First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  Butch went over to the blackboard. He took a piece of pastel chalk—ordinary chalk was too hard for his Moon-gravity muscles to use—and soberly began to make marks on the slate. The marks formed letters. The letters made words. The words made sense.

  YOU, wrote Butch quite incredibly in neat pica lettering, GOOD FRIEND.

  He turned his head to stare at Worden. Worden went white. “I haven’t taught you those words, Butch!” he said very quietly. “What’s up?”

  He’d forgotten that his words, to Butch, were merely vibrations in the air or in the floor. He’d forgotten they had no meaning. But Butch seemed to have forgotten it too. He marked soberly:

  MY FRIEND GET SPACESUIT. He looked at Worden and marked once more, TAKE ME OUT. I COME BACK WITH YOU.

  He looked at Worden with large incongruously soft and appealing eyes. And Worden’s brain seemed to spin inside his skull. After a long time Butch printed again—YES.

  Then Worden sat very still indeed. There was only Moon gravity in the nursery and he weighed only one eighth as much as on Earth. But he felt very weak. Then he felt grim.

  “Not much else to do, I suppose,” he said slowly. “But I’ll have to carry you through Earth gravity to the air lock.”

  He got to his feet. Butch made a little leap up into his arms. He curled up there, staring at Worden’s face. Just before Worden stepped through the door Butch reached up a skinny paw and caressed Worden’s cheek tentatively.

  “Here we go!” said Worden. “The idea was for you to be a traitor. I wonder—”

  But with Butch a furry ball, suffering in the multiplied weight Earth gravity imposed upon him, Worden made his way to the air lock. He donned a spacesuit. He went out.

  It was near sunrise then. A long time had passed and Earth was now in its last quarter and the very highest peak of all that made up the crater wall glowed incandescent in the sunshine. But the stars were still quite visible and very bright. Worden walked away from the station, guided by the Earth-shine on the ground underfoot.

  Three hours later he came back. Butch skipped and hopped beside his space-suited figure. Behind them came two other figures. They were smaller than Worden but much larger than Butch. They were skinny and furry and they carried a burden. A mile from the station he switched on his suit radio. He called. A startled voice answered in his earphones.

  “It’s Worden,” he said dryly. “I’ve been out for a walk with Butch. We visited his family and I’ve a couple of his cousins with me. They want to pay a visit and present some gifts. Will you let us in without shooting?”

  There were exclamations. There was confusion. But Worden went on steadily toward the station while another high peak glowed in sunrise light and a third seemed to burst into incandescence. Dawn was definitely on the way.

  The airlock door opened. The party from the airless Moon went in. When the airlock filled, though, and the gravity coils went on, Butch and his relatives became helpless. They had to be carried to the nursery. There they uncurled themselves and blinked enigmatically at the men who crowded into the room where gravity was normal for the Moon and at the other men who stared in the door.

  “I’ve got a sort of message,” said Worden. “Butch and his relatives want to make a deal with us. You’ll notice that they’ve put themselves at our mercy. We can kill all three of them. But they want to make a deal.”

  The head of the station said uncomfortably, “You’ve managed two-way communication, Worden.”

  “I haven’t,” Worden told him. “They have. They’ve proved to me that they’ve brains equal to ours. They’ve been treated as animals and shot as specimens. They’ve fought back—naturally! But they want to make friends. They say that we can never use the Moon except in spacesuits and in stations like this, and they could never take Earth’s gravity. So there’s no need for us to be enemies. We can help each other.”

  The head of the station said dryly, “Plausible enough, but we have to act under orders, Worden. Did you explain that?”

  “They know,” said Worden. “So they’ve got set to defend themselves if necessary. They’ve set up smelters to handle metals. They get the heat by sun mirrors, concentrating sunlight. They’ve even begun to work with gases held in containers. They’re not far along with electronics yet, but they’ve got the theoretic knowledge and they don’t need vacuum tubes. They live in a vacuum. They can defend themselves from now on.”

  The head said mildly, “I’ve watched Butch, you know, Worden. And you don’t look crazy. But if this sort of thing is sprung on the armed forces on Earth there’ll be trouble. They’ve been arguing for armed rocket ships. If your friends start a real war for defense—if they can—maybe rocket warships will be the answer.”

  Worden nodded.

  “Right. But our rockets aren’t so good that they can fight this far from a fuel store, and there couldn’t be one on the Moon with all of Butch’s kinfolk civilized—as they nearly are now and as they certainly will be within the next few weeks. Smart people, these cousins and such of Butch!”

  “I’m afraid they’ll have to prove it,” said the head. “Where’d they get this sudden surge in culture?”

  “From us,” said Worden. “Smelting from me, I think. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering from the tractor mechanics. Geology—call it lunology here—mostly from you.”

  “How’s that?” demanded the head.

  “Think of something you’d like Butch to do,” said Worden grimly, “and then watch him.”

  The head stared and then looked at Butch. Butch—small and furry and swaggering—stood up and bowed profoundly from the waist. One paw was placed where his heart could be. The other made a grandiose sweeping gesture. He straightened up and strutted, then climbed swiftly into Worden’s lap and put a skinny furry arm about his neck.

  “That bow,” said the head, very pale, “is what I had in mind. You mean—”

  “Just so,” said Worden. “Butch’s ancestors had no air to make noises in for speech. So they developed telepathy. In time, to be sure, they worked out something like music—sounds carried through rock. But like our music it doesn’t carry meaning. They communicate directly from mind to mind. Only we can’t pick up communications from them and they can from us.”

  “They read our minds!” said the head. He licked his lips. “And when we first shot them for specimens they were trying to communicate. Now they fight.”

  “Naturally,” said Worden. “Wouldn’t we? They’ve been picking our brains. They can put up a terrific battle now. They could wipe out this station without trouble. They let us stay so they could learn from us. Now they want to trade.”

  “We have to report to Earth,” said the head slowly, “but—”

  “They brought along some samples,” said Worden. “They’ll swap diamonds, weight for weight, for records. They like our music. They’ll trade emeralds for textbooks—they can read now! And they’ll set up an atomic pile and swap plutonium for other things they’ll think of later. Trading on that basis should be cheaper than a war!”

  “Yes,” said the head. “It should. That’s the sort of argument men will listen to. But how—”

  “Butch,” said Worden ironically. “Just Butch! We didn’t capture him—they planted him on us! He stayed in the station and picked our brains and relayed the stuff to his relatives. We wanted to learn about them, remember? It’s like the story of the psychologist…”

  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.

  DOOMSDAY DEFERRED

  If I were sensible, I’d say that somebody else told me this story, and then cast doubts on his veracity. But I saw it all. I was part of it. I have an invoice of a shipment I made
from Brazil, with a notation on it, “José Ribiera’s stuff.” The shipment went through. The invoice, I noticed only today, has a mashed soldado ant sticking to the page. There is nothing unusual about it as a specimen. On the face of things, every element is irritatingly commonplace. But if I were sensible, I wouldn’t tell it this way.

  It began in Milhao, where José Ribiera came to me. Milhao is in Brazil, but from it the Andes can be seen against the sky at sunset. It is a town the jungle unfortunately did not finish burying when the rubber boom collapsed. It is so far up the Amazon basin that its principal contacts with the outer world are smugglers and fugitives from Peruvian justice who come across the mountains, and nobody at all goes there except for his sins. I don’t know what took José Ribiera there. I went because one of the three known specimens of Morpho andiensis was captured nearby by Böhler in 1911, and a lunatic millionaire in Chicago was willing to pay for a try at a fourth for his collection.

  I got there after a river steamer refused to go any farther, and after four days more in a canoe with paddlers who had lived on or near river water all their lives without once taking a bath in it. When I got to Milhao, I wished myself back in the canoe. It’s that sort of place.

  But that’s where José Ribiera was, and in back-country Brazil there is a remarkable superstition that os Senhores Norteamericanos are honest men. I do not explain it. I simply record it. And just as I was getting settled in a particularly noisome inn, José knocked on my door and came in. He was a small brown man, and he was scared all the way down deep inside. He tried to hide that. The thing I noticed first was that he was clean. He was barefoot, but his tattered duck garments were immaculate, and the rest of him had been washed, and recently. In a town like Milhao, that was startling.

  “Senhor,” said José in a sort of apologetic desperation, “you are a Senhor Norteamericano. I—I beg your aid.”

  I grunted. Being an American is embarrassing, sometimes and in some places. José closed the door behind him and fumbled inside his garments. His eyes anxious, he pulled out a small cloth bundle. He opened it with shaking fingers. And I blinked. The lamplight glittered and glinted on the most amazing mass of tiny gold nuggets I’d ever seen. I hadn’t a doubt it was gold, but even at first glance I wondered how on earth it had been gathered. There was no flour gold at all—that fine powder which is the largest part of any placer yield. Most of it was gravelly particles of pinhead size. There was no nugget larger than a half pea. There must have been five pounds of it altogether, though, and it was a rather remarkable spectacle.

  “Senhor,” said José tensely, “I beg that you will help me turn this into cattle! It is a matter of life or death.”

  I hardened my expression. Of course, in thick jungle like that around Milhao, a cow or a bull would be as much out of place as an Eskimo, but that wasn’t the point. I had business of my own in Milhao. If I started gold buying or cattle dealing out of amiability, my own affairs would suffer. So I said in polite regret, “I am not a businessman, senhor, do not deal in gold or cattle either. To buy cattle, you should go down to São Pedro”—that was four days’ paddle downstream, or considering the current perhaps three—“and take this gold to a banker. He will give you money for it if you can prove that it is yours. You can then buy cattle if you wish.”

  José looked at me desperately. Certainly half the population of Milhao—and positively the Peruvian-refugee half—would have cut his throat for a fraction of his hoard. He almost panted: “But, senhor! This would be enough to buy cattle in São Pedro and send them here, would it not?”

  I agreed that at a guess it should buy all the cattle in São Pedro, twice over, and hire the town’s wheezy steam launch to tow them upriver besides. José looked sick with relief. But, I said, one should buy his livestock himself, so he ought to go to São Pedro in person. And I could not see what good cattle would be in the jungle anyhow.

  “Yet—it would buy cattle!” said José, gulping. “That is what I told—my friends. But I cannot go farther than Milhao, senhor. I cannot go to São Pedro. Yet I must—I need to buy cattle for—my friends! It is life and death! How can I do this, senhor?”

  Naturally, I considered that he exaggerated the emergency.

  “I am not a businessman,” I repeated. “I would not be able to help you.” Then at the terrified look in his eyes I explained, “I am here after butterflies.”

  He couldn’t understand that. He began to stammer, pleading. So I explained.

  “There is a rich man,” I said wryly, “who wishes to possess a certain butterfly. I have pictures of it. I am sent to find it. I can pay one thousand milreis for one butterfly of a certain sort. But I have no authority to do other business, such as the purchase of gold or cattle.”

  José looked extraordinarily despairing. He looked numbed by the loss of hope. So, merely to say or do something, I showed him a color photograph of the specimen of Morpho andiensis which is in the Goriot collection in Paris. Bug collectors were in despair about it during the war. They were sure the Nazis would manage to seize it. Then José’s eyes lighted hopefully.

  “Senhor!” he said urgently. “Perhaps my—friends can find you such a butterfly! Will you pay for such a butterfly in cattle sent here from São Pedro, senhor?”

  I said rather blankly that I would, but—Then I was talking to myself. José had bolted out of my room, leaving maybe five pounds of gravelly gold nuggets in my hands. That was not usual.

  I went after him, but he’d disappeared. So I hid his small fortune in the bottom of my collection kit. A few drops of formaldehyde, spilled before closing up a kit of collection bottles and insects, is very effective in chasing away pilferers. I make use of it regularly.

  Next morning I asked about José. My queries were greeted with shrugs. He was a very low person. He did not live in Milhao, but had a clearing, a homestead, some miles upstream, where he lived with his wife. They had one child. He was suspected of much evil. He had bought pigs, and taken them to his clearing, and behold he had no pigs there! His wife was very pretty, and a Peruvian had gone swaggering to pay court to her, and he had never come back. It is notable, as I think of it, that up to this time no ant of any sort has come into my story. Butterflies, but no ants. Especially not soldados—army ants. It is queer.

  I learned nothing useful about José, but I had come to Milhao on business, so I stated it publicly. I wished a certain butterfly, I said. I would pay one thousand milreis for a perfect specimen. I would show a picture of what I wanted to any interested person, and I would show how to make a butterfly net and how to use it, and how to handle butterflies without injuring them. But I wanted only one kind, and it must not be squashed.

  The inhabitants of Milhao became happily convinced that I was insane, and that it might be profitable insanity for them. Each person leaped to the nearest butterfly and blandly brought it to me. I spent a whole day explaining to bright-eyed people that matching the picture of Morpho andiensis required more than that the number of legs and wings should be the same. But, I repeated, I would pay one thousand milreis for a butterfly exactly like the picture. I had plenty of margin for profit and loss, at that. The last time a Morpho andiensis was sold, it brought $25,000 at auction. I’d a lot rather have the money, myself.

  José Ribiera came back. His expression was tense beyond belief. He plucked at my arm and said, “Senhor,” and I grabbed him and dragged him to my inn.

  I hauled out his treasure. “Here!” I said angrily. “This is not mine! Take it!”

  He paid no attention. He trembled. “Senhor,” he said, and swallowed. “My friends—my friends do not think they can catch the butterfly you seek. But if you will tell them—” He wrinkled his brows. “Senhor, before a butterfly is born, is it a little soft nut with a worm in it?”

  That could pass for a description of a cocoon. José’s friends—he was said not to have any—were close observers. I said so. José seemed to grasp at hope as at a straw.

  “My—friends will find
you the nut which produces the butterfly,” he said urgently, “if you tell them which kind it is and what it looks like.”

  I blinked. Just three specimens of Morpho andiensis had ever been captured, so far as was known. All were adult insects. Of course nobody knew what the cocoon was like. For that matter, any naturalist can name a hundred species—and in the Amazon valley alone—of which only the adult forms have been named. But who would hunt for cocoons in jungle like that outside of Milhao?

  “My friend,” I said skeptically, “there are thousands of different such things. I will buy five of each different kind you can discover, and I will pay one milreis apiece. But only five of each kind, remember!”

  I didn’t think he’d even try, of course. I meant to insist that he take back his gold nuggets. But again he was gone before I could stop him. I had an uncomfortable impression that when I made my offer, his face lighted as if he’d been given a reprieve from a death sentence. In the light of later events, I think he had.

  I angrily made up my mind to take his gold back to him next day. It was a responsibility. Besides, one gets interested in a man—especially of the half-breed class—who can unfeignedly ignore five pounds of gold. I arranged to be paddled up to his clearing next morning.

  It was on the river, of course. There are no footpaths in Amazon-basin jungle. The river flowing past Milhao is a broad deep stream perhaps two hundred yards wide. Its width seems less because of the jungle walls on either side. And the jungle is daunting. It is trees and vines and lianas as seen from the stream, but it is more than that. Smells come out, and you can’t identify them. Sounds come out, and you can’t interpret them. You cut your way into its mass, and you see nothing. You come out, and you have learned nothing. You cannot affect it. It ignores you. It made me feel insignificant.

  My paddlers would have taken me right on past José’s clearing without seeing it, if he hadn’t been on the river bank. He shouted. He’d been fishing, and now that I think, there were no fish near him, but there were some picked-clean fish skeletons. And I think the ground was very dark about him when we first saw him, and quite normal when we approached. I know he was sweating, but he looked terribly hopeful at the sight of me.