First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  The present state of affairs was the result. He had an uncle who was a prominent politician. That uncle went before the Space Patrol Board and pointed out smoothly that his nephew’s discovery was important. He demonstrated with mathematical precision that the Patrol was being ridiculous in ignoring a significant discovery simply because a junior officer had made it. And the Board, seething at outside interference, ordered Freddy to be taken to the object he had detected, given absolute command of the spacecruiser which had taken him there, and directed to make the examination he had suggested. By all the laws of probability, he would have to report that the hunk of matter from beyond the solar system was just like hunks of matter in it. And then the Board would pin back both his and his uncle’s ears with a vengeance.

  But now the hunk of matter turned out to be a fish-shaped artifact from an alien civilization. It turned out to be important. So the situation was one to make anybody steeped in Patrol tradition grind his teeth.

  “The thing, sir,” said Freddy evenly, “is a spaceship. It is driven by atomic engines shooting blasts sternward from somewhere near the bow. Apparently they steer only by hand. Apparently, too, there was a blow-up in the engine room and they lost most of their fuel out the tube vents. After that, the ship was helpless though they patched up the engines after a fashion. It is possible to calculate that in its practically free fall to the sun it’s been in its present state for a couple of thousand years.”

  “I take it, then,” said the skipper with fine irony, “that there are no survivors of the crew.”

  “It presents several problems, sir,” said Freddy evenly, “and that’s one of them.” He was rather pale. “The ship is empty of air, but her tanks are full. Storage spaces containing what look like supplies are only partly emptied. The crew did not starve or suffocate. The ship simply lost most of her fuel. So it looks like they prepared the ship to endure an indefinite amount of floating about in free space and”—he hesitated—“then it looks like they went into suspended animation. They’re all on board, in transparent cases that have—machinery attached. Maybe they thought they’d be picked up by sister ships sooner or later.”

  The skipper blinked.

  “Suspended animation? They’re alive?” Then he said sharply: “What sort of ship is it? Cargo?”

  “No, sir.” said Freddy. “That’s another problem. Bridges and I agree that it’s a fighting ship, sir. There are rows of generators serving things that could only be weapons. By the way they’re braced, there are tractor beams and pressor beams and—there are vacuum tubes that have grids but apparently work with cold cathodes. By the size of the cables that lead to them, those tubes handle amperages up in the thousands. You can figure that one out, sir.”

  The skipper paced two steps this way, and two steps that. The thing was stupendous. But his instructions were precise.

  “I’m under your orders,” he said doggedly. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to work myself to death, I suppose,” said Freddy unhappily, “and some other men with me. I want to go over that ship backwards, forwards, and sideways with scanners, and everything the scanners see photographed back on board, here. I want men to work the scanners and technicians on board to direct them for their specialties. I want to get every rivet and coil in that whole ship on film before touching anything.”

  The skipper said grudgingly:

  “That’s not too foolish. Very well, Mr. Holmes, it will be done.”

  “Thank you,” said Freddy. He started to leave the bridge, and stopped. “The men to handle the scanners,” he added, “ought to be rather carefully picked. Imaginative men wouldn’t do. The crew of that ship—they look horribly alive, and they aren’t pretty. And…er…the plastic cases they’re in are arranged to open from inside. That’s another problem still, sir.”

  He went on down. The skipper clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the bridge furiously. The first object from beyond the stars was a spaceship. It had weapons the Patrol had only vainly imagined. And he, a two-and-a-half-striper, had to stand by and take orders for its investigation from a lieutenant junior grade just out of the Academy. Because of politics! The skipper ground his teeth—

  Then Freddy’s last comment suddenly had meaning. The plastic cases in which the alien’s crew lay in suspended animation opened from the inside. From the inside!

  Cold sweat came out on the skipper’s forehead as he realized the implication. Tractor and pressor beams, and the ship’s fuel not quite gone, and the suspended-animation cases opening from the inside—

  There was a slender coaxial cable connecting the two spacecraft, now. They drifted in sunward together. The little cruiser was dwarfed by the alien giant.

  The sun was very far away; brighter than any star, to be sure, and pouring out a fierce radiation, but still very far from a warming orb. All about were the small, illimitably distant lights which were stars. There was exactly one object in view which had an appreciable diameter. That was Jupiter, a new moon in shape, twenty million miles sunward and eighty million miles farther along its orbit. The rest was emptiness.

  The spidery little spaceboat slid along the cable between the two craft. Spacesuited figures got out and clumped on magnetic-soled shoes to the air lock. They went in.

  Freddy came to the bridge. The skipper said hoarsely:

  “Mr. Holmes, I would like to make a request. You are, by orders of the Board, in command of this ship until your investigation of the ship yonder is completed.”

  Freddy’s face was haggard and worn. He said abstractedly:

  “Yes, sir. What is it?”

  “I would like,” said the Arnina’s skipper urgently, “to send a complete report of your investigation so far. Since you are in command, I cannot do so without your permission.”

  “I would rather you didn’t, sir,” said Freddy. Tired as he was, his jaws clamped. “Frankly, sir, I think they’d cancel your present orders and issue others entirely.”

  The skipper bit his lip. That was the idea. The scanners had sent back complete images of almost everything in the other ship, now. Everything was recorded on film. The skipper had seen the monsters which were the crew of the extrasolar vessel. And the plastic cases in which they had slumbered for at least two thousand years did open from the inside. That was what bothered him. They did open from the inside!

  The electronics technicians of the Arnina were going about in stilly rapture, drawing diagrams for each other and contemplating the results with dazed appreciation. The gunnery officer was making scale, detailed design-drawings for weapons he had never hoped for, and waking up of nights to feel for those drawings and be sure that they were real. But the engineer officer was wringing his hands. He wanted to take the other ship’s engines apart. They were so enormously smaller than the Arnina’s drive, and yet they had driven a ship with eighty-four times the Arnina’s mass—and he could not see how they could work.

  The alien ship was ten thousand years ahead of the Arnina. Its secrets were being funneled over to the little Earth-ship at a rapid rate. But the cases holding its still-living crew opened from the inside.

  “Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes,” the skipper said feverishly, “I must ask permission to send that report.”

  “But I am in command,” said Freddy tiredly, “and I intend to stay in command. I will give you a written order forbidding you to make a report, sir. Disobedience will be mutiny.”

  The skipper grew almost purple.

  “Do you realize,” he demanded savagely, “that if the crew of that ship is in suspended animation, and if their coffins or containers open only from inside—do you realize that they expect to open them themselves?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Freddy wearily. “Of course. Why not?”

  “Do you realize that cables from those containers lead to thermobatteries in the ship’s outer plating? The monsters knew they couldn’t survive without power, but they knew that in any other solar system they could get it! So the
y made sure they’d pass close to our sun with what power they dared use, and went into suspended animation with a reserve of power to land on and thermobatteries that would waken them when it was time to set to work!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Freddy, as wearily as before. “They had courage, at any rate. But what would you do about that?”

  “I’d report it to Headquarters!” raged the skipper. “I’d report that this is a warship capable of blasting the whole Patrol out of the ether and smashing our planets! I’d say it was manned by monsters now fortunately helpless, but with fuel enough to maneuver to a landing. And I’d ask authority to take their coffins out of their ship and destroy them! Then I’d—”

  “I did something simpler,” said Freddy. “I disconnected the thermobatteries. They can’t revive. So I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep. If you’ll excuse me—”

  He went to his own cabin and threw himself on his bunk.

  Men with scanners continued to examine every square inch of the monster derelict. They worked in spacesuits. To have filled the giant hull with air would practically have emptied the Arnina’s tanks. A spacesuited man held a scanner before a curious roll of flexible substance, on which were inscribed symbols. His headphones brought instructions from the photo room. A record of some sort was being duplicated by photography. There were scanners at work in the storerooms, the crew’s quarters, the gun mounts. So far no single article had been moved from the giant stranger. That was Freddy’s order. Every possible bit of information was being extracted from every possible object, but nothing had been taken away. Even chemical analysis was being done by scanner, using cold-light spectrography applied from the laboratory on the cruiser.

  And Freddy’s unpopularity had not lessened. The engineer officer cursed him luridly. The stranger’s engines, now—they had been patched up after an explosion, and they were tantalizingly suggestive. But their working was unfathomable. The engineer officer wanted to get his hands on them. The physiochemical officer wanted to do some analysis with his own hands, instead of by cold-light spectrography over a scanner. And every man, from the lowest enlisted apprentice to the skipper himself, wanted to get hold of some artifact made by an alien, non-human race ten thousand years ahead of human civilization. So Freddy was unpopular.

  But that was only part of his unhappiness. He felt that he had acted improperly. The Ethical Equations gave mathematical proof that probabilities and ethics are interlinked, so that final admirable results cannot be expected from unethical beginnings. Freddy had violated discipline—which is one sort of ethics—and after that through his uncle had interjected politics into Patrol affairs. Which was definitely a crime. By the Equations, the probability of disastrous coincidences was going to be enormous until corrective, ethically proper action was taken to cancel out the original crimes. And Freddy had been unable to devise such action. He felt, too, that the matter was urgent. He slept uneasily despite his fatigue, because there was something in the back of his mind which warned him stridently that disaster lay ahead.

  Freddy awoke still unrefreshed and stared dully at the ceiling over his head. He was trying discouragedly to envision a reasonable solution when there came a tap on his door. It was Bridges with a batch of papers.

  “Here you are!” he said cheerfully, when Freddy opened to him. “Now we’re all going to be happy!”

  Freddy took the extended sheets.

  “What’s happened?” he asked. “Did the skipper send for fresh orders regardless, and I’m to go in the brig?”

  Bridges, grinning, pointed to the sheets of paper in Freddy’s hand. They were from the physiochemical officer, who was equipped to do exact surveys on the lesser heavenly bodies.

  “Elements found in the alien vessel,” was the heading of a list. Freddy scanned the list. No heavy elements, but the rest was familiar. There had been pure nitrogen in the fuel tank, he remembered, and the engineer officer was going quietly mad trying to understand how they had used nitrogen for atomic power. Freddy looked down to the bottom. Iron was the heaviest element present.

  “Why should this make everybody happy?” asked Freddy.

  Bridges pointed with his finger. The familiar atomic symbols had unfamiliar numerals by them. H3, Li5, Gl8—He blinked. He saw N15, F18, S34,35—Then he stared. Bridges grinned.

  “Try to figure what that ship’s worth!” he said happily. “It’s all over the Arnina. Prize money isn’t allowed in the Patrol, but five percent of salvage is. Hydrogen three has been detected on Earth, but never isolated. Lithium five doesn’t exist on Earth, or glucinium eight, or nitrogen fifteen or oxygen seventeen or fluorine eighteen or sulphur thirty-four or thirty-five! The whole ship is made up of isotopes that simply don’t exist in the solar system! And you know what pure isotopes sell for! The hull’s practically pure iron fifty-five! Pure iron fifty-four sells for thirty-five credits a gram! Talk about the lost treasures of Mars! For technical use only, the stripped hull of this stranger is worth ten years’ revenue of Earth government! Every man on the Arnina is rich for life. And you’re popular!”

  Freddy did not smile.

  “Nitrogen fifteen,” he said slowly. “That’s what’s in the remaining fuel tank. It goes into a queer little aluminum chamber we couldn’t figure out, and from there into the drive tubes. I see—”

  He was very pale. Bridges beamed.

  “A hundred thousand tons of materials that simply don’t exist on Earth! Pure isotopes, intact! Not a contamination in a carload! My dear chap, I’ve come to like you, but you’ve been hated by everyone else. Now come out and bask in admiration and affection!”

  Freddy said, unheeding:

  “I’ve been wondering what that aluminum chamber was for. It looked so infernally simple, and I couldn’t see what it did—”

  “Come out and have a drink!” insisted Bridges joyously. “Be lionized! Make friends and influence people!”

  “No,” said Freddy. He smiled mirthlessly. “I’ll be lynched later anyhow. Hm-m-m. I want to talk to the engineer officer. We want to get that ship navigating under its own power. It’s too big to do anything with towlines.”

  “But nobody’s figured out its engines!” protested Bridges. “Apparently there’s nothing but a tiny trickle of nitrogen through a silly chamber that does something to it, and then it flows through aluminum baffles into the drive tubes. It’s too simple! How are you going to make a thing like that work?”

  “I think,” said Freddy, “it’s going to be horribly simple. That whole ship is made up of isotopes we don’t have on Earth. No. It has aluminum and carbon. They’re simple substances. Theirs and ours are just alike. But most of the rest—”

  He was pale. He looked as if he were suffering.

  “I’ll get a couple of tanks made up, of aluminum, and filled with nitrogen. Plain air should do—And I’ll want a gyro-control. I’ll want it made of aluminum, too, with graphite bearings—”

  He grinned mirthlessly at Bridges.

  “Ever hear of the Ethical Equations, Bridges? You’d never expect them to suggest the answer to a space-drive problem, would you? But that’s what they’ve done. I’ll get the engineer officer to have those things made up. It’s nice to have known you, Bridges—”

  As Bridges went out, Freddy Holmes sat down, wetting his lips, to make sketches for the engineer officer to work from.

  The control room and the engine room of the monster ship were one. It was a huge, globular chamber filled with apparatus of startlingly alien design. To Freddy, and to Bridges too, now, there was not so much of monstrousness as at first. Eight days of familiarity, and knowledge of how they worked, had made them seem almost normal. But still it was eerie to belt themselves before the instrument board, with only their hand lamps for illumination, and cast a last glance at the aluminum replacements of parts that had been made on some planet of another sun.

  “If this works,” said Freddy, and swallowed, “we’re lucky. Here’s the engine control. Cross your fingers, Bridges.”r />
  The interior of the hulk was still airless. Freddy shifted a queerly shaped lever an infinitesimal trace. There was a slight surging movement of the whole vast hull. A faint murmuring came through the fabric of the monster ship to the soles of their spacesuit boots. Freddy wet his lips and touched another lever.

  “This should be lights.”

  It was. Images formed on the queerly shaped screens. The whole interior of the ship glowed. And the whole creation had been so alien as somehow to be revolting, in the harsh white light of the hand lamps the men had used. But now it was like a highly improbable fairy palace. The fact that all doors were circular and all passages round tubes was only pleasantly strange, in the many-colored glow of the ship’s own lighting system. Freddy shook his head in his spacesuit helmet, as if to shake away drops of sweat on his forehead.

  “The next should be heat,” he said more grimly than before. “We do not touch that! Oh, definitely! But we try the drive.”

  The ship stirred. It swept forward in a swift smooth acceleration that was invincibly convincing of power. The Arnina dwindled swiftly behind. And Freddy, with compressed lips, touched controls here, and there, and the monstrous ship obeyed with the docility of a willing, well-trained animal. It swept back to clear sight of the Arnina.

  “I would say,” said Bridges in a shaking voice, “that it works. The Patrol has nothing like this!”

  “No,” said Freddy shortly. His voice sounded sick. “Not like this! It’s a sweet ship. I’m going to hook in the gyro controls. They ought to work. The creatures who made this didn’t use them. I don’t know why. But they didn’t.”

  He cut off everything but the lights. He bent down and looked in the compact little aluminum device which would control the flow of nitrogen to the port and starboard drive tubes.