First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  The skipper stopped for breath, scowling. Tommy Dort inconspicuously put his own hands on the belt of his spacesuit. He waited, hoping desperately that the trick would work.

  “He says, sir,” reported the helmet phones, “that all you say is true. But that his race has to be protected, just as you feel that yours must be.”

  “Naturally,” said the skipper angrily, “but the sensible thing to do is to figure out how to protect it! Putting its future up as a gamble in a fight is not sensible. Our races have to be warned of each other’s existence. That’s true. But each should have proof that the other doesn’t want to fight, but wants to be friendly. And we shouldn’t be able to find each other, but we should be able to communicate with each other to work out grounds for a common trust. If our governments want to be fools, let them! But we should give them the chance to make friends, instead of starting a space war out of mutual funk!”

  Briefly, the space phone said:

  “He says that the difficulty is that of trusting each other now. With the possible existence of his race at stake, he cannot take any chance, and neither can you, of yielding an advantage.”

  “But my race,” boomed the skipper, glaring at the alien captain, “my race has an advantage now. We came here to your ship in atom-powered spacesuits! Before we left, we altered the drives! We can set off ten pounds of sensitized fuel apiece, right here in this ship, or it can be set off by remote control from our ship! It will be rather remarkable if your fuel store doesn’t blow up with us! In other words, if you don’t accept my proposal for a commonsense approach to this predicament, Dort and I blow up in an atomic explosion, and your ship will be wrecked if not destroyed—and the Llanvabon will be attacking with everything it’s got within two seconds after the blast goes off!”

  The captain’s room of the alien ship was a strange scene, with its dull-red illumination and the strange, bald, gill-breathing aliens watching the skipper and waiting for the inaudible translation of the harangue they could not hear. But a sudden tensity appeared in the air. A sharp, savage feeling of strain. The alien skipper made a gesture. The helmet phones hummed.

  “He says, sir, what is your proposal?”

  “Swap ships!” roared the skipper. “Swap ships and go on home! We can fix our instruments so they’ll do no trailing, he can do the same with his. We’ll each remove our star maps and records. We’ll each dismantle our weapons. The air will serve, and we’ll take their ship and they’ll take ours, and neither one can harm or trail the other, and each will carry home more information than can be taken otherwise! We can agree on this same Crab Nebula as a rendezvous when the double-star has made another circuit, and if our people want to meet then they can do it, and if they are scared they can duck it! That’s my proposal! And he’ll take it, or Dort and I blow up their ship and the Llanvabon blasts what’s left!”

  He glared about him while he waited for the translation to reach the tense small stocky figures about him. He could tell when it came because the tenseness changed. The figures stirred. They made gestures. One of them made convulsive movements. It lay down on the soft floor and kicked. Others leaned against the walls and shook.

  The voice in Tommy Dort’s helmet phones had been strictly crisp and professional, before, but now it sounded blankly amazed.

  “He says, sir, that it is a good joke. Because the two crew members he sent to our ship, and that you passed on the way, have their spacesuits stuffed with atomic explosives too, sir, and he intended to make the very same offer and threat! Of course he accepts, sir. Your ship is worth more to him than his own, and his is worth more to you than the Llanvabon. It appears, sir, to be a deal.”

  Then Tommy Dort realized what the convulsive movements of the aliens were. They were laughter.

  It wasn’t quite as simple as the skipper had outlined it. The actual working-out of the proposal was complicated. For three days the crews of the two ships were intermingled, the aliens learning the workings of the Llanvabon’s engines, and the men learning the controls of the black spaceship. It was a good joke—but it wasn’t all a joke. There were men on the black ship, and aliens on the Llanvabon, ready at an instant’s notice to blow up the vessels in question. And they would have done it in case of need, for which reason the need did not appear. But it was, actually, a better arrangement to have two expeditions return to two civilizations, under the current arrangement, than for either to return alone.

  There were differences, though. There was some dispute about the removal of records. In most cases the dispute was settled by the destruction of the records. There was more trouble caused by the Llanvabon’s books, and the alien equivalent of a ship’s library, containing works which approximated the novels of Earth. But those items were valuable to possible friendship, because they would show the two cultures, each to the other, from the viewpoint of normal citizens and without propaganda.

  But nerves were tense during those three days. Aliens unloaded and inspected the foodstuffs intended for the men on the black ship. Men transshipped the foodstuffs the aliens would need to return to their home. There were endless details, from the exchange of lighting equipment to suit the eyesight of the exchanging crews, to a final check-up of apparatus. A joint inspection party of both races verified that all detector devices had been smashed but not removed, so that they could not be used for trailing and had not been smuggled away. And of course, the aliens were anxious not to leave any useful weapon on the black ship, nor the men upon the Llanvabon. It was a curious fact that each crew was best qualified to take exactly the measures which made an evasion of the agreement impossible.

  There was a final conference before the two ships parted, back in the communication room of the Llanvabon.

  “Tell the little runt,” rumbled the Llanvabon’s former skipper, “that he’s got a good ship and he’d better treat her right.”

  The message frame flicked word-cards into position.

  “I believe,” it said on the alien skipper’s behalf, “that your ship is just as good. I will hope to meet you here when the double star has turned one turn.”

  The last man left the Llanvabon. It moved away into the misty nebula before they had returned to the black ship. The vision plates in that vessel had been altered for human eyes, and human crewmen watched jealously for any trace of their former ship as their new craft took a crazy, evading course to a remote part of the nebula. It came to a crevasse of nothingness, leading to the stars. It rose swiftly to clear space. There was the instant of breathlessness which the overdrive field produces as it goes on, and then the black ship whipped away into the void at many times the speed of light.

  Many days later, the skipper saw Tommy Dort poring over one of the strange objects which were the equivalent of books. It was fascinating to puzzle over. The skipper was pleased with himself. The technicians of the Llanvabon’s former crew were finding out desirable things about the ship almost momently. Doubtless the aliens were as pleased with their discoveries in the Llanvabon. But the black ship would be enormously worthwhile—and the solution that had been found was by any standard much superior even to combat in which the Earthmen had been overwhelmingly victorious.

  “Hm-m-m. Mr. Dort,” said the skipper profoundly, “you’ve no equipment to make another photographic record on the way back. It was left on the Llanvabon. But fortunately, we have your record taken on the way out, and I shall report most favorably on your suggestion and your assistance in carrying it out. I think very well of you, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tommy Dort.

  He waited. The skipper cleared his throat.

  “You…ah…first realized the close similarity of mental processes between the aliens and ourselves,” he observed. “What do you think of the prospects of a friendly arrangement if we keep a rendezvous with them at the nebula as agreed?”

  “Oh, we’ll get along all right, sir,” said Tommy. “We’ve got a good start toward friendship. After all, since they see by infrared, the planets
they’d want to make use of wouldn’t suit us. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t get along. We’re almost alike in psychology.”

  “Hm-m-m. Now just what do you mean by that?” demanded the skipper.

  “Why, they’re just like us, sir!” said Tommy. “Of course they breathe through gills and they see by heat waves, and their blood has a copper base instead of iron and a few little details like that. But otherwise we’re just alike! There were only men in their crew, sir, but they have two sexes as we have, and they have families, and…er…their sense of humor—In fact—”

  Tommy hesitated.

  “Go on, sir,” said the skipper.

  “Well—There was the one I called Buck, sir, because he hasn’t any name that goes into sound waves,” said Tommy. “We got along very well. I’d really call him my friend, sir. And we were together for a couple of hours just before the two ships separated and we’d nothing in particular to do. So I became convinced that humans and aliens are bound to be good friends if they have only half a chance. You see, sir, we spent those two hours telling dirty jokes.”

  NOBODY SAW THE SHIP

  The landing of the Qul-En ship went completely unnoticed, as its operator intended. It was armed, of course. Despite its tiny size—no more than fifteen feet in diameter—and the fact that its crew was a single individual, it could have depopulated human cities in seconds. But its purpose was not destruction. It was seeking a complex hormone substance which Qul-En medical science said theoretically must exist, but the molecule of which even the Qul-En could not synthesize direct. Yet it needed to be found, in great quantity. Once discovered, the problem of obtaining it would be taken up, with the whole resources of the whole race behind the project. But first it had to be found. The tiny ship assigned to explore the Solar System for the hormone wished to pass unnoticed. Its mission of discovery should be accomplished in secret if possible. For one thing, the desired hormone would be destroyed by contact with the typical Qul-En ray-gun beam, so that normal methods of securing zoological specimens could not be used.

  The ship winked into being in empty space, not far from Neptune. It drove for that chilly planet and hovered about it, and decided not to land. It sped inward toward the sun and touched briefly on Io, but found no life there. It dropped into the atmosphere of Mars and did not rise again for a full week, but the vegetation on Mars is thin and the animals were degenerate survivors of once specialized forms. The ship came to Earth and hovered lightly at the atmospheres very edge for a long time, and doubtless chose its point of descent for reasons that seemed good to its occupant. Then it landed.

  It actually touched Earth at night. There was no rocket-drive to call attention. By dawn it was well-concealed. Only one living creature had seen it land, a mountain lion. Even so, by midday the skeleton of the lion was picked clean by buzzards, with ants tidying up after them. And the Qul-En in the ship was enormously pleased. The carcass, before being abandoned to the buzzards, had been studied with an incredible competence. The lion’s nervous system—particularly the mass of tissue in the skull—unquestionably contained either the desired hormone itself or something so close to it that it could be modified and the hormone produced. It remained only to discover how large a supply of the precious material could be found on Earth. It was not feasible to destroy a group of animals—say of the local civilized race—and examine their bodies, because the hormone would be broken down by the weapon which would search for it. So an estimate of available sources would have to be made by sampling. The Qul-En in the ship prepared to take samples.

  The ship had landed in tumbled country some forty miles south of Ensenada Springs. It was national forest territory, on which grazing rights were allotted to sheep-ranchers after illimitable red tape. Within ten miles of the hidden ship there were rabbits, birds, deer, coyotes, a lobo wolf or two, assorted chipmunks, field mice, perhaps as many as three or four mountain lions, one flock of two thousand sheep, one man and one dog. The man was Antonio Menendez. He was ancient, unwashed and ignorant, and the official shepherd of the sheep. The dog was Salazar, of dubious ancestry but sound worth, who actually took care of the sheep—and knew it. He was scarred from battles done in their defense. He was unweariedly solicitous of the woolly half-wits in his charge. There were whole hours, because of his duties, when he could not find time to scratch himself. He was reasonably fond of Antonio, but he knew that the man did not really understand sheep.

  Besides these creatures, among whom the Qul-En expected to find its samples, there were insects. These, however, the tiny alien being disregarded. It would not be practical to get any great quantity of the substance it sought from such small organisms.

  By nightfall of the day after its landing the door of the ship opened, and the explorer came out in a vehicle designed expressly for sampling on this planet. The vehicle came out, stood on its hind legs, closed the door and piled brush back to hide it. Then it moved away with the easy, feline gait of a mountain lion. At a distance of two feet it was a mountain lion. It was a magnificent job of adapting Qul-En engineering to the production of a device which would carry a small-bodied explorer about a strange world without causing remark. The explorer nested in a small cabin occupying the space—in the facsimile lion—that had been occupied by the real lion’s lungs. The fur of the duplicate was convincing. Its eyes were excellent, housing scanning-cells which could make use of anything from ultraviolet far down into the infrared. Its claws were retractile and of plastic much stronger and keener than the original lion’s claws. It had other equipment, including a weapon against which nothing on this planet could stand, and for zoological sampling it had one remarkable advantage. It had no animal smell. It was all metal and plastics.

  On the first night of its roaming, nothing in particular happened. The explorer became completely familiar with the way the controls of the machine worked. As a machine, of course, it was vastly more powerful than an animal. It could make leaps no mere creature of flesh and blood could duplicate. Its balancing devices were admirable. It was, naturally, immune to fatigue. The Qul-En inside it was pleased with the job.

  That night Antonio and Salazar bedded down their sheep in a natural amphitheater, and Antonio slept heavily, snoring. He was a highly superstitious ancient, so he wore various charms of a quasi-religious nature. Salazar merely turned around three times and went to sleep. But while the man slept soundly, Salazar woke often. Once he waked sharply at a startled squawking among the lambs. He got up and trotted over to make sure that everything was all right. He sniffed the air suspiciously. Then he went back, scratched where a flea had bitten him, bit—nibbling—at a place his paws could not reach and went back to sleep. At midnight he made a clear circle around his flock and went back to slumber with satisfaction. Toward dawn he raised his head suspiciously at the sound of a coyote’s howl. But the howl was far away. Salazar dosed until daybreak, when he rose, shook himself, stretched himself elaborately and scratched thoroughly, and was ready for a new day. The man waked, wheezing, and cooked breakfast. It appeared that the normal order of things would go undisturbed.

  For a time it did. There was certainly no disturbance at the ship. The small silvery vessel was safely hidden. There was a tiny, flickering light inside—the size of a pinpoint—which wavered and changed color constantly where a sort of tape unrolled before it. It was a recording device, making note of everything the roaming pseudo mountain lion’s eyes saw and everything its microphonic ears listened to. There was a bank of air-purifying chemical which proceeded to regenerate itself by means of air entering through a small ventilating slot. It got rid of carbon dioxide and stored up oxygen in its place, in readiness for further voyaging.

  Of course, ants explored the whole outside of the space-vessel, and some went inside through the ventilator-opening. They began to cart off some interesting if novel foodstuff they found within. Some very tiny beetles came exploring and one variety found the air-purifying chemical refreshing. Numbers of that sort of beetle moved in an
d began to raise large families. A minuscule moth, too, dropped eggs lavishly in the nestlike space in which the Qul-En explorer normally reposed during space-flight. But nothing really happened.

  Not until late morning. It was two hours after breakfast time when Salazar found traces of the mountain lion which was not a mountain lion. He found a rabbit that had been killed. Having been killed, it had very carefully been opened up and its various internal organs spread out for examination and its nervous system traced in detail. Its brain tissue, particularly, had been most painstakingly dissected, so the amount of a certain complex hormone to be found in it could be calculated with precision. The Qul-En in the lion shape had been vastly pleased to find the sought-for hormone in another animal beside a mountain lion. The dissection job was a perfect anatomical demonstration. No instructor in anatomy could have done better, and few neurosurgeons could have done as well with the brain. It was, in fact, a perfect laboratory job done on a flat rock in the middle of a sheep range, and duly reproduced on tape by a flickering, color-changing light. The reproduction, however, was not as good as it should have been, because the tape was then covered by small ants who had found its coating palatable and were trying to clean it off.

  Salazar saw the rabbit. There were blowflies buzzing about it. There was a buzzard reluctantly flying away because of his approach. Salazar barked at the buzzard. Antonio heard the barking. He came.

  Antonio was ancient, superstitious and unwashed. He came wheezing, accompanied by flies who had not finished breakfasting on the bits of his morning meal he had dropped on his vest. Salazar wagged his tail and barked at the buzzard. The rabbit had been neatly dissected, but not eaten. The cuts which opened it up were those of a knife or scalpel. It was not—it was definitely not—the work of an animal. But there were mountain-lion tracks and nothing else. More, every one of the tracks was that of a hind foot! A true mountain lion eats what he catches. He does not stand on his hind paws and dissect it with scientific precision. Nothing earthly had done this!