The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  “Check,” James agreed.

  “And Lola, those ‘Guardians’ out there. I thought they were the same as the Arpalone we talked to. They aren’t. Not even telepathic. Same color scheme, is all.”

  “Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine teeth. Carnivorous. I’ll call them just ‘guardians’ until we find out what they really are.”

  The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked—and, accidentally or not, it was Belle’s green slipper that first touched ground. There was a terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar case, in being so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and why. Also who. And all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors like Hodell? And all about Belle’s green hair. And the photographers were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles.

  “Hold it!” Garlock loosed a blast of thought that “silenced” almost the whole field. “We will have order, please. Lola Montandon, our anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to throw half of them off the field. I’m going over to Administration and check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like.”

  The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked away together, Garlock noted that the man was in fact a Second—his flow of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream of speech going into his portable recorder. Garlock also noticed that in any group of more than a dozen people there was always at least one guardian. They paid no attention whatever to the people, who in turn ignored them completely. Garlock wondered briefly. Guardians? The Arpalones, out in space, yes. But these creatures, naked and unarmed on the ground? The Arpalones were non-human people. These things were—what?

  At the door of the Field Office the reporter, after turning Garlock over to a startlingly beautiful, leggy, breasty, blonde receptionist-usherette, hurried away.

  He flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened. How could a Two—a high Two, at that—be working as an usher? And with her guard down clear to the floor? He probed—and saw.

  “Lola!” He flashed a tight-beamed thought. “You aren’t putting out anything about our sexual customs, family life, and so on.”

  “Of course not. We must know their mores first.”

  “Good girl. Keep your shield up.”

  “Oh, we’re so glad to see you, Captain Garlock, sir!” The blonde, who was dressed little more heavily than the cigarette girls in Venusberg’s Cartier Room, seized his left hand in both of hers and held it considerably longer than was necessary. Her dazzling smile, her laughing eyes, her flashing white teeth, the many exposed inches of her skin, and her completely unshielded mind; all waved banners of welcome.

  “Captain Garlock, sir, Governor Atterlin has been most anxious to see you ever since you were first detected. This way, please, sir.” She turned, brushing her bare hip against his leg in the process, and led him by the hand along a hallway. Her thoughts flowed. “I have been, too, sir, and I’m simply delighted to see you close up, and I hope to see a lot more of you. You’re a wonderfully pleasant surprise, sir; I’ve never seen a man like you before. I don’t think Hodell ever saw a man like you before, sir. With such a really terrific mind and yet so big and strong and well-built and handsome and clean-looking and blackish. You’re wonderful, Captain Garlock, sir. You’ll be here a long time, I hope? Here we are, sir.”

  She opened a door, walked across the room, sat down in an overstuffed chair, and crossed her legs meticulously. Then, still smiling happily, she followed with eager eyes and mind Garlock’s every move.

  Garlock had been reading Governor Atterlin; knew why it was the governor who was in that office instead of the port manager. He knew that Atterlin had been reading him—as much as he had allowed. They had already discussed many things, and were still discussing.

  The room was much more like a library than an office. The governor, a middle-aged, red-headed man a trifle inclined to portliness, had been seated in a huge reclining chair facing a teevee screen, but got up to shake hands.

  “Welcome, friend Captain Garlock. Now, to continue. As to exchange. Many ships visiting us have nothing we need or can use. For such, all services are free—or rather, are paid by the city. Our currency is based upon platinum, but gold, silver, and copper are valuable. Certain jewels, also.…”

  “That’s far enough. We will pay our way—we have plenty of metal. What are your ratios of value for the four metals here on Hodell?”

  “Today’s quotations are.…” He glanced at a screen, and his fingers flashed over the keys of a computer beside his chair. “One weight of platinum is equal in value to seven point three four six.…”

  “Decimals are not necessary, sir.”

  “Seven plus, then, weights of gold. One of gold to eleven of silver. One of silver to four of copper.”

  “Thank you. We’ll use platinum. I’ll bring some bullion tomorrow morning and exchange it for your currency. Shall I bring it here, or to a bank in the city?”

  “Either. Or we can have an armored truck visit your ship.”

  “That would be better yet. Have them bring about five thousand tanes. Thank you very much, Governor Atterlin, and good afternoon to you, sir.”

  “And good afternoon to you, sir. Until tomorrow, then.”

  Garlock turned to leave.

  “Oh, may I go with you to your ship, sir, to take just a little look at it?” the girl asked, winningly.

  “Of course, Grand Lady Neldine, I’d like to have your company.”

  She seized his elbow and hugged it quickly against her breast. Then, taking his hand, she walked—almost skipped—along beside him. “And I want to see Pilot James close up, too, sir—he’s not nearly as wonderful as you are, sir—and I wonder why Planetographer Bellamy’s hair is green? Very striking, of course, sir, but I don’t think I’d care for it much on me—unless you’d think I should, sir?”

  Belle knew, of course, that they were coming; and Garlock knew that Belle’s hackles were very much on the rise. She could not read him, except very superficially, but she was reading the strange girl like a book and was not liking anything she read. Wherefore, when Garlock and his joyous companion reached the great spaceship—

  “How come you picked up that little man-eating shark?” she sent, venomously, on a tight band.

  “It wasn’t a case of picking her up.” Garlock grinned. “I haven’t been able to find any urbane way of scraping her off. First Contact, you know.”

  “She wants altogether too much Contact for a First—I’ll scrape her off, even if she is one of the nobler class on this world.…” Belle changed her tactics even before Garlock began his reprimand. “I shouldn’t have said that, Clee, of course.” She laughed lightly. “It was just the shock; there wasn’t anything in any of my First Contact tapes covering what to do about beautiful and enticing girls who try to seduce our men. She doesn’t know, though, of course, that she’s supposed to be a bug-eyed monster and not human at all. Won’t Xenology be in for a rough ride when we check in? Wow!”

  “You can play that in spades, sister.” And for the rest of the day Belle played flawlessly the role of perfect hostess.

  It was full dark before the Hodellians could be persuaded to leave the Pleiades and the locks were closed.

  “I have refused one hundred seventy-eight invitations,” Lola reported then. “All of us, individually and collectively, have been invited to eat everything, everywhere in town. To see shows in a dozen different theaters and eighteen night spots. To dance all night in twenty-one different places, ranging from dives to strictly soup-and-fish. I was nice about it, of course—just begged off because we were dead from our belts both ways from our long, hard trip. My thought, of course, is that we’d better eat our own food and take it slowly at first. Check, Clee?”

  “On the beam, dead center. And you weren’t lying much, either. I feel a
s though I’d done a day’s work. After supper there’s a thing I’ve got to discuss with all three of you.”

  Supper was soon over. Then:

  “We’ve got to make a mighty important decision,” Garlock began, abruptly. “Grand Lady Neldine—that title isn’t exact, but close—wondered why I didn’t respond at all, either way. However, she didn’t make a point of it, and I let her wonder; but we’ll have to decide by tomorrow morning what to do, and it’ll have to be airtight. These Hodellians expect Jim and me to impregnate as many as possible of their highest-rated women before we leave. By their Code it’s mandatory, since we can’t hide the fact that we rate much higher than they do—their highest rating is only Grade Two by our standards—and all the planets hereabouts upgrade themselves with the highest-grade new blood they can find. Ordinarily, they’d expect you two girls to become pregnant by your choices of the top men of the planet; but they know you wouldn’t breed down and don’t expect you to. But how in all hell can Jim and I refuse to breed them up without dealing out the deadliest insult they know?”

  There was a minute of silence. “We can’t,” James said then. A grin began to spread over his face. “It might not be too bad an idea, at that, come to think of it. That ball of fire they picked out for you would be a blue-ribbon dish in anybody’s cook-book. And Grand Lady Lemphi—” He kissed the tips of two fingers and waved them in the air. “Strictly Big League Material; in capital letters.”

  “Is that nice, you back-alley tomcat?” Belle asked, plaintively; then paused in thought and went on slowly, “I won’t pretend to like it, but I won’t do any public screaming about it.”

  “Any anthropologist would say you’ll have to,” Lola declared without hesitation. “I don’t like it, either. I think it’s horrible; but it’s excellent genetics and we cannot and must not violate systems-wide mores.”

  “You’re all missing the point!” Garlock snapped. He got up, jammed his hands into his pockets, and began to pace the floor. “I didn’t think any one of you was that stupid! If that was all there were to it we’d do it as a matter of course. But think, damn it! There’s nothing higher than Gunther Two in the humanity of this planet. Telepathy is the onlyESP they have. High Gunther uses hitherto unused portions of the brain. It’s transmitted through genes, which are dominant, cumulative, and self-multiplying by interaction. Jim and I carry more, stronger, and higher Gunther genes than any other two men known to live. Can we—dare we—plant such genes where none have ever been known before?”

  Two full minutes of silence.

  “That one has really got a bone in it,” James said, unhelpfully.

  Three minutes more of silence.

  “It’s up to you, Lola,” Garlock said then. “It’s your field.”

  “I was afraid of that. There’s a way. Personally, I like it less even than the other, but it’s the only one I’ve been able to think up. First, are you absolutely sure that our refusal—Belle’s and mine, I mean—to breed down will be valid with them?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then the whole society from which we come will have to be strictly monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal sense of the term. No exceptions whatever. Adultery, anything illicit, has always been not only unimaginable, but in fact impossible. We pair—or marry, or whatever they do here—once only. For life. Desire and potency can exist only within the pair; never outside it. Like eagles. If a man’s wife dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. That would make it physically impossible for you two to follow the Hodellian Code. You’d both be completely impotent with any women whatever except your mates—Belle and me.”

  “That will work,” Belle said. “How it will work!” She paused. Then, suddenly, she whistled; the loud, full-bodied, ear-piercing, tongue-and-teeth whistle which so few women ever master. Her eyes sparkled and she began to laugh with unrestrained glee. “But do you know what you’ve done, Lola?”

  “Nothing, except to suggest a solution. What’s so funny about that?”

  “You’re wonderful, Lola—simply priceless! You’ve created something brand-new to science—an impotent tomcat! And the more I think about it.…” Belle was rocking back and forth with laughter. She could not possibly talk, but her thought flowed on, “I just love you all to pieces! An impotent tomcat, and he’ll have to stay true to me—Oh, this is simply killing me—I’ll never live through it!”

  “It does put us on the spot—especially Jim,” came Garlock’s thought.

  He, too, began to laugh; and Lola, as soon as she stopped thinking about the thing only as a problem in anthropology, joined in. James, however, did not think it was very funny.

  “And that’s less than half of it!” Belle went on, still unable to talk. “Think of Clee, Lola. Six two—over two hundred—hard as nails—a perfect hunk of hard red meat—telling this whole damn cockeyed region of space that he’s impotent, too! And with a perfectly straight face! And it ties in so beautifully with his making no response, yes or no, when she propositioned him. The poor, innocent, impotent lamb just simply didn’t have even the faintest inkling of what she meant! Oh, my.…”

  “Listen—listen—listen!” James managed finally to break in. “Not that I want to be promiscuous, but.…”

  “There, there, my precious little impotent tomcat,” Belle soothed him aloud, between giggles and snorts. “Us Earth-girls will take care of our lover-boys, see if we don’t. You won’t need any nasty little.…” Belle could not hold the pose, but went off again into whoops of laughter. “What a brain you’ve got, Lola! I thought I could imagine anything, but to make these two guys of ours—the two absolute tops of the whole Solar System—it’s a stroke of genius.…”

  “Shut up, will you, you human hyena, and listen!” James roared aloud. “There ought to be some better way than that.”

  “Better? Than sheer perfection?” Belle was still laughing but could now talk coherently.

  “If you can think of another way, Jim, the meeting is still open.” Garlock was wiping his eyes. “But it’ll have to be a dilly. I’m not exactly enamored of Lola’s idea, either, but as the answer it’s one hundred percent to as many decimal places as you want to take time to write zeroes.”

  There was more talk, but no improvement could be made upon Lola’s idea.

  “Well, we’ve got until morning,” Garlock said, finally. “If anybody comes up with anything by then, let me know. If not, it goes into effect the minute we open the locks. The meeting is adjourned.”

  Belle and James left the room; and, a few minutes later, Garlock went out. Lola followed him into his room and closed the door behind her. She sat down on the edge of a chair, lighted a cigarette, and began to smoke in short, nervous puffs. She opened her mouth to say something, but shut it without making a sound.

  “You’re afraid of me, Lola?” he asked, quietly.

  “Oh, I don’t.… Well, that is.…” She wouldn’t lie, and she wouldn’t admit the truth. “You see, I’ve never… I mean, I haven’t had very much experience.”

  “You needn’t be afraid of me at all. I’m not going to pair with you.”

  “You’re not?” Her mouth dropped open and the cigarette fell out of it. She took a few seconds to recover it. “Why not? Don’t you think I could do a good enough job?”

  She stood up and stretched, to show her splendid figure to its best advantage.

  Garlock laughed. “Nothing like that, Lola; you have plenty of sex appeal. It’s just that I don’t like the conditions. I never have paired. I never have had much to do with women, and that little has been urbane, logical, and strictly en passant; on the level of mutual physical desire. Thus, I have never taken a virgin. Pairing with one is very definitely not my idea of urbanity and there’s altogether too much obligation to suit me. For all of which good reasons I am not going to pair with you, now or ever.”

  “How do you know whether I’m a virgin or not? You’ve never read me that deep. Nobody can. Not even you, unless I let you.”

&nb
sp; “Reading isn’t necessary—you flaunt it like a banner.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.… I certainly don’t do it intentionally. But I ought to pair with you, Clee!” Lola had lost all of her nervousness, most of her fear. “It’s part of the job I was chosen for. If I’d known, I’d’ve gone out and got some experience. Really I would have.”

  “I believe that. I think you would have been silly enough to have done just that. And you have a very high regard for your virginity, too, don’t you?”

  “Well, I… I used to. But we’d better go ahead with it. I’ve got to.”

  “No such thing. Permissible, but not obligatory.”

  “But it was assumed. As a matter of course. Anyway…well, when that girl started making passes at you, I thought you could have just as much fun, or even more—she’s charming; a real darling, isn’t she?—without pairing with me, and then I had to open my big mouth and be the one to keep you from playing games with anyone except me, and I certainly am not going to let you suffer.…”

  “Bunk!” Garlock snorted. “Sheer flapdoodle! Pure psychological prop-wash, started and maintained by men who are either too weak to direct and control their drives or who haven’t any real work to occupy their minds. It applies to many men, of course, possibly to most. It does not, however, apply to all, and, it lacks one whole hell of a lot of applying to me. Does that make you feel better?”

  “Oh, it does…it does. Thanks, Clee. You know, I like you, a lot.”

  “Do you? Kiss me.”

  She did so.

  “See?”

  “You tricked me!”

  “I did not. I want you to see the truth and face it. Your idealism is admirable, permanent, and shatter-proof; but your starry-eyed schoolgirl’s mawkishness is none of the three. You’ll have to grow up, some day. In my opinion, forcing yourself to give up one of your hardest-held ideals—virginity—merely because of the utter bilge that those idiot head-shrinkers stuffed you with, is sheer, plain idiocy. I suppose that makes you like me even less, but I’m laying it right on the line.”