Worst Contact

by Hank Davis

  Arthon had said that the drive had no moving parts. I didn’t have the mathematical background to understand how it worked, he said, but he could easily show me how to make one. If it was that simple, could the extrasolarites, as I called them, have hit upon the drive by accident and still be, with the exception of the drive, in a more primitive state of technological development than humans? Then they wouln’t have the wherewithal to bump each other off and woudn’t need any magic formula for peace. Arthon’s planet was out to get the know-how for nuclear power and lick the other planets in the federation. That was what his people could learn from me!

  Nope—because Earth had been discovered by a fleet of extrasolarites; one ship from each planet in the federation. And each ship had taken back one (1) Earthling to its home planet; so no planet would have an advantage over any other. Moreover, each Earthling taken was just like me—an ultra-departmentalized specialist in the social sciences whose total knowledge of atomic power consisted of: “Well, there’re some bombs that have uranium in them and some that have hydrogen and the ones with hydrogen make bigger bangs and the bombs cause fallout, yup, yup, yup.”

  My 10-year-old son was a bug about science and electronics. They could have found out more about atomic power by snatching him than by carting me off.

  What if, instead of the planets of the Federation fighting among themselves, they have ganged up and go around looking for other planets to clobber?

  Nope—in that case, why did they contact us instead of just going back home with the news of fresh prey? And, if they wanted to size us up as to what kind of a fight we would give them, why were they taking social scientists back with them instead of military experts?

  My train of thought was derailed by Arthon’s entrance. “Howard, the time which will be that of the breaking out of pseudospace will be ten minutes from this time,” he informed me. “Would that which you want be to see it?”

  “Lead on, MacDuff,” I said. The misquote fit my mood.

  I went with him down the corridor, which was throbbing with the engine’s pussy-noise galore, and followed him into the control room. We sat down in deep-cushioned seats, both with slots for a prehensile tail, and looked through the viewscreen at the rippling violet shell that surrounded the ship.

  “You promised me a surprise,” I reminded him.

  “At this time the surprise would be that which I could only tell you. In five minutes, it will be that which can be seen with those eyes which are your own.” He paused. “It is afraid that I am, Howard, that honest is not what we have been with you.”

  Little crawling bits of fear were in my spinal column, as numerous as ants in an anthill. “How is that?”

  “You are hoping that the secret of peace is something which can be obtained from us, are you not?”

  “Yes. We were expecting a rain of death from the skies any day. Then you came and we, well . . . had hope again.”

  “For how long had this rain of death from your skies been something that you had expected?”

  “What?”

  “Let me ask again the question in another shape. How long has atomic power been with you humans?”

  My heart sank. “Well, uh, since 1945.”

  “And how many times has a war seen the use of atomic weapons?”

  “Well, twice. Both times in the same year—1945.”

  “So, you have not used the weaons of which you have great fear for almost as long as you have had them.”

  “Well . .. yes.” I frowned.

  “Atomic power was our discovery over three hundred of your years ago.”

  “And you haven’t wiped yourselves out? Now I know that you must have the key to peace, Arthon!” (But, still, something was calling the short hairs on the back of my neck to military attention.)

  “The terribleness of nuclear weapons has not the final greatness that you think it does, Howard. There are perfect defenses against them. There are energy fields which are such that a fission bomb will not explode within them. There are other such fields for fusion bombs and antimatter bombs.”

  “Then you’ve survived because you have defenses against atomic weapons. You can give them to us and there will be no atomic war.”

  “Understanding is that which you do not yet have, Howard. There are weapons which have a deadliness far greater than those I have named. There are biological weapons. There are X-ray lasers. The knowledge is ours which can convert a sunspot into a laser and incinerate the sunlit half of a planet. And defenses are ours which nullify those weapons. And others that are more terrible.”

  “To have survived such dangers proves that you have the key to peace that I seek.”

  “As I have said, Howard, honest is not what we have been with you. We have misled your people. Happiness was ours when we saw that to study us was your wish and so we gladly took you and your fellows to the planets which were ours, because there is that which we must learn from you.”

  He paused. My tongue was looking for a hole to crawl into and hide.

  “As you once told me, and exactly as you told me, ‘A common characteristic equally shared by a group is not evident to the group as a characteristic until they encounter another group which has the characteristic to a different degree.’ As you said, ‘A colony of people, all having the same IQ, would have no awareness of intelligence as a variable.’ True would be what this statement would be even if the colony were one of geniuses, would it not, Howard?”

  He had amazed me by quoting me verbatim, pedantic professorial phrasing and all. He must have a photographic memory. “Yes, Arthon,” I answered.

  “Earth is a colony of geniuses, Howard. In the years which have been those of your development of atomic weapons, you have used only two bombs, both small ones. In my planet’s number of years that were the same, we used hundreds, many of them more powerful than any that are yours now. Your population is expanding so fast as to be that which is a problem to you. Our population is now one tenth of that which it was when we discovered atomic energy. The time of our discovery was more than three of your centuries back. The number of planets which are those in our federation, as you call it, is shrinking. Eighty-seven planets which once were among those which are members are lifeless balls rolling through space now.”

  The violet curtain parted and we began the approach to Arthon’s planet on slow drive. My white shirt was no longer violet, but I ignored it. I was looking at the ugly craters on the planet’s surface, which were plainly visible, even at this distance, like planetary smallpox scars. I could easily see the black areas where nothing green grew.

  A tear, running ahead to act as scout for the main body, crept out of Arthon’s left eye.

  “The job of keeping the peace is that which your humans think you have done poorly,” he said in a voice soft as a crumbling dream. “Teach us how to do a job that is as poor. Please!”

  HORNETS’ NEST

  by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  Humanity’s first starship narrowly avoided making contact with aliens—which was fortunate for the human race’s survival.

  ***

  Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1923-2002) was wounded in World War II and permanently disabled, in spite of which he resumed his education, finally earning a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He subsequently taught at the same university, and also Eastern Michigan University in the 1950s. After he published his first short story, “Gypped,” in the July 1956 Galaxy, he went on to write two dozen novels and hundreds of short stories. He wrote both science fiction and mystery novels and stories, combining both genres in his Jan Darzek series about a private detective in the future, which began with his 1963 novel All the Colors of Darkness. His academic field was musicology, which often showed up in some of his stories, most notably in his frequently reprinted novelet “The Tunesmith.” I read “Hornets’ Nest” when it appeared in If in 1959, and it has stuck with me over the succeeding decades. If you’ll pardon a digression, in the early 1980s, a science fiction writer announced at
a convention that a woman wanted recordings of SF stories that she could duplicate for the blind. I remembered “Hornets’ Nest” and recorded it, and a couple of other favorite but less than famous stories on a cassette, and sent it to the address. It came back a month later, marked, “Moved—No Forwarding Address.” I think of that experience whenever I find myself having idealistic impulses and need to suppress them with a dose of reality. At least, I can bring the story back into print without being thwarted this time.

  They sat in the captain’s quarters, relaxed in the easy silence of close friendship as they absently sipped drinks and watched the monitor of the ship’s scanner screen. There was Captain Miles Front, big, formidable-looking, a healthy and robust forty-five. There was Clyde Paulson, his brilliant young navigator. There was the expedition’s chief scientist, Doctor John Walter, a pleasant-looking, balding man of indeterminate age.

  It was Paulson who broke the silence. “I have an important mission of my own,” he said.

  They regarded him with amused skepticism, and he grinned good-naturedly.

  “An ancestor of mine, my great-great-great—how many generations has it been now? Anyway, old Grandfather Paulson left Earth in some kind of disgrace. The details have been forgotten, down through the years, but the legend has been passed along as a family joke. I don’t know whether he joined the colonists to run away, or whether that was someone’s idea of a good way to get rid of him. Anyway, it’s kind of a pledge to the family’s honor that the first one to get back to Earth will check up and see whether Grandfather Paulson has been exonerated, or pardoned, or acquitted, or whatever. That’s my mission. Not that it will make any difference to Grandfather Paulson one way or the other.”

  “So that’s why you were so eager to make this trip,” the captain said. “You needn’t have bothered. A lot of chance you will have to rake up a scandal that old!”

  “I thought it was a pretty good excuse,” said Paulson.

  Doctor Walter pointed at a boldly glimmering star. “You’re sure that’s the one?”

  Paulson grinned, and Captain Front chuckled dryly.

  “Disappointed to find it looks just like another star?” the captain said.

  “Maybe,” Walter said dreamily. “This is a different kind of mission for me. It’s a pilgrimage. There are maddening blank spaces in the information the colonists brought with them about this solar system. I hope to fill in some of those. I’d like to fill all of them in.”

  “You may be able to,” the captain said. “Remember that Earth’s scientists haven’t been standing still all this time. They must have progressed beyond the point they’d reached when the colonists left. Perhaps they’ll have everything you want waiting for you.”

  Walter shrugged and the captain chuckled again, and said to Paulson, “I’ve disappointed him. He doesn’t want to find the answers on file. He wants to dig them out for himself.”

  Doctor Walter said to the captain, “What’s your mission?”

  “To get us there and back. And frankly—” he turned to look at the lone, flickering star—“there are angles to this thing that bother me. It’s just possible that our mother planet might not be at all glad to see us.”

  “It should greet us with open arms,” Walter said. “The population problem was serious when the colonists left. It will be critical by now. We can use the people, and Earth should be able to spare as many as we want. Our science is bound to be ahead of Earth’s in many respects, and we know they can’t match our starships, or we would have heard from them before now. Ships that bring out new colonists can take essential raw materials back to Earth. Cooperation will benefit all of us.”

  “It should,” the captain said, “But we don’t know how Earth will look at it. When the original colonists left, there was supposed to be a new ship every couple of years. Nothing has been heard from Earth since. It looks as if Earth simply wrote us off and forgot about us. Now that we’ve built our own civilization, and maybe done far better than Earth expected, we might not be welcomed back. Earth might be jealous. Or it might have a guilty conscience. It should have.”

  “Faulty navigation,” Paulson suggested.

  “An occasional ship might go astray. Not all of them. No. The thing has me worried. That’s why I want to hit Pluto Base and planet-hop our way in. Give Earth notice that we’re coming, and a chance to get used to the idea before we arrive.”

  Doctor Walter brightened. “Pluto Base. I wonder if they ever found a tenth planet.”

  Clyde Paulson laid out a perfect interception course for Pluto, and he was still grinning with satisfaction when they brought the ship down. The captain rotated the scanner and looked broodingly at the frigid, airless landscape.

  “Is this Pluto Base or isn’t it?” he growled.

  “It is,” Paulson said confidently.

  “They’re taking their time about sending out a reception committee. They should have picked us up hours ago. Some security system!”

  They waited, straining their eyes to pick out details. Doctor Walter came into the control room. He glanced at the screen and exclaimed, “Why, there’s nothing there!”

  “Pluto Base is underground,” the captain said, rotating the scanner again. “Or at least it was. I imagine it still is.”

  “Stop!” Paulson shouted. “Over there on that hill—wouldn’t that be the base entrance?”

  The captain threw in the magnification unit.

  “It could be,” Doctor Walter said.

  “It is,” the captain said. “And the airlock is open.”

  They landed, watched, saw nothing more and entered.

  They went cautiously through the empty corridors. Equipment was there. Supplies were there. Machinery was in operating condition. All signs indicated a hasty departure.

  “They left just before lunch,” Doctor Walter said in the mess room. “The food is still here, laid out for them.”

  “All we’d have to do” Captain Front said, “is close the airlock, start the air machines and take over. The supplies would last us indefinitely. I can understand that they might find reasons to abandon this base, but why would they pull out and leave all this stuff?”

  “The transmitters are in working condition,” a communications officer said. “It’d be easy to start the power station. Shall we call Earth and ask them?”

  The captain said, “Now that I think of it, we haven’t picked up any signals from Earth, have we?”

  There was an uneasy silence. The captain looked around at the faces that peered grotesquely at him through spacesuit faceplates.

  “Then we won’t call Earth,” he said, “until we’re certain just what might be there to answer us.”

  They spiraled slowly in toward the sun, probing, exploring, searching, constantly alert and cautious. They touched Neptune and Uranus and such moons as looked promising. They touched a half-dozen of the moons of Saturn. The bases, where they found them, were desolate and abandoned.

  Not until they reached the moons of Jupiter did they find the first dusty remnants of human bodies.

  “Whatever it was,” Doctor Walter said, “it happened quickly.”

  “Attack?” the captain asked.

  “I can’t believe it. An attack can take people by surprise but they’re not too surprised to know what’s happening. Some of them would take defensive measures. Most of them would act for their own safety. These people were stricken down in the everyday routine of living.”

  “Disease? Plague?”

  “It wouldn’t strike everyone at the same instant. This did.”

  “We might as well go on,” the captain said. “If it’s necessary, we can hit any of these places again on the way out.”

  From that moment they all knew. No one talked about it. No one even hinted at the cold fear that twisted within him. The communications men continued to search vainly for signals. The scientists carried on their observations. The ship’s officers rotated the scanner toward a far-off corner of emptiness and strai
ned to see a fleck of light that would be Earth when they came closer. And they all knew what they would find there.

  On Mars, it was no longer desolate bases. It was annihilated cities except that stone and mortar and steel were untouched. The people had been struck down as unsuspectingly as if a remote deity had suddenly decided upon doomsday. The flimsy atmosphere domes had lost their air and the buildings stood in excellent preservation, a futile monument to a wasted dream.

  And then there was Earth. Rolling green hills, majestic cities, awesome natural wonders, all familiar, like a long-forgotten love. Majestic cities of the dead. Towns and villages and hamlets and solitary dwelling of the dead.

  They had known what they would find, and they found it, and still were stunned.

  “It hit the whole solar system,” Doctor Walter said, snapping his fingers, “just like that.”

  Paulson objected. “There weren’t any bodies at the outer bases. Those people had a chance to get away—or at least to try.”

  The captain nodded. “I have a hunch that Venus and Mercury were caught. If so, that means it struck the solar system out as far as Jupiter’s moons. Something from the sun?”

  Walter pondered the suggestions, and shook his head. “Heat would have left traces. So would any kind of radiation I know of that could do this. How long has it been? We should be able to pick up the exact date.”

  They landed at New Washington. The specialists, the experts, went grimly to work. The archeologist who had come to probe eagerly some faded secrets of Earth’s ancient peoples found himself with the problem of an extinct interplanetary civilization. The botanist could only wonder at the survival of abundant flora when all fauna had perished. The bacteriologist, the chemist, the physicists, the military intelligence officer masquerading as a diplomat, all pondered the possible source of the catastrophe.

  Clyde Paulson, unwanted by the scientists and unneeded by his ship, found his way into the military records section and gazed disheartened at the mountainous files of films.