Tomorrow, the Stars

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Worden said urgently, “Suppose I send some pictures of Butch? He’s very human, sir! He’s extraordinarily appealing! He has personality! A reel or two of Butch at his lessons ought to be popular!”

  Again that irritating wait while his voice traveled a quarter million miles at the speed of light and the wait for the reply.

  “The—ah—lunar creatures, Worden,” said the chief biologist regretfully, “have killed a number of men who have been publicized as martyrs to science. We cannot give favorable publicity to creatures that have killed men!” Then he added blandly, “But you are progressing splendidly, Worden—splendidly! Carry on!”

  His image faded from the video screen. Worden said naughty words as he turned away-. He’d come to like Butch. Butch trusted him. Butch now slid down from that crazy perch of his and came rushing to his arms every time he entered the nursery.

  Butch was ridiculously small—no more than eighteen inches high. He was preposterously light and fragile in his nursery, where only Moon gravity obtained. And Butch was such an earnest little creature, so soberly absorbed in everything that Worden showed him!

  He was still fascinated by the phenomena of sound. Humming or singing—even Worden’s humming and singing—entranced him. When Worden’s lips moved now Butch struck an attitude and held up the hoop diaphragm with a tiny finger pressed to it to catch the vibrations Worden’s voice made.

  Now too when he grasped an idea Worden tried to convey, he tended to swagger. He became more human in his actions with every session of human contact. Once, indeed, Worden looked at the video screens which spied on Butch and saw him—all alone— solemnly going through every gesture and every movement Worden had made. He was pretending to give a lesson to an imaginary still tinier companion. He was pretending to be Worden, apparently for his own satisfaction!

  Worden felt a lump in his throat. He was enormously fond of the little mite. It was painful that he had just left Butch to help in the construction of a vibrator microphone device which would transfer his voice to rock vibrations and simultaneously pick up any other vibrations that might be made in return.

  If the members of Butch’s race did communicate by tapping on rocks or the like, men could eavesdrop on them—could locate them, could detect ambushes in preparation, and apply mankind’s deadly military countermeasures.

  Worden hoped the gadget wouldn’t work. But it did. When he put it on the floor of the nursery and spoke into the microphone, Butch did feel the vibrations underfoot. He recognized their identity with the vibrations he’d learned to detect in air.

  He made a skipping exultant hop and jump. It was plainly the uttermost expression of satisfaction. And then his tiny foot pattered and scratched furiously on the floor. It made a peculiar scratchy tapping noise which the microphone picked up. Butch watched Worden’s face, making the sounds which were like highly elaborated footfalls.

  “No dice, Butch,” said Worden unhappily. “I can’t understand it. But it looks as if you’ve started your treason already. This’ll help wipe out some of your folks.”

  He reported it reluctantly to the head of the station.

  Microphones were immediately set into the rocky crater floor outside the station and others were made ready for exploring parties to use for the detection of Moon creatures near them. Oddly enough, the microphones by the station yielded results right away.

  It was near sunset. Butch had been captured near the middle of the three-hundred-and-thirty-four-hour lunar day. In all the hours between—a week by Earth time—he had had no nourishment of any sort. Worden had conscientiously offered him every edible and inedible substance in the station. Then at least one sample of every mineral in the station collection. Butch regarded them all with interest but without appetite. Worden—liking Butch—expected him to die of starvation and thought it a good idea. Better than encompassing the death of all his race, anyhow. And it did seem to him that Butch was beginning to show a certain sluggishness, a certain lack of bounce and energy. He thought it was weakness from hunger.

  Sunset progressed. Yard by yard, fathom by fathom, half-mile by half-mile, the shadows of the miles-high western walls of Tycho crept across the crater floor. There came a time when only the central hump had sunlight. Then the shadow began to creep up the eastern walls. Presently the last thin jagged line of light would vanish and the colossal cup of the crater would be filled to overflowing with the night.

  Worden watched the incandescent sunlight growing even narrower on the cliffs. He would see no other sunlight for two weeks’ Earth time. Then abruptly an alarm bell rang. It clanged stridently, furiously. Doors hissed shut, dividing the station into airtight sections.

  Loudspeakers snapped, “Noises in the rock outside! Sounds like Moon creatures talking nearby! They may plan an attack! Everybody into spacesuits and get guts ready!”

  At just that instant the last thin sliver of sunshine disappeared. Worden thought instantly of Butch. There was no spacesuit to fit him. Then he grimaced a little. Butch didn’t need a spacesuit.

  Worden got into the clumsy outfit. The lights dimmed. The harsh airless space outside the station was suddenly bathed in light. The multimillion-lumen beam, made to guide rocket ships to a landing even at night, was turned on to expose any creatures with designs on its owners. It was startling to see how little space was really lighted by the beam and how much of stark blackness spread on beyond.

  The loudspeaker snapped again. “Two Moon creatures! Running away! They’re zigzagging! Anybody who wants to take a shot—” The voice paused. It didn’t matter. Nobody is a crack shot in a spacesuit. “They left something behind!” said the voice in the loudspeaker. It was sharp and uneasy.

  “I’ll take a look at that,” said Worden. His own voice startled him but he was depressed. “I’ve got a hunch what it is.”

  Minutes later he went out through the air lock. He moved lightly despite the cumbrous suit he wore. There were two other staff members with him. All three were armed and the searchlight beam stabbed here and there erratically to expose any relative of Butch who might try to approach them in the darkness.

  With the light at his back Worden could see that trillions of stars looked down upon Luna. The zenith was filled with infinitesimal specks of light of every conceivable color. The familiar constellations burned ten times as brightly as on Earth. And Earth itself hung nearly overhead. It was three-quarters full—a monstrous bluish giant in the sky, four times the Moon’s diameter, its ice caps and continents mistily to be seen.

  Worden went forebodingly to the object left behind by Butch’s kin. He wasn’t much surprised when he saw what it was. It was a rocking stone on its plate with a fine impalpable dust on the plate, as if something had been crushed under the egg-shaped upper stone acting as a mill.

  Worden said sourly into his helmet microphone, “It’s a present for Butch. His kinfolk know he was captured alive. They suspect he’s hungry: They’ve left some grub for him of the kind he wants or needs most.”

  That was plainly what it was. It did not make Worden feel proud. A baby—Butch—had been kidnapped by the enemies of its race. That baby was a prisoner and its captors would have nothing with which to feed it. So someone, greatly daring—Worden wondered somberly if it was Butch’s father and mother—had risked their lives to leave food for him with a rocking stone to tag it for recognition as food.

  “It’s a dirty shame,” said Worden bitterly. “All right! Let’s carry it back. Careful not to spill the powdered stuff!”

  His lack of pride was emphasized when Butch fell upon the unidentified powder with marked enthusiasm. Tiny pinch by tiny pinch Butch consumed it with an air of vast satisfaction. Worden felt ashamed.

  “You’re getting treated pretty rough, Butch,” said Worden. “What I’ve already learned from you will cost a good many hundred of your folks’ lives. And they’re taking chances to feed you! I’m making you a traitor and myself a scoundrel.”

  Butch thoughtfully held up the hoop diaphr
agm to catch the voice vibrations in the air. He was small and furry and absorbed. He decided that he could pick up sounds better from the rock underfoot. He pressed the communicator microphone on Worden. He waited.

  “No!” said Worden roughly. “Your people are too human. Don’t let me find out any more, Butch. Be smart and play dumb!”

  But Butch didn’t. It wasn’t very long before Worden was teaching him to read. Oddly, though, the rock microphones that had given the alarm at the station didn’t help the tractor parties at all. Butch’s kinfolk seemed to vanish from the neighborhood of the station altogether. Of course if that kept up, the construction of a fuel base could be begun and the actual extermination of the species carried out later. But the reports on Butch were suggesting other possibilities.

  “If your folks stay vanished,” Worden told Butch, “it’ll be all right for a while—and only for a while. I’m being urged to try to get you used to Earth gravity. If I succeed, they’ll want you on Earth in a zoo. And if that works—why, they’ll be sending other expeditions to get more of your kinfolk to put in other zoos.”

  Butch watched Worden, motionless. “And also”—Worden’s tone was very grim—”there’s some miniature mining machinery coming up by the next rocket. I'm supposed to see if you can learn to run it.”

  Butch made scratching sounds on the floor. It was unintelligible of course, but it was an expression of interest at least. Butch seemed to enjoy the vibrations of Worden’s voice, just as a dog likes to have his master talk to him. Worden grunted.

  “We humans class you as an animal, Butch. We tell ourselves that all the animal world should be subject to us. Animals should work for us. If you act too smart well hunt down all your relatives and set them to work digging minerals for us. You’ll be with them. But I don’t want you to work your heart out in a mine, Butch! It’s wrong!”

  Butch remained quite still. Worden thought sickishly of small furry creatures like Butch driven to labor in airless mines in the Moon’s frigid depths. With guards in spacesuits watching lest any try to escape to the freedom they’d known before the coming of men. With guns mounted against revolt. With punishments for rebellion or weariness.

  It wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Indians in Cuba when the Spanish came . . . Negro slavery in both Americas . . . concentration camps . . .

  Butch moved. He put a small furry paw on Worden’s knee. Worden scowled at him.

  “Bad business,” he said harshly. “I’d rather not get fond of you. You’re a likable little cuss but your race is doomed. The trouble is that you didn’t bother to develop a civilization. And if you had, I suspect we’d have smashed it. We humans aren’t what you’d call admirable.”

  Butch went over to the blackboard. He took a piece of pastel chalk—ordinary chalk was too hard for his Moon-gravity muscles to use—and soberly began to make marks on the slate. The marks formed letters. The letters made words. The words made sense.

  YOU, wrote Butch quite incredibly in neat pica lettering, GOOD FRIEND.

  He turned his head to stare at Worden. Worden went white. “I haven’t taught you those words, Butch!” he said very quietly. “What’s up?”

  He’d forgotten that his words, to Butch, were merely vibrations in the air or in the floor. He’d forgotten they had no meaning. But Butch seemed to have forgotten it too. He marked soberly:

  MY FRIEND GET SPACESUIT. He looked at Worden and marked once more. TAKE ME OUT. I COME BACK WITH YOU.

  He looked at Worden with large incongruously soft and appealing eyes. And Worden’s brain seemed to spin inside his skull. After a long time Butch printed again— YES.

  Then Worden sat very still indeed. There was only Moon gravity in the nursery and he weighed only one eighth as much as on Earth. But he felt very weak. Then he felt grim.

  “Not much else to do, I suppose,” he said slowly. “But I’ll have to carry you through Earth gravity to the air lock.”

  He got to his feet. Butch made a little leap up into his arms. He curled up there, staring at Worden’s face. Just before Worden stepped through the door Butch reached up a skinny paw and caressed Worden’s cheek tentatively.

  “Here we go!” said Worden. “The idea was for you to be a traitor. I wonder—”

  But with Butch a furry ball, suffering in the multiplied weight Earth-gravity imposed upon him, Worden made his way to the air lock. He donned a spacesuit. He went out.

  It was near sunrise then. A long time had passed and Earth was now in its last quarter and the very highest peak of all that made up the crater wall glowed incandescent in the sunshine. But the stars were still quite visible and very bright. Worden walked away from the station, guided by the Earth-shine on the ground under foot.

  Three hours later he came back. Butch skipped and hopped beside his spacesuited figure. Behind them came two other figures. They were smaller than Worden but much larger than Butch. They were skinny and furry and they carried a burden. A mile from the station he switched on his suit radio. He called. A startled voice answered in his earphones.

  “It’s Worden,” he said dryly. “I’ve been out for a walk with Butch. We visited his family and I’ve a couple of his cousins with me. They want to pay a visit and present some gifts. Will you let us in without shooting?”

  There were exclamations. There was confusion. But Worden went on steadily toward the station while another high peak glowed in sunrise light and a third seemed to burst into incandescence. Dawn was definitely on the way.

  The aft-lock door opened. The party from the airless Moon went in. When the air lock filled, though, and the gravity coils went on, Butch and his relatives became helpless. They had to be carried to the nursery. There they uncurled themselves and blinked enigmatically at the men who crowded into the room where gravity was normal for the Moon and at the other men who stared in the door.

  “I’ve got a sort of message,” said Worden. “Butch and his relatives want to make a deal with us. You’ll notice that they’ve put themselves at our mercy. We can kill all three of them. But they want to make a deal.”

  The head of the station said uncomfortably, “You’ve managed two-way communication, Worden.”

  “I haven’t,” Worden told him. “They have. They’ve proved to me that they’ve brains equal to ours. They’ve been treated as animals and shot as specimens. They’ve fought back—naturally! But they want to make friends. They say that we can never use the Moon except in spacesuits and in stations like this, and they could never take Earth’s gravity. So there’s no need for us to be enemies. We can help each other.”

  The head of the station said dryly, “Plausible enough, but we have to act under orders, Worden. Did you explain that?”

  “They know,” said Worden. “So they’ve got set to defend themselves if necessary. They’ve set up smelters to handle metals. They get the heat by sun mirrors, concentrating sunlight. They’ve even begun to work with gases held in containers. They’re not far along with electronics yet, but they’ve got the theoretic knowledge and they don’t need vacuum tubes. They live in a vacuum. They can defend themselves from now on.”

  The head said mildly, “I’ve watched Butch, you know, Worden. And you don’t look crazy. But if this sort of thing is sprung on the armed forces on Earth there’ll be trouble. They’ve been arguing for armed rocket ships. If your friends start a real war for defense—if they can—maybe rocket warships will be the answer.” style='mso-tab-count: 1'> —

  Worden nodded.

  “Right. But our rockets aren’t so good that they can fight this far from a fuel store, and there couldn’t be— one on the Moon with all of Butch’s kinfolk civilized——as they nearly are now and as they certainly will be within the next few weeks. Smart people, these cousins and such of Butch!”

  “I’m afraid they’ll have to prove it,” said the head “Where’d they get this sudden surge in culture?”

  “From us,” said Worden. “Smelting from me, I think. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering from
the tractor mechanics. Geology—call it lunology here—mostly from you.”

  “How’s that?” demanded the head.

  “Think of something you’d like Butch to do,” said Worden grimly, “and then watch him.”

  The head stared and then looked at Butch. Butch— small and furry and swaggering—stood up and bowed profoundly from the waist. One paw was placed where his heart could be. The other made a grandiose sweeping gesture. He straightened up and strutted, then climbed swiftly into Worden’s lap and put a skinny furry arm about his neck.

  “That bow,” said the head, very pale, “is what I had in mind. You mean—”

  “Just so,” said Worden. “Butch’s ancestors had no air to make noises in for speech. So they developed telepathy. In time, to be sure, they worked out something like music—sounds carried through rock. But like our music it doesn’t carry meaning. They communicate directly from mind to mind. Only we can’t pick up communications from them and they can from us.”

  “They read our minds!” said the head. He licked his lips. “And when we first shot them for specimens they were. trying to communicate. Now they fight.”

  “Naturally,” said Worden. “Wouldn’t we? They’ve been picking our brains. They can put up a terrific battle now. They could wipe out this station without trouble. They let us stay so they could learn from us. Now they want to trade.”

  “We have to report to Earth,” said the head slowly, “but—”

  “They brought along some samples,” said Worden. “They’ll swap diamonds, weight for weight, for records. They like our music. They’ll trade emeralds for textbooks—they can read now! And they’ll set up an atomic pile and swap plutonium for other things they’ll think of later. Trading on that basis should be cheaper than war!”

  “Yes,” said the head. “It should. That’s the sort of argument men will listen to. But how——”