by Jerry
“Oh, I don’t know,” Moore said. “We’ve got a few more tricks up our sleeves. Democracy, for instance. We made it work over an entire planet—why not the stars, too? And then there’s the Golden Rule. . . .”
Shapuriq only looked puzzled.
WINNER TAKE ALL
Ross Rocklynne
Commander Joseph Marker was in love with planet Earth. He considered his wife, children and home to be perfection. He had tender feelings toward the violets under the ravishing lilac trees in his back yard. He furthermore had a great affection for, and a deep understanding of, all his neighbors; had no fault to find with the lowliest human being. Nothing on Earth could bring fault-finding into his usually fault-finding gaze.
The exception being Ship Co-ordinator Whitsey.
In a word, Marker, his crew, and the Colonial Planet Survey Corporation spaceship Apollo-1, were gone from Earth three years.
Earth had become blameless heaven, space an ink nightmare.
“So get yourself a planet,” Whitsey remorselessly was telling Marker over the Leaper, which afforded tenuous communication between ship and Earth, “and you can come home.”
“There aren’t any!” Marker snapped. “I told you, this is the original empty apple barrel!”
“It’s got a bottom somewhere,” Whitsey observed mildly. “You’ll come across a stellar system. Maybe. And find a planet. Maybe. And besides—”
Remarkable how easy it was for Co-ordinator Whitsey, surrounded by the blessed comforts of Earth, to get tough!
“—the Colonial Planetary Survey Corporation can’t sink a fortune into an expedition without drawing a return. That’s axiomatic. I would suggest you find a planet.”
Marker burned. Before taking over the Apollo-1, Marker himself was Co-ordinator, and for eight years directed the hundred-odd Survey ships in their sifting of the interstellar sphere for new planets to sop up the population overflow of the Solar System. These planets, depending on their usability, were sold for varying prices to population groups, or to other Corporations for development and subsequent resale.
Because there was more money in field work, and because he did need a vacation from Earth (he thought) and from his family (he thought) and because (he thought) he could make a quick killing, and return to Earth after mere months in space with a planet and a big bonus—because of these things he had let the slick-talking commander of the Ursus—Whitsey himself—get him into the mood of taking out a ship.
The Office had been agreeable, and there was some talk that Marker would take over his co-ordinating post when he returned. But three years had passed. Whitsey had had the chance to work himself in solid. In spite of this, Marker still considered himself Co-ordinator in absentia. He had a hunch Whitsey did, too.
He had long since decided he didn’t like Co-ordinator Whitsey. He looked with displeasure on the younger, smoother, somewhat mocking face, the only unlovable thing on Earth.
“I know now why you egged me into taking a ship out,” he grunted sourly. “You already had it arranged with the Old Man to take over my co-ordinating job. Well, I’m giving myself two or three months more out here. By that time I’ll know you engineered me into an empty Sack—where there aren’t, never were, and never will be, any planets. Then I’m coming back to my old job.”
“And the violets in your back yard,” commented Whitsey dryly, having heard the details of Marker’s growing nostalgia for Earth. Then his lips thinned. “Don’t forget, Commander, if you return without my authorization, you’ll be thrown out of the Office. And if you return with authorization, but without a planet, you’ll be stripped down to office clerk.”
Marker scoffed, with a confidence he did not feel. “When the Old Man understands you framed me,” he stated, “he’ll square things up. You’ll be out on your ear.”
All Whitsey did was grin mockingly.
At that moment, the ship intercommunicator blew a short, sweet pip of sound. Marker grabbed the callback with a knobby fist. Second-in-Command Alex Jorey, from the Navigation Room, began talking at him with something more than his usual fatted lethargy.
Marker’s eyes, overhung by the heavy red fringe of brow, glittered with satisfaction. Finally he hung up and twisted his lips at Whitsey.
“There goes your little pipe-dream of keeping me out in space forever,” he said. “Alex Jorey just tell-taled a G-2 star. There’s a drift of Sack-dust between us, but the star is blowing out the same all-wave static the Sun gives off—with an interesting off-beat which probably means a planet.”
Whitsey’s breath sucked in almost imperceptibly. Then he got his young face back in shape again. “Congratulations,” he said dryly. “Pip me if you raise a planet.” He signed off.
One planet, a gay, starkly green little world frisking with busy energy about its mighty parent.
Marker, staring with astounded eyes, had the feeling that this audacious pair danced each for the entertainment of the other. He felt, in addition, a faint belligerence, and a fainter premonition. These two owned the Sack—not the Apollo. Grumpily, he ordered the ship back to free-space drive and with not much feeling of exaltation further ordered atmosphere-cut.
The Apollo-1 sank heavily down on its repelling field. The breezy gales of a healthy planetary wind system whipped about the ship. It did not take many hours of cross-hatching the latitudes and longitudes to see that here was a world made for human colonization and exploitation.
To Marker’s intense disappointment, the planet had intelligent inhabitants. Sourly, Marker again called Whitsey.
Whitsey nodded, with some evidence of relief. “The presence of inhabitants,” he said smoothly, “extends your task a bit. You say their cities are of a rural, unmechanized type, that they practice agriculture and tend small herds of domestic animals. Very well, it will be necessary to contact government representatives, if there are such; it will be necessary to open communications. Arrangements must be made to secure their co-operation in opening the planet for the—er—benefits to be had from human colonization.”
“I’ll secure their co-operation, all right,” Marker growled.
“You shall not use weapons, Commander,” Whitsey said sternly. “Tactics of eliminating a population to gain possession of a planet have of late met with considerable furor from the popular press.”
Marker’s small eyes regarded Whitsey with disfavor. “That’s a new one,” he grunted. “When you had the Ursus I gave you carte blanche. Anything to get new lands. Now the tables are turned, you’re breaking your back to keep me from returning a profit and shoving you out of your job. Won’t work, Whitsey.” He signed off.
He was still vastly in love with the planet Earth, which seemed paradise enough for any man in his right mind. For a moment he toyed with the thought of blanketing the planet with Type A-12—or perhaps A-13, to do a good job—psyche-gas, which would selectively return intelligent beings to a brute status. The Office, always anxious to increase stockholders dividends, would put a hush-hush on the mess, would give Marker what for, but would privately work a bonus for him into the books.
Then he felt a sentimental pang of guilt. After all, they were people, probably had their own families, and a sense of beauty, if one could judge that from observing their peculiar, misty blue villages. And—Marker felt a squirming inside—they might even have, something analogous to violets in their back yards.
He gave orders to cut the gravities and land.
Never a subtle man, never given to indirection, Marker landed on a village street. He stood in the bridge bulge-port, which gave him a view in almost all four directions. The houses were uniformly composed of some slate material, and were uniformly sloppy in their construction. He sensed a disregard of the plumb-line. Yet, in the crazy leanings, which looked like something out of Mother Hubbard, a fascinating, giggling kind of beauty could be noted.
There were some wagons on the streets, drawn by starkly red, ballooned-quartered beasts some of which had four, some five, some six le
gs.
The town, extremely rural and sparse in nature, had come to a standstill. Two or three hundred inhabitants seemed greatly interested in the Apollo-1, and were moving with rapid prancing steps about it. Once in awhile one hopped by using a suddenly-appearing third or fourth leg.
“Definitely not humanoid,” stated Jorey, staring in fascination out of his fat enclosed eyes. “Insectoid maybe? How about those projecting knobs? Communication, maybe. No, they’ve got mouths—and faces capable of expression. They’re beautiful, Markey!”
“Please address me as ‘sir’ Mr. Jorey?” said Marker on a rising inflection. He felt his own irritation.
“Yes, sir,” said Jorey, bowing and scraping. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And yes, sir.” Then he stopped that to point with a fatty forefinger. A wagon drawn by a quartet of multi-legged scarlet beasts plunged down the street. As the dust of its stopping cleared, one of the creatures, a sash of red and purple knotted from the neck and again from the waist, was seen to be standing on the seat and waving its arms rapidly toward the ship.
“We’re in,” sighed Marker. “We’ll assume this is an official, perhaps the mayor. Follow me up, Mr. Jorey. We’re going to rush this thing through. I have the feeling we shall not be here long.”
“There are many ways fate could interpret this, sir,” said the fat, humble Mr. Jorey, but Marker blandly brushed the wisecrack aside. He sniffed. The A pollo-1’s airlock was open. In the air was the smell of growing things. Memory of Earth stabbed at Marker again. But now there was the problem of communication.
He was to discover that communication was no problem at all. The moment the big sliding airlock door in the side of the Apollo-1 rumbled back to expose Marker and the crowding crewmen, the being of the wagon hopped to the moist dust of the street and approached with all eagerness. Marker went down the gangplank, painfully breathing air that had an Earth-tang, pleasantly experiencing a Sol-type warmth on his burly, uniformed shoulders.
With many quick foot motions and lusty puffings, the creature stopped before Marker, its small flat eyes moving rapidly in the huge sockets. The puffing increased in tempo, whereupon a half-dozen slickly smooth stalks with milky white globes on the ends shot out.
“He shoots ’em under mechanical air-pressure,” marveled Jorey out of the corner of his mouth. Marker nodded. Each stalk grew from a tightly stretched half-balloon which merged with the creature’s body. The mechanism contained an element of comedy, but Marker was only reminded of the blow-snake toys his children played with—except, he thought glumly, after three years they weren’t children anymore.
Marker suspected the equivalent of a handshake when the milky white globes came in contact with his hands and head. He endured it for many minutes, while the populace, apparently much impressed, excitedly and accidentally blew out stalks of their own, or developed new legs or arms—to the accompaniment of eager puffing.
Finally the creature’s stalks popped back into his body, the pouches contracting with a sigh of escaped air. The expressive, almost transparent face showed what Marker thought was delight. The rose-lips moved experimentally, making garbled sounds which gradually assumed the English equivalent.
“At last!” the being cried eagerly. “We are discovered! We have long suspected there was more to creation than our disagreeable world.”
Marker refused to be dismayed. “This is true,” he agreed. “But your world is, on the contrary, a most agreeable one, being much like our own planet. But it needs developing. This is our reason for seeking you out.” He thereupon introduced himself and Jorey as well. The creature’s name, he learned, was Fashono, the planet itself was called “Lain,” which word was the equivalent of “dirt.” Marker had another pang. One could as well have called his own world “Dirt,” except for the unfortunate connotation of the word.
Eagerly puffing, Fashono listened to Marker’s description of Earth, his eyes delighted as Marker glibly and vividly described how colonization of Earth would raise the Lainian living standard to a fantastic high. He hopped up and down on a leg which blew out of the lower part of his body under the intensity of his excitement. Marker then suggested that perhaps a quick conference could be had with the rulers of Lain—?
“We shall have such a conference,” cried Fashono. “Immediately! This is too glorious an opportunity for us to miss. But first! We must quarter you and your men! You are tired of being cooped up on your mighty ship!”
Whereupon he turned and spoke in rapid garble to the puffing populace. They instantly dispersed and with rapid motions disappeared inside their mistily blue, crazily leaning homes. Moments later they emerged, many carrying small children, some loaded with possessions. Then fully half the village population melted away into the extensive jungle shrubbery bordering the village.
Marker was nettled. “We have no wish to make your people uncomfortable,” he said, squirming. “We are comfortable enough in our ship—”
But Fashono was insistent. “You are sorry for these people? They are nothing. Let them sleep in the woods and make out as best they can. Some of them may be attacked by the slor-beasts, but this is, of course, unimportant.”
“No?” thought Marker grimly. Now that he had come into contact with these simple people, he felt guilty and supremely sympathetic. After all, they couldn’t be much different in thought, feeling, and desire from his own kind. It was one thing to consider destroying a civilization from a distant point in space, and quite another from close at hand. Obviously these people were oppressed by their rulers. Marker’s conscience began to clear. Ordinarily, human colonization distorted alien cultures. Colonization of Lain would lift the inhabitants from slavery.
Reluctantly, Marker let himself be swayed, and dispersed his sizable crew to their new, individual quarters. Marker found his own house clean, gorgeously furnished with hangings and padded spindly chairs. Searching around, he was utterly surprised to note a complete absence of the use of metals. Yet tests had proved the planet abounded in such natural resources.
The conference took place an hour later, in Marker’s house. Fashono listened greedily to Marker’s proposals, and enthusiastically threw out his diaphanous arms.
“We shall welcome you,” he cried. “You may have the planet to do as you wish. A new era has come to our stupid peoples. How I have longed for this day!”
Marker said cautiously, “But do you represent all the other ruling officials of Lain?”
Whereupon Fashono explained that he was all the other officials of Lain. “Not that I myself am,” he explained hastily. “But we are—how shall I put the thought—together. We are—in communication. They think as I do. And how could it be otherwise? Such a glorious opportunity!”
Fashono, to show what he meant, blew out several stalks which he placed against Marker’s head. And Marker understood. He found himself touching the minds of at least seven hundred Lainians. They came from readily differentiated directions, were various in personality, and were officials. They were definitely not Fashono. Marker nodded. These people had amazing thought-powers; by evidence, they were able to pluck a new language out of a person’s head.
“Very well,” he said. “I’m satisfied. We then have your unqualified permission to bring our technologists to Lain. We can make plans to bring millions of Earth beings here to live side by side with your peoples so that we can raise your civilization to our level.”
“Unqualified!” insisted Fashono, tiny, looping eyes glittering. “You would like to inform your Office of this fact?”
“Yes,” said Marker determinedly, and removed himself to the Apollo-1 and the Leaper, which, by means of seven different sub-photonic particles which virtually leap-frogged over each other in ascending orders of speed down a light-beam, made instantaneous interstellar communication possible. Whitsey looked startled, disbelieving, and considerably put out.
“I’m suspicious,” he growled. “Better watch out. They’re too eager.”
“That’s their nature,” Mark
er said belligerently. “Don’t try to mess me up, Whitsey. You’d like to keep me out here another year. It bothers you to know I’ve got the planet sewed up—and by fair means, at that.”
Whitsey rubbed speculatively at his pointed chin. He said casually, “You were hit pretty hard by those Lainians being forced from their homes, weren’t you? But think a minute, Commander. Did you ever hear of a psychological quirk people have called ‘identifying’ ?”
“I am interested,” said Marker pugnaciously, “only in securing a planet for the Colonial Survey Corporation, Co-ordinator Whitsey! I am not interested in your attempts to sidetrack me from that aim for your own personal benefit.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Whitsey commented mildly. A taunting smile played around his lips. “You have my permission to go ahead with the papers, Commander. Looks like you’re having excellent sailing. All luck.” He signed off with a half smirk. Marker buoyantly returned to his house, only slightly disturbed by Whitsey’s remarks. Fortunately, he was astute enough to see through Whitsey’s hypocrisy.
He explained to Fashono that he now had official permission for the drawing up of the necessary paper, upon which Fashono begged Marker to come to his home for the evening meal. Marker complied reluctantly, taking Jorey with him. He and the waddling navigation officer followed after the prancing Fashono.
“Say,” Jorey said, pointing. “Isn’t that Fashono’s house, across the street?”
Marker observed that it was. “Then,” asked Jorey, “why are we walking toward the other end of the village, on this side of the street, to get there?”
Marker, lost in pleasant thoughts of his reunion with his family on Earth, shrugged indifferently. “Some custom,” he explained. “Let us not be concerned with small matters, Mr. Jorey, when large matters are to be taken care of.”