First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  I sweat, sitting there. I can see the whole picture. Brooks is worrying about Moklins loose among humans, outsmarting them as their kids grow up, being the big politicians, the bosses, the planetary pioneers, the prettiest girls and the handsomest guys in the Galaxy—everything humans want to be themselves. Just thinking about it is enough to make any human feel like he’s going nuts. But Brooks is also worrying about Inspector Caldwell, who is five foot three and red-headed and cute as a bug’s ear and riding for a bad fall.

  They come back from the trip to the other trading post. Inspector Caldwell is baffled and mad. Brooks is sweating and scared. He slips me the signal and I wiggle my little finger back at him, just so I’ll know he didn’t get substituted for without Inspector Caldwell knowing it, and so he knows nothing happened to me while he was gone. They didn’t see the Moklin that looks like Brooks. They didn’t get a bit of information we didn’t have before—which is just about none at all.

  Things go on. Brooks and me are sweating it out until the Palmyra lets down out of the sky again, meanwhile praying for Inspector Caldwell to get her ears pinned back so proper steps can be taken, and every morning he crosses his fingers at me, and I wiggle my little finger back at him…And he watches over Inspector Caldwell tender.

  The other trading post goes on placid. They sell their stuff at half the price we sell ours for. So, on Inspector Caldwell’s orders, we cut ours again to half what they sell theirs for. So they sell theirs for half what we sell ours for, so we sell ours for half what they sell theirs for. And so on. Meanwhile we sweat.

  Three days before the Palmyra is due, our goods are marked at just exactly one per cent of what they was marked a month before, and the other trading post is selling them at half that. It looks like we are going to have to pay a bonus to Moklins to take goods away for us to compete with the other trading post.

  Otherwise, everything looks normal on the surface. Moklins hang around as usual, friendly and admiring. They’ll hang around a couple of days just to get a look at Inspector Caldwell, and they regard her respectful.

  Brooks looks grim. He is head over heels crazy about her now and she knows it, and she rides him hard. She snaps at him, and he answers her patient and gentle—because he knows that when what he hopes is going to happen, she is going to need him to comfort her. She has about wiped out our stock, throwing bargain sales. Our shelves are almost bare. But the other trading post still has plenty of stock.

  “Mr. Brooks,” says Inspector Caldwell, bitter, at breakfast, “we’ll have to take most of the Palmyra’s cargo to fill up our inventory.”

  “Maybe,” he says, tender, “and maybe not.”

  “But we’ve got to drive that other post out of business!” she says, desperate. Then she breaks down. “This—this is my first independent assignment. I’ve got to handle it successfully!”

  He hesitates. But just then Deeth comes in. He beams friendly at Inspector Caldwell.

  “A compliment for you, ma’am. Three of them.”

  She goggles at him. Brooks says, gentle, “It’s all right. Deeth, show them in and get some presents.”

  Inspector Caldwell splutters incredulous, “But—but—”

  “Don’t be angry,” says Brooks. “They mean it as a compliment. It is, actually, you know.”

  Three Moklin girls come in, giggling. They are not bad-looking at all. They look as human as Deeth, but one of them has a long, droopy mustache like a mate of the Palmyra—that’s because they hadn’t even seen a human woman before Inspector Caldwell come along. They sure have admired her, though! And Moklin kids get born fast. Very fast.

  They show her what they are holding so proud and happy in their arms. They have got three little Moklin kids, one apiece. And every one of them has red hair, just like Inspector Caldwell, and every one of them is a girl that is the spit and image of her. You would swear they are human babies, and you’d swear they are hers. But of course they ain’t. They make kid noises and wave their little fists.

  Inspector Caldwell is just plain paralyzed. She stares at them, and goes red as fire and white as chalk, and she is speechless. So Brooks has to do the honors. He admires the kids extravagant, and the Moklin girls giggle, and take the compliment presents Deeth brings in, and they go out happy.

  When the door closes, Inspector Caldwell wilts.

  “Oh-h!” she wails. “It’s true! You didn’t—you haven’t—they can make their babies look like anybody they want!”

  Brooks puts his arms around her and she begins to cry against his shoulder. He pats her and says, “They’ve got a queer sort of evolution on Moklin, darling. Babies here inherit desired characteristics. Not acquired characteristics, but desired ones! And what could be more desirable than you?”

  I am blinking at them. He says to me, cold, “Will you kindly get the hell out of here and stay out?”

  I come to. I says. “Just one precaution.”

  I wiggle my little finger. He crosses his fingers at me.

  “Then,” I says, “since there’s no chance of a mistake, I’ll leave you two together.”

  And I do.

  The Palmyra booms down out of the sky two days later. We are all packed up. Inspector Caldwell is shaky, on the porch of the post, when Moklins come hollering and waving friendly over from the landing field pulling a freight-truck with Cap Haney on it. I see the other festive groups around members of the crew that—this being a scheduled stop—have been given ship-leave for a couple hours to visit their Moklin friends.

  “I’ve got the usual cargo—” begins Cap Haney.

  “Don’t discharge it,” says Inspector Caldwell, firm. “We are abandoning this post. I have authority and Mr. Brooks has convinced me of the necessity for it. Please get our baggage to the ship.”

  He gapes at her. “The Company don’t like to give in to competition—”

  “There isn’t any competition,” says Inspector Caldwell. She gulps. “Darling, you tell him,” she says to Brooks.

  He says, lucid, “She’s right, Captain. The other trading post is purely a Moklin enterprise. They like to do everything that humans do. Since humans were running a trading post, they opened one too. They bought goods from us and pretended to sell them at half price, and we cut our prices, and they bought more goods from us and pretended to sell at half the new prices…Some Moklin or other must’ve thought it would be nice to be a smart businessman, so his kids would be smart businessmen. Too smart! We close up this post before Moklins think of other things…”

  He means, of course, that if Moklins get loose from their home planet and pass as humans, their kids can maybe take over human civilization. Human nature couldn’t take that! But it is something to be passed on to the high brass, and not told around general.

  “Better sound the emergency recall signal,” says Inspector Caldwell, brisk.

  We go over to the ship and the Palmyra lets go that wailing siren that’ll carry twenty miles. Any crew member in hearing is going to beat it back to the ship full-speed. They come running from every which way, where they been visiting their Moklin friends. And then, all of a sudden, here comes a fellow wearing Moklin guest garments, yelling, “Hey! Wait! I ain’t got my clothes—”

  And then there is what you might call a dead silence. Because lined up for checkoff is another guy that comes running at the recall signal, and he is wearing ship’s clothes, and you can see that him and the guy in Moklin guest garments are just exactly alike. Twins. Identical. The spit and image of each other. And it is for sure that one of them is a Moklin. But which?

  Cap Haney’s eyes start to pop out of his head. But then the guy in Palmyra uniform grins and says, “Okay, I’m a Moklin. But us Moklins like humans so much, I thought it would be nice to make a trip to Earth and see more humans. My parents planned it five years ago, made me look like this wonderful human, and hid me for this moment. But we would not want to make any difficulties for humans, so I have confessed and I will leave the ship.”

  He tak
es it as a joke on him. He talks English as good as anybody. I don’t know how anybody could tell which was the human guy and which one the Moklin, but this Moklin grins and steps down, and the other Moklins admire him enormous for passing even a few minutes as human among humans.

  We get away from there so fast, he is allowed to keep the human uniform.

  Moklin is the first planet that humans ever get off of, moving fast, breathing hard, and sweating copious. It’s one of those things that humans just can’t take. Not that there’s anything wrong with Moklins. They’re swell folks. They like humans. But humans just can’t take the idea of Moklins passing for human and being all the things humans want to be themselves. I think it’s really a false alarm. I’ll find out pretty soon.

  Inspector Caldwell and Brooks get married, and they go off to a post on Briarius Four—a swell place for a honeymoon if there ever was one—and I guess they are living happy ever after. Me, I go to the new job the Company assigns me—telling me stern not to talk about Moklin, which I don’t—and the Space Patrol orders no human ship to land on Moklin for any reason.

  But I’ve been saving money and worrying. I keep thinking of those three Moklin kids that Inspector Caldwell knows she ain’t the father of. I worry about those kids. I hope nothing’s happened to them. Moklin kids grow up fast, like I told you. They’ll be just about grown now.

  I’ll tell you. I’ve bought me a little private spacecruiser, small but good. I’m shoving off for Moklin next week. If one of those three ain’t married, I’m going to marry her, Moklin-style, and bring her out to a human colony planet. We’ll have some kids. I know just what I want my kids to be like. They’ll have plenty of brains—top-level brains—and the girls will be real good-looking!

  But besides that, I’ve got to bring some other Moklins out and start them passing for human, too. Because my kids are going to need other Moklins to marry, ain’t they? It’s not that I don’t like humans. I do! If the fellow I look like—Joe Brinkley—hadn’t got killed accidental on that hunting trip with Deeth, I never would have thought of taking his place and being Joe Brinkley. But you can’t blame me for wanting to live among humans.

  Wouldn’t you, if you was a Moklin?

  THE ETHICAL EQUATIONS

  It is very, very queer. The Ethical Equations, of course, link conduct with probability, and give mathematical proof that certain patterns of conduct increase the probability of certain kinds of coincidences. But nobody ever expected them to have any really practical effect. Elucidation of the laws of chance did not stop gambling, though it did make life insurance practical. The Ethical Equations weren’t expected to be even as useful as that. They were just theories, which seemed unlikely to affect anybody particularly. They were complicated, for one thing. They admitted that the ideal pattern of conduct for one man wasn’t the best for another. A politician, for example, has an entirely different code—and properly—than a Space Patrol man. But still, on at least one occasion—

  The thing from outer space was fifteen hundred feet long, and upward of a hundred and fifty feet through at its middle section, and well over two hundred in a curious bulge like a fish’s head at its bow. There were odd, gill-like flaps just back of that bulge, too, and the whole thing looked extraordinarily like a monster, eyeless fish, floating in empty space out beyond Jupiter. But it had drifted in from somewhere beyond the sun’s gravitational field—its speed was too great for it to have a closed orbit—and it swung with a slow, inane, purposeless motion about some axis it had established within itself.

  The little spacecruiser edged closer and closer. Freddy Holmes had been a pariah on the Arnina all the way out from Mars, but he clenched his hands and forgot his misery and the ruin of his career in the excitement of looking at the thing.

  “No response to signals on any frequency, sir,” said the communications officer, formally. “It is not radiating. It has a minute magnetic field. Its surface temperature is just about four degrees absolute.”

  The commander of the Arnina said, “Hrrrmph!” Then he said, “We’ll lay alongside.” Then he looked at Freddy Holmes and stiffened. “No,” he said, “I believe you take over now, Mr. Holmes.”

  Freddy started. He was in a very bad spot, but his excitement had made him oblivious of it for a moment. The undisguised hostility with which he was regarded by the skipper and the others on the bridge brought it back, however.

  “You take over, Mr. Holmes,” repeated the skipper bitterly. “I have orders to that effect. You originally detected this object and your uncle asked Headquarters that you be given full authority to investigate it. You have that authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?”

  There was fury in his voice surpassing even the rasping dislike of the voyage out. He was a lieutenant commander and he had been instructed to take orders from a junior officer. That was bad enough. But this was humanity’s first contact with an extrasolar civilization, and Freddy Holmes, lieutenant junior grade, had been given charge of the matter by pure political pull.

  Freddy swallowed.

  “I…I—” He swallowed again and said miserably, “Sir, I’ve tried to explain that I dislike the present set-up as much as you possibly can. I…wish that you would let me put myself under your orders, sir, instead of—”

  “No!” rasped the commander vengefully. “You are in command, Mr. Holmes. Your uncle put on political pressure to arrange it. My orders are to carry out your instructions, not to wet-nurse you if the job is too big for you to handle. This is in your lap! Will you issue orders?”

  Freddy stiffened.

  “Very well, sir. It’s plainly a ship and apparently a derelict. No crew would come in without using a drive, or allow their ship to swing about aimlessly. You will maintain your present position with relation to it. I’ll take a spaceboat and a volunteer, if you will find me one, and look it over.”

  He turned and left the bridge. Two minutes later he was struggling into a spacesuit when Lieutenant Bridges—also junior grade—came briskly into the spacesuit locker and observed:

  “I’ve permission to go with you, Mr. Holmes.” He began to get into another spacesuit. As he pulled it up over his chest he added blithely: “I’d say this was worth the price of admission!”

  Freddy did not answer. Three minutes later the little spaceboat pulled out from the side of the cruiser. Designed for expeditionary work and tool-carrying rather than as an escapecraft, it was not inclosed. It would carry men in spacesuits, with their tools and weapons, and they could breathe from its tanks instead of from their suits, and use its power and so conserve their own. But it was a strange feeling to sit within its spidery outline and see the great blank sides of the strange object draw near. When the spaceboat actually touched the vast metal wall it seemed impossible, like the approach to some sorcerer’s castle across a monstrous moat of stars.

  It was real enough, though. The felted rollers touched, and Bridges grunted in satisfaction.

  “Magnetic. We can anchor to it. Now what?”

  “We hunt for an entrance port,” said Freddy curtly. He added: “Those openings that look like gills are the drive tubes. Their drive’s in front instead of the rear. Apparently they don’t use gyros for steering.”

  The tiny craft clung to the giant’s skin, like a fly on a stranded whale. It moved slowly to the top of the rounded body, and over it, and down on the other side. Presently the cruiser came in sight again as it came up the near side once more.

  “Nary a port, sir,” said Bridges blithely. “Do we cut our way in?”

  “Hm-m-m,” said Freddy slowly. “We have our drive in the rear, and our control room in front. So we take on supplies amidships, and that’s where we looked. But this ship is driven from the front. Its control room might be amidships. If so, it might load at the stern. Let’s see.”

  The little craft crawled to the stern of the monster.

  “There!” said Freddy.

  It was not like an entrance port on any vessel in the solar system
. It slid aside, without hinges. There was an inner door, but it opened just as readily. There was no rush of air, and it was hard to tell if it was intended as an air lock or not.

  “Air’s gone,” said Freddy. “It’s a derelict, all right. You might bring a blaster, but what we’ll mostly need is light, I think.”

  The magnetic anchors took hold. The metal grip shoes of the spacesuits made loud noises inside the suits as the two of them pushed their way into the interior of the ship. The spacecruiser had been able to watch them, until now. Now they were gone.

  The giant, enigmatic object which was so much like a blind fish in empty space floated on. It swung aimlessly about some inner axis. The thin sunlight, out here beyond Jupiter, smote upon it harshly. It seemed to hang motionless in mid-space against an all-surrounding background of distant and unwinking stars. The trim Space Patrol ship hung alertly a mile and a half away. Nothing seemed to happen at all.

  Freddy was rather pale when he went back to the bridge. The pressure mark on his forehead from the spacesuit helmet was still visible, and he rubbed at it abstractedly. The skipper regarded him with a sort of envious bitterness. After all, any human would envy any other who had set foot in an alien spaceship. Lieutenant Bridges followed him. For an instant there were no words. Then Bridges saluted briskly:

  “Reporting back on board, sir, and returning to watch duty after permitted volunteer activity.”

  The skipper touched his hat sourly. Bridges departed with crisp precision. The skipper regarded Freddy with the helpless fury of a senior officer who has been ordered to prove a junior officer a fool, and who has seen the assignment blow up in his face and that of the superior officers who ordered it. It was an enraging situation. Freddy Holmes, newly commissioned and assigned to the detector station on Luna which keeps track of asteroids and meteor streams, had discovered a small object coming in over Neptune. Its speed was too high for it to be a regular member of the solar system, so he’d reported it as a visitor and suggested immediate examination. But junior officers are not supposed to make discoveries. It violates tradition, which is a sort of Ethical Equation in the Space Patrol. So Freddy was slapped down for his presumption. And he slapped back, on account of the Ethical Equations’ bearing upon scientific discoveries. The first known object to come from beyond the stars ought to be examined. Definitely. So, most unprofessionally for a Space Patrol junior, Freddy raised a stink.