Big Book of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  “But you can’t! I mean…his blood—”

  “I know. Took a sample to type it. I have two technicians trying to blend chemicals into plasma so we can approximate it. Both of ‘em called me a liar. But he’s got to have the transfusion. I’ll let you know.” He strode out of the room.

  “There goes one bewildered medico.”

  “He’s O.K.,” said Zinsser. “I know him well. Can you blame him?”

  “For feeling that way? Gosh now. Harry, I don t know what I’ll do if Mewhu checks out.”

  “That fond of him?”

  “Oh, if isn’t only that. But to come so close to meeting a new culture, and then have it slip from our fingers like this—it’s too much.”

  “That jet . . . Jack, without Mewhu to explain it, I don’t think any scientist will be able to build another. It would be like . . . like giving a Damascus sword-smith some tungsten and asking him to draw it into filaments. There the jet would be, hissing when you shove it toward the ground, sneering at you.”

  “And that telepathy—what J. B. Rhine wouldn’t give to be able to study it!”

  “Yeah, and what about his origin?” Zinsser asked excitedly. “He isn’t from this system. It means that he used an interstellar drive of some kind, or even that space-time warp the boys write about.”

  “He’s got to live,” said Jack. “He’s got to, or there ain’t no justice. There are too many things we’ve got to know, Harry! Look—he’s here. That must mean that some more of his people will come some day.”

  “Yeah. Why haven’t they come before now?”

  “Maybe they have. Charles Fort—”

  “Aw, look,” said Zinsser, “don’t let’s get this thing out of hand.”

  The doctor came back. “I think he’ll make it.”

  “Really?”

  “Not really. Nothing real about that character. But from all indications, he’ll be O.K. Responded very strongly. What does he eat?”

  “Pretty much the same as we do, I think.”

  “You think. You don’t seem to know much about him.”

  “I don’t. He only just got here. No—don’t ask me where from,” said Jack. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  The doctor scratched his head. “He’s out of this world. I can tell you that. Obviously adult, but every fracture but one is a greenstick break; kind of thing you see on a three-year-old. Transparent membranes over his . . . what are you laughing at?” he asked suddenly.

  Jack had started easily, with a chuckle, but it got out of control. He roared.

  Zinsser said, “Jack! Cut it out. This is a hosp—”

  Jack shoved his hand away. “I ... I got to,” he said helplessly and went off on another peal.

  “You’ve got to what?”

  “Laugh,” said Jack, gasping. He sobered—he more than sobered. “It has to be funny, Harry. I won’t let it be anything else.”

  “What the devil do you—”

  “Look, Harry. We assumed a lot about Mewhu, his culture, his technology, his origin . . . we’ll never know anything about it!”

  “Why? You mean he won’t tell us—”

  “He won’t tell us. I’m wrong. He’ll tell us plenty. But it won’t do any good. Here’s what I mean. Because he’s our size, because he obviously arrived in a spaceship, because he brought a gadget or two that’s obviously the product of a highly advanced civilization, we believe that he produced the civilization; that he’s a superior individual in his own place.”

  “Well, he must be.”

  “He must be? Harry, did Molly invent the automobile?”

  “No, but—”

  “But she drove one through the back of the garage.”

  Light began to dawn on Zinsser’s moon face. “You mean—”

  “It all fits! Remember when Mewhu figured out how to carry that heavy trapdoor of mine on the jet stick, and then left the problem half-finished? Remember his fascination with Molly’s yo-yo? What about that peculiar rapport he has with Molly that he has with no one else? Doesn’t that begin to look reasonable? Look at Iris’ reaction to him—almost maternal, though she didn’t know why.”

  “The poor little fellow,” breathed Zinsser. “ I wonder if he thought he was home when he landed?”

  “Poor little fellow—sure,” said Jack, and began to laugh again. “Can Molly tell you how an internal combustion engine works? Can she explain laminar flow on an airfoil?” He shook his head. “You wait and see. Mewhu will be able to tell us the equivalent of Molly’s ‘I rode in the car with Daddy and we went sixty miles an hour.’”

  “But how did he get here?”

  “How did Molly get through the back of my garage?”

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders helplessly, “About that I don’t know. But his biological reactions do look like those of a child—and if he is a child, then his rate of tissue restoration will be high, and I’ll guarantee he’ll live.”

  Zinsser groaned. “Much good will it do us—and him, poor kid. With a kid’s inherent faith in any intelligent adult anywhere, he’s probably been feeling happily sure we’d get him home somehow. Well—we haven’t got what it takes, and won’t have for a long, long time. We don’t know enough to start duplicating that jet of his—and that was just a little kid’s toy on his world.”

  ~ * ~

  “Daddy—”

  “Molly! I thought Mother was—”

  “Daddy, I jus’ wannit you to take this to Mewhu.” She held out her old, scuff-rimmed yo-yo. “Tellum I’m waiting. Tellum I’ll play with him soon’s he’s better.”

  Jack Garry took the toy. “I’ll tell him, honey.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  NOBODY SAW THE SHIP

  by Murray Leinster

  THE landing of the Qul-En ship, a tiny craft no more than fifteen feet in diameter, went completely unnoticed, as its operator intended. It was armed, of course, but its purpose was not destruction. If this ship, whose entire crew consisted of one individual, were successful in its mission then a great ship would come, wiping out the entire population of cities before anyone suspected the danger.

  But this lone Qul-En was seeking a complex hormone substance which Qul-En medical science said theoretically must exist, but the molecule of which even the Qul-En- could not synthesize directly. Yet it had to be found, in great quantity; once discovered, the problem of obtaining it would be taken up, with the resources of the whole race behind it. But first it had to be found.

  The tiny ship assigned to explore the Solar System for the hormone wished to pass unnoticed. Its mission of discovery should be accomplished in secrecy if possible. For one thing, the desired hormone would be destroyed by contact with the typical Qul-En ray-gun beam, so that normal methods of securing zoological specimens could not be used.

  The ship winked into being in empty space, not far from Neptune. It drove for that chilly planet, hovered about it, and decided not to land. It sped inward toward the sun and touched briefly on Io, but found no life there. It dropped into the atmosphere of Mars, and did not rise again for a full week, but the vegetation on Mars is thin and the animals mere degenerate survivors of once specialized forms. The ship came to Earth, hovered lightly at the atmosphere’s very edge for a long time, and doubtless chose its point of descent for reasons that seemed good to its occupant. Then it landed.

  It actually touched Earth at night. There was no rocket-drive to call attention and by dawn it was well concealed. Only one living creature had seen it land—a mountain lion. Even so, by midday the skeleton of the lion was picked clean by buzzards, with ants tidying up after them. And the Qul-En in the ship was enormously pleased. The carcass, before being abandoned to the buzzards, had been studied with an incredible competence. The lion’s nervous system—particularly the mass of tissue in the skull—unquestionably contained either the desired hormone itself, or something so close to it that it could be modified and the hormone produced. It remained only to discover how large a supply
of the precious material could be found on Earth. It was not feasible to destroy a group of animals—say, of the local civilized race—and examine their bodies, because the hormone would be broken down by the weapon which allowed of a search for it. So an estimate of available sources would have to be made by sampling. The Qul-En in the ship prepared to take samples.

  The ship had landed in tumbled country some forty miles south of Ensenada Springs, national forest territory, on which grazing-rights were allotted to sheep-ranchers after illimitable red tape. Within ten miles of the hidden ship there were rabbits, birds, deer, coyotes, a lobo wolf or two, assorted chipmunks, field-mice, perhaps as many as three or four mountain lions, one flock of two thousand sheep, one man, and one dog.

  The man was Antonio Menendez. He was ancient, unwashed, and ignorant, and the official shepherd of the sheep. The dog was Salazar, of dubious ancestry but sound worth, who actually took care of the sheep and knew it; he was scarred from battles done in their defense. He was unweariedly solicitous of the wooly half-wits in his charge. There were whole hours when he could not find time to scratch himself, because of his duties. He was reasonably fond of Antonio, but knew that the man did not really understand sheep.

  Besides these creatures, among whom the Qul-En expected to find its samples, there were insects. These, however, the tiny alien being disregarded. It would not be practical to get any great quantity of the substance it sought from such small organisms.

  By nightfall of the day after its landing, the door of the ship opened and the explorer came out in a vehicle designed expressly for sampling on this planet. The vehicle came out, stood on its hind legs, closed the door, and piled brush back to hide it. Then it moved away with the easy, feline gait of a mountain lion. At a distance of two feet it was a mountain lion. It was a magnificent job of adapting Qul-En engineering to the production of a device which would carry a small-bodied explorer about a strange world without causing remark. The explorer nested in a small cabin occupying the space—in the facsimile lion—that had been occupied by the real lion’s lungs. The fur of the duplicate was convincing; its eyes were excellent, housing scanning-cells which could make use of anything from ultraviolet far down into the infra-red. Its claws were retractable and of plastic much stronger and keener than the original lion’s claws. It had other equipment, including a weapon against which nothing on this planet could stand, and for zoological sampling it had one remarkable advantage. It had no animal smell; it was all metal and plastics.

  On the first night of its roaming, nothing in particular happened. The explorer became completely familiar with the way the controls of the machine worked. As a machine, of course, it was vastly more powerful than an animal. It could make leaps no mere creature of flesh and blood could duplicate; its balancing devices were admirable; it was, naturally, immune to fatigue. The Qul-En inside it was pleased with the job.

  That night Antonio and Salazar bedded down their sheep in a natural amphitheatre and Antonio slept heavily, snoring. He was a highly superstitious ancient, so he wore various charms of a quasi-religious nature. Salazar merely turned around three times and went to sleep. But while the man slept soundly, Salazar woke often. Once he waked sharply at a startled squawking among the lambs. He got up and trotted over to make sure that everything was all right, sniffed the air suspiciously. Then he went back, scratched where a flea had bitten him, bit—nibbling—at a place his paws could not reach, and went back to sleep. At midnight he made a clear circle around his flock and went back to slumber with satisfaction. Toward dawn he raised his head suspiciously at the sound of a coyote’s howl, but the howl was far away Salazar dozed until daybreak, when he rose, shook himself, stretched himself elaborately, scratched thoroughly, and was ready for a new day. The man waked, wheezing, and cooked breakfast; it appeared that the normal order of things would go undisturbed.

  For a time it did; there was certainly no disturbance at the ship. The small silvery vessel was safely hidden. There was a tiny, flickering light inside—the size of a pin-point—which wavered and changed color constantly where a sort of tape unrolled before it. It was a recording device, making note of everything the roaming pseudo-mountain lion’s eyes saw and everything its microphonic ears listened to. There was a bank of air-purifying chemical which proceeded to regenerate itself by means of air entering through a small ventilating slot. It got rid of carbon dioxide and stored up oxygen in its place, in readiness for further voyaging.

  Of course, ants exploded the whole outside of the space-vessel, and some went inside through the ventilator-opening. They began to cart off some interesting if novel foodstuff they found within. Some very tiny beetles came exploring, and one variety found the air-purifying chemical refreshing. Numbers of that sort of beetle moved in and began to raise large families. A minuscule moth, too, dropped eggs lavishly in the nest-like space in which the Qul-En explorer normally reposed during space-flight. But nothing really happened.

  Not until late morning. It was two hours after breakfast-time when Salazar found traces of the mountain lion which was not a mountain lion. He found a rabbit that had been killed. Having been killed, it had very carefully been opened up, its various internal organs spread out for examination, and its nervous system traced in detail. Its brain-tissue, particularly, had been most painstakingly dissected, so the amount of a certain complex hormone to be found in it could be calculated with precision. The Qul-En in the lion shape had been vastly pleased to find the sought-for hormone in another animal besides a mountain lion.

  The dissection job was a perfect anatomical demonstration; no instructor in anatomy could have done better, and few neuro-surgeons could have done as well with the brain. It was, in fact, a perfect laboratory job done on a flat rock in the middle of a sheep-range, and duly reproduced on tape by a flickering, color-changing light. The reproduction, however, was not as good as it should have been, because the tape was then covered by small ants who had found its coating palatable and were trying to clean it off.

  Salazar saw the rabbit. There were blow-flies buzzing about it, and a buzzard was reluctantly flying away because of his approach. Salazar barked at the buzzard. Antonio heard the barking; he came.

  Antonio was ancient, superstitious, and unwashed. He came wheezing, accompanied by flies who had not finished breakfasting on the bits of his morning meal he had dropped on his vest. Salazar wagged his tail and barked at the buzzard. The rabbit had been neatly dissected, but not eaten. The cuts which opened it up were those of a knife or scalpel. It was not—it was definitely not!—the work of an animal. But there were mountain-lion tracks, and nothing else. More, every one of the tracks was that of a hind foot! A true mountain lion eats what he catches; he does not stand on his hind-paws and dissect it with scientific precision. Nothing earthly had done this!

  Antonio’s eyes bulged out. He thought instantly of magic, Black Magic. He could not imagine dissection in the spirit of scientific inquiry; to him, anything that killed and then acted in this fashion could only come from the devil.

  He gasped and fled, squawking. When he had run a good hundred yards, Salazar caught up to him, very much astonished. He overtook his master and went on ahead to see what had scared the man so. He made casts to right and left, then went in a conscientious circle all around the flock under his care. Presently he came back to Antonio, his tongue lolling out, to assure him that everything was all right. But Antonio was packing, with shaking hands and a sweat-streaked brow.

  In no case is the neighborhood of a mountain lion desirable for a man with a flock of sheep. But this was no ordinary mountain lion. Why, Salazar—honest, stout-hearted Salazar— did not scent a mountain lion in those tracks. He would have mentioned it vociferously if he had, so this was beyond nature. The lion was un fantasmo or worse; Antonio’s thoughts ran to were-tigers, ghosts-lions, and sheer Indian devils. He packed, while Salazar scratched fleas and wondered what was the matter.

  They got the flock on the move. The sheep made idiotic efforts
to disperse and feed placidly where they were. Salazar rounded them up and drove them on. It was hard work, but even Antonio helped in frantic energy—which was unusual.

  Near noon, four miles from their former grazing-ground, there were mountain-peaks all around them. Some were snowcapped, and there were vistas of illimitable distance everywhere. It was very beautiful indeed, but Antonio did not notice; Salazar came upon buzzards again. He chased them with loud barkings from the meal they reluctantly shared with blowflies and ants. This time it wasn’t a rabbit; it was a coyote. It had been killed and most painstakingly taken apart to provide at a glance all significant information about the genus canis, species latrans, in the person of an adult male coyote. It was a most enlightening exhibit; it proved conclusively that there was a third type of animal, structurally different from both mountain lions and rabbits, which had the same general type of nervous system, with a mass of nerve-tissue in one large mass in a skull, which nerve-tissue contained the same high percentage of the desired hormone as the previous specimens. Had it been recorded by a tiny colored flame in the hidden ship —the flame was now being much admired by small red bugs and tiny spiders—it would have been proof that the Qul-En would find ample supplies on Earth of the complex hormone on which the welfare of their race now depended. Some members of the Qul-En race, indeed, would have looked no farther. But sampling which involved only three separate species and gave no proof of their frequency was not quite enough; the being in the synthetic mountain lion was off in search of further evidence.