First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  Freddy came back to the control board and threw in the drive once more. And the gyro control worked. It should. After all, the tool work of a Space Patrol machinist should be good. Freddy tested it thoroughly. He set it on a certain fine adjustment. He threw three switches. Then he picked up one tiny kit he had prepared.

  “Come along,” he said tiredly. “Our work’s over. We go back to the Arnina and I probably get lynched.”

  Bridges, bewildered, followed him, to the spidery little spaceboat. They cast off from the huge ship, now three miles or more from the Arnina and untenanted save by its own monstrous crew in suspended animation. The Space Patrol cruiser shifted position to draw near and pick them up. And Freddy said hardly:

  “Remember the Ethical Equations, Bridges? I said they gave me the answer to that other ship’s drive. If they were right, it couldn’t have been anything else. Now I’m going to find out about something else.”

  His spacegloved hands worked clumsily. From the tiny kit he spilled out a single small object. He plopped it into something from a chest in the spaceboat—a mortar shell, as Bridges saw incredulously. He dropped that into the muzzle of a line-mortar the spaceboat carried as a matter of course. He jerked the lanyard. The mortar flamed. Expanding gases beat at the spacesuits of the men. A tiny, glowing, crimson spark sped toward outer space. Seconds passed. Three. Four. Five—

  “Apparently I’m a fool,” said Freddy, in the grimmest voice Bridges had ever heard.

  But then there was light. And such light! Where the dwindling red spark of a tracer mortar shell had sped toward infinitely distant stars, there was suddenly an explosion of such incredible violence as even the proving-grounds of the Space Patrol had never known. There was no sound in empty space. There was no substance to be heated to incandescence other than that of a half-pound tracer shell. But there was a flare of blue-white light and a crash of such violent static that Bridges was deafened by it. Even through the glass of his helmet he felt a flash of savage heat. Then there was—nothing.

  “What was that?” said Bridges, shaken.

  “The Ethical Equations,” said Freddy. “Apparently I’m not the fool I thought—”

  The Arnina slid up alongside the little spaceboat. Freddy did not alight. He moved the boat over to its cradle and plugged in his communicator set. He talked over that set with his helmet phone, not radiating a signal that Bridges could pick up. In three minutes or so the great lock opened and four spacesuited figures came out. One wore the crested four-communicator helmet which only the skipper of a cruiser wears when in command of a landing party. The newcomers to the outside of the Arnina’s hull crowded into the little spaceboat. Freddy’s voice sounded again in the headphones, grim and cold.

  “I’ve some more shells, sir. They’re tracer shells which have been in the work boat for eight days. They’re not quite as cold as the ship, yonder—that’s had two thousand years to cool off in—but they’re cold. I figure they’re not over eight or ten degrees absolute. And here are the bits of material from the other ship. You can touch them. Our spacesuits are as nearly nonconductive of heat as anything could be. You won’t warm them if you hold them in your hand.”

  The skipper—Bridges could see him—looked at the scraps of metal Freddy held out to him. They were morsels of iron and other material from the alien ship. By the cold glare of a handlight the skipper thrust one into the threaded hollow at the nose of a mortar shell into which a line-end is screwed when a line is to be thrown. The skipper himself dropped in the mortar shell and fired it. Again a racing, receding speck of red in emptiness. And a second terrible, atomic blast.

  The skipper’s voice in the headphones:

  “How much more of the stuff did you bring away?”

  “Three more pieces, sir,” said Freddy’s voice, very steady now. “You see how it happens, sir. They’re isotopes we don’t have on Earth. And we don’t have them because in contact with other isotopes at normal temperatures, they’re unstable. They go off. Here we dropped them into the mortar shells and nothing happened, because both isotopes were cold—down to the temperature of liquid helium, or nearly. But there’s a tracer compound in the shells, and it burns as they fly away. The shell grows warm. And when either isotope, in contact with the other, is as warm as…say…liquid hydrogen…why…they destroy each other. The ship yonder is of the same material. Its mass is about a hundred thousand tons. Except for the aluminum and maybe one or two other elements that also are nonisotopic and the same in both ships, every bit of that ship will blast off if it comes in contact with matter from this solar system above ten or twelve degrees absolute.”

  “Shoot the other samples away,” said the skipper harshly. “We want to be sure—”

  There were three violent puffs of gases expanding into empty space. There were three incredible blue-white flames in the void. There was silence. Then—

  “That thing has to be destroyed,” said the skipper, heavily. “We couldn’t set it down anywhere, and its crew might wake up anyhow, at any moment. We haven’t anything that could fight it, and if it tried to land on Earth—”

  The alien monster, drifting aimlessly in the void, suddenly moved. Thin flames came from the gill-like openings at the bow. Then one side jetted more strongly. It swung about, steadied, and swept forward with a terrifying smooth acceleration. It built up speed vastly more swiftly than any Earth-ship could possibly do. It dwindled to a speck. It vanished in empty space.

  But it was not bound inward toward the sun. It was not headed for the plainly visible half-moon disk of Jupiter, now barely seventy million miles away. It headed out toward the stars.

  “I wasn’t sure until a few minutes ago,” said Freddy Holmes unsteadily, “but by the Ethical Equations something like that was probable. I couldn’t make certain until we’d gotten everything possible from it, and until I had everything arranged. But I was worried from the first. The Ethical Equations made it pretty certain that if we did the wrong thing we’d suffer for it…and by we I mean the whole Earth, because any visitor from beyond the stars would be bound to affect the whole human race.” His voice wavered a little. “It was hard to figure out what we ought to do. If one of our ships had been in the same fix, though, we’d have hoped for—friendliness. We’d hope for fuel, maybe, and help in starting back home. But this ship was a warship, and we’d have been helpless to fight it. It would have been hard to be friendly. Yet, according to the Ethical Equations, if we wanted our first contact with an alien civilization to be of benefit to us, it was up to us to get it started back home with plenty of fuel.”

  “You mean,” said the skipper, incredulously, “you mean you—”

  “Its engines use nitrogen,” said Freddy. “It runs nitrogen fifteen into a little gadget we know how to make, now. It’s very simple, but it’s a sort of atom smasher. It turns nitrogen fifteen into nitrogen fourteen and hydrogen. I think we can make use of that for ourselves. Nitrogen fourteen is the kind we have. It can be handled in aluminum pipes and tanks, because there’s only one aluminum, which is stable under all conditions. But when it hits the alien isotopes in the drive tubes, it breaks down—”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I gave them a double aluminum tank of nitrogen, and bypassed their atom smasher. Nitrogen fourteen goes into their drive tubes, and they drive! And…I figured back their orbit, and set a gyro to head them back for their own solar system for as long as the first tank of nitrogen holds out. They’ll make it out of the sun’s gravitational field on that, anyhow. And I reconnected their thermobatteries. When they start to wake up they’ll see the gyro and know that somebody gave it to them. The double tank is like their own and they’ll realize they have a fresh supply of fuel to land with. It…may be a thousand years before they’re back home, but when they get there they’ll know we’re friendly and…not afraid of them. And meanwhile we’ve got all their gadgets to work on and work with—”

  Freddy was silent. The little spaceboat clung to the side of the Ar
nina, which with its drive off was now drifting in sunward past the orbit of Jupiter.

  “It is very rare,” said the skipper ungraciously, “that a superior officer in the Patrol apologizes to an inferior. But I apologize to you, Mr. Holmes, for thinking you a fool. And when I think that I, and certainly every other Patrol officer of experience, would have thought of nothing but setting that ship down at Patrol Base for study, and when I think what an atomic explosion of a hundred thousand tons of matter would have done to Earth…I apologize a second time.”

  Freddy said uncomfortably:

  “If there are to be any apologies made, sir, I guess I’ve got to make them. Every man on the Arnina has figured he’s rich, and I’ve sent it all back where it came from. But you see, sir, the Ethical Equations—”

  When Freddy’s resignation went in with the report of his investigation of the alien vessel, it was returned marked “Not Accepted.”

  And Freddy was ordered to report to a tiny, hard-worked spacecan on which a junior Space Patrol officer normally gets his ears pinned back and learns his work the hard way. And Freddy was happy, because he wanted to be a Space Patrol officer more than he wanted anything else in the world. His uncle was satisfied, too, because he wanted Freddy to be content, and because certain space-admirals truculently told him that Freddy was needed in the Patrol and would get all the consideration and promotion he needed without any politicians butting in. And the Space Patrol was happy because it had a lot of new gadgets to work with which were going to make it a force able not only to look after interplanetary traffic but defend it, if necessary.

  And, for that matter, the Ethical Equations were satisfied.

  KEYHOLE

  There’s a story about a psychologist who was studying the intelligence of a chimpanzee. He led the chimp into a room full of toys, went out, closed the door and put his eye to the keyhole to see what the chimp was doing. He found himself gazing into a glittering interested brown eye only inches from his own. The chimp was looking through the keyhole to see what the psychologist was doing.

  When they brought Butch into the station in Tycho Crater he seemed to shrivel as the gravity coils in the air lock went on. He was impossible to begin with. He was all big eyes and skinny arms and legs, and he was very young and he didn’t need air to breathe. Worden saw him as a limp bundle of bristly fur and terrified eyes as his captors handed him over.

  “Are you crazy?” demanded Worden angrily. “Bringing him in like this? Would you take a human baby into eight gravities? Get out of the way!”

  He rushed for the nursery that had been made ready for somebody like Butch. There was a rebuilt dwelling-cave on one side. The other side was a human school room. And under the nursery the gravity coils had been turned off so that in that room things had only the weight that was proper to them on the Moon.

  The rest of the station had coils to bring everything up to normal weight for Earth. Otherwise the staff of the station would be seasick most of the time. Butch was in the Earth-gravity part of the station when he was delivered, and he couldn’t lift a furry spindly paw.

  In the nursery, though, it was different. Worden put him on the floor. Worden was the uncomfortable one there—his weight only twenty pounds instead of a normal hundred and sixty. He swayed and reeled as a man does on the Moon without gravity coils to steady him.

  But that was the normal thing to Butch. He uncurled himself and suddenly flashed across the nursery to the reconstructed dwelling-cave. It was a pretty good job, that cave. There were the five-foot chipped rocks shaped like dunce caps, found in all residences of Butch’s race. There was the rocking stone on its base of other flattened rocks. But the spear stones were fastened down with wire in case Butch got ideas.

  Butch streaked it to these familiar objects. He swarmed up one of the dunce-cap stones and locked his arms and legs about its top, clinging close. Then he was still. Worden regarded him. Butch was motionless for minutes, seeming to take in as much as possible of his surroundings without moving even his eyes.

  Suddenly his head moved. He took in more of his environment. Then he stirred a third time and seemed to look at Worden with an extraordinary intensity—whether of fear or pleading Worden could not tell.

  “Hmm,” said Worden, “so that’s what those stones are for! Perches or beds or roosts, eh? I’m your nurse, fella. We’re playing a dirty trick on you but we can’t help it.”

  He knew Butch couldn’t understand, but he talked to him as a man does talk to a dog or a baby. It isn’t sensible, but it’s necessary.

  “We’re going to raise you up to be a traitor to your kinfolk,” he said with some grimness. “I don’t like it, but it has to be done. So I’m going to be very kind to you as part of the conspiracy. Real kindness would suggest that I kill you instead—but I can’t do that.”

  Butch stared at him, unblinking and motionless. He looked something like an Earth monkey but not too much so. He was completely impossible but he looked pathetic.

  Worden said bitterly, “You’re in your nursery, Butch. Make yourself at home!”

  He went out and closed the door behind him. Outside he glanced at the video screens that showed the interior of the nursery from four different angles. Butch remained still for a long time. Then he slipped down to the floor. This time he ignored the dwelling-cave of the nursery.

  He went interestedly to the human-culture part. He examined everything there with his oversized soft eyes. He touched everything with his incredibly handlike tiny paws. But his touches were tentative. Nothing was actually disturbed when he finished his examination.

  He went swiftly back to the dunce-cap rock, swarmed up it, locked his arms and legs about it again, blinked rapidly and seemed to go to sleep. He remained motionless with closed eyes until Worden grew tired of watching him and moved away.

  The whole affair was preposterous and infuriating. The first men to land on the Moon knew that it was a dead world. The astronomers had been saying so for a hundred years, and the first and second expeditions to reach Luna from Earth found nothing to contradict the theory.

  But a man from the third expedition saw something moving among the up-flung rocks of the Moon’s landscape and he shot it and the existence of Butch’s kind was discovered. It was inconceivable of course that there should be living creatures where there was neither air nor water. But Butch’s folk did live under exactly those conditions.

  The dead body of the first living creature killed on the Moon was carried back to Earth and biologists grew indignant. Even with a specimen to dissect and study, they were inclined to insist that there simply wasn’t any such creature. So the fourth and fifth and sixth lunar expeditions hunted Butch’s relatives very earnestly for further specimens for the advancement of science.

  The sixth expedition lost two men whose spacesuits were punctured by what seemed to be weapons while they were hunting. The seventh expedition was wiped out to the last man. Butch’s relatives evidently didn’t like being shot as biological specimens.

  It wasn’t until the tenth expedition of four ships established a base in Tycho Crater that men had any assurance of being able to land on the Moon and get off again. Even then the staff of the station felt as if it were under permanent siege.

  Worden made his report to Earth. A baby lunar creature had been captured by a tractor party and brought into Tycho Station. A nursery was ready and the infant was there now, alive. He seemed to be uninjured. He seemed not to mind an environment of breathable air for which he had no use. He was active and apparently curious and his intelligence was marked.

  There was so far no clue to what he ate—if he ate at all—though he had a mouth like the other collected specimens and the toothlike concretions which might serve as teeth. Worden would of course continue to report in detail. At the moment he was allowing Butch to accustom himself to his new surroundings.

  He settled down in the recreation room to scowl at his companion scientists and try to think, despite the program beamed on ra
dar frequency from Earth. He definitely didn’t like his job, but he knew that it had to be done. Butch had to be domesticated. He had to be persuaded that he was a human being, so human beings could find out how to exterminate his kind.

  It had been observed before, on Earth, that a kitten raised with a litter of puppies came to consider itself a dog and that even pet ducks came to prefer human society to that of their own species. Some talking birds of high intelligence appeared to be convinced that they were people and acted that way. If Butch reacted similarly he would become a traitor to his kind for the benefit of man. And it was necessary!

  Men had to have the Moon, and that was all there was to it. Gravity on the Moon was one eighth of gravity on Earth. A rocket ship could make the Moon voyage and carry a cargo, but no ship yet built could carry fuel for a trip to Mars or Venus if it started out from Earth.

  With a fueling stop on the Moon, though, the matter was simple. Eight drums of rocket fuel on the Moon weighed no more than one on Earth. A ship itself weighed only one eighth as much on Luna. So a rocket that took off from Earth with ten drums of fuel could stop at a fuel base on the Moon and soar away again with two hundred, and sometimes more.

  With the Moon as a fueling base men could conquer the solar system. Without the Moon, mankind was earthbound. Men had to have the Moon!

  But Butch’s relatives prevented it. By normal experience there could not be life on an airless desert with such monstrous extremes of heat and cold as the Moon’s surface experienced. But there was life there. Butch’s kinfolk did not breathe oxygen. Apparently they ate it in some mineral combination and it interacted with other minerals in their bodies to yield heat and energy.

  Men thought squids peculiar because their blood stream used copper in place of iron, but Butch and his kindred seemed to have complex carbon compounds in place of both. They were intelligent in some fashion, it was clear. They used tools, they chipped stone, and they had long, needlelike stone crystals which they threw as weapons.