“If something weren’t done about that reaction, Hekla would not only refuse the minor dealing with us such as our attempt to sell them metal and machines represents—they would, for their own protection, refuse to have anything whatever to do with the Federation and its component races. You know what has happened on other planets when a culturally and mentally inferior race was forced into contact with their betters. They died out, rapidly, and the cause was not deliberate extermination. In many cases, strenuous efforts were made to preserve them. Such things happened on Earth long before man left the planet; and it has happened all over the Galaxy since then.
“The Heklans are not our mental inferiors; they are intelligent enough to recognize a danger which must have been completely new to them, and to act on it in the only possible way—although that way is not a very good one, even from their own viewpoint. They may get rid of us, but they would have a hard time forgetting us.”
“Are you sure they recognize the danger?” interjected Rodin.
“Reasonably sure; and even if they don’t, it is none the less real—and our making fools of ourselves is just as good a cure. We showed them a field—probably not the only one, but certainly the most obvious—in which they are not merely our equals but have advanced far beyond us. We showed them in a way that will penetrate—their sense of humor seems to be as well developed as ours; and we showed them at the relatively minor price of your reputation—and mine, of course.” The last phrase was an afterthought inspired by Rodin’s attitude. The meteorologist calmed himself again with an effort, and asked a question.
“When did you realize what was happening to them, and what led you to that belief?”
“After my first long conversation with Serrnak Deg, I started to return to the ship alone. By an error, I stopped the elevator at the wrong level, and saw a room full of electrical machinery. I am not a scientist, but I think I know a teletype keyboard when I see it. Before I could see more, I was hustled out of the room. When I got back to the ship, I spent quite a while searching the frequency bands we have found practical for communication. I heard nothing, and yet the station was obviously in constant contact with the rest of the planet—even I know that a weather map can’t be kept up to date otherwise. Disregarding the remote chance that they had either medium transmitters or a means of radiant communication undreamed of by us, it seemed obvious that the station was actually connected by metallic cables with other centers of communication. The method is primitive, as even you will admit; why should they conceal the installation from me, if they were not ashamed of its simplicity?
“Later, when they showed us around the station, and failed to hide any of the other primitive equipment such as internal combustion engines, I was sure they had decided to give up the attempt to conceal the inferiority they felt in the face of our apparatus. Deg had visited the lifeboat by then, remember. They were planning then, and must have been planning until we started this trip, to break with us completely.
“You can see why I didn’t tell you this before. I’m not sure I should have told you now, because it will be necessary for you to go back to that station and not only admit your ignorance to Marn and Deg, but put the capping stone on the business by asking for enlightenment. I hope you have the intestinal fortitude to do it.”
Rodin smiled wryly.
“I guess I can’t let you down, since you’ve gone this far. Perhaps I can make up the face I’ve lost here by staying a while, learning some Heklan meteorology, and publishing a few papers for the benefit of the rest of the Galaxy. I can be the first non-Heklan stellar meteorologist, anyway, which ought to have some weight with my beloved colleagues. All right, Alf, I’ll try it.”
~ * ~
Vickers nodded and smiled slightly, as he altered the course slightly to bear toward the cloud banner of Observatory Hill, now vaguely visible in the distance.
“I was sure you would. After all, reputation or no scientific reputation, you have a job for which you get paid, same as I. Just don’t lose any chance of building up to the Heklans the importance of their contributions to the meteorological knowledge of the Federation races.”
“I won’t,” answered Rodin, “and it won’t need much of my help. They really have something that will drive some of my friends wild, and will probably rock the astronomers slightly in their seats.
“But speaking of jobs, you also have one; and how does your proving to all concerned that it is impractical to work on Hekla’s climate fit in with a program supposed to sell large quantities of metal?”
Vickers set the ship gently down on the ramp before turning to face his friend.
“That was solved some time ago. My motives in assuring successful relations with this race were not entirely humanitarian, though of course I don’t regret the good I’m doing. My personal problem, of sales, was solved long ago, as I say; but without any Heklans the solution would be somewhat impractical. Hence the call for your invaluable assistance. Tell me, Dave, what you do if the landlord won’t repair the air conditioner in your apartment?” He smiled at the look of comprehension on the other’s face. “Of course. Granting the availability of other quarters, you move.
“There are certainly other quarters available for the Heklans, even if they are restricted to the systems of red giant stars; and the Federation can undoubtedly find a number of suitable worlds in a very few years, even if they are not already known.
“Any race that goes in for colonization in a big way, Dave, is going to need spaceships in considerable numbers; and I am sure that Belt Metals will be only too glad to provide them. In fact, I think we might both draw a very comfortable bonus on such a transaction; and I plan, at the first opportune moment, to put the proposition to Serrnak Deg.”
Vickers rose from the control seat, touching as he did so the switch that opened the inner air lock door.
“I think that covers all the problems of the moment,” he said, as he struggled into a jacket. “Now come on into that station with me, Dave. I want to see you eat humble pie!”
<
~ * ~
Murray Leinster
THE PLANTS
The dominant life form on an unexplored planet couldn’t be discounted, even if it were just a pretty flower.
~ * ~
T
he plants on Aiolo grew by thousands and millions and hundreds of millions over the wide flat plains of the planet. It was not a very luring planet, perhaps, but the plants knew no other and they were content. They were all alike. Every one was a flower with a singularly complicated center and a wide collar of white petals. It grew four feet high upon a reedy, seemingly flimsy stalk. Up at the top, just under the blossom, there was a furry thickening of the stalk for about six inches. This thick part was asymmetric, with lumps here and there as if the organism within it were far from simple. It was. The plants spent most of the daylight hours gazing at Aiolo’s tiny, blue-white sun. Now and then, though, they turned from it to regard each other or any singular occurrence that might take place. But there were not often any occurrences because there was nothing on Aiolo but the plants. Literally nothing. No animals. No birds. No insects. And the plants were all alike. They were not only the dominant species on Aiolo, they were its flora and fauna and everything else.
But one day there came a screaming, far away in Aiolo’s thin air, and out of the purplish sky a dark object came hurtling horribly. For a time it traveled almost parallel to the ground, but gradually it descended, struck and bounced upward like a skipped stone, struck and bounced again, and then struck a third time and ploughed a monstrous furrow in the soft earth for a quarter of a mile before it stopped. It killed thousands of the plants of Aiolo in its plunging.
After it was still for a long time, four men came staggering out of gaping rents in its plating and gazed dazedly about them. And all the plants within view turned their faces to regard them curiously.
Hours after their landing, the four men built a campfire in the great furrow d
ug by the Copernicus’ shattered hull. They brought out shattered burnable litter from the ship’s interior to use for fuel, because, of course, the plants would not burn. As they cooked, the sun sank abruptly and the formerly faintly-visible stars came out with astonishing brilliance. The only light anywhere on the ground was that of the campfire. The flames licked high and burned with more than ordinary brightness. The atmosphere of Aiolo was only five percent nitrogen, and despite its thinness men could breathe without air tanks, and fire could burn.
The men moved about the fire with stiff and painful motions as if badly bruised and shaken. Around them the round flower faces turned toward the flames or the men or both. They made an effect of innumerable marveling listeners. The men had found their stalks too tough to be readily brushed aside, and they camped in the cleared furrow for convenience.
“After thinkin’ it over,” said one of the men ironically, “an’ even allowin’ for the fact that we’re still alive, I still say we’re in a fix! Slade musta been crazy!”
A second man—Caxton—said meditatively:
“No-o-o, Burton. He planned it too carefully. Some of his explosives must have been set before we left port. And he pushed off in the lifeboat before they went off. They were exactly calculated to wreck the Copernicus from stem to stern. He had some scheme in mind, but just what—”
“It was just murder!” said Burton stubbornly. “He was a killin’ lunatic. There were forty-eight men in the ship, countin’ him. Forty-three of ‘em died right off. We shoulda died, too. He just meant to kill everyody. What’d he gain by wreckin’ the old ship fifty light-years from anywhere?”
A third man, Palmer, said heavily:
“There’s twelve million stellars worth of iridium on board. If he figured he could get away with that somehow— He might figure on coming back to loot it. He’d have the Copernicus’ course and speed.”
“Yeah?” said Burton scornfully. “How’d he reach any place to come back from? All he had was a lifeboat! An’ what’d the ship’s course an’ speed be by the time he did get back?”
Caxton nodded.
“I agree on that, Burton. If you don’t find a wreck pretty quick you don’t find it. But still I think Slade had some scheme in mind. He wasn’t just a maniac killing people. A maniac likes to see people die, and he left hours ahead of time.”
They ate as they talked, but the food was not really cooked. The boiling point of water in the thin air of Aiolo was well below two hundred and twelve Fahrenheit. The food was hardly more than well-warmed, save where it was burnt. The coffee could be drawn straight from the boiling pot without scorching one’s tongue.
Presently they fell silent gazing into the fire. Their situation was completely without hope of betterment. The hull and drive of the Copernicus was shattered far past patching. The ship’s fuel was gone to the last ounce. The wrecking of the ship in midspace had been a triumph of ingenuity and skill. At one instant the freighter had been droning along comfortably at cruising speed on overdrive, taking a direct line between Algol IV and the Briariades. And then, without warning, there was one shattering explosion, then two more, and then a monstrous blast which seemed like the end of all things. Within seconds the Copernicus changed from a well-found, space-worthy vessel to a riddled, airless, powerless hunk, its overdrive off, and therefore next to no forward velocity.
The four men beside the campfire on Aiolo were the only survivors beside the man who had set off the blasts by machinery. They had happened to be off watch in the only two compartments of the ship which were neither cracked open by the explosions nor emptied of air by the jamming of self-sealing doors. Their situation had seemed hopeless then.
Even now it was hardly better, though something like a miracle was responsible for their being still alive. No possible astrogator could have calculated a landing such as they had made, nor could any wreck have grounded approximately in one piece on any planet less featureless than Aiolo. The derelict had hit the atmosphere traveling west to east at the flattest of conceivable angles. Morever, it had overtaken the planet in its orbit so that both orbital speed and the speed of rotation could be subtracted from the relative motion of hulk and planet. It had hit within an impossibly small margin of the incredible, at a rate which would allow the atmosphere to slow it without burning it up, and at an angle which allowed it to reach ground like a skipping stone. It bounced twice, ploughed a huge ditch in soft earth, and came to rest-
But the four men who still survived the shaking-up were in no enviable position, at that. They were marooned on Aiolo, which had been visited by men exactly once before in all galactic history. They had no hope whatever of ever leaving it. And their situation was the work of a shipmate who had caused it and then set out, seemingly, to travel fifty light-years in a lifeboat powered for seven.
The night grew chill, even beside the fire. It would be horribly cold presently. Horribly! But in the bright starlight the plants stayed erect and the flowers open, their round faces staring at the fire and the men.
“We might as well turn in,” said Caxton presently. “We’ll think of something we can do, sooner or later.”
The statement was a lie. There was nothing to think of but endless chilly days and endless frigid nights to come, on a planet on which every square mile seemed to be exactly like every other square mile. They would live here, and grow old, and die. Perhaps in a thousand or a million years another cosmographic expedition would land on Aiolo and find the rusted wreckage of their ship. But that was all they could look forward to.
They had sleeping bags ready. They crawled into them and zipped the flaps shut. The fire died down and died down—
~ * ~
Starlight shone on the broken hulk, and on the four sleeping bags; and on the plants. The flowers stirred subtly. They made tiny, quite imperceptible sounds. Presently those nearest the gouged-out furrow leaned toward the sleeping men. They drooped in tiny jerkings; not at all like the smooth movement of muscle, but they moved. Three of the four men were far beyond their reach, though the nearest flowers strained toward them, but Caxton had happened to sleep with his head quite near to undisturbed ground. Hannet was fairly close to some flower stalks, and one leaned far over and out to approach him, but it could not. Half a dozen or more, however, could hover over Caxton. Their blooms bent down and bent down until they almost touched the cloth of the sleeping bag above his head.
Beyond that, nothing happened at all. When dawn broke and the men waked, the flowers were all erect again.
~ * ~
But, next morning, as the castaways prepared their necessarily half-cooked breakfast, Caxton said suddenly:
“Look here! Slade left the Copernicus with fuel for at most seven light-years. It’s fifty to the nearest inhabited solar system. We thought he was crazy! But—where are we?”
“Right here,” said Palmer gloomily. “And likely to stay, too!”
“Well then—where’d Slade be if he had sense?”
“If he had sense,” snapped Burton, “he wouldn’t ha* wrecked the ship. But if he wanted to stay alive—”
Then Burton stopped short, his mouth open. Palmer swore suddenly. Hannet growled.
“He’d be here, too,” said Burton angrily. “He’d have made for this place and landed! He’s somewhere on this planet!”
Caxton nodded. His expression was queer.
“It came to me in my sleep,” he said slowly. “I had odd dreams, all mixed up with these flowers. Somehow I had a feeling in my sleep that they were telling me Slade is here. But it makes sense.”
He looked uneasily at the flowers, all of which seemed to regard the man and the hulk of the spaceship with a round-eyed curiosity. It was particularly odd that all of them faced the men, because some were on the north and some on the south and east and west. The ground went on to the horizon, completely flat and completely monotonous. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing in view but these flowers. They were all the same variety. There was no grass und
erfoot. They were spaced without regularity, but with an amazing equality of space between them.
“Flowers told you? Huh!” snapped Burton. “But that’s it, all right. He smashed up the ship and landed here and—”
Again his mouth dropped open.
“But he couldn’t ha’ figured the ship ‘ud land here,” he protested. “Nobody coulda calculated the landing we made!”
Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01] Page 26
