One by one they began to react to the piercing signal. It took that long because it was a signal they had all studied as youngsters but had never heard outside their studies.
It was the General Alarm.
There were many alarm signals and many drills employing them: alarms in case of loss of hull integrity, alarms for depressurization, alarms for water leaks and accidental dispersion of toxic chemicals. They’d practiced and rehearsed how to deal with these theoretical situations and their respective alarms. But there had never been a drill designed to cope with a general alarm because it would have been disruptive to too many important ship’s functions.
Which in all likelihood suggested that this was not a drill.
Hesitation was rapidly giving way to movement and action as those around him abandoned their amusements in the rush to their posts, moving in long, leaping Quozl strides. The few mothers with maturing infants went more slowly, careful of the offspring in their pouches. As they did so the General Alarm segued into a second modulated wail that was even more impossible than its predecessor.
Battle stations.
Battle stations? That was an anachronism, an archaic throwback to a primitive past designed to amuse instead of prepare. There was nothing in the universe to battle against. Looks-at-Charts began to slow as new thoughts formed in his head. Consider the situation. They’d just arrived in or close to Shiraz orbit. It was a moment of great import and great release for the majority of the crew, but it was not a game. How better to bring everyone back to reality than by putting an abrupt and shocking damper on their initial enthusiasm?
Quozl ran and dashed around him, pushing but not shoving. There was plenty of a excitement but no panic, no rudeness. No one was trampled or elbowed aside. Looks-at-Charts began to smile inwardly. If he was wrong he would be late reaching his assigned position. That would mean a reprimand. But if he was right …
The wailing faded, to be replaced by a calm voice he didn’t recognize. He cheered it anyway because it proceeded to confirm his suspicions. A scout, he told himself proudly as others slowed to listen, must have good instincts and the confidence to act on them.
It had indeed been a drill, to alert and place a cap on the unrestrained levity. Time enough for that later, once the colony was in place and the First Burrow established. There were plenty of impolite murmurs and even a few curses from the crowd, but there were also signs of amusement. Leave it to Stream-cuts-Through to re-establish discipline in a fashion none could ignore, and relieve tension at the same time.
Battle stations indeed! Even criminals rarely resorted to actual physical violence, though every Quozl knew how to fight. But there was no one to do battle with. A criminal who resorted to violence would lose status among his own kind, let alone among the general populace.
The Quozl were alone in the universe, the sole intelligence, the keepers of conscious thought. Battle stations call existed to comply with tradition, not reality. There was no one for the colonists to talk to, much less fight.
His communicator whistled for attention. Acknowledging, he was instructed to report not to the main meeting chamber this time but to a smaller one up near Command. He frowned inwardly, then relaxed as he changed direction. Lifts-with-Shout would want to talk to the landing teams separately, in more intimate surroundings than the big chamber offered. Or perhaps he was going to be queried about scouting procedure now that it was at hand, or maybe a final, spontaneous test. It didn’t matter. He was ready for anything. Hadn’t he divined the actual reason for the General Alarm before anyone else? Or perhaps it was time to select an actual touchdown site for the survey ship. That thought made him walk faster.
He wondered if he dared joke with Stream-cuts-Through if she was present. He wanted to compliment her on the delightful absurdity of sounding General Alarm and battle stations. It really was funny, he told himself. No one had ever accused the Captain of suffering from an excess of humor, and here she’d gone and fooled the whole ship. That made the joke all the more marvelous.
As in the main meeting chamber there was a viewscreen on the left-hand wall, but it was much smaller. There were no rows of seats, not even a central table: only large comfortable chairs in which one could sink and relax. More akin to living quarters than a business room.
Stream-cuts-Through wasn’t there when he entered but she arrived presently, her distinctive voice preceding her. Liftswith-Shout greeted her. Burden-carries-Far sat on the far side of the room. What surprised Looks was that his friend was in animated conversation with Senses-go-Fade. What was the ship’s philosopher doing here? Unless, of course, he was present to watch the two scouts as they answered questions and render a verdict on the state of their mental health.
The joke must have already worn thin because he saw no signs of amusement. Quite the contrary. Ears were either laid flat back and down or held stiff and formal. He could see the tenseness in Burden-carries-Far when his colleague turned and saw him. Was something wrong after all? All the confidence with which he’d entered the room abruptly vanished, to be replaced by a horrible thought. It was so horrible he blurted it out without properly presenting himself.
“Battle stations? I thought it was a joke.”
It was a measure of the seriousness of the situation that Lifts-with-Shout utterly ignored the scout’s awful breach of courtesy.
“No, it wasn’t a joke.”
Looks-at-Charts heard the door close, tightly, behind him. He barely noted that there was a guard stationed at the door. An armed guard. In all his years he’d never seen an armed guard on board the Sequencer. He wondered weakly if the guard was present to keep others out, or him and his companions inside.
“But it was rescinded,” he mumbled, sounding not at all mature. “It was declared a drill.” Nervously he fiddled with the big earring in his left ear.
The Landing Supervisor’s ears crooked ever so slightly. “We reacted the wrong way at first, which is to say we reacted as we should have. That was a mistake, and unnecessary. It was decided rather hastily and on Senses-go-Fade’s advice to retract the alarm in order not to panic the ship, since the majority of colonials will have nothing to do with this matter. They must be prepared to receive the information gradually. A parokim tree grows strong only when care is taken in planting.”
“But ‘battle stations’? That’s just for tradition’s sake.”
“Some traditions have a way of haunting history.” Everyone turned to Stream-cuts-Through.
Looks tumbled into a chair. “I still don’t understand.”
“I was present when the analysis was confirmed,” said Burden-carries-Far from nearby. He was as tense as when Looks had entered. “We weren’t out of unshifted space very long. Preliminary surveys were well under way when I entered Command. I had a question which I quickly forgot as the situation became apparent.”
“What situation?” said an exasperated Looks-at-Charts.
“You can imagine the reaction among the onboard survey team,” Burden continued with a touch of irony in his voice. “They were as anxious as everyone else to do the tasks for which they had been training all their lives. Instead they found themselves distracted and set to an entirely new work.”
“They found something unexpected,” Looks said.
Burden’s ears went absolutely sideways, parallel to the floor. “At first nobody believed the information that was coming in, but they were right there the instant the Sequencer entered Shiraz orbit. Emanations from the surface, mostly in the form of primitive radio waves. Too much to be natural phenomena.”
“As we enter nightside you can see it with the naked eye,” an obviously troubled Lifts-with-Shout added.
Looks-at-Charts was uncertain. “See it?”
“Light. From population centers. Urban concentrations.”
“Artificial illumination.” Burden’s ears twisted. “Once we saw that, even the most reluctant conceded the obvious.”
“Could they be Quozl? Another settlement shi
p gone off course and come to rest here?”
A senior navigator spoke up from the far side of the room. “Settlement ships don’t go ‘off course.’ Besides, the transmissions are all wrong. There are numerous languages in use down there, and none of them are Quozl.”
“And there’s another reason,” the Landing Supervisor mumbled to himself.
Looks-at-Charts was both anxious and excited. Another intelligence! All the texts insisted that there was no such thing, that the Quozl were alone in the universe and would be so until the end of time. So it fell to the Quozl to fill up the inhabitable worlds with life. That was the Quozl purpose.
Now it appeared that unless all the signs had been misinterpreted they had company. Or competition.
His questions came too fast to sort out. All he could manage was, “What are they like?”
“We don’t know,” said Stream-cuts-Through softly. “Their multitudinous transmissions are verbal only, no visual. But we know that they cannot be like us.”
“How can we know that?”
The Landing Supervisor eyed him sharply. “Because they are at war.” All fourteen of the Captain’s fingers were interlocked, tight with tension.
Looks-at-Charts tried to mull the implications, found too many contradictions not to question further. By now he had remembered who and where he was.
“I apologize for my ignorance and for my unsatisfied mind, but how can we know such a thing if we cannot even see what they look like?”
Burden explained. “Our instruments are not powerful enough to resolve individual creatures on the surface, but at their best they can detect the existence and movement of large mechanical devices and groups of individuals in motion. There are numerous and constant low-scale explosions, large columns of metal vehicles that come under attack, and at least two large population centers that are undergoing steady bombardment. All this from the most preliminary observations.”
“You all understand now,” said Stream-cuts-Through, “why this must be kept secret from the majority of the colonials. Information will be discussed at regular meetings here in this sealed room twice a day at times to be determined. Nothing will be sent over normal channels lest it be intercepted by unauthorized personnel. I look forward to hearing your suggestions and comments.
“As far as anyone not involved with touchdown and preliminary survey is concerned, prelanding procedures are proceeding normally. I need not add that anyone caught breaching this security matter will be dealt with most harshly. That is all.” And she concluded by naming a time for the next gathering.
Like the rest of the landing team, from Lifts-with-Shout on down, Looks-at-Charts was forced to place his emotions as well as his dreams on indefinite hold. Preliminary survey personnel worked under guard and in double shifts to learn as much as possible about the unexpectedly dangerous world of Shiraz. Some of it was reassuring; much was not.
The Captain’s first concern was for the safety of the Sequencer itself since there was no guarantee that the warlike inhabitants of their new home might not join to turn on alien visitors. That fear was quickly dispelled when it became clear that the natives were incapable of traveling or of sending vehicles beyond the lower reaches of their own atmosphere. Their aircraft were slow and limited in range.
Nor did they possess any sort of long-range detection devices. It appeared that the Seqencer was safe in orbit, unreachable and undetectable from the surface except possibly by means of primitive visual scopes. The staff debated briefly and decided that based on what was known of native technology, it was most unlikely they possessed optical devices capable of resolving an object as small as the Sequencer. And even if they had the scientific means to do so, it was unlikely they would be taking visual looks at space except for specific astronomical purposes. They were too busy shooting at each other.
Though the conflict appeared to be worldwide it was intense only in specific regions: principally in one part of the largest ocean and on two large land masses. One hemisphere was virtually free of actual combat. It was there that the study group concentrated its efforts.
They had to go down. Looks-at-Charts knew that as well as the Captain, as well as any colonial. The Sequencer was designed as a springboard, not as a permanent home. They could not return to Quozlene, could not go elsewhere. Inhabited or not, racked by artificial convulsions or not, Shiraz was now their home. They would have to make the best of the situation.
Nor was there any point in waiting to see what would happen below. If one used Quozlene as a model, then the primitives of Shiraz might well have been fighting for thousands of years, might continue to do battle among themselves for thousands more. It never occurred to the hastily assembled native modeling group that the conflict might only just have begun and might end relatively soon, in Quozl terms. They had no historical precedent on which to formulate such a model. There was war or peace. It was not a stop-and-go matter.
Stream-cuts-Through and the Command section were much more concerned with the technological progress the natives might make under the impetus of war. That had happened on Quozlene. If the natives followed a similar developmental pattern then they might at any time discover how to send weapons beyond the limits of their atmosphere and gravity and thereby threaten the Sequencer. It would be far better to establish the First Burrow and proceed in relative safety than to wait for that to happen.
It explained Command’s initial reaction. Battle stations had not been a joke. It was only after the survey teams discovered the technological limits of the natives that it had been rescinded. But those limits might change at any time. Before that happened the colonists had to make a move.
It was incredibly frustrating to have crossed so much space only to find themselves thwarted, however momentarily, on the brink of triumph. Looks-at-Charts could not hide all his frustration. His friends noted it and he was forced to seek therapy and spend additional time in meditation. He had plenty of company. Fortunately the crew involved was either isolated from the general ship population or widely scattered among them, so no one not in on the secret became overly suspicious and security was preserved. The great majority of colonists went about the routine of preparing for touchdown unaware of the continuing crisis. There was no panic and security was preserved.
But the longer touchdown was delayed, the longer the Sequencer remained in orbit, the harder it became to conceal the knowledge that their new home was already tenanted.
III.
“EVENTUALLY WE MUST persuade these warlike natives to share their world with us.” Senses-go-Fade had their undivided attention. The ship’s philosopher did not speak often, and when he did he was often ignored. Not today, however.
“Despite the predominance of the oceans there is ample uninhabited land which the natives either cannot or choose not to make use of. Quozl can make a home anywhere. There are vast tracts devoid of the marks of agriculture or urbanization. The other possibility is that this race is still in its infancy and therefore its population is still immature. Regardless of the reason there is ample room for settlement.”
“What we need at this point,” said Stream-cuts-Through from her central chair in the tiny meeting room, “is not knowledge about Shiraz but about its inhabitants. We have decided that the natives cannot be like us mentally. But the Quozl once fought as they do. Might they not resemble us physically? The biologists tell me that intelligence is unlikely to develop a second time, as it has here, in a radically different physical form. However, just because we might look like one another does not mean they would necessarily welcome us with open arms. We would still be foreign to them. Another tribe to fight, much as the tribes below are in conflict.
“All this is hypothesis. They might also greet us with open arms and unprotected pouches.”
“That’s likely,” said Lifts-with-Shout with a grunt. The Landing Supervisor was not an optimist.
“Precisely our problem.” The Captain gestured with one ear in appreciation of the Supervisor’s po
sition. “We cannot afford to make a move based solely on guesswork, however admirable that guesswork might be. What hard information we have been able to assemble is taken wholly from long-range, extra-atmospheric study. We need more intimate knowledge.”
Looks-at-Charts felt a thrill of excitement race through him but of course said nothing. His status did not permit it.
“There are ethical questions involved as well,” said Senses-go-Fade. “While our technology appears to be superior, the Sequencer carries only small arms and few of those at that. We cannot simply push intelligent natives off the best settlement sites nor would we if we had the wherewithal to do so. Since we cannot fight them we have two choices left to us: we can cooperate with them, or we can avoid them altogether. Presently it seems only the last option is open to us. I regret this but see the necessity of it.”
It would have been different with the ancient, immature Quozl, Looks-at-Charts knew. They would have landed, massacred the locals, taken their land and foodstocks. Civilized behavior had long ago closed off that course to them. It was no longer how the Quozl lived. They could not do anything like that and still remain Quozl.
With luck they would manage. He had studied the preliminary images until his eyes blurred and both lids felt like dead weights. There was so much empty land. They could hide, begin the colony in secret. Perhaps the warring natives would exterminate themselves. That would solve the ethical dilemma.
It would be nice to have friends, though. Nice to know that the burden of maintaining intelligence in the universe no longer fell entirely on Quozl shoulders. Nice to have company—assuming it was friendly and not hostile.
But how could they have achieved mechanical technology while continuing to war? It was enough to drive an intelligent Quozl insane, and it was doing just that to the members of the native study team. How could supposedly intelligent beings cooperate one moment and then turn to internecine combat the next? Shiraz was a place where reality was proving itself surreal.
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