by James White
Plainly they had to breathe less, but communication was vital.
The main computer was down, and with it all of the mother ship’s remote control systems. Through the crackle of simulated radiation interference, Beth was able to make intermittent contact with the three, self-powered repair robots assigned to the lander dock area. The robots were capable of performing a variety of delicate, precise, and quite complex tasks, she told Martin, provided they were given equally precise and complex instructions. Being in-organic and capable of operating in an airless, radioactive environment, it was possible for them to be given directions for finding and operating the manual release for the distress beacon-if she could remember the complicated internal geography of the mother ship and none of the different paths she programmed them to follow were blocked by simulated wreckage. But the first two robots died on her long before reaching their objective.
Beth complained angrily that the stupid things had done what they were told, not what she wanted them to do, and began the even more precise and careful instruction of the third and last one.
While she was working, Martin opened the seal between the flight deck and lock chamber to allow maximum circulation of their remaining air. Then he detached the wide, one-piece padding from their control couches and tied the attachment straps together to form a makeshift sleeping bag which he anchored loosely beside the direct vision port. Since the heating had been turned off, it was becoming colder by the minute-doubtless the rate of heat dissipation into space was being accelerated for the purposes of the test. He checked the food storage locker again, finding only two water bulbs and the characteristic shape of a self-warming food container, but the glow coming from their only working communicator screen was too dim to let him read the label.
Martin had succeeded in detaching one of the cabinet’s short, metal shelves when the communicator began producing louder and more regular hissing sounds overlaying the background interference-the distress beacon was functioning. A few minutes later the communicator screen went dark as Beth directed what little power remained to air production.
Hastily they shared the hot food and fumbled their way into the makeshift sleeping bag. Then they put their arms around each other, the first time they had done so, and breathed slowly and economically and remained otherwise motionless. There was nothing they could do but try to conserve the remaining air, pool their body heat, and await rescue.
They had no way of knowing how long that would take, or if it would come in time. Their supervisor would not deliberately let them die, they thought, but it was a completely alien lifeform with a metabolism utterly unlike their own, and a misjudgment might occur.
It was also possible that then’ rescuers had arrived, and were trying vainly to raise them on the dead communicator before beginning a long, time-wasting search of the entire hypership. That was why Martin, at what he thought were reasonable intervals, reached outside their cocoon of relative warmth to hammer his piece of shelving against the nearest bulkhead, to signal their presence and position to rescuers who were probably not there yet.
A subjective eternity passed as they drifted weightless in the utter darkness, staring out of an unseen viewport at an equally dark lander dock. The temperature continued to fall, the air-maker’s status light had dimmed to extinction, the air was thick and stale and painfully cold in the lungs. The sweat on Martin’s face felt like a film of ice and there was a pounding ache in his head that seemed louder than the noise he was making with the shelf. Through their thin coveralls he was aware of every curve and contour and movement of Beth’s body, which had begun to shake with a motion that was slower but more violent than shivering. It was the uncontrollable tremor of fear.
“If you’re as cold as all that,” he whispered between deep, unsatisfying gulps of stale air, “I’ve just thought of a nice way of generating more body heat…”
“L-liar,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’ve felt you thinking it since we got into this bloody, two-person straight-jacket. No. A-apart from.. from other considerations, dammit, it would be too wasteful of energy and oxygen, and it would let in the cold.”
She was still shaking, and holding him more tightly than before.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered reassuringly. “It’s only a matter of time before we’re rescued. And I’d say you passed this test, no doubt about that. The way you directed that last repair robot to the beacon, with the ship hi darkness and relying on memory alone for internal navigation, that was really fine work.
“As for me,” he went on, taking another deep, gasping breath, “I’ve done nothing at all but talk and make noise. If you want to worry about something, worry about me flunking this test.”
She had stopped trembling, and now it was her turn to be reassuring. He felt her cold, damp forehead rest against his equally clammy cheek as she said, “Moral support is important at a time tike this. It’s the only kind that doesn’t waste energy. Besides, the sleeping bag idea was yours. I would have put us into the unpowered space suits, where we would have frozen to death by — Look!”
Bright, greenish-yellow light was streaming through the direct vision port and reflecting from the dead screens and control console. It was coming from a large vehicle with the unmistakable outlines of a manned rescue pod which was drifting through the unlit dock and toward their Under. But as it moved closer, and he heard it dock with their entry port, he saw that some of the structural details were unfamiliar. Frantically he began battering at the viewport surround with his length of shelving.
“Take it easy, they know we’re here,” Beth said, grabbing his arm. “What’s the matter with you?”
“That isn’t the rescue pod we trained on,” he said urgently. “The configuration is slightly different. And look at that, that yellow fog inside the canopy, and their interior lighting. Dammit, our simulated bloody rescuers aren’t even human! I’ve got to make them understand that we belong to a different species, and work out a way of telling them so before they open our lock and poison us with their air. Let go of my arm!”
“Hammering won’t tell them anything,” Beth said. ‘They’ll think we’re naturally excited at being rescued. But-but I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Neither of them mentioned the fact that he was supposed to be the specialist in other-species communication, that the problem was all his, and that it was now his turn to be tested. Beth’s face looked white even in that yellow light, and frightened, but the concern in her eyes seemed to be only for him.
He had to communicate urgently, send detailed physiological and metabolic data to an alien and intelligent lifeform, from a dead ship whose only channel of communication was a piece of metal shelving.
Or was that the only channel?…
“Close the bag after me and stay inside,” he told Beth, and wriggled out into the biting, breath-stopping cold.
He was already searching the control deck with his eyes, but his head was enveloped in clouds of condensation, and objects in the weightless condition had the habit of drifting into dark corners. He wasted several precious minutes before he found them, then he dived into the lock chamber and checked himself against the airlock’s outer seal, which was already beginning to open.
Fighting desperately not to inhale, he watched the crescent of yellow, foggy light widen as the seal opened. Some of the yellow fog eddied through, stinging his eyes so badly that he had to feel rather than see when the seal had opened wide enough for him to throw the objects into the alien rescue pod. Then he backed quickly out of the lock chamber and closed the inner seal behind him, dogging it shut so that it could only be opened from the inside.
Shivering uncontrollably and with his eyes streaming from the effect of the alien air, and coughing because some of it was still adhering to his hair and clothing, Martin groped his way back to the sleeping bag.
He felt Beth’s hands on his body, helping him in and then holding him tightly in an effort to stop his shivering. He felt her
fingers moving gently against his eyelids, as if he were a small, hurt child and she his mother brushing away the tears. He blinked several times and found that he was able to see her, and the way she was looking at him. But all she said was, “The rescue pod is moving away. What the blazes did you do back there?”
“Good,” Martin said, smiling for the first time in many hours. “I think we’ve cracked it. I threw them a water bulb with a few drops still in it, and the empty food container, and made it clear that we did not want them to get any farther into the ship. If they put those samples into their analyzer, they should be able to learn enough about our metabolism to mount a proper rescue. It’s just a matter of waiting a little longer.”
But he was wrong.
As Martin finished speaking the control deck lights and heating came on; the cold, stale fog they had been breathing was being replaced by air that was warm and fresh. With the return of artificial gravity their makeshift sleeping bag settled gently to the deck, and the communicator screen lit with a message.
EXERCISE TERMINATED. TEST RESULTS EXCELLENT BOTH SUBJECTS. EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT RESTORED TO EARTH-HUMAN OPTIMUM. YOU MAY RETURN TO TRAINEE QUARTERS.
They did not return to quarters, or leave the lander or the sleeping bag, for a very long time. It was during this period that what they came to think of as their First Contact took place. It was a contact which deepened and broadened and made the remaining long years of their training seem short, and it would, they believed, be maintained and strengthened during the rest of their lives.
Chapter 5
THEY were settling themselves for the first study session of what promised to be another not very exciting day, when it happened.
GOOD MORNING, read their desk displays. ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW. PLEASE RECORD FOR LATER STUDY.
With the appearance of the words, the wall facing them became a screen depicting in unpleasantly fine detail their supervisor and the large, low-ceilinged, and dimly lit compartment in which it lived-or perhaps only taught. It was surrounded by two-small consoles and eight untidy heaps of garishly colored material which Martin had thought at first were art objects or furniture but had later decided, after seeing the creature holding one of them close to a body orifice, were more likely to be food or collections of aromatic vegetation.
SUMMARY OF ASSIGNMENT. PROCEED TO THE SYSTEM LISTED AS TRD/5/23768/G3 AND TAKE UP ORBIT ABOUT FOURTH PLANET. STUDY IT, INTERVIEW A MEMBER OR MEMBERS OF ITS DOMINANT LIFEFORM, AND CARRY OUT PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF THIS SPECIES’ SUITABILITY OR OTHERWISE FOR CITIZENSHIP.
QUESTIONS?
Martin swallowed. He knew that the feeling was purely psychosomatic, but it felt as if his stomach were experiencing zero-gee independently of the rest of his body. At the adjoining desk, Beth was putting on her spectacles. She did not need them, or any other sensory aid for that matter, because all of the Earth trainees had received the benefits of the Federation’s advanced medical and regenerative procedures so that they were as perfect physiologically as it was possible for a member of their species to be. But in times of stress, Beth wore her glasses because, she insisted, they made her feel more intelligent.
“No questions,” she said quietly, glancing at Martin for corroboration. “Until more assignment data is available, questions would consist of requests for more information.”
VERY WELL, THE PLANET IS CALLED TELDI IN THE LANGUAGE MOST WIDELY USED ON THAT WORLD. IT IS A DANGEROUS PLANET AND IS CONSIDERED SO EVEN BY ITS INHABITANTS, WHO LIVE ON A LARGE EQUATORIAL CONTINENT AND A CHAIN OF ISLANDS LINKING IT TO THE NORTH POLAR LAND MASS. TECHNOLOGICALLY THE CULTURE IS NOT ADVANCED. TELDI WAS DISCOVERED BY A FEDERATION SEARCHSHIP TWENTY-SEVEN OF YOUR YEARS AGO. BECAUSE OF GROSS PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TELDINS AND THE SPECIES MANNING THE VESSEL, NO OVERT CONTACT WAS MADE.
QUESTIONS?
There was a very obvious question, and Martin asked it. “If direct contact could not be made because the searchship personnel were too visually horrendous so far as the Teldins were concerned, why wasn’t indirect contact tried by translated visual word displays only, as was done on Earth?”
TELDINS WILL NOT DISCUSS MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE OR MAKE MAJOR DECISIONS THROUGH INTERMEDIARIES LIVING OR MECHANICAL. DISCOVERING THE REASON FOR THIS BEHAVIOR IS PART OF YOUR ASSIGNMENT
“Then we shall be meeting them face to face,” Martin said, wondering where all his saliva had gone. “May we see one of the faces concerned?”
OBSERVE.
“No doubt,” Beth commented in a shaky voice, following a three-second glimpse of the lifeform, “they have beautiful minds.”
THE MATTER TRANSMITTER NETWORK WILL NOT INCLUDE TELDI UNTIL A FAVORABLE ASSESSMENT HAS BEEN MADE. YOUR TRANSPORTATION WILL BE BY HYPERSHIP DURING SURFACE INVESTIGATIONS BY THE ENTITY MARTIN, THE ENTITY BETH WILL REMAIN WITH THE SHIP IN A SURVEILLANCE AND SUPPORT ROLE.
QUESTIONS?
Martin lifted his eyes to stare at the monstrosity beyond the desk screen, feeling himself beginning to sweat. He said, “This… this is a very important assignment.”
THAT IS A SELF-EVIDENTLY TRUE STATEMENT. IT IS NOT A QUESTION.
Beside him Beth laughed nervously. “What he is trying to say, Tutor, is why us?”
THREE REASONS. ONE: YOU HAVE BOTH SHOWN ABILITY ABOVE THE AVERAGE BOTH AS INDIVIDUALS AND AS A TEAM. TWO: AS MEMBERS OF THE SPECIES MOST RECENTLY OFFERED FEDERATION MEMBERSHIP, YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS INVOLVED IN MAKING THIS ASSESSMENT WILL BE GREATER THAN THAT OF LONG-TERM MEMBERS. THREE: THERE ARE MANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE TELDINS AND THE EARTH-HUMAN SPECIES WHICH SHOULD EASE YOUR COMMUNICATIONS PROBLEMS.
“Apart from breathing a similar atmosphere,” Beth protested, “there is no resemblance at all. They are ungainly, completely lacking in aesthetic appeal, visually repellant, and…”
YOUR PARDON. I HAD THOUGHT THAT THE DIFFERENCES WERE SUPERFICIAL.
To you, Martin thought, they probably are.
YOU WILL ALREADY HAVE REALIZED THAT YOU ARE BOTH TO UNDERGO IMPORTANT FITNESS TESTS. THE VALUE OF THESE TESTS WOULD BE DIMINISHED IF I ASSISTED YOU OTHER THAN BY PROVIDING THE BASIC INFORMATION.
QUESTIONS?
“Can you give us advice?” he asked.
OBVIOUSLY. YOU HAVE BEEN RECEIVING ADVICE, GUIDANCE. AND INSTRUCTION SINCE YOU CAME HERE. MY ADVICE IS TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT AND PUT IT INTO PRACTICE. THE ASSIGNMENT NEED NOT BE A LENGTHY ONE PROVIDED THE ENTITY BETH USES ITS BRAIN AND THE SHIP’S SENSOR AND COMPUTER FACILITIES EFFECTIVELY, AND THE ENTITY MARTIN IS CAREFUL IN ITS CHOICE AND SUBSEQUENT INTERROGATION OF THE FIRST CONTACTEE.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO ARRIVE AT A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF A CULTURE FROM THE INTERROGATION OF ONE OF ITS MEMBERS. ALL THE NECESSARY EQUIPMENT IS AVAILABLE TO YOU, AND YOU HAVE BEEN FULLY TRAINED IN ITS USE. WHILE YOU ARE DECIDING ON THE SUITABILITY OR OTHERWISE OF TELDI FOR FEDERATION MEMBERSHIP, WE SHALL BE DECIDING ON YOUR SUITABILITY AS A HYPERSHIP CAPTAIN AND AN OTHER-SPECIES CONTACT SPECIALIST.
THE RESPONSIBILITY IS ENTIRELY YOURS.
The system had seven planets, and its only inhabited world, Teldi, was encircled by the broken remnants of a satellite which apparently had approached within the Roche limit and been pulled apart by the gravity of its primary. The planet had no axial tilt, and the orbit of the moon had coincided with the equator. The constantly colliding orbital debris had not yet formed into a stable ring system, so that the equatorial land mass of Teldi was regularly swept by a light, meteorite drizzle which was-seeded with enough heavier pieces to make life very uncertain for anyone who remained for long periods in the open.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Martin said, pointing at one of the sensor displays they had been studying. “That gray strip with the old impact craters all over it was an airport runway, those heaps of masonry and corroded metal could only be industrial complexes, and the rubble of what’s left of their residential area stretches for miles around. This culture must have been as advanced at least as that of pre-Exodus Earth before their moon
broke up.”
“It may have been more than one moon,” Beth said thoughtfully. “The orbit and unusual clumping of the debris indicates a…”
“The difference is academic,” Martin broke in. “What we have here is a once advanced culture which has been hammered flat by meteorite bombardment to the extent that they have regressed to a primitive fanning and fishing society. Except for that polar settlement, which is virtually free of meteorites, their past technology seems to have been destroyed. The question is, where do I land?”
Beth displayed a blown-up photograph of the polar settlement along with the relevant sensor data. It was a scientific establishment of some kind, with a small observatory, a non-nuclear power source, and a well-built road which was obviously a supply route. Communicating with the inhabitants would be relatively easy, Martin thought, because the astronomers among them would be mentally prepared for the possibility of off-world visitors. But they would not be typical of the population as a whole.
An assessment should not be based on a species’ intellectuals alone. Ideally he should talk to the Teldi equivalent of a well-educated man in the street.
The landing site finally chosen was by a roadside some ten miles from a “city” which lay on and under the floor and walls of a deep, fertile valley on the equatorial continent.
“And now,” Beth said, “what about protection?”
For several minutes they discussed the advisability of using the ship’s special protection systems while he was on the surface, then decided against them. He had to make contact with a technologically backward alien, and he would do himself no good at all by frightening it with gratuitous demonstrations of supersedence.