by Jerry
Cooper placed a hand on the face of a panel, and followed the metal structure deep into the ground to a device that must be the power source. It seemed to Cooper to constitute a controlled fusion reaction, but he could not be certain; the minds that had built it were too different from his. But the shell was of steel, and the steel contained trace amounts of sulfur as an impurity. Cooper gathered large numbers of the sulfur molecules into one area, and introduced them into the crystalline structure of the steel shell to form a flaw in the shape of a square measuring two centimeters on a side. Then Cooper went to his ship, and raised it.
AT an altitude of five miles he felt the touch of the magnetic beams on the hull of the ship, but only for an instant. He watched the boiling puddle of molten rock appear where the building had stood and spread over an area a mile in diameter. There was no explosion, only geysers of rock and a gentle licking of flames and climbing coils of heavy grey smoke. Cooper headed for the collection of Magellians he had found. He had covered less than five hundred kilometers when several Magellian ships joined him. He reached out to the ships and dipped into the occupants and found himself in the usual blackness. He had no warning at all when the orange electron beam danced from the third ship to the bow of his own. The bow was punctured before Cooper could strike an ionized beam of his own of predominately positively charged ions, and turn the electron beam back on the ship that had emitted it. The ship blew up, and Cooper shook his head. A human being would have resented the destruction of one of their fleet, and tried to do something about it. Not this race. And from what Cooper had seen on the ground, it was not a question of caution or fear. A Magellian seemed to strike out for some reason peculiarly his own, a reason not shared even by other Magellians.
Then a ship drifted closer to Cooper’s ship. It was fortunate that Cooper was alert and ready for the unexpected. The purple beam that danced over was a neutron beam, unaffected by electromagnetic radiation or plasmas or ions of any charge. The beam tore a hole in the side of the ship but Cooper tapped the energy in the ship’s reactor to amass nitrogen and oxygen right on the plate that was the source of the beam on the Magellian ship. The resulting scattered radiation tore out the side of the Magellian ship, and it plummeted to the ground. Immediately another ship pulled close and projected its own neutron beam. Cooper blew it out of the sky in the same manner. One after another the ships pulled close and went through the same procedure. It was the first time Cooper had seen the Magellians engage in any thing that resembled consistent activity, and he wondered. Could it be that they were curious as to how he handled the beam of neutrons? Cooper dipped into the remaining creatures, but he found nothing but the usual soft blackness. He withdrew and formed a heat sink, and when he had enough he melted the remaining ships. His own ship was riddled with holes. The absolute pressure in his ship was two millimeters of mercury, low enough to kill human being and Magellian alike, and Cooper resolved to repair his ship before the Magellians discovered that he could live under such conditions. Then he reconsidered, and one thing: became clear. The Magellians—at least those he had met so far—were not the slightest bit interested in any human characteristics. To a human being, such lack of interest was unthinkable. But these were not human beings.
Cooper flew straight to the city and let his ship down in an open area just outside. He sat for a moment and sensed the entire region, dipping into all living creatures. He found nothing familiar, save the unfathomable blackness, so he got out and walked toward the center of the group of structures.
IT was a sort of city, all right, a city devoted to manufacture. Much of it contained buildings housing great flat pans of liquid in which grew a green scum. It took Cooper hours to find what became of the green material, for the process did not follow a logical sequence of steps as judged by human standards. The end product was a long thin, spaghetti-like, brown rod measuring half a centimeter in diameter. Cooper stood over a roll of it, looking at it, trying to figure it out. The smell that rose from it was vaguely similar to the stench that pervaded the entire planet. Cooper concluded that it must be a food. He set out to see it eaten. When he finally did, only his reinforced mental stamina kept him from being violently ill.
Cooper had assumed that the vertical cleft in the front of the head of the Magellians was used for eating as well as for uttering the whining sounds. His only basis for such an assumption was that human beings were constructed in that fashion. It was being born in on Cooper that the entire background of his entire race was totally useless in arriving at a single sensible conclusion regarding the Magellians. In order to eat, a Magellian tucked a long strip of the tube up under one of the flaps of skin that encircled its body, and apparently absorbed it by some process akin to osmosis. Sometimes one of the creatures would wind a strip round and round its body, from just under the neck to the region on the trunk where the legs branched. Often, when lifting the flap of skin to insert a fresh piece, the remnants of the last piece, moist and putrid, could be seen. Cooper looked further and noted that coils of the tube rested everywhere. Food was apparently supplied free.
In fact, Cooper was unable to find any evidence of an economy based on an exchange of the fruits of work. None seemed to be poorer or wealthier than any other. All seemed equal in rank, wealth, and ability. But Cooper now knew better than to try to judge them with human standards, so he wandered around. On several occasions a passing Magellian flung itself on him. He found that it was not necessary to kill the creature; he could merely immobilize it, and the killing urge passed after a few minutes; the creature then simply got up and went about its business. Cooper dared to wonder if somehow the constant killing served to keep the race strong by removing the weakest individuals. As he walked about the settlement, he saw enough fights to learn that every Magellian must be in a fight every so often. There could be no old or weak Magellians, only strong Magellians or dead Magellians. A human being could not survive for two hours in a settlement like this.
Toward dusk Cooper found the area reserved for the young. He circled in the region for hours in the relative darkness, and continued the next morning; it took him that long to find out what went on. A Magellian would wander in and deposit a mass of eggs in a huge water-filled container. Another would wander in and fertilize them, but it was all a haphazard process. The wrigglers from hatched eggs fended for themselves, and those who made it to a filled food tank had a chance to survive. As they grew they ranged further afield, and soon began eating the tubelike material that Magellians lived on. Any young that moved out of the area were killed. When the young were about half grown, the combat started, feebly at first, but quickly growing more vicious. Of those that reached half size, only half ever lived to emerge from the hatching area to take their places in the adult world.
COOPER needed two more pieces of information to complete in his own mind the analysis of the Magellian situation. He set out through the settlement, looking for the younger creatures. It was important to determine how they achieved their learning. The Magellians possessed a high degree of knowledge of the physical sciences, and so somewhere there must be the equivalent of a school. So Cooper searched, but found nothing. A full three days time he spent carefully going over the entire settlement, but there was nothing. He took more time to follow the progress of one of the young Magellians who wandered into the area where the solutions for growing the green scum were made up. He saw the young one start to busy itself at the outskirts of the activity. In half a day the young one was right in the midst of the bustling organization; apparently a full-fledged member of the technical team. Cooper was appalled at the speed of learning. There was no effort made on the part of any other creature to help it; it simply learned the complex tasks by being near them in some fashion that eluded Cooper. He did not concern himself with the learning process. It was there, it was efficient, it was swift. He need not understand it.
There was one other thing that Cooper needed to know. He walked out into the open and wondered if he had the right
to do what he had in mind. He looked at the sky, and it was a strange sky that looked down on him. He looked around, and strangeness met his eyes, one that even his mind could not penetrate. The horrible stench filled his nostrils, and as he thought about it he felt no trace of repulsion at what he had in mind. He acted.
He walked toward his ship on the outskirts of the settlement. As the structures and the abundance of creatures thinned, he swept up one of the creatures, then another, and on until he had six of the Magellians immobilized. He carried them along in the air, using the heat from the ground around him as his source of power. He climbed into the ship, stashing the Magellians carefully in a corner so as not to hurt them; he wanted them alive.
alert, and responsive. He reached out with a conducting beam and touched the sun, and adjusted it to draw on the proton supply.
HE lifted ship, but stopped at one kilometer altitude. The ship was still open from the holes in her hull, and he did not want the Magellians asphyxiated. No sooner had he stopped than he felt the touch of the traction beam they had used on his ship when he first came to the planet. Surprised, he traced it to a newly-built station, one that had not been there when he landed four days before. More skilled now, Copper tapped his proton supply and conducted a stream to his ship and then down the beam to the station where the beam was generated, and there at the tip of his conductor he brought about the fusion of hydrogen nucleii to form helium. He stirred his conductor over the surface of the ground, moving the point of fusion back and forth. Where the point of fusion hovered even momentarily, geysers of gaseous rock spouted skyward, and a borehole hundreds of meters deep appeared.
Cooper dragged his Magellians to the cabin window so they could see what was happening below. Making as certain as he could that their eyes saw, Cooper wiped his point of fusion in an ever-narrowing helix across the entire settlement. The Magellians watched it disappear in a flaming display of white fire and spouting smoke. Cooper released all hold on his Magellians to see what they would do. They did nothing. He dipped into each in turn and met the blackness. Cooper swept his point of fusion over larger regions of the planets, broadening it, and moving the ship out of the giant clouds of steam and smoke that began to reach it. His Magellians made no response. One turned away, then turned back. Another began to look around the ship. A third flung himself on a fourth in the customary manner. As far as Cooper could tell, the spectacle of their seething mother planet had not the slightest effect on any of them. He dropped them all out and rode his beam halfway to the sun.
Pulling great surges of power, Cooper sped his ship toward the nearest likeliest sun, not bothering to repair the holes in the ship. The sun was a late F-type star, and Cooper did not have to go near it to feel the blackness that met his probe. He turned to another star, and another until he had touched enough of them to tell with statistical certainty that life everywhere was the same. There was much to do.
COOPER headed back to the Milky Way, and to Knaol.
He sent ahead a message that he was coming, and they met him. Case looked at the ship and shook his head and said, “Why did you bother with the ship at all?”
Cooper said, “To impress you, I suppose.” And he smiled.
They waited.
Cooper said, “There is no way I know of that human beings will ever be able to communicate with Magellians. We can never learn to speak to them; they use a combination of sound and facial movements. There is no writing we can ever use, no signals, no way we can even let them know we want to communicate with them. It would be like trying to teach a flower to speak. They have no interest in us as living beings.”
They stared at him, and he continued, “I am unable to tell you anything significant about them or their culture; they are too different for us to understand in the slightest. They have no curiosity as we know it, no love of home, children, or family, no desire to help each other, no need for money or possessions, no love of nation, race, or planet. I think we will never be able to find out what motivates them. There is absolutely no area in which we have a trace of anything in common with them. At the same time, they are technically advanced, physically strong, and will unquestionably kill men whenever they meet them in the same manner as they kill each other.”
They looked at each other, and Case said, “What do we do about it?”
You know the answer. Quarantine. Human beings must stay away from the Magellanic Clouds. Never go near them. And if they should ever come to the Milky Way, they must be killed immediately. The distance is great enough between the galaxies that a war is unthinkable, at least for now. These two races must have no contact. They cannot possibly live together.”
They were quiet, then Case said, “Is that really the only answer, to so treat another intelligent creature?”
Cooper tapped the heat in the ground, so that their feet grew cold, and he dipped into each man’s mind, and he created there a running series of vivid scenes of much of the behavior of the Magellians. When it was over, the men were white and weak and terribly shaken; Cooper had forgotten the relative softness of the normal human mind.
WHEN they recovered Case said, “You’ve done well, and we’ll have to do it the way you describe.” He hesitated, and Cooper knew without dipping into his mind just what he was thinking. Case said, “Well, you’re work is done. We will put you back the way you were. Are you ready for the operation?”
“No.”
They stared at him soberly. Cooper said, “Think of how nice it will be for me. No more persuading people they need antifriction bearings, then finding the minerals, building the mines and the factories, overseeing the distribution, getting the economy geared to use my product. If I stay the way I am, I can take it easy for the rest on my life.”
They stared at him.
“There isn’t anything you can do about it. Those of you who are here are not aware of it, but when I was changed there was a certain weakness built into the medulla oblongata. In case I refused to be changed back one of your people has a device that will cause a breakdown of the weak area.”
They looked at each other. “But I found that area, and I repaired it. It is not weak any longer. Your device is useless.” Case said, “Come on, Cooper, let’s get the operation over with.” Cooper smiled at him, and turned to the others and said, “I want to warn you. Be very careful about doing this to a man. You can’t really control him, and he can be dangerous. I could take apart your entire solar system in the next ten seconds and your device is powerless to do anything to stop me.”
Case tapped him on the shoulder as he turned away saying, “Come on, Cooper. We don’t put our trust in devices. We put our trust in men.”
When he said that, Cooper knew the human race would forgive him when it found that there were no Magellians in existence any more.
THE three-minute alarm rang, and Jim Cooper walked to his acceleration couch. He strapped himself in and looked at his watch. A full minute before takeoff to Malish. A fly buzzed past him, then returned and sat on his knee. He loosened one hand, wondering to himself why the manifold marvels of science seemed unable to eliminate the common housefly throughout the galaxy. He shooed it away, and tightened the straps and waited for the heavy hand of acceleration. It came.
THE END
SPECIMEN
C.C MacApp
At first there was only gray awareness; then gradually, recognition of specific things; a throb in his head, aching joints, pebbles gouging into his back. One arm, folded across his chest, moved; and the feel of his skin made him think, I am naked. He puzzled over that for a while. Was there a condition other than nakedness?
HIS hand moved up to rub gingerly at a sore spot on his temple, and he thought, Electrode. His wits began to coalesce. His pulse grew stronger, quickened with hate. He forced himself to sit up, fought dizziness, and finally heaved himself erect to stand, sweating and gasping and sick, while strength dribbled into him. When he could lift his head he did so, to Curse them once more; seeing nothing, expecting
no response and getting none.
As usual, he was in a patch of ground baked gray-brown and hard by a bulging coppery sun, surrounded by a jungle the elephantine leaves of which stirred faintly in a breeze he could not feel. Dankness and fragrance mingled familiarly. He could recall a series of such awakenings, stretching into the past until they were lost beyond the hazed horizon of memory.
Another memory, like an alarm bell, made him crouch suddenly, then dart for a particular spot in the jungle wall. He strained to see into the shadows, threw an anxious look behind him, and reached for familiar handholds on the bole of a great tree. He hauled himself, panting with effort, upward until he was twenty feet above ground, then slumped in a crotch and tried to keep from retching with the agony in his lungs.
In a few minutes he was able to creep up the slanting limb to where, hidden in a clump of leaves, he could watch the clearing.
Creatures of many shapes and sizes moved in the trees around him, but they stayed away from him and it was in his mind that nothing which could climb this high would challenge him.
THE enemy he awaited came A fast not bothering with the stealth of which he was capable, but crashing through the brush and bursting into the open in full bounding stride. The broad head swung in a quick scrutiny that made the man crouch deeper among the leaves, then the enemy growled in frustration and padded slowly to the center of the clearing to sniff at the ground where the man had lain. He remembers well, the man thought; and despite the inescapable enmity, something in him reached out toward the tiger. That striped splended deadliness was of Earth, which could not be said of the trees nor of most of the creatures in them.