Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XI

by Various

  "Heh!" Ives' heavy voice came from the communications desk. "Maybe the natives are primitives, at that. Not a whisper of any radio on any band. No powerline fields, either. These are plowboys, for sure."

  Johnny looked out at the sleeping valley. His irritation over the lighter was still in his voice. "Imagine that. No video or trideo. No jet-races or feelies. What do people do with their time in a place like this?"

  "Books," said Hoskins, almost absently. "Chess. Conversation."

  "I don't know what chess is, and conversation's great if you want to tell somebody something, like 'bring me a steak'," said Johnny. "Let's get out of this fire-trap," he said to the Captain.

  "In time," said the Captain. "Ives, DX those radio frequencies. If there's so much as a smell of radiation even from the other side of this planet, we want to know about it. Hoskins, check the landing-suits--food, water, oxygen, radio, everything. Earth-type planet or no, we're not fooling with alien viruses. Johnny, I want you to survey this valley in every way you can and plot a minimum of three take-off vectors."

  The crew fell to work, Ives and Hoskins intently, Johnny off-handedly, as if he were playing out a ritual with some children. Paresi bent over a stereomicroscope, manipulating controls which brought in samples of air-borne bacteria and fungi and placed them under its objective. Captain Anderson ranged up beside him.

  "We could walk out of the ship as if we were on Muroc Port," said Paresi. "These couldn't be more like Earth organisms if they'd been transplanted from home to delude us."

  The Captain laughed. "Sometimes I tend to agree with Johnny. I never met a more suspicious character. How'd you ever bring yourself to sign your contract?"

  "Turned my back on a couple of clauses," said Paresi. "Here--have a look."

  At that moment the usually imperturbable Ives uttered a sharp grunt that echoed and re-echoed through the cabin. Paresi and the Captain turned. Hoskins was just coming out of the after alleyway with an oxygen bottle in his hand, and had frozen in his tracks at the sharp sound Ives had made. Johnny had whipped around as if the grunt had been a lion's roar. His back was to the bulkhead, his lean, long frame tensed for fight or flight. It was indescribable, Ives' grunt, and it was the only sound which could have had such an effect on such a variety of men--the same shocked immobility.

  Ives sat over his Communications desk as if hypnotized by it. He moved one great arm forward, almost reluctantly, and turned a knob.

  A soft, smooth hum filled the room. "Carrier," said Ives.

  Then the words came. They were English words, faultlessly spoken, loud and clear and precise. They were harmless words, pleasant words even.

  They were: "Men of Earth! Welcome to our planet."

  The voice hung in the air. The words stuck in the silence like insects wriggling upon a pin. Then the voice was gone, and the silence was complete and heavy. The carrier hum ceased. With a spine-tingling brief blaze of high-frequency sound, Hoskins' oxygen-bottle hit the steel deck.

  Then they all began to breathe again.

  "There's your farmers, Johnny," said Paresi.

  "Knight to bishop's third," said Hoskins softly.

  "What's that?" demanded Johnny.

  "Chess again," said the Captain appreciatively. "An opening gambit."

  Johnny put a cigarette to his lips, tried his lighter. "Damn. Gimme a light, Ives."

  Ives complied, saying over his big shoulder to the Captain, "In case you wondered, there was no fix on that. My direction-finders indicate that the signal came simultaneously from forty-odd transmitters placed in a circle around the ship which is their way of saying 'I dunno'."

  The Captain walked to the view bubble in front of the console and peered around. He saw the valley, the warm light of mid-afternoon, the too-green slopes and the blue-green distances. Trees, rocks, a balancing bird.

  "It doesn't work," muttered Johnny.

  The Captain ignored him. "'Men of Earth....'" he quoted. "Ives, they've gotten into Survey's squeak-box and analyzed its origin. They know all about us!"

  "They don't because they can't," said Ives flatly. "Survey traverses those boxes through second-order space. They materialize near a planet and drop in. No computation on earth or off it could trace their normal-space trajectory, let alone what happens in the second-order condition. The elements the box is made of are carefully averaged isotopic forms that could have come from any of nine galaxies we know about and probably more. And all it does is throw out a VUHF signal that says beep on one side, boop on the other, and bup-bup in between. It does not speak English, mention the planet Earth, announce anyone's arrival and purpose, or teach etiquette."

  Captain Anderson spread his hands. "They got it from somewhere. They didn't get it from us. This ship and the box are the only Terran objects on this planet. Therefore they got their information from the box."

  "Q.E.D. You reason like Euclid," said Paresi admiringly. "But don't forget that geometry is an artificial school, based on arbitrary axioms. It just doesn't work where the shortest distance is not a straight line.... I'd suggest we gather evidence and postpone our conclusions."

  "How do you think they got it?" Ives challenged.

  "I think we can operate from the fact they got it, and make our analyses when we have more data."

  Ives went back to his desk and threw a switch.

  "What are you doing?" asked the Captain.

  "Don't you think they ought to be answered?"

  "Turn it off, Ives."

  "But--"

  "Turn it off!" Ives did. An expedition is an informal, highly democratic group, and can afford to be, for when the situation calls for it, there is never any question of where authority lies. The Captain said, "There is nothing we can say to them which won't yield them more information. Nothing. For all we know it may be very important to them to learn whether or not we received their message. Our countermove is obviously to make no move at all."

  "You mean just sit here and wait until they do something else?" asked Johnny, appalled.

  The Captain thumped his shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll do something in some other area than communications. Hoskins--are those landing suits ready?"

  "All but," rapped Hoskins. He scooped up the oxygen bottle and disappeared.

  Paresi said, "We'll tell them something if we don't answer."

  The Captain set his jaw. "We do what we can, Nick. We do the best we can. Got any better ideas?"

  Paresi shrugged easily and smiled. "Just knocking, skipper. Knock everything. Then what's hollow, you know about."

  "I should know better than to jump salty with you," said the Captain, all but returning the doctor's smile. "Johnny. Hoskins. Prepare for exploratory patrol."

  "I'll go," said Paresi.

  "Johnny goes," said the Captain bluntly, "because it's his first trip, and because if he isn't given something to do he'll bust his adrenals. Hoskins goes, because of all of us, the Engineer is most expendable. Ives stays because we need hair-trigger communications. I stay to correlate what goes on outside with what goes on inside. You stay because if anything goes wrong I'd rather have you fixing the men up than find myself trying to fix you up." He squinted at Paresi. "Does that knock solid?"

  "Solid."

  "Testing, Johnny," Ives said into a microphone. Johnny's duplicated voice, from the open face-plate of his helmet and from the intercom speaker, said, "I hear you fine."

  "Testing, Hoskins."

  "If I'd never seen you," said the speaker softly, "I'd think you were right here in the suit with me." Hoskins' helmet was obviously buttoned up.

  The two men came shuffling into the cabin, looking like gleaming ghosts in their chameleon-suits, which repeated the color of the walls. "Someday," growled Johnny, "there'll be a type suit where you can scratch your--"

  "Scratch when you get back," said the Captain. "Now hear this. Johnny, you can move fastest. You go out first. Wait in the airlock for thirty seconds after the outer port opens. When Ives gives you the beep, jump out
, run around the bows and plant your back against the hull directly opposite the port. Hold your blaster at the ready, aimed down--you hear me? Down, so that any observer will know you're armed but not attacking. Hoskins, you'll be in the lock with the outer port open by that time. When Johnny gives the all clear, you'll jump out and put your back against the hull by the port. Then you'll both stay where you are until you get further orders. Is that clear?"

  "Aye."

  "Yup."

  "You're covered adequately from the ship. Don't fire without orders. There's nothing you can get with a blaster that we can't get first with a projector--unless it happens to be within ten meters of the hull and we can't depress to it. Even then, describe it first and await orders to fire except in really extreme emergency. A single shot at the wrong time could set us back a thousand years with this planet. Remember that this ship isn't called Killer or Warrior or even Hero. It's the Earth Ship Ambassador. Go to it, and good luck."

  Hoskins stepped back and waved Johnny past him. "After you, Jets."

  Johnny's teeth flashed behind the face-plate. He clicked his heels and bowed stiffly from the waist, in a fine burlesque of an ancient courtier. He stalked past Hoskins and punched the button which controlled the airlock.

  They waited. Nothing.

  Johnny frowned, jabbed the button again. And again. The Captain started to speak, then fell watchfully silent. Johnny reached toward the button, touched it, then struck it savagely. He stepped back then, one foot striking the other like that of a clumsy child. He turned partially to the others. In his voice, as it came from the speaker across the room, was a deep amazement that rang like the opening chords of a prophetic and gloomy symphony.

  He said, "The port won't open."

  II

  The extremes of mysticism and of pragmatism have their own expressions of worship. Each has its form, and the difference between them is the difference between deus ex machina and deus machina est. --E. Hunter Waldo

  "Of course it will open," said Hoskins. He strode past the stunned pilot and confidently palmed the control.

  The port didn't open.

  Hoskins said, "Hm?" as if he had been asked an inaudible question, and tried again. Nothing happened. "Skipper," he said over his shoulder, "Have a quick look at the meters behind you there. Are we getting auxiliary power?"

  "All well here," said Anderson after a glance at the board. "And no shorts showing."

  There was a silence punctuated by the soft, useless clicking of the control as Hoskins manipulated it. "Well, what do you know."

  "It won't work," said Johnny plaintively.

  "Sure it'll work," said Paresi swiftly, confidently. "Take it easy, Johnny."

  "It won't work," said Johnny. "It won't work." He stumbled across the cabin and leaned against the opposite bulkhead, staring at the closed port with his head a little to one side as if he expected it to shriek at him.

  "Let me try," said Ives, going to Hoskins. He put out his hand.

  "Don't!" Johnny cried.

  "Shut up, Johnny," said Paresi.

  "All right, Nick," said Johnny. He opened his face plate, went to the rear bulkhead, keyed open an acceleration couch, and lay face down on it. Paresi watched him, his lips pursed.

  "Can't say I blame him," said the Captain softly, catching Paresi's eye. "It's something of a shock. This shouldn't be. The safety factor's too great--a thousand per cent or better."

  "I know what you mean," said Hoskins. "I saw it myself, but I don't believe it." He pushed the button again.

  "I believe it," said Paresi.

  Ives went to his desk, clicked the transmitter and receiver switches on and off, moved a rheostat or two. He reached up to a wall toggle, turned a small air-circulating fan on and off. "Everything else seems to work," he said absently.

  "This is ridiculous!" exploded the Captain. "It's like having your keys home, or arriving at the theater without your tickets. It isn't dangerous--it's just stupid!"

  "It's dangerous," said Paresi.

  "Dangerous how?" Ives demanded.

  "For one thing--" Paresi nodded toward Johnny, who lay tensely, his face hidden. "For another, the simple calculation that if nothing inside this ship made that control fail, something outside this ship did it. And that I don't like."

  "That couldn't happen," said the Captain reasonably.

  Paresi snorted impatiently. "Which of two mutually exclusive facts are you going to reason from? That the ship can't fail? Then this failure isn't a failure; it's an external control. Or are you going to reason that the ship can fail? Then you don't have to worry about an external force--but you can't trust anything about the ship. Do the trick that makes you happy. But do only one. You can't have both."

  Johnny began to laugh.

  Ives went to him. "Hey, boy--"

  Johnny rolled over, swung his feet down, and sat up, brushing the fat man aside. "What you guys need," Johnny chuckled, "is a nice kind policeman to feed you candy and take you home. You're real lost."

  Ives said, "Johnny, take it easy and be quiet, huh? We'll figure a way out of this."

  "I already have, scrawny," said Johnny offensively. He got up, strode to the port. "What a bunch of deadheads," he growled. He went two steps past the port and grasped the control-wheel which was mounted on the other side of the port from the button.

  "Oh my God," breathed Anderson delightedly, "the manual! Anybody else want to be Captain?"

  "Factor of safety," said Hoskins, smiting himself on the brow. "There's a manual control for everything on this scow that there can be. And we stand here staring at it--"

  "If we don't win the furlined teacup...." Ives laughed.

  Johnny hauled on the wheel.

  It wouldn't budge.

  "Here--" Ives began to approach.

  "Get away," said Johnny. He put his hands close together on the rim of the wheel, settled his big shoulders, and hauled. With a sharp crack the wheel broke off in his hands.

  Johnny staggered, then stood. He looked at the wheel and then up at the broken end of its shaft, gleaming deep below the surface of the bulkhead.

  "Oh, fine...." Ives whispered.

  Suddenly Johnny threw back his head and loosened a burst of high, hysterical laughter. It echoed back and forth between the metal walls like a torrent from a burst dam. It went on and on, as if now that the dam was gone, the flood would run forever.

  Anderson called out "Johnny!" three times, but the note of command had no effect. Paresi walked to the pilot and with the immemorial practice slapped him sharply across the cheeks. "Johnny! Stop it!"

  The laughter broke off as suddenly as it had begun. Johnny's chest heaved, drawing in breath with great, rasping near-sobs. Slowly they died away. He extended the wheel toward the Captain.

  "It broke off," he said, finally, dully, without emphasis.

  Then he leaned back against the hull, slowly slid down until he was sitting on the deck. "Broke right off," he said.

  Ives twined his fat fingers together and bent them until the knuckles cracked. "Now what?"

  "I suggest," said Paresi, in an extremely controlled tone, "that we all sit down and think over the whole thing very carefully."

  Hoskins had been staring hypnotically at the broken shaft deep in the wall. "I wonder," he said at length, "which way Johnny turned that wheel."

  "Counter-clockwise," said Ives. "You saw him."

  "I know that," said Hoskins. "I mean, which way: the right way, or the wrong way?"

  "Oh." There was a short silence. Then Ives said, "I guess we'll never know, now."

  "Not until we get back to Earth," said Paresi quickly.

  "You say 'until', or 'unless'?" Ives demanded.

  "I said 'until', Ives," said Paresi levelly, "and watch your mouth."

  "Sometimes," said the fat man with a dangerous joviality, "you pick the wrong way to say the right thing, Nick." Then he clapped the slender doctor on the back. "But I'll be good. We sow no panic seed, do we?"

&nbs
p; "Much better not to," said the Captain. "It's being done efficiently enough from outside."

  "You are convinced it's being done from outside?" asked Hoskins, peering at him owlishly.

  "I'm ... convinced of very little," said the Captain heavily. He went to the acceleration couch and sat down. "I want out," he said. He waved away the professional comment he could see forming on Paresi's lips and went on, "Not claustrophobia, Nick. Getting out of the ship's more important than just relieving our feelings. If the trouble with the port is being caused by some fantastic something outside this ship, we'll achieve a powerful victory over it, purely by ignoring it."

  "It broke off," murmured Johnny.

  "Ignore that," snorted Ives.

  "You keep talking about this thing being caused by something outside," said Paresi. His tone was almost complaining.

  "Got a better hypothesis?" asked Hoskins.

  "Hoskins," said the Captain, "isn't there some way we can get out? What about the tubes?"

  "Take a shipyard to move those power-plants," said Hoskins, "and even if it could be done, those radioactive tubes would fry you before you crawled a third of the way."

  "We should have a lifeboat," said Ives to no one in particular.

  "What in time does a ship like the Ambassador need with a lifeboat?" asked Hoskins in genuine amazement.

  The Captain frowned. "What about the ventilators?"

  "Take us days to remove all the screens and purifiers," said Hoskins, "and then we'd be up against the intake ports. You could stroll out through any of them about as far as your forearm. And after that it's hull-metal, skipper. That you don't cut, not with a piece of the Sun's core."

  The Captain got up and began pacing, slowly and steadily, as if the problem could be trodden out like ripe grapes. He closed his eyes and said, "I've been circling around that idea for thirty minutes now. Look: the hull can't be cut because it is built so it can't fail. It doesn't fail. The port controls were also built so they wouldn't fail. They do fail. The thing that keeps us in stays in shape. The thing that lets us out goes bad. Effect: we stay inside. Cause: something that wants us to stay inside."

  "Oh," said Johnny clearly.

  They looked at him. He raised his head, stiffened his spine against the bulkhead. Paresi smiled at him. "Sure, Johnny. The machine didn't fail. It was--controlled. It's all right." Then he turned to the Captain and said carefully, "I'm not denying what you say, Skipper. But I don't like to think of what will happen if you take that tack, reason it through, and don't get any answers."