by J F Bone
Then came the Contact. An area was picked,—preferably an isolated backwater with a few inhabitants. The contact ship came straight in, collected a few dominant form of life, passed them through the analyser and educator, extracted all the pertinent physical and physiological data from their bodies and the thought patterns from their minds, planted a compulsion to cooperate, and turned them loose. Within hours the chain reaction triggered by the educator would extend to the entire community,—and then, loaded with vital information, the ship would leave for the BEE labs where the data would be processed and an Advance Party trained for further penetration. Contact phase normally took less than ten hours.
Borchardt grinned sourly. If things kept on going like they were, this particular Contact was never going to be consummated.
“Well, what do we do now?” Konev asked.
“Might as well turn in and get some sleep. They won’t be back tonight.”
“That’s been their pattern so far, but maybe they’ll change it? We stopped them pretty cold tonight. They hardly made expenses.”
“They work on a pattern,” Borchardt said. “One raid a night,—that’s all.
“They’ve left our heavy stuff alone so far. Maybe they’ll try for it.”
“I doubt it. There aren’t enough of them. Outside of the youngsters there aren’t more than a dozen natives in that village, and, besides, I don’t think that they’re really interested in cleaning us. They’re just robbing us for the fun of it, and perhaps because we apparently have more things than we need. They aren’t either vicious or warlike. Fighting this environment is a full time job. They’re just sharing our wealth.”
“They aren’t doing badly at it so far,” Vassily said grimly. “We’ve been here five days, and so far they’ve gotten away with two cases of concentrated protein rations, a case of powdered milk, both our handle talkies, two down sleeping rigs, a box of spare tubes, the tuner out of the Communicator, a hundred pounds of assorted tools and small stores,—and now the box of torch heads—”
“It was bad luck that we hit that outcropping on touchdown,” Borchardt said, “but that damn tundra hid it. If we hadn’t messed up the jet we wouldn’t have had to unload the fin, and we wouldn’t have tempted them.”
Vassily nodded. It was partially their own fault. Like all BEE personnel he was tolerant of the feelings of alien races. Tolerance was the Bureau’s middle name, an attitude that had been developed through the exploration and opening of half a hundred humanoid worlds. It paid off.
Tolerance and understanding had bred tolerance and understanding, and the Earth hegemony, recently translated into the Confederation, had through these two factors become the only major power in this section of the galaxy.
All things being considered, the BEE had a good record—and the men who served in the Bureau were proud of it. Somehow. they’d get out of this present jam with colors fixing.
BEE teams had been in worse. At least the natives were not hostile.
From the darkness outside came the sibilant hiss of the floater’s power plant. Vassily grinned. Now that the ruckus was all over, Doc was coming back. He had a good idea why Doc wanted to visit the village at night. He was a pacifist, a man who hated violence. Weapons, even when meant only in threat, left him physically ill. But Doc, too, was tolerant. Such things were done by the old timers, and he respected even though he didn’t agree with them. Doc, Vassily reflected, wasn’t so bad once you got to know him. But he was their sole dependence to get them out of this jam, and Doc was a pretty slender reed.
The floater came slowly into the light moving with the peculiar motion that gave it its name,—a stubby vehicle mounted on three fat sausage-shaped flotons that would carry it over almost any terrain. It stopped and the hissing died as Doctor Wilson Chang damped the powerplant and crawled stiffly out of the driver’s compartment.
His oriental face a mask of inscrutable calm, Chang pulled a small metal case out of the floater and handed it to Vassily. “Did you lose this?” he asked.
Vassily grabbed the case and opened it. “The heads!” he yelped joyfully. “Where’d you find them?”
Out there. I was coming up from the village when the fellow that stole them came down the trail. Your shot lit right behind him, and I was in front.
I guess he thought discretion was the better thing, because he dropped the box and took off up the slope like his private devil was chasing him.” Chang smiled. Those fellows certainly can run. They must have a terrific metabolic rate.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Vassily said happily, “but I’m sure glad to get these beauties back. I had visions of some native blacksmith hammering them into spear heads.”
“That’s probably what would have happened to them,” Chang agreed. “They have a great deal of trouble getting metal. It’s highly prized. Most of the hunters use bone spears in catching the fat fish that are the main source of their diet.” Chang scratched his head. “I should remember something about this sort of people. They are very similar to the Eskimoes on Earth except that they move much faster. They’re noncombative, live on a diet mainly consisting of proteins and fats, in an iceworld environment. Even their stone houses and gentleness are similar.”
“If we could only catch one of them,—” Vassily said.
“We could try to win their confidence,” Chang replied, “but that’s going to take time, and maybe it’ll never be done by us. They’re very shy.” He paused. “Their family life is communal as far as I can find out,” he said obliquely, “but I can’t see where that’s going to help us much.”
“You’re the doctor,” Vassily said.
CHANG nodded. He was. In addition to being an ecologist he was also a qualified doctor of medicine, a dual function that saved weight and expense in these fantastically un-remunerative preliminary explorations. He also had some extensive training in alien psychology. He understood these people well enough. The only trouble was that he couldn’t make the necessary first contact.
He cursed softly to himself in ancient Cantonese. He was supposed to be one of the bright boys, one of the lads who knew how to solve problems like this, but for nearly a week he’d been stumbling around trying to find the answer which he knew was there but which was obstinately eluding him. There were enough supplies to last a month, and the repairs were of a minor nature. There was nothing serious about their position. It was merely frustrating.
With a sigh he turned toward the ship and his quarters. A few hours sleep and another session with the ship’s remarkably complete microfilm library, and he’d be ready to try something else. It was a shame that the natives were so resistant to normal methods of capture. Like himself, they were tolerant,—but in a different way. Drugs didn’t work. Fear didn’t paralyze them. Exposure to the unknown didn’t result in superstitious awe. Gas didn’t work,—he’d tried that tonight while Borchardt and Konev were fighting off the raid.
He grunted with mild disgust. Five days and still no contact. It was almost unheard of,—and he had the bitter suspicion it would be the same story by the time their supplies ran out and the repairs were made.
Chang awoke to Vassily’s tenor voice singing a minor keyed love song. The big man was a sentimentalist, particularly when he was cooking. Planetfall was always a morale builder with Vassily Konev, for then he could exhume his preciously hoarded dehydrates and reconstitute them into flavorful dishes that smelt and tasted of Earth. Vassily was a born cook, and Chang wondered why the big man had ever taken the job of a space engineer.
“What is it this morning, Vassily?” Chang asked.
“Borscht,” Konev said happily, “with hard rolls, eggs a la Hadrian and Turkish coffee.”
“Soup?—for breakfast?”
“In Russia we eat borscht at any time.”
“In China the soup is with the dinner,—and why Turkish coffee?”
“I stored some sugar in the Number three sponson, and I found it last night. I had forgotten it was there. Besides, I like
Turkish coffee.”
“You hoard like a pack rat,” Borchardt said, “but the results at planetfall are worth it. But lay off the Turkish coffee as far as I’m concerned. I’ll take mine black. Sugar makes me sick. I’ve no tolerance for the stuff.”
Chang smiled. “Thank you so much, Dale,” he said. “The great light has at last dawned. You, my friend, have pushed the right button and the answer comes just like you said it would. Tonight we collect our first native. So today we had better build a small electronic pen, and get the manacles ready.” Chang’s smile vanished as he suddenly changed into the inscrutable oriental. “And, Vassily,” he continued, “do you know how to make fudge,—or perhaps sugar candy?”
“Why of course,” Vassily said.
“Do so then.—make up about two or three pounds of it.”
“What are you going to do, Doc? Lure them into that pen with a sugar trail?” Borchardt asked. “We’ve tried a variation of that, and it didn’t work.”
“This one will,—I hope,” Chang said. He didn’t say anything more and both Vassily and Borchardt held back their questions. The important thing was that Chang had an idea—and if he didn’t wish to publish it, they could wait.
THE short day passed rapidly. Vassily made up a dozen slabs of chocolate fudge, and wrapped them in the bright red eye-catching plastic that the natives apparently liked. Chang and Borchardt set up the corner stakes that generated the forcefields of the pen, and tested a dozen pair of gravitic manacles. Finally everything was ready. And as the cold orange ball of the sun dropped below the horizon, and the fanlights were turned on, the three men tried to act as normally as possible.
The red packages were piled upon the other gear, and Vassily set to work clearing out some of the crumpled duralloy that once was a stabilizer. The cutting torch hissed, flamed and sparkled as it ate through the stubbornly resistant metal. Borchardt stood alertly on guard while Chang puttered in and out of the ship as he customarily did during the early part of the evening.
Vassily turned off his torch and went to the supply pile. Picking up one of the packages of fudge, he opened it, broke the brown contents into three pieces and passed them around. Borchardt, who hated the stuff, munched on it with every evidence of enjoyment, while Chang and Vassily didn’t have to simulate pleasure. It really was good fudge, Chang decided as he finished the piece.
Suddenly there was a flash of movement around the periphery of the light and four figures dashed into the area with enormous speed. Borchardt leaped to his feet with a curse, dragging at his Kelly, but he was far too slow. The natives had gone, with only a trail of high pitched laughter to mark their passage.
“They took it,” Vassily said with satisfaction. “Now what?”
“Now we go get them,” Chang replied. “They usually eat part of their loot on the way back to the village, and with their metabolic rate, I don’t think we’ll have to go too far.”
They didn’t. The four natives were sprawled on the tundra less than a quarter of a kilometer down the trail to the village. They didn’t move as the Earthmen came up.
“Drunk! by God!” Borchardt swore, as he looked down at their thin, limp, oddly manlike bodies.
“Not drunk,” Chang said. “Here, help me get them in the floater. We’ll have to get them back to the ship. They might die if they’re not treated.” He bent over the natives and pulled open the skin garments that covered their chests. A jet hypo gleamed in his hand. It hissed softly four times, and Chang sighed. “I hope that’ll do it. This is a dangerous business. Now get those manacles on. If I’m right, they’ll be coming to in a few minutes. But I don’t think they’ll be any trouble.”
Chang was right. Contact was made quite simply, and the natives, stunned, bemused, and still a little unsteady on their feet, were turned loose to bring their fellows in tomorrow. The chain reaction had started and the BEE had a foothold on another world.
“What on Earth did you do?” Borchardt asked with heartfelt curiosity.
“It was easy. You gave me the clue, Borchardt. Actually, these people are much like Earth’s Eskimos. Of course, their appearance is different, but their environment is the same, and they’re humanoid,—which means that they have essentially the same metabolism as we do. I merely made an educated guess, and it paid off. These folks have been living all their lives on a high fat, high protein diet. They’re tolerant to it. If we tried the same thing, we’d probably die of acidosis. But with this tolerance they have little if any tolerance for carbohydrates. In the Eskimo it produces the same syndrome as excess sugar in a diabetic;—a diabetic coma. And with their faster metabolism it should appear faster.” Chang grinned. “It did,” he finished dryly.
THE END
TRIGGERMAN
The essential requirements of a first-class triggerman are two: that he know how to pull the trigger—and when not to!
GENERAL Alastair French was probably the most important man in the Western Hemisphere from the hours of 0800 to 1600. Yet all he did was sit in a windowless room buried deeply underground, facing a desk that stood against a wall. The wall was studded with built-in mechanisms. A line of twenty-four-hour clocks was inset near the ceiling, showing the corresponding times in all time zones on Earth. Two huge TV screens below the clocks were flanked on each side by loud-speaker systems. The desk was bare except for three telephones of different colors—red, blue, and white—and a polished plastic slab inset with a number of white buttons framing a larger one whose red surface was the Color of fresh blood. A thick carpet, a chair of peculiar design with broad flat arms, and an ash tray completed the furnishings. Warmed and humidified air circulated through the room from concealed grilles at floor level. The walls of the room were painted a soft restful gray, that softened the indirect lighting. The door was steel arid equipped with a time lock.
The exact location of the room and the Center that served it was probably the best kept secret in the Western world. Ivan would probably give a good per cent of the Soviet tax take to know precisely where it was, just as the West would give a similar amount to know where Ivan’s Center was located. Yet despite the fact that its location was remote, the man behind the desk was in intimate contact with every major military point in the Western Alliance. The red telephone was a direct connection to the White House. The blue was a line that reached to the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to the emergency Capitol hidden in the hills of West Virginia. And the white telephone connected by priority lines with every military center and base in the world that was under Allied control.
General French was that awesome individual often joked about by TV comics who didn’t know that he really existed. He was the man who could push the button that would start World War III!
French was aware of his responsibilities and took them seriously. By nature he was a serious man, but, after three years of living with ultimate responsibility, it was no longer the crushing burden that it was at first when the Psychological Board selected him as one of the most inherently stable men on Earth. He was not ordinarily a happy man; his job, and the steadily deteriorating world situation precluded that, but this day was a bright exception. The winter morning had been extraordinarily beautiful, and he loved beauty with the passion of an artist. A flaming sunrise had lighted the whole Eastern sky with golden glory, and the crisp cold air stimulated his senses to appreciate it. It was much too lovely for thoughts of war and death.
He opened the door of the room precisely at 0800, as he had done for three years, and watched a round, pink-cheeked man in a gray suit rise from the chair behind the desk. Kleinmeister, he thought, neither looked like a general nor like a potential executioner of half the world. He was a Santa Claus without a beard. But appearances were deceiving. Hans Kleinmeister could, without regret kill half the world if he thought it was necessary. The two men shook hands, a ritual gesture that marked the changing of the guard, and French sank into the padded chair behind the desk.
“It’s a beautiful day outside,
Hans,” he remarked as he settled his stocky, compact body into the automatically adjusting plastifoam. “I envy you the pleasure of it.”
“I don’t envy you, Al,” Kleinmeister said. “I’m just glad it’s all over for another twenty-four hours. This waiting gets on the nerves.” Kleinmeister grinned as he left the room. The steel door thudded into place behind him and the time lock clicked. For the next eight hours French would be alone.
He sighed. It was too bad that he had to be confined indoors on a day like this one promised to be, but there was no help for it. He shifted luxuriously in the chair. It was the most comfortable seat that the mind and ingenuity of man could contrive. It had to be. The man who sat in it must have every comfort. He must want for nothing. And above all he must not be irritated or annoyed. His brain must be free to evaluate and decide—and nothing must distract the functioning of that brain. Physical comfort was a means to that end—and the chair provided it. French felt soothed in the gentle caress of the upholstery.
The familiar feeling of detachment swept over him as he checked the room. Nominally, he was responsible to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but practically he was responsible to no one. No hand but his could set in motion the forces of massive retaliation that had hung over aggression for the past twenty years. Without his sanction no intercontinental or intermediate range missile could leave its rack. He was the final authority, the ultimate judge, and the executioner if need be—a position thrust upon him after years of intensive tests and screening. In this room he was as close to a god as any man had been since the beginning of time.
French shrugged and touched one of the white buttons on the panel.
“Yes, sir?” an inquiring voice came from one of the speakers.
“A magazine and a cup of coffee,” said General French.
“What magazine, sir?”
“Something light—something with pictures. Use your judgment.”
