A Scatter of Stardust

by E. C. Tubb

  “We have contacted a new race,” I said quietly. “The Lhassa. Small, humanoid, something like a furry monkey but with a highly advanced civilization.”

  He turned and stared out of the window. His features twitched. The wall of detachment between us showed the first crack.

  “Preliminary investigations have been completed.” I did not meet his eyes. “Soon now a fleet will be dispatched — you know why.”

  “Telepathic?” The crack widened.

  “Yes.”

  “Like the Frenzha?” A segment of the wall crumpled into dust.

  “Mentally, yes.”

  “My God!” It was a cry from the heart. “My God!”

  “We want to be friends,” I said. “The fleet is — just in case.”

  “Dear God,” he prayed. “Dear God, not again!” Now he met my eyes; the wall had totally vanished.

  I looked at a man who lived in torment.

  A man who had condemned an entire race to total annihilation.

  *

  It had begun when the first rocket reached for the moon, and after that there was no stopping. Never mind the reasons given at the time: the military expediency, the lust for prestige, the rivalry of opposed cultures. The bare fact was that man had broached a new frontier, and man, being what he is, had to go all the way.

  The moon was the hardest; Jupiter and Saturn hard but not as hard as Mars and Venus. New drives had been invented by then, old problems solved and new ones recognized. It was only a matter of time before the AG drive gave us the stars. It was inevitable that man should discover that he was not alone in the universe.

  The Frenzha were humanoid but stemmed from reptilian stock. They walked upright, had four limbs, smooth, rounded skulls and were totally devoid of hair. They spoke in a lisping series of sibilants — when they spoke at all. Normally they did not speak; there was no need. The Frenzha were a race of telepaths.

  Earth and Frenzha met and faced each other like cat and dog. Diplomats were exchanged and some trade permitted. Commerce flowed for a time and then ceased, as both races came up against the same barrier.

  The Frenzha were telepaths. Terrestrials were not. The Frenzha, used to honesty and understanding in their dealings with each other, were at a loss when it came to dealing with Earthmen. They could not go below the spoken word. They could not gauge the honesty and sincerity of a statement. That in itself would not have been an insurmountable problem. The thing they could neither understand or tolerate was the cruelty of the human race.

  A man does not tolerate a boy pulling the wings off flies. The boy may think the insect had no feelings, the man knows better. A telepath is acutely sensitive to physical and emotional pain. The harshness, inconsideration, sheer disregard for others and the blind pursuit of self-gratification which is a part of the normal makeup of the human race sickened the Frenzha.

  Five years after the first meeting, three years ago, I had commanded the fleet of ships which orbited the world of the Frenzha.

  Tolsen, a newly created captain, was with me in control.

  “They think of us as cripples,” he said bitterly. He was young and had a Terrestrial’s share of pride. “Insanely cruel and hopelessly vicious. They hate us, commander.”

  “Hate isn’t enough,” I said. “We have to be certain.”

  He nodded and slumped back, eyes closed in the effort of concentration. Looking down at him, feeling about me the humming life of the ship and, beyond the ship, the entire fleet, I felt aloof, distant, almost godlike. I could be excused that feeling. I had more power at my disposal than any other man in history. The power, literally, to destroy a world.

  But Tolsen had the real power.

  Tolsen was the one to pass judgment.

  I had never met a telepathic human before. I had heard of them, read reports of what they could do. But they were rare and worked mostly at the Institute.

  Telepathy, like the other parapsychological sciences, had been ignored and derided for so long that, even now, when concrete proof had been given as to their necessity, recognition was slow. True, Malkin had his Institute backed by government funds. He had chased down all the materials he could, but even so the results were poor. Tolsen was the best he could give me.

  He opened his eyes and met mine.

  “Well?”

  He shrugged and held his head in his hands. I gripped his shoulder. “Listen,” I snapped. “I know it’s hard but it has to be done. You’ve been down there, met the Frenzha, caught their thoughts and probed their emotions. They can’t read our minds and we can’t read theirs. Only a few — ”

  “Freaks, commander?”

  “ — A few unusual types can do that.” I ignored the interruption. It was too close to the truth to be comfortable. “They hate us, commander. I told you that.”

  “We can live with hatred.”

  “They’re afraid of us”

  “We can live with fear.”

  “They despise us.” Tolsen bit his lip. “It wasn’t pleasant learning the truth of how they feel about us. It makes me feel almost ashamed.”

  “How they feel about us isn’t too important.” Control was air-conditioned; I shouldn’t have been sweating. “What do they intend doing about it?”

  “They want to isolate us.”

  “And?”

  “They want to have nothing to do with us, to expunge us from their memory. They want to pretend that we don’t exist, have never existed; and yet they are a logical race. They know that denying the existence of something doesn’t eliminate it.” He stared at me, his eyes wild. “They feel revolted at ever having met us.”

  “So?”

  “They intend to destroy us.”

  It had come, the thing which had to be faced, the thing which I had hoped not to hear. The Frenzha were logical. To them we were a diseased race of mental cripples, cruel, thoughtless, hateful. So, like a surgeon deciding to cut out a malignant growth, they had decided to eliminate us.

  “I see.”

  “They mean it, commander.” Tolsen had misread my expression. “They can do it, too.”

  “I know that.” I looked down at him, sitting slumped in his chair. A unique individual into whose hands fate had placed the destiny of a world. “Be certain,” I urged. “You know what we’re here for and what we can do. Check again. You may have made a mistake.”

  “There’s no mistake.”

  “Check anyway.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes again and concentrated on the wash of mental emanations rising from the planet below. He had tried to explain to me how it felt, this reception of two billion minds. It was akin, I imagined, to hearing the distant murmur of a crowd, and yet it was more than that. Emotions came sharp and clear. Individual words were lost, but a telepathic race had a gestalt inconceivable to others. It was a crowd, perhaps, but a crowd with a single voice, a single emotion.

  There had been no mistake. The Frenzha intended to destroy us, to eliminate us completely. Tolsen was certain of it.

  So I gave the order which would eliminate them first.

  And, as the bombs tore the very atmosphere from their world, Tolsen went insane from the dying impact of two billion minds.

  *

  It was something we had never even thought about. A telepath can read the mind of another telepath, can sense and share the emotions and pain of that other. Tolsen didn’t stand a chance. He suffered the relayed sensations of two billion deaths and lived to know the guilt of a murderer two billion times over. And some of it, inevitably, washed over to those around him.

  They, superficially at least, had recovered. Tolsen never would.

  He was calm enough, drugs had seen to that, but drugs could only make it easier for him to remember, they could not make him forget Even so his hand was shaking as he reached for the bottle with its tablets. I passed him water as he swallowed half a dozen and waited as he drank it.

  “Not again, commander!” His eyes were those of a child who begs not to be beat
en.

  I lit another cigarette.

  “You can’t do it again,” he said wildly. “You can’t destroy another race just because they are like what we should be. Because we are mental cripples. Surely, now, that must be obvious. First the Frenzha, now the Lhassa, all telepaths. How many other races are there the same? How many like us?”

  “Perhaps none.” I studied the smoke of my cigarette. Space is a lonely place. It gives a man time to think. “Maybe, somehow, we took the wrong turning. Or perhaps we, as a race, had to work a little too hard for survival. Telepathy was a luxury we simply couldn’t afford. You can’t feel sorry for the animal you are killing for dinner. Both Frenzha and Lhassa are — were — soft worlds. The inhabitants herbivorous. They could afford to be gentle.”

  “But we are past all that now,” said Tolsen. “Survival no longer demands that we kill and kill and keep on killing.”

  “I know that, but our heritage is a part of us. An unknown number of years, an unknown number of generations, all have gone to make us what we are. We couldn’t afford the parapsychological powers. We couldn’t afford to be telepaths. We had to turn away from it in order to stay alive.” I crushed out the cigarette, conscious that I was talking more than I should.

  “Then — ”

  “There won’t be another Frenzha.”

  I rose. It was time to go. My visit to yesterday had stiffened my determination. Malkin met me outside.

  “Well?”

  “Will he recover? Fully, I mean?”

  “Never.” Malkin took my arm. “As an individual he is lost to us, but all is not lost. His seed bears the gene pattern which made him what he was. We’ll find him a girl, one with the same talent if possible. Together they’ll have children.” He drew a deep breath. “No. Tolsen is not wholly lost.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  “And you?”

  “What do you mean?” I was deliberately casual.

  “Rumor gets around. What of the Lhassa?”

  “I am in command of the fleet which is being sent to Lhassa,” I said slowly. “On the theory, perhaps, that what I have done once I can do again.”

  “John!”

  “You said that I’d had a choice when dealing with the Frenzha,” I said. “But it was no real choice and you know it. Did you expect me to permit the destruction of my race?”

  “Do you think that you can avoid it?” Malkin was bitter. “We aren’t alone in the universe. How many races do you think we shall be permitted to destroy before we are wiped out as the menace we appear to be?”

  “Isn’t that up to you?”

  “How so?”

  “You, not I, have the answer. It’s up to you to produce the telepaths who will be accepted as ‘normal’ by the aliens. They must be our diplomats, our spokesmen. They must be our shield.” I stared him full in the face. “Produce enough telepaths, and we are safe from retribution and everything else. No telepathic race could ever bring itself to destroy a similar culture. If you doubt that, then go and look at Tolsen.”

  “Is that why you came, John?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “There won’t be another Frenzha.”

  On the way out I stopped at the desk. The blonde was still there, still petulant, still hurt at the treatment I’d given her. She was snapping at someone on the phone. She looked up, her eyes wary.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For not understanding you.”

  “I don’t — ”

  “I didn’t know that you were new here. Someone obviously forgot to make out the correct list of permitted visitors. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, but the truth is that I’ve a game leg and it makes me impatient.”

  She softened. Her eyes lost their strained wariness. She smiled. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “In space?”

  “An accident. They gave me a plastic bone but it gives me hell at times. You know how it is.”

  “I know,” she confided. “To tell the truth I’m at fault, too, but my shoes are killing me.”

  “Then you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  We smiled at each other and parted. The exchange had reassured me by strengthening a theory. People can be easy to get along with providing they know more about you than you are normally inclined to tell. If they know your weakness as well as your strength.

  As with people, so with races.

  I would show the Lhassa more than the destructive might of Earth. I would show them why we needed it, show them how we had risen, driven by fear, unable to tell friend from enemy until, too often, it was too late. They were intelligent creatures. They would understand. And, in the meantime, Malkin would be working.

  Earth needed telepaths. Other races were naturally telepathic, so it was logical to assume that humans, too, had those latent powers.

  The need for survival had dictated against their development but that need was past. Now it was essential that we catch up.

  Survival demanded it.

  Little Girl Lost

  They showed me the professor and then they told me what they wanted me to do. It wasn’t a hard job, physically that is, but I could see that it would be more than wearing in other ways. I hesitated — they didn’t seem to mind that — then took another look at the professor. That was easy because they had him behind one-way glass.

  He was dressing a little girl’s hair. He took his time about it, brushing, combing, weaving the hair into plaits. Two plaits tied with ribbon, and he made hard work of the bows. When he had got them just right he kissed her on the forehead, tickled her under the arms and then sent her out to play.

  A nice, normal, everyday scene. The kind of thing every father does if he’s lucky enough to have a little girl. The thing every father has to do if he’s unlucky enough to have lost his wife. Nothing to it.

  Only it was two in the morning in the heart of one of the most closely guarded places in the world. There was no brush, no comb, no ribbon.

  And no little girl.

  “It’s all in his mind,” whispered the colonel. He didn’t have to whisper. The professor couldn’t have heard him had he shouted, but he, like me, felt that he should lower his voice. “To him, she’s still alive, his daughter, I mean. He simply can’t accept the fact that she’s dead.”

  “When?”

  “Six months ago. Hit-and-run driver; we never did find out who it was.”

  “And the mother?”

  “Died in childbirth.” The colonel stared through the one-way glass. Inside the soundproofed room the professor had sat down at his desk and was busy with pencil and paper. The colonel sighed, and I limped after him as he led the way back to his office.

  Cottrell, the psychologist, was waiting for us and he passed out cigarettes as we sat down.

  “Well,” he said tightly, “what’s your reaction?”

  “Must I have one?” I accepted a light from the colonel and blew smoke across the desk. “I assume that you’ve a reason for keeping him where he is and I also assume that you’ve a reason for offering me the job.” I looked at the colonel. “Incidentally, why me?”

  “Security whitewashed you. The air force didn’t want you. You’ve had acting experience, and you happen to resemble the professor when he was young.” Cottrell spoke before the colonel could answer. “Also, he has a natural sympathy for the afflicted.”

  It was too crude to be accidental. The incident which had blasted me out of the skies had left me with a smashed leg, and it isn’t polite to remind a cripple of what he is. I guessed that Cottrell was sore at my getting the offer and said so. He shrugged.

  “Sorry, but that’s the answer. It’s important that the professor likes you. He doesn’t like me or any of us here. If you take the job, you’ll have to be closer to him than his own skin and, above all, you mustn’t upset him in any way. It won’t be easy.”

  “That’s obvious,” I said. “But why? What
’s the point?”

  The colonel hesitated and I knew that I was treading on thin ice. Security ice, the sort which cracks if you so much as read the wrong newspaper. But the colonel was intelligent. He knew that no man can do a good job if he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. He took a chance.

  “The professor is important,” he said slowly. “I can’t tell you how much or in just what way, but if I said that the future of this country depended on him I wouldn’t be exaggerating. He was working on...something...when his daughter was killed. The accident upset him. It almost ruined his mind so that, to us, he was useless. He only began to work again when he’d established his delusion.” He looked at me through the smoke of his cigarette.

  “He refuses to work here any longer. We can’t force him. We can keep him here, yes, but only as an idiot. We don’t want that. We want the genius of his mind, and to get it we have to play things his way. We have to let him go so that he can work where he likes and when he likes, but we daren’t let him go unprotected. So we want you to stay with him as both friend and bodyguard. You keep him working, you pass on his findings and, above all, you keep him happy.” He sighed. “I know that it sounds crazy, but if you know a better answer I’d be glad to hear it.”

  I had no suggestions, only a question. “Does he give any reason for wanting to leave here?”

  “Yes.” Cottrell was bitter. “He says that this is no place in which to bring up a young girl. He’s perfectly right, of course, and as we’ve got to humor his delusion, we have no choice but to let him go.”

  “And,” said the colonel, “we want you to go with him.”

  *

  At first things were a little stiff. The professor liked me, yes, but he was not used to having me around, and it was important to break down the barriers of his isolation. The way I did it was to make friends with Ginney.

  She was ten years old, a cute blonde with long, plaited hair, a freckled face and cheeky blue eyes. She had been around quite a bit, was full of the devil and loved fun. She also liked plenty of conversation.

  She had been dead for six months.

  It wasn’t easy to make friends with a ghost. I studied her photographs until I saw her in my sleep. I watched the professor until I knew just how she looked to him. I made myself imagine her, talk to her, listen to her answers and then talk some more. I memorized her history so that we’d have points in common, and all the time I had to guard against a single slip which would have destroyed the professor’s trust in me. That in itself wasn’t too important, but I dared not injure his belief in his delusion. It was the only thing which kept him sane.