First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  Braden waited patiently until both the Director of Meadeville Mental and the man from Washington had finished reading the yellowed papers. Then Braden explained calmly:

  “He’s insane, of course. It’s paranoia. He is as convinced of his superiority to us as—say—Napoleon or Edison would have been convinced of their superiority if they’d suddenly been dumped down among a tribe of Australian bushmen. As a matter of fact, John Kingman may have just as good reason as they would have had to feel his superiority. But if he were sane he would prove it. He would establish it. Instead, he has withdrawn into a remote contemplation of his own greatness. So he is a paranoiac. One may surmise that he was insane when he first appeared. But he doesn’t have a delusion of persecution because on the face of it no such theory is needed to account for his present situation.”

  The Director said in a tolerantly shocked tone:

  “Dr. Braden! You speak as if he were not a human being!”

  “He isn’t,” said Braden. “His body temperature is a hundred and five. Human tissues simply would not survive that temperature. He has extra vertebrae and extra ribs. His joints are not quite like ours. He has two hearts. We were able to check his circulatory system just under the skin with infrared lamps, and it is not like ours. And I submit that he has been a patient in this asylum for one hundred and sixty-two years. If he is human, he is at least remarkable!”

  The man from Washington said interestedly:

  “Where do you think he comes from, Dr. Braden?”

  Braden spread out his hands. He said doggedly:

  “I make no guesses. But I sent photostats of the sketches he made to the Bureau of Standards. I said that they were made by a patient and appeared to be diagrams of atomic structure. I asked if they indicated a knowledge of physics. You”—he looked at the man from Washington—“turned up thirty-six hours later. I deduce that he has such knowledge.”

  “He has!” said the man from Washington, mildly. “The X-ray sketches were interesting enough, but the others—Apparently he has told us how to get controlled atomic energy out of silicon, which is one of earth’s commonest elements. Where did he come from, Dr. Braden?”

  Braden clamped his jaw.

  “You noticed that the commitment papers referred to shooting stars then causing much local comment? I looked up the newspapers for about that date. They reported a large shooting star which was observed to descend to the earth. Then, various credible observers claimed that it shot back up to the sky again. Then, some hours afterward, various large shooting stars crossed the sky from horizon to horizon, without ever falling.”

  The Director of Meadeville Mental said humorously:

  “It’s a wonder that New Bedlam—as we were then—was not crowded after such statements!”

  The man from Washington did not smile.

  “I think,” he said meditatively, “that Dr. Braden suggests a spaceship landing to permit John Kingman to get out, and then going away again. And possible pursuit afterward.”

  The Director laughed appreciatively at the assumed jest.

  “If,” said the man from Washington, “John Kingman is not human, and if he comes from somewhere where as much was known about atomic energy almost two centuries ago as he has showed us, and if he were insane there, he might have seized some sort of vehicle and fled in it because of delusions of persecution. Which in a sense, if he were insane, might be justified. He would have been pursued. With pursuers close behind him he might have landed—here.”

  “But the vehicle!” said the Director, humorously. “Our ancestors would have recorded finding a spaceship or an airplane.”

  “Suppose,” said the man from Washington, “that his pursuers had something like…say…radar. Even we have that! A cunning lunatic would have sent off his vehicle under automatic control to lead his pursuers as long and merry a chase as possible. Perhaps he sent it to dive into the sun. The rising shooting star and the other cruising shooting stars would be accounted for. What do you say, Dr. Braden?”

  Braden shrugged.

  “There is no evidence. Now he is insane. If we were to cure him—”

  “Just how,” said the man from Washington, “would you cure him? I thought paranoia was practically hopeless.”

  “Not quite,” Braden told him. “They’ve used shock treatment for dementia praecox and schizophrenia, with good results. Until last year there was nothing of comparable value for paranoia. Then Jantzen suggested euphoric shock. Basically, the idea is to dispel illusions by creating hallucinations.”

  The Director fidgeted disapprovingly. The man from Washington waited.

  “In euphoric shock,” said Braden carefully, “the tensions and anxieties of insane patients are relieved by drugs which produce a sensation of euphoria, or well-being. Jantzen combined hallucination-producing drugs with those. The combination seems to place the patient temporarily in a cosmos in which all delusions are satisfied and all tensions relieved. He has a rest from his struggle against reality. Also he has a sort of super-catharsis, in the convincing realization of all his desires. Quite often he comes out of the first euphoric shock temporarily sane. The percentage of final cures is satisfyingly high.”

  The man from Washington said:

  “Body chemistry?”

  Braden regarded him with new respect. He said:

  “I don’t know. He’s lived on human food for almost two centuries, and in any case it’s been proved that the proteins will be identical on all planets under all suns. But I couldn’t be sure about it. There might even be allergies. You say his drawings were very important. It might be wisest to find out everything possible from him before even euphoric shock was tried.”

  “Ah, yes!” said the Director, tolerantly. “If he has waited a hundred and sixty-two years, a few weeks or months will make no difference. And I would like to watch the experiment, but I am about to start on my vacation—”

  “Hardly,” said the man from Washington.

  “I said, I am about to start on my vacation.”

  “John Kingman,” said the man from Washington mildly, “has been trying for a hundred and sixty-two years to tell us how to have controlled atomic energy, and pocket X-ray machines, and God knows what all else. There may be, somewhere about this institution, drawings of antigravity apparatus, really efficient atomic bombs, spaceship drives or weapons which could depopulate the earth. I’m afraid nobody here is going to communicate with the outside world in any way until the place and all its personnel are gone over…ah…rather carefully.”

  “This,” said the Director indignantly, “is preposterous!”

  “Quite so. A thousand years of human advance locked in the skull of a lunatic. Nearly two hundred years more of progress and development wasted because he was locked up here. But it would be most preposterous of all to let his information loose to the other lunatics who aren’t locked up because they’re running governments! Sit down!”

  The Director sat down. The man from Washington said:

  “Now, Dr. Braden—”

  John Kingman spent days on end in scornful, triumphant glee. Braden watched him somberly. Meadeville Mental Hospital was an armed camp with sentries everywhere, and especially about the building in which John Kingman gloated. There were hordes of suitably certified scientists and psychiatrists about him, now, and he was filled with blazing satisfaction.

  He sat in regal, triumphant aloofness. He was the greatest, the most important, the most consequential figure on this planet. The stupid creatures who inhabited it—they were only superficially like himself—had at last come to perceive his godliness. Now they clustered about him. In their stupid language which it was beneath his dignity to learn, they addressed him. But they did not grovel. Even groveling would not be sufficiently respectful for such inferior beings when addressing John Kingman. He very probably devised in his own mind the exact etiquette these stupid creatures must practice before he would condescend to notice them.

  They made elaborate te
sts. He ignored their actions. They tried with transparent cunning to trick him into further revelations of the powers he held. Once, in malicious amusement, he drew a sketch of a certain reaction which such inferior minds could not possibly understand. They were vastly excited, and he was enormously amused. When they tried that reaction and square miles turned to incandescent vapor, the survivors would realize that they could not trick or force him into giving them the riches of his godlike mind. They must devise the proper etiquette to appease him. They must abjectly and humbly plead with him and placate him and sacrifice to him. They must deny all other gods but John Kingman. They would realize that he was all wisdom, all power, all greatness when the reaction he had sketched destroyed them by millions.

  Braden prevented that from happening. When John Kingman gave a sketch of a new atomic reaction in response to an elaborate trick one of the newcomers had devised, Braden protested grimly.

  “The patient,” he said doggedly, “is a paranoiac. Suspicion and trickiness is inherent in his mental processes. At any moment, to demonstrate his greatness, he may try to produce unholy destruction. You absolutely cannot trust him! Be careful!”

  He hammered the fact home, arguing the sheer flat fact that a paranoiac will do absolutely anything to prove his grandeur.

  The new reaction was tried with microscopic quantities of material, and it only destroyed everything within a fifty-yard radius. Which brought the final decision on John Kingman. He was insane. He knew more about one overwhelmingly important subject than all the generations of men. But it was not possible to obtain trustworthy data from him on that subject or any other while he was insane. It was worth while to take the calculated risk of attempting to cure him.

  Braden protested again:

  “I urged the attempt to cure him,” he said firmly, “before I knew he had given the United States several centuries head-start in knowledge of atomic energy. I was thinking of him as a patient. For his own sake, any risk was proper. Since he is not human, I withdraw my urging. I do not know what will happen. Anything could happen.”

  His refusal held up treatment for a week. Then a Presidential executive order resolved the matter. The attempt was to be made as a calculated risk. Dr. Braden would make the attempt.

  He did. He tested John Kingman for tolerance of euphoric drugs. No unfavorable reaction. He tested him for tolerance of drugs producing hallucination. No unfavorable reaction. Then—

  He injected into one of John Kingman’s veins a certain quantity of the combination of drugs which on human beings was most effective for euphoric shock, and whose separate constituents had been tested on John Kingman and found harmless. It was not a sufficient dose to produce the full required effect. Braden expected to have to make at least one and probably two additional injections before the requisite euphoria was produced. He was taking no single avoidable chance. He administered first a dosage which should have produced no more than a feeling of mild but definite exhilaration.

  And John Kingman went into convulsions. Horrible ones.

  There is such a thing as allergy and such a thing as synergy, and nobody understands either. Some patients collapse when given aspirin. Some break out in rashes from penicillin. Some drugs, taken alone, have one effect, and taken together quite another and drastic one. A drug producing euphoria was harmless to John Kingman. A drug producing hallucinations was harmless. But—synergy or allergy or whatever—the two taken together were deadly poison.

  He was literally unconscious for three weeks, and in continuous convulsion for two days. He was kept alive by artificial nourishment, glucose, nasal feeding—everything. But his coma was extreme. Four separate times he was believed dead.

  But after three weeks he opened his eyes vaguely. In another week he was able to talk. From the first, his expression was bewildered. He was no longer proud. He began to learn English. He showed no paranoiac symptoms. He was wholly sane. In fact, his I.Q.—tested later—was ninety, which is well within the range of normal intelligence. He was not over-bright, but adequate. And he did not remember who he was. He did not remember anything at all about his life before rousing from coma in the Meadeville Mental Hospital. Not anything at all. It was, apparently, either the price or the cause of his recovery.

  Braden considered that it was the means. He urged his views on the frustrated scientists who wanted now to try hypnotism and “truth serum” and other devices for picking the lock of John Kingman’s brain.

  “As a diagnosis,” said Braden, moved past the tendency to be technical, “the poor devil smashed up on something we can’t even guess at. His normal personality couldn’t take it, whatever it was, so he fled into delusions—into insanity. He lived in that retreat over a century and a half, and then we found him out. And we wouldn’t let him keep his beautiful delusions that he was great and godlike and all-powerful. We were merciless. We forced ourselves upon him. We questioned him. We tricked him. In the end, we nearly poisoned him! And his delusions couldn’t stand up. He couldn’t admit that he was wrong, and he couldn’t reconcile such experiences with his delusions. There was only one thing he could do—forget the whole thing in the most literal possible manner. What he’s done is to go into what they used to call dementia praecox. Actually, it’s infantilism. He’s fled back to his childhood. That’s why his I.Q. is only ninety, instead of the unholy figure it must have been when he was a normal adult of his race. He’s mentally a child. He sleeps, right now, in the foetal position. Which is a warning! One more attempt to tamper with his brain, and he’ll go into the only place that’s left for him—into the absolute blankness that is the mind of the unborn child!”

  He presented evidence. The evidence was overwhelming. In the end, reluctantly, John Kingman was left alone.

  He gets along all right, though. He works in the records department of Meadeville Mental now, because there his six-fingered hands won’t cause remark. He is remarkably accurate and perfectly happy.

  But he is carefully watched. The one question he can answer now is—how long he’s going to live. A hundred and sixty-two years is only part of his lifetime. But if you didn’t know, you’d swear he wasn’t more than fifty.

  PROXIMA CENTAURI

  The Adastra, from a little distance, already shone in the light of the approaching sun. The vision disks which scanned the giant space ship’s outer skin relayed a faint illumination to the visiplates within. They showed the monstrous, rounded bulk of the metal globe, crisscrossed with girders too massive to be transported by any power less than that of the space ship itself. They showed the whole five-thousand-foot globe as an ever so faintly glowing object, seemingly motionless in mid-space.

  In that seeming, they lied. Monstrous as the ship was, and apparently too huge to be stirred by any conceivable power, she was responding to power now. At a dozen points upon her faintly glowing side there were openings. From those openings there flowed out tenuous purple flames—less bright than the star ahead—but they were the disintegration blasts from the rockets which had lifted the Adastra from the surface of Earth and for seven years had hurtled it on through interstellar space toward Proxima Centauri, nearest of the fixed stars to humanity’s solar system.

  Now they hurtled it forward no more. The mighty ship was decelerating. Thirty-two and two-tenths feet per second, losing velocity at the exact rate to maintain the effect of Earth’s gravity within its bulk, the huge globe slowed. For months braking had been going on. From a peak-speed measurably near the velocity of light, the first of all vessels to span the distance between two solar systems had slowed and slowed, and would reach a speed of maneuver some sixty million miles from the surface of the star.

  Far, far ahead, Proxima Centauri glittered invitingly. The vision disks that showed its faint glow upon the space ship’s hull had counterparts which carried its image within the hull, and in the main control room it appeared enlarged very many times. An old, white-bearded man in uniform regarded it meditatively. He said slowly, as if he had said the same thing
often before, “Quaint, that ring. It is double, like Saturn’s. And Saturn has nine moons. One wonders how many planets this sun will have.”

  The girl said restlessly, “We’ll find out soon, won’t we? We’re almost there. And we already know the rotation period of one of them! Jack said that—”

  Her father turned deliberately to her. “Jack?”

  “Gary,” said the girl. “Jack Gary.”

  “My dear,” said the old man mildly, “he seems well-disposed, and his abilities are good, but he is a Mut. Remember!”

  The girl bit her lip.

  The old man went on, quite slowly and without rancor: “It is unfortunate that we have had this division among the crew of what should have been a scientific expedition conducted in the spirit of a crusade. You hardly remember how it began. But we officers know only too well how many efforts have been made by the Muts to wreck the whole purpose of our voyage. This Jack Gary is a Mut. He is brilliant, in his way. I would have brought him into the officers’ quarters, but Alstair investigated and found undesirable facts which made it impossible.”