This is another first extraterrestrial yarn, but with a difference since so much of it is John W. Campbell that I should have shared the by-line with him. The late editor of Analog, under the pseudonym Don Stuart, wrote quite a bit of s-f himself before taking over what was then called Astounding Stories. At the helm of the most prestigious magazine in the field, he began firing off letters to his favorite writers with astounding èlan. They would often run to half a dozen single-spaced pages of story ideas. In my time, I have received scores of these. This story is a result of one of the more lengthy missives.
And, oh, yes, that bit of business about the human mouth and how unique it is must be credited to the late Nobel Prize winner Herman “Joe” Muller, who was an avid science-fiction fan and with whom I corresponded in his final days. He was of the opinion that the type of material I was putting into my stories deserved wider circulation in mainstream magazines. I wrote back and sourly told him that I agreed but, unfortunately, the s-f magazines were the only ones that would touch my stories even with fire tongs. Happily, this isn’t so true anymore. Today such publications as Playboy run quite a bit of controversial science fiction. Upon the death of this great man, Mrs. Muller wrote, requesting the handwritten letters he had addressed me. They now reside in the museum dedicated to him and to his work.
—Mack Reynolds
* * * *
Franklin Monroe was in a state of euphoria.
For one thing, it was a superlative day. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day—sunshine, temperature, a certain cleanness in the air. It was a vintage day.
Besides that, he had escaped his guard and was on the town—or, at least, the countryside.
He went along, relishing it all. Relishing each patch of greenery; that colorful stone by the side of the path, the bird sounding its mad head off, that tree in full leaf.
Oh, it was a beautiful day, all right, the perfect day in which to escape one’s guard. The immediate thing was to remain at large. Franklin Monroe headed for the timber. In his haste, he failed to detect the weight loss when the gun he carried fell from his belt and to the path.
* * * *
The alien space scout did not descend on the White House lawn, Red Square, nor in the sea to be confounded by porpoises, nor yet in Australia to be confounded by kangaroos. Nor did the occupant have any idea of approaching the first higher life form he spotted and saying, “Take me to your leader.” His culture had no conception of leaders.
He chose a rather remote area and settled to ground unobserved.
It was a one-man scout, a most impressive product of an advanced technology, and its pilot was most surprisingly similar to Earth-side life forms. Perhaps the logical reason for this is that his assignment involved locating and making a brief preliminary exploration of planets potentially suited for trade with his species. He breathed air, imbibed water, assimilated carbohydrates and proteins, was reasonably comfortable at Earth temperatures and found the gravity tolerable.
Thus it was that he was mildly jubilant with Earth.
Only mildly, since over the aeons he and his colleagues had discovered that there are other things besides oxygen to breathe, water to drink, bearable gravity and temperatures—such things as rattlesnakes.
However, the point here is that he was most remarkably similar to life as we know it, in its higher forms, on Earth.
For, fond romantics to the contrary, it is most unlikely that elsewhere in the galaxy the evolution of life will duplicate that on Earth, finally to the point of producing vertebrates. Vertebrates are unique, indeed.
Take, for example, the manner in which we breathe air. It comes in through the mouth or nose, and inconveniently must share the same canal used for food. The snail, whose lung has a passage and opening distinct from the food passage, is better off. So also is the grasshopper which breathes through portholes near the organs to be aerated. But this is not the sole off-beat quality of the mouth. Besides serving for both air and food, it is also the most powerful weapon of most of we vertebrates and sometimes the most deft organ of manipulation. In addition, the mouth has the peculiar function of emitting sounds and is also used for expressing feelings through sneers, smiles, scowls and such. Yes, the mouth alone is most unique. An organ combining ingesting, breathing, chewing, tasting, biting, fighting, yelling, whistling, grimacing, murmuring love preliminaries and helping to thread a needle.
To expect an alien life form to evolve along such similar lines as to produce such an organ, is truly asking too much. Gentle reader, in your far dreams of far planets, hope not ever to kiss an alien mouth.
Nevertheless, our visitor was most remarkably similar to life as we know it.
So similar he hardly had left his vessel, after throwing on all automatics as prescribed upon making first landing on an alien world, when he met tragedy as he trod upon a rattlesnake.
Rattlesnake venom is poisonous stuff to we who are native to Earth, but to our alien and his different biochemistry it proved as sudden and violently deadly as botulin to our own. One millimicrogram would have killed him; he received a five-gram injection. There was instantaneous paralysis, followed by death so fast he scarcely felt the prick of the fangs before he stopped altogether. He carried a score of defenses against a hundred potential threats, and had time to utilize not one.
A family of hungry coyotes finished his remains and died themselves within the hour. While we of Earth find that the substances of practically all other organisms, animal, plant or microbe, found on our planet can be digested and used by us, at least after cooking, this is not to be expected of other life forms. They would not be able to use us as food, nor we them.
* * * *
Franklin Monroe had, as a matter of fact, seen spaceships before—on television.
However, this one was neither cigar-like, with fins to one end, nor yet saucer-shaped.
It was spherical and the alloy of which its shell was made gleamed in a way similar to mother-of-pearl. It was not meant to be beautiful, the alien life form possessed no sense of vision, but to the human eye it could hardly have been more so.
At first, Franklin Monroe could do nothing more than stare his fill of beauty.
The ship was quite fully automatic and was quite adequately equipped with emotion-pattern scanners.
Franklin Monroe approached, his mood one of euphoria still—a happy, friendly, exploratory mood, full if curiosity, of course. In fact, to the scanners, a most acceptable, full mood-pattern of an exploratory scout.
The portal, at the head of the ramp, remained open.
Franklin Monroe entered.
The ship could have been built to his specifications. The chairs and other furniture, if that is quite the term— they were for an alien life—were even to his size.
It was fascination upon fascination.
He touched here, there; fumbled here and there, at the control board. It was obvious, even to an untutored, Earth-side mind, that this was the center of the small ship.
And while the ship was cognizant of the fact that he didn’t have the logical-intelligence-knowledge pattern to be allowed to operate the controls, still there was no reason to bar him from various sensors.
So it was that of a sudden he felt his understandings projected a thousand feet above, and the Earth below to be observed. Not to be seen, but still thoroughly observed. Never, in all his years, had he experienced such as this.
He realized, vaguely, that it must have something to do with the levers, buttons, switches, with which he had been toying at the control board. He realized that he was still standing before that board. In fact, he could see it there in front of him.
But still, at the same time, he was a thousand feet above.
He wasn’t seeing, hearing, and most certainly he wasn’t feeling or tasting. But he was observing that which transpired below.
And up the path over which he had come, less than fifteen minutes before, he perceived his guard, hurrying along.
Panic struck him.
* * * *
Audrey Monroe, in a tizzy, knew that he must have come this way. Aside from the fact that this was his direction usually when he got out of her view, she could have spotted him from the windows of the cabin had he gone down hill, or over toward the lake.
Oh, the devil! The untrustworthy, little devil.
She was relieved when she found the toy plastic pistol on the path. At least, now she knew this was the way he had come.
She wondered how far he had got this time.
He could have been no more than fifteen minutes out of sight. She had put the roast into the oven and had started out to check on him. But then her eye had fallen upon a pair of shorts which needed a sewn button, a matter of certainly ten minutes, at most.
But ten minutes to a five-year-old boy! Good heavens, the little wretch could be halfway to the Canadian border.
More happily, he was apt to be squatting at the side of the path, observing a caterpillar or other insect, or improvising boats of leaves and twigs at one of the woodland streams.
She knew better than to call him.
He knew he had a spanking coming, and in his first reaction would possibly hide. And that led to a complication with young Franklin Monroe. The longer he hid from her, the more frightened he became, until the little fellow managed to scare himself into terror. She and Lew had found him once in the cellar, after five hours of calling and searching for him—frozen into terrified silence. Actually, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have been playing in the cellar, it was just that when he heard their anxious calling, he panicked.
Confound the little devil. She had to keep her eye on that roast. Lew was scheduled to arrive in the late afternoon. She had promised herself to surprise him. No prepared frozen dinners today, nothing whatsoever from the deep freeze, or even cans. Today he was going to discover that the modern woman was not so hopeless as all that.
She came up abruptly.
And immediately knew what it was.
There was no question whatsoever. This thing was not of Earth. It was obviously a vehicle. There had been enough in the press over the past twenty years about flying saucers and unidentified flying objects that any intelligent person with the ability to read would have reacted as did Audrey Monroe.
It lay athwart the narrow dirt path which led from the Monroe summer cabin up into the woods. There was a small clearing here, big enough for it to have landed, small enough so that an aircraft flying above would have had to be almost exactly over before being able to spot it.
It lay athwart the route Frankie had been taking. The only path Frankie could have been taking.
There was a ramp and an open portal at the top of it.
Squealing fear, she dashed—the female of her species, rescuing her first born. The terror was not for herself. She had no feeling whatsoever about herself. Down through the long millennia came the instinct that motivated her. She was Cro-Magnon woman, throwing herself at the saber-tooth in the defense of her young.
* * * *
The space scout had a greater defensive and offensive potential than the aggregate of all tigers that had ever lived, saber-tooth and otherwise. However, the culture which had produced it was mature.
It was doubly motivated. The new entity approaching it projected panic-fear-hate-of-the-dangerous-strange. And the sympathetic intelligent life it had already accepted into its bowels was projecting fear-of-pain-from-the-entity-without.
For Frankie Monroe knew perfectly well he had broken one of the numerous taboos that he hadn’t even known existed. His life was a series of discoveries of new taboos. It seemed almost unbelievable how many taboos a boy of five doesn’t know exist, until he breaks a new one.
He could hear his mother’s voice now, screaming. He had broken some terribly important taboo. Nothing could be more obvious than that he was going to be spanked.
The culture which had produced the pseudo-intelligent craft was mature. Its computers’ activities were stringently limited by built-in commands. It could not be aggressive, but it must do its utmost to protect itself and above all its living-intelligent passengers, on a purely defensive level—passive defense, unless acute external menace appeared. Only then was an absolute minimal defensive reaction permitted it.
Fast as Audrey moved, the ship moved faster.
The ramp disappeared into its interior. The lockway sealed itself immediately. The force field defensive web went up. And Audrey Monroe crashed into it, beating herself against the invisible.
She fell back and to the ground, her nose bleeding, a cut over one eye, dazed. For the moment her mind was blank.
Instinct functioned where mind did not.
She pushed herself to her feet, tried to scramble forward. And ran into the impassable, invisible nothing.
How long she stood there, scratching, pounding and mewling her passion, she did not know.
When she came to her senses, she was sitting again, drained of her physical energies, only her mind still hating, still ruthless of this strangeness which held her offspring.
Audrey Monroe was not a scatterbrain. And she was motivated by the strongest drive of which woman is capable. She forced herself to comparative coolness.
She had to think. She must think. She knew that.
A silly thought came to her. Man was the thinking animal. All right, Audrey Monroe—put up or shut up.
She breathed deeply, fought off the physical weariness. She had been a fool to expend her energies pounding against… against whatever it was she pounded.
She came to her feet again, and stepped forward warily. When she came up against whatever-it-was, she touched it cautiously. She could think only of glass. A glass transparent beyond belief, but feeling the same, simply a slightly cool hardness.
She stooped quickly and picked up a baseball-sized rock and began pounding—utterly without result. The force field would have taken a medium-sized nuclear explosion.
She pounded longer than made sense, and at long last dropped the stone in despair.
She stood back and said aloud, “I must think. I have to think.”
She returned to the invisible whatever-it-was and stretched her hand up. Audrey Monroe was five foot five; the screen, or whatever, went higher than she could reach. She stooped to the ground; it went all the way down.
She began circling to her right, always feeling. She worked her way completely around the alien craft, sitting there in the small clearing.
The invisible barrier extended the complete circle. She had to decide that it was a dome, completely over the small inter-world ship, as a glass cover is put over a cake.
She stood back, shaking her head.
Suddenly, she shouted, “Franklin, Franklin! Can you hear me? Don’t be frightened, Franklin! Can you hear me?”
She never called him Franklin when she loved him. She called him Franklin when she scolded him, when he had done something taboo. He had run away to play in the woods, and, above all he had come into this, this strange place, and that was evidently very taboo.
Frankie froze up. Her voice came through perfectly clear. But Frankie Monroe couldn’t have answered had he wished. His throat was frozen.
She closed her eyes in despair.
She turned suddenly and ran for the house. Ran as fast as she could, as carefully as she could so as not to stumble. She must not waste the time involved in stumbling along the narrow path.
She dashed around the house and into the garage. She stared around desperately. Spotted the war surplus entrenching tool Lew had bought at the Army and Navy Store for camping and for use around the cabin here.
She caught it up and headed back for the alien craft.
* * * *
She reached the force field, catching herself just in time to keep from running into it again. It was so very invisible.
She began digging at the point where it reached the ground. She dug as fast as she could and reached a full two feet in depth before despair again touched her. She went down a
nother foot.
At last she dropped the implement and sat down sobbing. She realized, full well, that the barrier extended around the ship as a globe, under the ground as well as above the surface. There was no place she could break through.
She forced herself erect and took up the several-purpose tool, and used it as a pickax against the shield. It was no more effective than had been her fists.
Looking at her fists, she realized for the first time that they were black and blue and ached. She looked down at her blouse. It was splattered with blood. Her nosebleed had stopped, she didn’t remember when, but her whole front was blood splattered.
The silly thought came to her that Lew was going to be shocked when he saw her. He only came out weekends this part of the summer, and, of course, expected her to be in her best to greet him.
Lew, she thought. He wasn’t going to be here for…how long?
Who else was there?
The nearest, a few miles away. She could jump in the Renault, their second car, and...
No, she couldn’t possibly take the time. How long the thing would remain was unknown. If she left, it might go away—with Frankie. She had to think something out on her own.
They had been mad to ever build this little cabin in the mountains and woods—without phone, without neighbors. They had been fools above fools. Get away from it all, they had told each other. Get Franklin out into the real air. Teach him from infancy to love the outdoors, animals, birds. Start him off right, with a love of nature. Teach him to fish, teach him to hunt, teach him the joys of solitude in the woods and mountains, away from the stench of cities, the stink of cars, the fumes of factories.
No phone.
She couldn’t bear to take the car in search of help.
Lew wouldn’t be here for far too long.
She had to think.
She turned abruptly and hurried back toward the house. Thank heavens, it was at no great distance.
She stood before Lew’s gun rack, desperately. The shotguns—no, of course not. The .45 automatic, the souvenir from his war years—no, not even that. She brought down the converted 30-06 deer gun, with its telescopic sight, now obviously unneeded. She fumbled in the drawer for shells. She must concentrate. He had some heavier cartridges for heavier game, bear and elk. These must be the ones. She snatched up a handful and started back.
The Second Mack Reynolds Megapack Page 10