Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Louise Pryor andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction August 1959.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyrighton this publication was renewed.]
THE ALIENS
BY MURRAY LEINSTER
Illustrated by van Dongen
_The human race was expanding through the galaxy ... and so, they knew, were the Aliens. When two expanding empires meet ... war is inevitable. Or is it ...?_
At 04 hours 10 minutes, ship time, the _Niccola_ was well inside theTheta Gisol solar system. She had previously secured excellent evidencethat this was not the home of the Plumie civilization. There was no tunedradiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel--rockets wouldbe more than obvious, and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristicradiation-pattern--so the real purpose of the _Niccola's_ voyage wouldnot be accomplished here. She wouldn't find out where Plumies came from.
There might, though, be one or more of those singular, conical,hollow-topped cairns sheltering silicon-bronze plates, which constitutedthe evidence that Plumies existed. The _Niccola_ went sunward toward theinner planets to see. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarkson oxygen-type planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years.By the vegetation about them, some were a century old. On the sameevidence, others had been erected only months or weeks or even daysbefore a human Space Survey ship arrived to discover them. And thesituation was unpromising. It wasn't likely that the galaxy was bigenough to hold two races of rational beings capable of space travel. Backon ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races withtools and fire. Historically, that problem was settled when _Homosapiens_ exterminated _Homo neanderthalis_. It appeared that the samesituation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were Plumies.Both had interstellar ships. To humans, the fact was alarming. The needfor knowledge, and the danger that Plumies might know more first, andthereby be able to exterminate humanity, was appalling.
Therefore the _Niccola_. She drove on sunward. She had left one frozenouter planet far behind. She had crossed the orbits of three others. Thelast of these was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets revolving aboutit. It was now some thirty millions of miles back and twenty to one side.The sun, ahead, flared and flamed in emptiness against that expanse oftinted stars.
Jon Baird worked steadily in the _Niccola's_ radar room. He was one ofthose who hoped that the Plumies would not prove to be the naturalenemies of mankind. Now, it looked like this ship wouldn't find out inthis solar system. There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. Fromhere on, it looked like routine to the next unvisited family of planets.But meanwhile he worked. Opposite him, Diane Holt worked as steadily, herdark head bent intently over a radar graph in formation. The immediatejob was the completion of a map of the meteor swarms following cometaryorbits about this sun. They interlaced emptiness with hazards tonavigation, and nobody would try to drive through a solar system withoutsuch a map.
Elsewhere in the ship, everything was normal. The engine room was a placeof stillness and peace, save for the almost inaudible hum of the drive,running at half a million Gauss flux-density. The skipper did whateverskippers do when they are invisible to their subordinates. The weaponsofficer, Taine, thought appropriate thoughts. In the navigation room thesecond officer conscientiously glanced at each separate instrument atleast once in each five minutes, and then carefully surveyed all thescreens showing space outside the ship. The stewards disposed of thedebris of the last meal, and began to get ready for the next. In thecrew's quarters, those off duty read or worked at scrimshaw, or simplyand contentedly loafed.
Diane handed over the transparent radar graph, to be fitted into thethree-dimensional map in the making.
"There's a lump of stuff here," she said interestedly. "It could be thecomet that once followed this orbit, now so old it's lost all its gasesand isn't a comet any longer."
* * * * *
At this instant, which was 04 hours 25 minutes ship time, the alarm-bellrang. It clanged stridently over Baird's head, repeater-gongs sounded allthrough the ship, and there was a scurrying and a closing of doors. Thealarm gong could mean only one thing. It made one's breath come faster orone's hair stand on end, according to temperament.
The skipper's face appeared on the direct-line screen from the navigationroom.
"_Plumies?_" he demanded harshly. "_Mr. Baird! Plumies?_"
Baird's hands were already flipping switches and plugging the radar roomapparatus into a new setup.
"There's a contact, sir," he said curtly. "No. There was a contact. It'sbroken now. Something detected us. We picked up a radar pulse. One."
The word "one" meant much. A radar system that could get adequateinformation from a single pulse was not the work of amateurs. It was theproduct of a very highly developed technology. Setting all equipment tofull-globular scanning, Baird felt a certain crawling sensation at theback of his neck. He'd been mapping within a narrow range above and belowthe line of this system's ecliptic. A lot could have happened outside thearea he'd had under long-distance scanning.
But seconds passed. They seemed like years. The all-globe scanningcovered every direction out from the _Niccola_. Nothing appeared whichhad not been reported before. The gas-giant planet far behind, and theonly inner one on this side of the sun, would return their pulses onlyafter minutes. Meanwhile the radars reported very faintfully, but theyonly repeated previous reports.
"No new object within half a million miles," said Baird, after a suitableinterval. Presently he added: "Nothing new within three-quarter millionmiles." Then: "Nothing new within a million miles ..."
The skipper said bitingly:
"_Then you'd better check on objects that are not new!_" He turned aside,and his voice came more faintly as he spoke into another microphone."_Mr. Taine! Arm all rockets and have your tube crews stand by in combatreadiness! Engine room! Prepare drive for emergency maneuvers!Damage-control parties, put on pressure suits and take combat posts withequipment!_" His voice rose again in volume. "_Mr. Baird! How aboutobserved objects?_"
Diane murmured. Baird said briefly:
"Only one suspicious object, sir--and that shouldn't be suspicious. Weare sending an information-beam at something we'd classed as a burned-outcomet. Pulse going out now, sir."
Diane had the distant-information transmitter aimed at what she'd saidmight be a dead comet. Baird pressed the button. An extraordinary complexof information-seeking frequencies and forms sprang into being and leapedacross emptiness. There were microwaves of strictly standard amplitude,for measurement-standards. There were frequencies of other values, whichwould be selectively absorbed by this material and that. There werelaterally and circularly polarized beams. When they bounced back, theywould bring a surprising amount of information.
They returned. They did bring back news. The thing that had registered asa larger lump in a meteor-swarm was not a meteor at all. It returned fourdifferent frequencies with a relative-intensity pattern which said thatthey'd been reflected by bronze--probably silicon bronze. The polarizedbeams came back depolarized, of course, but with phase-changes which saidthe reflector had a rounded, regular form. There was a smooth hull ofsilicon bronze out yonder. There was other data.
"It will be a Plumie ship, sir," said Baird very steadily. "At a guess,they picked up our mapping beam and shot a single pulse at us to find outwho and what we were. For another guess, by now they've picked up andanalyzed our information-beam and know what we've found out about them."
The skipper scowled.
"_How many of them?_" he demanded. "_Have we run into a flee
t?_"
"I'll check, sir," said Baird. "We picked up no tuned radiation fromouter space, sir, but it could be that they picked us up when we came outof overdrive and stopped all their transmissions until they had us in atrap."
"_Find out how many there are!_" barked the skipper. "_Make it quick!Report additional data instantly!_"
His screen clicked off. Diane, more than a little pale, worked swiftly toplug the radar-room equipment into a highly specialized pattern. The_Niccola_ was very well equipped, radar-wise. She'd been a type G8 Surveyship, and on her last stay in port she'd been rebuilt especially to huntfor and make contact with Plumies. Since the discovery of theirexistence, that was the most urgent business of the Space Survey. Itmight well be the most important business of the
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