am learning the discipline of patience.
* * *
The crew of a ship approaching Phobos would have seen few surface installations though the moonlet housed the HQ Outer Planets Search and Rescue, an Advanced College of Null-Gravity Science, the Belt Mining Co-Operative Ore Refineries, a dozen privately owned and very secretive research organizations and, most extensive of all, the Martian Terra-forming Project Laboratories and Administrative Offices.
All of these were located inside the tunnelled and hollowed rock that was Phobos.
It had been known for a century or more that the moonlet was slowly spiralling inwards for a long fall to Mars, and Martian Terraforming did not want some 6000 cubic kilometres of solid matter crashing on the planet either before or after its hundred-year work was completed. So the interior had been excavated to the extent of nearly twenty per cent of the total mass (the engineers had vetoed more lest stress changes break the rock apart) and the detritus blasted into space at high velocity. The change in mass, even after the installation of men and machinery, had slowed the inward drift but more brutal measures would eventually have to be taken, and one College research unit was permanently engaged in deciding what such measures might be (brute force is easily said) and how they might be applied (less easily said).
Phobos, swinging 6000 kilometres above the Martian
surface, was a busy hive where even gossip rarely rose above the intellectual feuds and excitements of dogged dedication—
—until a junior ass in S & R cried breathlessly, careless of eager ears, “Bloody thing looks like a lily pad with head and chest. A plant, bejesus!”
After that, S & R had trouble preventing the information being broadcast throughout the System, but prevent it they did. The last thing a troubled Earth needed as it emerged from the Greenhouse Years and the Population Wars was the political, religious and lunatic fringe upheaval expectable on the cry of We are not alone.
* * *
Possum Takamatta, John’s younger brother, a Communications Operative with S & R, pondered the hologram transmitted from the Belt and asked, “Just what sense do they think an ecologist might make of that?”
“God knows,” said ecologist Anne Spriggs of Waterloo, Iowa and Martian Terraforming, who was as pink-and-white as Possum was deep brown-black, “but I know some botany, which is more than anyone else around here does, so I just might make a useful contribution, read guess.”
“With no tame expert at hand, they’re desperate?”
“Possum, wouldn’t you be desperate?”
“Why? I’m just interested. My people knew that ‘more things in heaven and earth’ line twenty thousand years before Shakespeare. You got any ideas?”
“No, only questions.”
“Like?”
“Is it necessarily a plant because it reminds us of a plant? If it is, how does a rooted vegetable evolve into a motile form?”
“Who says it’s motile? We’ve only got this still picture.”
“It has to be to go into space. It couldn’t take a garden plot with it.”
“Why not? A small one, packed with concentrates, eh? And why should it have to become motile? Might have descended from floating algae washed up in swamplands with plenty of mud. Developed feet instead of roots, eh?”
Anne said with frustration, “So much for the ecologist! The local screeneye has more ideas than I do.”
He tried soothing because he liked Anne. “You’re hampered by knowledge, while I can give free rein to ignorance.”
She was not mollified. “Anyway, is it plant or animal? Why not something new? Who knows what conditions formed it or where it’s from?”
“From at least Alpha Centauri; that’s the nearest. It came in at thirty k per second, and decelerating; if that was anything like its constant speed it’s been on its way for centuries. That’s a long time for one little lone entity.”
“Why not FTL propulsion?”
“Come off it, girl! Do you credit that shit?”
“Not really.”
“Nor does anyone else. If it came from anywhere out there, then it’s an ancient monument in its own lifetime.”
“In the face of that,” she said, “I feel monumentally useless. What in hell am I good for?”
“Marry me and find out.”
“In a humpy outside Alice Springs?”
“I’ve a bloody expensive home in Brisbane.”
“And I’ve a fiance in Waterloo, Iowa.”
“The hell you say!”
“So watch it, Buster!” She planted a kiss on the tip of his ear. “That’s it. Everything else is off limits.”
“In Australia we say out of bounds.”
“In Australia you also say sheila when you mean pushover.”
Not quite right but near enough and she certainly made better viewing than the mess on the screen.
* * *
In another part of the cavern system the Base Commander S & R held a meeting in an office not designed to hold thirteen people at once—himself and the twelve managers of the moonlet’s private research companies. Commander Ali Musad’s mother was Italian, his father Iraki and himself a citizen of Switzerland; S & R took pride in being the least racially oriented of all the service arms.
He had set the office internal g at one-fifth, enough to keep them all on the floor, however crowded; it is difficult to dominate a meeting whose units sit on walls and ceiling and float away at a careless gesture.
He said, “I have a problem and I need your help. As Station senior executive I can give orders to service groups and enforce them; of you ladies and gentlemen representing civilian projects I can only ask.”
They resented his overall authority. They remained silent, letting him wriggle on his own hook, whatever it was. Then they might help, cautiously, if advantage offered.
“Some of you will have heard of a … presence … in space. A foolish boy talked too loudly in a mess room and no doubt the whisper of what he said has gone the rounds.”
That should have produced a murmur but did not. Only Harrison of Ultra-Micro asked, “Something about a green man in a sort of lifeboat?”
“Something like that.”
“I didn’t pay attention. Another comedian at work or has someone picked up a phantom image from a dramacast?”
“Neither. He’s real.”
Someone jeered softly, someone laughed, most preferred a sceptical lift of eyebrows. Chan of Null-G Germinants suggested that managers had low priority on the rumour chain. “Ask the maintenance staff; they’re the slush bearers.”
Musad told them, “It isn’t silly season slush; it’s real; I’ve seen it. Talk has to be stopped.”
Still they did not take him too seriously. “Can’t stop gossip, Commander.”
“I mean: Stop it getting off Phobos.”
“Too late, Commander. If it’s a little green men story it’s gone out on a dozen private coms by now.”
He said stiffly, “It hasn’t. I’ve activated the censor network.” The shocked silence was everything he could have desired. “Every com going out is being scanned for key words; anything containing them is being held for my decision.”
He waited while anger ran its course of outrage and vituperation. They didn’t give a damn about little green men but censorship was an arbitrary interference guaranteed to rouse fury anywhere across the System. The noise simmered down in predictable protests: “… abuse of power … justifiable only in war emergency … legally doubtful on international Phobos…”
Melanie Duchamp, the Beautiful Battleaxe of Fillette Bonded Aromatics, produced the growling English that browbeat boardrooms: “You will need a vairy good reason for this.”
No honorific, he noted; Melanie was psyching herself for battle. “It was a necessary move. Now I am asking you to ratify it among your company personnel.”
“Fat chance,” said one, and another, “We’d have mutiny on our hands.”
He had expected as much. “In that case I shall order it as a service necessity and take whatever blame comes.” And leave them to accept blame if events proved his action the right one. “I can promise worse than mutiny if the news is not controlled.”
At that at least they listened. He told them what he knew of the intruding ship, its contents and the speculation about its origin, and then: “Let this news loose on Earth and Luna and we’ll have every whining, power-grabbing, politicking ratbag in the System here within days. I don’t mean just the service arms and intelligence wood-beetles and scientists and power-brokers; I mean the churches and cults and fringe pseudo-sciences and rich brats with nothing better to do. I also mean your own company executives and research specialists and the same from your merchant rivals—to say nothing of the print and electronic media nosing at your secrets. How do you feel about it?”
It was Melanie who surrendered savagely. “I will support you—under protest.”
“You don’t have to cover your arse, Melanie. I’ll take the flack.”
“So? There will be lawsuits, class actions that will cost the companies millions.”
“No! I will declare a Defence Emergency.”
“Then God or Allah help you, Commander.”
Harrison said, “You can’t do it. You say the thing seems to be unarmed; how can you invoke defence?”
“Possible espionage by an
alien intruder. If that won’t do, the Legal Section will think up something else.”
In the end they agreed if only because he left them no choice. Satisfied that they would keep the lid on civilian protest, he threw them a bone: He would call on them to supply experts in various fields not immediately available among the service personnel on Phobos, because he intended to bring the thing inside and mount as complete an examination as possible before allowing a squeak out of Phobos Communications.
They brightened behind impassive agreement. With their own men at the centre of action they would be first with the news as history was made in their particular corners … with profit perhaps … and wily Musad was welcome to the lawsuits.
* * *
When they had gone he summoned his secretary. “All on record?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Am I covered?”
“I think so. They will co-operate in case you retaliate by leaving them out of the selection of expert assistance. Which means that you must take at least one from each firm, however useless.”
“Yes. Many messages intercepted?”
“Seven for your attention. Three to media outlets. It seems we have some unofficial stringers aboard.”
“The buggers are everywhere. I don’t want media complaints when they find out that their lines were stopped. They stir up too much shit.” He recalled too late that Miss Merritt was a Clean Thinker. “Sorry.”
She was unforgiving. “Nevertheless there will be complaints.” Her tone added, And serve you right. Clean Thinkers held that censorship was unnecessary in a right-minded community—and so was crude language.
“I think the courts will uphold me.”
“No doubt, sir. Will that be all?”
“Yes, Miss Merritt.” And to hell with you, Miss Merritt, but you are too efficient to be returned to the pool.
* * *
The Number Three scow drifted down through darkness to hover over the moonlet’s docking intake, a square hole like a mineshaft, that came suddenly alive with light.
The docking computer took control, edged the huge scow, precisely centred, through the intake and closed the entry behind it.
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 48
