Son of the Stars

by Raymond F. Jones

He hoped it would be as easy at the ship. It wasn’t. The paunchy guard there blocked the hatchway like an immobile plug.

  “Permission was for one entrance, kid. Not for any old time you pleased.”

  “Will you call the General,” said Ron, “or do I have to go all the way back to town to get him on the phone?”

  “I guess we can call him—if we can raise him. What shall I say you want to go in for?”

  “Tell him I’ve come for Clonar.”

  “I want to get out of this uniform, kid, but not that way!”

  “He’s been hiding under your noses all the time. I can show you.”

  “Maybe I will tell that to Gillispie,” the guard said slowly. “That would be about the best way I know to get you out of our hair for good.”

  Ron shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  He followed down into the interior of the ship, where a radio room had been set up for communication with the Air Base. It took a few minutes to get the General. But when the guard finally told him what Ron had said, an explosion shook the speaker until it rattled in the panel.

  “But we know this isn’t true!” the guard protested when quiet reigned again. “We’ve searched the ship—”

  “You can be sure it’s true if Ron Barron says so,” said Gillispie evenly. “That boy happens to hold more in his skull than any twenty so-called top sergeants assigned to this base. Follow him and observe how careful the search of your men must have been in order to have overlooked what was probably a very obvious hiding place.”

  Red-faced, the guard turned away from the panel as Gillispie cut off.

  “You heard, super-boy, let’s go.”

  Ron suppressed a grin and followed Pete out the door and down the long corridors toward Clonar’s hiding place. He pounded on the panel there and yelled.

  “Clonar! Clonar—this is Ron.”

  Abruptly the door in the ceiling dropped and the guard stood with his mouth open as Clonar’s face appeared above them.

  Clonar looked startled and uncertain as he saw the guard.

  “It’s all right,” said Ron. “Everything is O.K.”

  Clonar hesitated, glancing from one to the other. “You’ll have to help me with my equipment, Ron. I’ll bring it up here.”

  He disappeared and returned four times, lining the cases at the edge of the opening. Then he passed them down one by one to Ron and the guard. Lastly, he swung himself down. Pete gave a yelp of welcome and plastered his front paws against Clonar’s shoulders.

  For a moment Clonar bent down and pressed his face against the shaggy head. He rubbed Pete’s neck and shoulders hard between his hands as if his hunger for friendship could be satisfied in the dog. When he looked up, Ron had the momentary impression that there was the glistening of moisture in his eyes.

  The guard made no comment whatever except to eye the hidden panel opening in disgust. He took up his share of the cases and led the way down the corridor.

  When they were outside the ship Ron stopped and gazed up the hillside.

  “Would you mind letting a man help us to the car?” he said.

  “I’ll help,” the guard grunted. “Come on, let’s go.”

  In the car, Ron and Clonar sat a moment in silence. “It’s good to have you back with us,” said Ron.

  “It’s good to be back,” Clonar breathed. But his eyes were upturned. “You’d never know the stars were so far away, would you?”

  Ron started the car and drove down the hills to the town. On his own street, he glimpsed the house from a distance and saw that the light was on in Clonar’s room and the windows were open to let in the cool night air.

  George Barron met them as the car pulled up. “Welcome home, Clonar,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Thank you, sir. It’s like coming home—almost.”

  “We can leave your equipment in the car,” said Ron. “It’ll be locked up.”

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Barron looked up with a start as they came in. Watching her closely, Ron saw her stiffen—and then her frozen pattern of behavior toward the alien and unknowable melted before the despair and loneliness in Clonar’s eyes.

  “It’s very good to have you back with us,” she said.

  Ron remembered the day when Clonar had said, “I hope someday your mother will like me.” He caught Clonar’s eye now and they smiled at each other, aware that the day had come.

  She indicated the food she had prepared on the table and he sat down and turned hungrily to it.

  “We’ll be off to bed now,” said George Barron. “See you in the morning, boys.”

  A moment later the telephone rang and Ron answered. It was Gilhspie.

  “I just wanted to check if this story of Clonar’s being found was on the level.”

  “It is. Want to talk to him?”

  “No. I’ll take your word for it. I want to offer my congratulations. When you get your ‘greetings’ you might remember the Air Force. We could use a man like you.”

  “Thanks, General. But there’s more to this. I’ve got another deal on.”

  He told Gilhspie then about Clonar’s need and the offer to exchange data on the faster-than-light wave generator. He heard Gillispie’s breath suck in deeply.

  “I’m in hot water already, you know,” said Gilhspie.

  “Where is this going to end? Am I going to get anything more out of Clonar? Do we get to examine his ship?”

  “Clonar wants nothing more than to go home right now. He’ll probably leave his ship without another thought if he gets a chance to get away. Beyond that, I’ll get all the technical information he’s willing to give me freely in the time left to him—and I’ll pass it along if you’ll let us have access to the radio lab.”

  “All right. It’s a deal. When do you want to come out?”

  “First thing in the morning.”

  By six o’clock the car was backing out the driveway as the sun topped the eastern hills. Ron and Clonar headed out of town and beyond the narrow valley to the broad plain beyond, where the Air Base was located.

  Clonar breathed the sharp air with obvious enjoyment, and admired the mechanism of the car.

  “How would you like to drive?” said Ron suddenly. “I’d like it very much.”

  Ron pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. They exchanged places and Ron explained briefly the operation of the controls.

  Clonar started off slowly, his hands relaxed and sure upon the steering wheel. In a few moments his skill seemed the equal of Ron’s for all his experience in driving.

  “Is there anything that you can’t learn in ten seconds flat?” said Ron.

  “We are trained to do things this way.”

  “How can you train to do something you don’t even know you’re going to be called upon to do?”

  Clonar smiled. “It’s like providing a workshop with every tool that may ever be needed instead of waiting until a given job comes along and then assembling the tools one by one. That is about the best analogy I can give.

  “From what you have told me I gather that your school systems simply put into the mind a few elementary facts that will take care of most of the commonly met requirements. They make no attempt to train the mind to meet new requirements.”

  “That’s about it,” said Ron. “What a system yours must be! How I’d like to get me some of that!”

  “We begin training when we are less than a year old—corresponding to your time. Our basic education consists of acquiring the tools with which to think and act, not the assembling of a few facts and the learning about tools and jobs.”

  Ron leaned back, speculating what the human mind might be able to accomplish if it were trained under such a system. He had the evidence at hand in Clonar—Clonar’s learning in two days as much English as an Earthman would acquire in six months of heavy study, his driving the hotrod with a skill as great as Ron’s after a minute or two of learning.

  The silver motes of jet ships appeared in the sky and th
ere began to appear on the horizon the sprawling buildings of the base and the great radio towers looming at its edge.

  Gillispie met them in the office he was using during his stay at the base. He rose to greet them and shook their hands.

  “I’m glad to see you again, Clonar,” he said.

  “It’s good to be out of prison,” Clonar answered, not attempting to conceal his bitterness over his previous association with the General.

  Gilhspie looked at him for a long time, his face solemn. “Some day I wish that you and I could understand each other, Clonar.”

  And then he turned swiftly and indicated chairs.

  “Hornsby has been notified and a lab has been prepared for your use. You may use such transmitter facilities as you need in exchange for information on your communication system. Is that satisfactory?”

  Clonar nodded. “I should like to begin work at once.”

  Gillispie led them out of the building and across the sandy stretch to the massive radio laboratory. There, Hornsby greeted them dourly.

  “This is a little different from last time.” Ron could not resist it. “This time we are using your equipment!”

  Hornsby glowered and turned away toward the section that had been cleared for their use.

  “Here’s your working space,” he said. “Meter equipment is in the storeroom. Transmitters will be shown you by the sergeant who will be assigned to help you. I trust the one you use will not be completely useless afterwards.”

  Ron chuckled. “Why not? Clonar’s was when you got through with it.”

  He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but the purpling of Hornsby’s face was a delight to behold.

  “I’ll send the sergeant in.” He stalked away.

  Gillispie was grinning faintly. “You had better not try that too often. The man is liable to burst a blood vessel. He takes himself pretty seriously.”

  “Don’t we all?” said Ron.

  “No,” Gillispie said cheerfully, “not all of us. We simply try to do our job the best way we know how. Someday you will understand that, Ron.”

  “Maybe I’m beginning to understand it a little bit now.”

  They spent the rest of the morning in the company of the sergeant who was assigned to them. He showed them the available equipment and the giant, experimental transmitters being tested there.

  Clonar insisted on examining each of these in great detail. The process was slow because it was necessary for Ron to explain many of the technical terms with which Clonar was unfamiliar. But by noon he had made his choice. A giant, hundred kilowatt, high-frequency transmitter being designed for communication with Air Force bases throughout the world.

  The sergeant whistled as Clonar made his selection. “You would take the prize baby on the base,” he said. “I hope you don’t expect to rebuild this in a couple of afternoons.”

  “I selected it because it will require the least modification of any of the sets you have.”

  After lunch, they brought the cases from the car into the laboratory. Then they began to settle into what looked like a long routine.

  A correlation had to be set up between the power units and all electrical values of Clonar’s system and Ron’s so that they could be understood. For Ron this appeared to be a tremendous task, but Clonar’s memory made it almost trivial for him. A thing once explained was forever understood.

  As evening drew on Clonar seemed satisfied that he was reasonably well acquainted with the units used by Earthmen.

  “We’ll set up my generators now,” he said, “and see what will be required to feed them into the transmitters. I’ll set up my receiver for a check. You’ll be able to hear the signal from my fleet.”

  Ron and the sergeant merely watched while Clonar’s swift fingers began setting up the equipment. After a half-hour’s work, he seemed satisfied and then prepared his receiver. This required a power modifying circuit, which he set up on a breadboard layout, before plugging into the wall outlet.

  Without any warm-up time, there came a satisfying hiss from the speaker as if some powerful carrier wave were tuned in. Clonar adjusted the controls and waited a moment.

  There burst from the speaker a swift, alien sound. Ron recognized it, for Clonar had given him demonstrations of his native tongue. For a moment he thought Clonar was going to cry as he stood listening.

  The sergeant muttered under his breath. “That stuff’s not coming from ten light-years away! You’ll never make me believe that.”

  “But it is,” Ron whispered. “You’ve got to take his word that it is.”

  Then he saw the paleness of terror fixed upon Clonar’s face.

  “What is it, Clonar? What’s happened?”

  “I must not have heard it all the first time.” Clonar turned to him as if in a daze. “The message says now that the fleet is preparing to leave this sector and abandon the search. It says the watch will be maintained for only nine more days!

  “I can’t stop now. I’ve got to make them hear me. Ron, stay with me tonight and help me!”

  Chapter 17 An Alien Forever

  They worked until well past midnight, and were back again at six in the morning. Ron’s mother protested, but when Clonar told her in his own words the message he’d heard, she caught the urgency of their task.

  They worked eighteen hours a day for the next two days modifying the tuning circuits of the transmitter to accept the wave form of Clonar’s generator.

  Gillispie came around the second day and looked over the work they were doing. Ron told him what Clonar had heard from the fleet. He turned on the receiver to let Gillispie hear it himself.

  “It’s from ten light-years away,” said Ron. “It’s hard for the mind to get hold of that.”

  Gillispie glanced into the case of the instrument at the components that bore no resemblance to any Earthly mechanisms.

  “I’m glad for Clonar’s sake,” he said. “But for my own sake, I had hoped that he would fail. We need such knowledge as his. We need to know this and a hundred thousand other things.

  “I came over to talk to him about the possibilities of further commerce between his people and ours. Have you said anything along those lines to him?”

  “Yes. I thought of it, too. Clonar said it’s utterly impossible. In the first place, we are too far away, even by their standards of travel. There is no commerce that would be profitable to them to conduct at this distance. The purpose of their fleet in this area was purely exploratory, and their visits will not be repeated.

  “As for giving up their technology to us, Clonar says no on that score, too. He points out that our technology is already so far ahead of our knowledge of the humanities that we are on the verge of disaster. He is willing to release the principles of his communication system and a few other gadgets, but such things as the power plant of the ship are out of the question. You could not force that out of him.”

  Gillispie’s jaw muscles knotted hard. “I’m not convinced that we aren’t fools for failing to try it.”

  “Our tragedy,” said Ron, “is that they are a hundred million light-years away—and from this distance we have to envy them in their civilization that is a hundred thousand years ahead of us.”

  Although he was familiar with the basic principles of the huge transmitter, Ron had, of course, never worked on a piece of equipment this size before. With the assistance of the sergeant, he had to refer constantly to the massive volume of instructions and the intricate schematic diagrams. The details of this technical information had to be relayed to Clonar bit by bit as he added modifying components to the tuning circuits.

  It was made increasingly difficult by the fact that Ron had no knowledge of exactly what Clonar was trying to do to the equipment. Clonar’s urgency was too great for him to indulge in long explanations at this time. He asked for information in terms of voltages, currents, and electrical values of the existing components. Most of the actual reassembling he did himself, delegating only a fraction to Ron and the serg
eant.

  During their short pauses for lunch Clonar kept his receiver on, listening over and over again to the search message from his fleet. Day by day, the remaining time of search was shortened. It was like a drug, Ron thought, that kept Clonar charged to a fever pitch of activity.

  He wondered, however, how much this hectic activity contributed to Clonar’s efficiency. Increasingly, he detected slips and boners that were apparent even to him. He wished unhappily that he could carry more of the burden of the work. He tried to persuade Clonar that he could do it, but a few trials showed that it was slower in the long run.

  Near midnight of the third day at the base, they reached the end of the first stage of the work. The modified transmitter was ready for its first check with the power on, and the wave generator replacing the conventional oscillator.

  At Clonar’s signal, the sergeant turned on the filament power and let the big tubes warm up for twenty minutes. Then, stage by stage, plate power was applied and the meters carefully checked. They reached the final power stage where six giant water-cooled tubes fed the antenna.

  They watched meters swing over as the power came on. But the needles didn’t stop at operating indexes.

  Ron, watching behind the protective cage, saw the plates glowing, surging into brilliant cherry, then white.

  “Shut it down! The plates are burning up!” he cried.

  The sergeant leaped for the STOP button on the panel, but he was far too late. A sharp hissing burst from the power stage, and the tubes darkened and died.

  The three of them stood staring after the power had been cut.

  “The overload relay should pick now to conk out,” muttered the sergeant. “Four of the bottles gone-fifteen hundred bucks apiece at Government contract price.”

  “That does it,” said Ron. “We’ve been pushing too hard. When we check the relays, I’m willing to bet we’ll find it’s our own fault. We’ve got to quit, Clonar. Tomorrow there’s no work at all for us. We’ll botch the whole job if we push it like this.”

  “Ron, there’s so little time—you don’t understand.”

  “The bulk of the labor is done—if we don’t wreck it by pushing too hard. It’s only a matter of refinement from here out. We’ve got to have the gray matter perking for that. No work tomorrow.”