The Fleet 01

by David Drake (ed)

  “It is our new alien psychologist, Dr. Allan Bantry.”

  “And what’s that he’s wearing?”

  “A tharg suit. Where he comes from it’s considered formal dress.”

  The tharg suit, I learned, is worn by male populations of twenty-two human planets with combined populations of sixty-three billion, all of them directly related to our remote ancestor, Adam Sapiens. But those populations live rather far away from Earth and the two hundred or so planets in our vicinity that adhere to the Terran dress code, with its emphasis on the sort of tailored, rugged good looks that only a uniform can give you. A tharg suit is large and baggy with huge pockets for carrying the sort of stuff men must have, such as pencils and sandwiches. It makes even a rather rugged man look a bit like an Easter bunny. In any event, it doesn’t have the tailored look which some people, especially military ones like Commander Esplendadore, consider vital in males.

  “If that’s their idea of formal dress,” said Shotwell, “I’d hate to see what they wear to run down to the supermarket.” He collapsed into loud laughter at his own unfortunate joke.

  Among the many disciplines which the Fleet embraces, and from time to time makes use of, is that of Alien Psychologist. The post is invariably held by a civilian since some of the more influential of the warlords of the Fleet had never admitted that aliens can have a psychology. It was not a favored branch of service, and so I had more or less made up my mind in advance to avoid it, even before Dr. Allan Bantry asked to interview me.

  Allan Bantry was very tall and thin and looked too young to be called “doctor.” I found out later that he was twenty-seven years old, which seems quite old when you’re eighteen, and that he had taken his doctorate at Luna University three years before. He wore dark, baggy tweeds, the sort of thing university people wear all over the galaxy. He had an odd manner of being either totally attentive, or impossibly distracted, with very little in between.

  I liked him at once, because he seemed to me to be the sort of person who thought a great deal about what he wanted to get done rather than how he looked or what other people thought of him.

  Dr. Bantry explained to me a little about his specialty. An Alien Psychologist, as the name implies, is a specialist in the psychology of nonhuman races. There are quite a few in the Alliance. Some of our allies derive their heritage from remote reptilian ancestors, others avian.

  The way Dr. Bantry, or Allan, as I came to know him, described it, Alien Psychologist was really an important position, for he was the man in charge of first communications with races unlike our own. So far, these races had had no particular significance, militarily.

  Because of this, the Fleet high brass thought of their Alien Psychologists as about as important as their etiquette officers. But I was interested, and at the conclusion of my interview I told Dr. Bantry that I would certainly consider his proposal that I sign on as his assistant.

  I had several more interviews, and then, abruptly, our time in space was at an end. The announcement came over the loudspeakers.

  “All personnel, prepare for changeover from FTL to normal drive.”

  Then Esplendadore’s voice came on, saying, “Now all you people, hear this: we have arrived at our destination. Go to your acceleration couches and keep your eyes fixed on your screens. The next sight you will see will be your new home, the planet Klaxon.”

  We came out of FTL drive without incident. My eyes were fixed on the screen. Slowly, a glowing dot appeared. It enlarged swiftly and I had my first view of Klaxon.

  Frankly, I was not too impressed. The first view from the air showed a sphere in which oranges, yellows and tans predominated. As we descended, I saw long layers of grayish-yellow clouds hiding the land from us. We passed through them to see mountains and deserts, and a great empty plain which might once have been a seabed. Then more mountains and rugged rolling land.

  We broke through another layer of cloud cover, and I saw below me a wide green valley enclosed between barren mountain ranges. This, I learned, was the only fertile area on this side of the planet, a single valley, about a hundred miles long, by twenty-five miles at its widest point. This was where the new base would be built. The Valley was named AT334L, but the Fleet people referred to it as Xanadu.

  I had a sudden irrational sensation of fear as we began our descent to the surface. It was that second-sight of mine kicking up again. It was like I had received a quick, instant mental snapshot of the planet Klaxon and the main emotion it had given me was one of struggle, pain and outrage. It was an uncanny feeling, and I couldn’t account for it at all.

  I managed to shrug it off as the ship’s doors opened.

  IV.

  Our camp was sprawled untidily over several acres of rocky ground just at the beginning of the green valley of Xanadu. The rock was some kind of limestone, colored dirty white with bits of mica sparkling in it, and here and there red splotches that somebody told me were from iron deposits. Just beyond that was the lovely valley itself, nestled between two bald mountain ranges. Xanadu was a lusher green than I remembered from home, as if all the life and vitality of this planet were concentrated into this single small valley. It was a place of low rolling hills, and a small river ran down the middle of it.

  The officers’ quarters had been built first, and then the officers’ mess, so I heard. The Fleet has an ancient and unashamed tradition of privilege for higher ranks. Communications came next. There was a small relay station on Klaxon, but what was used mainly were the big radio rigs on the cruiser, Skua.

  Immediately after disembarkation we were assigned to our new quarters. I had a large combination bedroom/sitting room with a small kitchen. My picture window had a view out over the green valley.

  One of the problems the Fleet had to deal with was the sense of constriction that Fleet personnel get after long weeks and months of keeping station in space. Because of this, in the interest of simple mental hygiene, the Fleet tried to make its base accommodations spacious and inviting. It cost very little more for them to build large than to build small.

  The furniture was quite nice, too, Danish Modern, one of the most pleasing of the old designs, and there were copies of famous paintings on the walls. Unfortunately, all of the furniture in all of the living units was identical. Still, it was the first place I had entirely to myself, and I liked it right away.

  The Fleet had even tried to do something about the usual mess hall arrangements. We could eat in anyone of five different restaurants on the base. Each had a different decor. There was Joe’s Hawaiian Village and Eddie Lee’s China Town and, my favorite, Harriet’s Cafe, which looked just like a place I had known back home.

  Of course, they all served the same food. The Fleet hasn’t gotten quite far enough to think of supplying different cuisines.

  Earthmovers and bulldozers had already moved into the valley of Xanadu. The first group of structures had already gone up. They needed only glass for the windows to be ready for occupancy.

  It happened that the very first night of our arrival marked the beginning of the troubles that were to plague the Klaxon base.

  Work proceeded, but it didn’t go well. There were many accidents. Stresses must have been miscalculated, because sections kept collapsing. Some areas, which surveyed as solid granite, turned out to have soggy parts where the rock was hollowed away.

  V.

  Two weeks later, the first section of buildings was ready to be opened for everyone’s use. They looked a great deal like office buildings—four hundred feet high, built out of concrete and aluminum. Just before the dedication ceremony, Commander Hansen, the chief engineer, inspected the foundations. He found what looked like a slight subsidence. The buildings seemed to have settled down a bit on one side.

  Hansen frowned. They had done thorough tests on the load-bearing capacities of the substrata. This shouldn’t be happening.

  Hansen went dow
n to the lower basement. At the bottom-most level he found that one of the main girders had pushed right through an unsuspected sinkhole in the concrete-reinforced earth. The stresses of the building were distributed unequally.

  Hansen stared at it. It was impossible, but it had happened. Now the whole damn structure was in danger of collapse.

  He ran to the emergency phone. He could hear strange creaking sounds, the building starting to settle.

  “Get me the Admiral at once!” he told the yeoman who answered. “Emergency!”

  Esplendadore was just coming out of his shower. His dress uniform was carefully laid out on the bed. In twenty minutes he had to make a speech, dedicating the building and thanking everyone for their efforts. Why did they have to bother him with details? Still, it was part of his legend that he was always available for emergencies. He dried himself and picked up the phone.

  “Sir. Hansen here. Something’s wrong with the building structure.”

  “Hansen, what are you talking about?”

  “One of the girders has collapsed. The whole structure is starting to collapse. You must get all of the people away from the area!”

  Esplendadore had a thousand questions, but there was no time to ask them. He hit the general alarm. Everybody would drop whatever they were doing and assemble as quickly as they could at the spaceship. It was the fastest way of getting them away from the new structure.

  Down below in the subcellar, Hansen had seen enough. He ran for the elevator. There were loud crashes all around him. Heavy girders began to let go. He just made it to the elevator and started up.

  The elevator was barely under way when there was a dazzling flash of light as a girder snapped and carried away the electrical cables with it.

  Hansen opened the trap door in the ceiling of the elevator.

  Through the dim stand-by lighting in the elevator shaft, he could see the iron stanchions set into the walls for emergencies. The engineer started climbing toward the surface.

  Above, on the ground level, the crowds had been rapidly evacuating the area of the new buildings. But those at the back of the crowd felt the ground tremble under them, saw the foremost building bend gracefully as though it were bowing to the distant mountains, heard the shriek of tortured metal as the whole thing collapsed.

  Hansen, down below, felt the elevator shaft start to buckle.

  He pulled himself to the surface and scrambled out a second later, just before internal pressures closed the elevator shaft like a well-squeezed toothpaste tube. It had been a close thing.

  VI.

  Esplendadore had been a great fighting admiral in his day, but that day was some years past. Now he was a very good desk chair admiral. A lot of the dash and fire of his youth had just faded away with the passage of years. As his hair grew grayer, his decisions became more tempered. Ever since his great victory at Achilles’ Star, Esplendadore’s career had been in a decline. It was a slow decline to be sure, so slow as to be almost imperceptible, but it led downward all the same. His most recent postings over the last several years had been to quiet sectors with no possibility of combat. He had complained about this.

  “Take a rest,” the top brass had told him. But he suspected that what they meant was, “Let somebody else have a chance.” He had seen his career and his life slipping away into dignified decay. Desperately he had pulled strings, used all the influence he still possessed. He had to get out of this rear-echelon status they had posted him to. He was a fighting admiral, not a glorified supply clerk.

  After intrigues worthy of the courts of Byzantium, Esplendadore had managed to get appointed to this new Klaxon expedition which had been dreamed up in the high councils of the Alliance ... probably after someone had smoked some rather potent stuff. Esplendadore had his doubts about the soundness of the scheme. It all depended on keeping knowledge of the Klaxon base from the Khalia so that a single giant blow could be attempted against them, a blow that would fall as though from nowhere and be utterly devastating.

  Well, it was a pretty dream, of course. Civilians were very good at dreaming up these plans that involved violent changes of fortune through subterfuge and required the utilization of very little in the way of vital means and material. Sneaky and secret, that was a politician’s idea of warfare. But how likely was it that the Khalia would not learn about this through their numerous turncoat spies? How long did he have to prepare everything and launch his attack? A month? Six months? It was impossible to say exactly how much time he had. Obviously, the best likelihood of carrying out the plan unknown to the Khalia was to build the base and launch the attack as quickly as possible.

  That was exactly what Esplendadore was determined to do.

  Strike one blow for mankind—one great, and perhaps last, blow for himself.

  VII.

  The next day I went to work at Fleet Victuallers Division of the Supply Wing. I learned how complicated are the procedures needed to feed nearly seven thousand civilian workers, and an unknown number of Fleet personnel—I would judge them to be at least five thousand in number, counting a few hundred Space Marines whom we saw but rarely, for they had their own camp several miles from us. In all, at least ten thousand or so people who needed three good meals a day with some variety, even though we lived on a planet which, before our arrival, bore none of the grains or cereals that humans live upon.

  On the morning of my first work assignment, I went out into the Valley, following the well-marked path that led to the agriculture area. This was some hundreds of yards into the Valley itself, and what it consisted of were long, low glass-topped buildings, greenhouses, such as we have back home. There was a small, central power-booster plant. Inside, the hydroponics and the soil experiments were well underway. The person in charge was Dr. John Edwardson, an older man (and married), and he showed me around.

  It was interesting to learn that in this single small agricultural area nearly twenty percent of our food was being grown. Of course, our main food supply was still the fast-frozen, freeze-dried products. Some of these foods had been stored in depots in space for a very long time. It seems that science has made it possible for us to store food that will keep almost forever. There still seems something wrong in eating a steak that has been frozen over a hundred years. But, of course, there are some people who say it takes that long to properly tenderize the grade of beefsteak that the Fleet buys.

  I was very pleased to see so many species from Old Earth doing so well here in this, for them, exotic environment. Dr. Edwardson told me that you could never tell how an Earth plant would do once it was transplanted to alien soil. Some did well, others not. He showed me how vigorously the turnips and the Brussels sprouts were growing. I must admit that I rather wrinkled my nose at this accomplishment.

  “What about the native species on this planet?” I asked him. “Is there room here for both them and the Earth plants?”

  “Well,” Dr. Edwardson told me, “that depends upon whether two of them are fighting for room in the same ecological niche. But of course, warfare is the way of nature. All plant species are constantly engaged in a slow-motion battle with all other species.”

  It was nice to see these Earth plants, which are the same plants we have successfully raised on Trinitus. I knew from my schoolbooks that the Fleet cruisers all carry biological packs filled with the most useful species of plants from Earth. The doctor confirmed that this was true, and said, with kind of a laugh, that we were performing a kind of a warfare with our Terran plants against all of the other plant life of the universe. It was a little creepy to think of it that way. The doctor called it a form of manifest biological destiny. He said it was only logical that we human beings and our plants should ultimately be stamped out, or become standard everywhere in the galaxy. And, after that, in all the galaxies, and, after that, the entire universe which contains them.

  I told him that didn’t sound very nice of us. It
made us seem predatory.

  As the days passed, I became fascinated with the struggles of our plants against the alien plants of the planet Klaxon. The doctor and his assistants gave the plants a little help of course. The seedlings were planted in partially cleared ground. But he didn’t try to spare them from every menace.

  “These plants have to survive on their own,” he told me. “We won’t be around here all the time to spread pesticides for them.”

  My own work had to do mainly with writing out little tags and hanging them on the little plants, and then making entries in the computer noting that I had done so.

  I realized that I was part of something vast and wonderful, of course: the extension of the food supply of the Alliance planets. But somehow my own role in it was not very dramatic. I began to think again about Dr. Bantry and his Department of Alien Psychology.

  VIII.

  There was a full investigation of the accident to the new buildings. Admiral Esplendadore needed at least a partial answer right away. He needed something upon which he could base further action.

  The initial findings were not too encouraging to a man who was in search of a simple, clear-cut answer. All of the advance planning appeared at first glance to have been sound. The collapse itself was attributed to a land fault triggered off, perhaps, by something minor, but whose existence could not have been detected with present instruments.

  Was such a thing likely to occur again, Esplendadore wanted to know. His scientists could only shrug their shoulders. By all rights. it should not have happened in the first place.