“No,” said Freddy shortly. His voice sounded sick. “Not like this! It’s a sweet ship. I’m going to hook in the gyro controls. They ought to work. The creatures who made this didn’t use them. I don’t know why. But they didn’t.”
He cut off everything but the lights. He bent down and hooked in the compact little aluminum device which would control the flow of nitrogen to the port and starboard drive tubes.
Freddy came back to the control board and threw in the drive once more. And the gyro control worked. It should. After all, the tool work of a Space Patrol machinist should be good. Freddy tested it thoroughly. He set it on certain fine adjustment. He threw three switches. Then he picked up one tiny kit he had prepared.
“Come along,” he said tiredly. “Our work’s over. We go back to the Arnina and I probably get lynched.”
Bridges, bewildered, followed him to the spidery little spaceboat. They cast off from the huge ship, now three miles or more from the Arnina and untenanted save by its own monstrous crew in suspended animation. The Space Patrol cruiser shifted position to draw near and pick them up. And Freddy said hardly:
“Remember the Ethical Equations, Bridges? I said they gave me the answer to that other ship’s drive. If they were right, it couldn’t have been anything else. Now I’m going to find out about something else.”
His spacegloved hands worked clumsily. From the tiny kit he spilled out a single small object. He plopped it into something from a chest in the spaceboat—a mortar shell, as Bridges saw incredulously. He dropped that into the muzzle of a line-mortar the spaceboat carried as a matter of course. He jerked the lanyard. The mortar flamed. Expanding gases beat at the spacesuits of the men. A tiny, glowing, crimson spark sped toward outer space. Seconds passed. Three. Four. Five—
“Apparently I’m a fool,” said Freddy, in the grimmest voice Bridges had ever heard.
But then there was light. And such light! Where the dwindling red spark of a tracer mortar shell had sped toward infinitely distant stars, there was suddenly an explosion of such incredible violence as even the proving-grounds of the Space Patrol had never known. There was no sound in empty space. There was no substance to be heated to incandescence other than that of a half-pound tracer shell. But there was a flare of blue-white light and a crash of such violent static that Bridges was deafened by it. Even through the glass of his helmet he felt a flash of savage heat. Then there was—nothing.
“What was that?” said Bridges, shaken.
“The Ethical Equations,” said Freddy. “Apparently I’m not the fool I thought—”
The Arnina slid up alongside the little spaceboat. Freddy did not alight. He moved the boat over to its cradle and plugged in his communicator set. He talked over that set with his helmet phone, not radiating a signal that Bridges could pick up. In three minutes or so the great lock opened and four spacesuited figures came out. One wore the crested four-communicator helmet which only the skipper of a cruiser wears when in command of a landing party. The newcomers to the outside of the Arnina’s hull crowded into the little spaceboat. Freddy’s voice sounded again in the headphones, grim and cold.
“I’ve some more shells, sir. They’re tracer shells which have been in the work boat for eight days. They’re not quite as cold as the ship, yonder—that’s had two thousand years to cool off in—but they’re cold. I figure they’re not over eight or ten degrees absolute. And here are the bits of material from the other ship. You can touch them. Our spacesuits are as nearly nonconductive of heat as anything could be. You won’t warm them if you hold them in your hand.”
The skipper—Bridges could see him—looked at the scraps of metal Freddy held out to him. They were morsels of iron and other material from the alien ship. By the cold glare of a handlight the skipper thrust one into the threaded hollow at the nose of a mortar shell into which a line-end is screwed when a line is to be thrown. The skipper himself dropped in the mortar shell and fired it. Again a racing, receding speck of red in emptiness. And a second terrible, atomic blast.
The skipper’s voice in the headphones:
“How much more of the stuff did you bring away?”
“Three more pieces, sir,” said Freddy’s voice, very steady now. “You see how it happens, sir. They’re isotopes we don’t have on Earth. And we don’t have them because in contact with other isotopes at normal temperatures, they’re unstable. They go off. Here we dropped them into the mortar shells and nothing happened, because both isotopes were cold—down to the temperature of liquid helium, or nearly. But there’s a tracer compound in the shells, and it burns as they fly away. The shell grows warm. And when either isotope, in contact with the other, is as warm as…say…liquid hydrogen…why…they destroy each other. The ship yonder is of the same material. Its mass is about a hundred thousand tons. Except for the aluminum and maybe one or two other elements that also are nonisotopic and the same in both ships, every bit of that ship will blast off if it comes in contact with matter from this solar system above ten or twelve degrees absolute.”
“Shoot the other samples away,” said the skipper harshly. “We want to be sure—”
There were three violent puffs of gases expanding into empty space. There were three incredible blue-white flames in the void. There was silence. Then—
“That thing has to be destroyed,” said the skipper, heavily. “We couldn’t set it down anywhere, and its crew might wake up anyhow, at any moment. We haven’t anything that could fight it, and if it tried to land on Earth—”
The alien monster, drifting aimlessly in the void, suddenly moved. Thin flames came from the gill-like openings at the bow. Then one side jetted more strongly. It swung about, steadied, and swept forward with a terrifying smooth acceleration. It built up speed vastly more swiftly than any Earth-ship could possibly do. It dwindled to a speck. It vanished in empty space.
But it was not bound inward toward the sun. It was not headed for the plainly visible half-moon disk of Jupiter, now barely seventy million miles away. It headed out toward the stars.
“I wasn’t sure until a few minutes ago,” said Freddy Holmes unsteadily, “but by the Ethical Equations something like that was probable. I couldn’t make certain until we’d gotten everything possible from it, and until I had everything arranged. But I was worried from the first. The Ethical Equations made it pretty certain that if we did the wrong thing we’d suffer for it…and by we I mean the whole Earth, because any visitor from beyond the stars would be bound to affect the whole human race.” His voice wavered a little. “It was hard to figure out what we ought to do. If one of our ships had been in the same fix, though, we’d have hoped for—friendliness. We’d hope for fuel, maybe, and help in starting back home. But this ship was a warship, and we’d have been helpless to fight it. It would have been hard to be friendly. Yet, according to the Ethical Equations, if we wanted our first contact with an alien civilization to be of benefit to us, it was up to us to get it started back home with plenty of fuel.”
“You mean,” said the skipper, incredulously, “you mean you—”
“Its engines use nitrogen,” said Freddy. “It runs nitrogen fifteen into a little gadget we know how to make, now. It’s very simple, but it’s a sort of atom smasher. It turns nitrogen fifteen into nitrogen fourteen and hydrogen. I think we can make use of that for ourselves. Nitrogen fourteen is the kind we have. It can be handled in aluminum pipes and tanks, because there’s only one aluminum, which is stable under all conditions. But when it hits the alien isotopes in the drive tubes, it breaks down—”
He took a deep breath.
“I gave them a double aluminum tank of nitrogen, and bypassed their atom smasher. Nitrogen fourteen goes into their drive tubes, and they drive! And…I figured back their orbit, and set a gyro to head them back for their own solar system for as long as the first tank of nitrogen holds out. They’ll make it out of the sun’s gravitational field on that, anyhow. And I reconnected their thermobatteries. When they start to wake up they�
�ll see the gyro and know that somebody gave it to them. The double tank is like their own and they’ll realize they have a fresh supply of fuel to land with. It…may be a thousand years before they’re back home, but when they get there they’ll know we’re friendly and…not afraid of them. And meanwhile we’ve got all their gadgets to work on and work with—”
Freddy was silent. The little spaceboat clung to the side of the Arnina, which with its drive off was now drifting sunward past the orbit of Jupiter.
“It is very rare,” said the skipper ungraciously, “that a superior officer in the Patrol apologizes to an inferior. But I apologize to you, Mr. Holmes, for thinking you a fool. And when I think that I, and certainly every other Patrol officer of experience, would have thought of nothing but setting that ship down at a Patrol Base for study, and when I think what an atomic explosion of a hundred thousand tons of matter would have done to Earth…I apologize a second time.”
Freddy said uncomfortably:
“If there are to be any apologies made, sir, I guess I’ve got to make them. Every man on the Arnina has figured he’s rich, and I’ve sent it all back where it came from. But you see, sir, the Ethical Equations—”
* * * *
When Freddy’s resignation went in with the report of his investigation of the alien vessel, it was returned marked “Not Accepted.” And Freddy was ordered to report to a tiny, hard-worked spacecan on which a junior Space Patrol officer normally gets his ears pinned back and learns his work the hard way. And Freddy was happy, because he wanted to be a Space Patrol officer more than he wanted anything else in the world. His uncle was satisfied, too, because he wanted Freddy to be content, and because certain space-admirals truculently told him that Freddy was needed in the Patrol and would get all the consideration and promotion he needed without any politicians butting in. And the Space Patrol was happy because it had a lot of new gadgets to work with which were going to make it a force able not only to look after interplanetary traffic but defend it, if necessary.
And, for that matter, the Ethical Equations were satisfied.
*
THE PLANTS
(Originally Published in 1946)
The plants on Aiolo grew by thousands and millions and hundreds of millions over the wide flat plains of the planet. It was not a very luring planet, perhaps, but the plants knew no other and they were content. They were all alike. Every one was a flower with a singularly complicated center and a wide collar of white petals. It grew four feet high upon a reedy, seemingly flimsy stalk. Up at the top, just under the blossom, there was a furry thickening of the stalk for about six inches. This thick part was asymmetric, with lumps here and there as if the organism within it were far from simple. It was. The plants spent most of the daylight hours gazing at Aiolo’s tiny, blue-white sun. Now and then, though, they turned from it to regard each other or any singular occurrence that might take place. But there were not often any occurrences because there was nothing on Aiolo but the plants. Literally nothing. No animals. No birds. No insects. And the plants were all alike. They were not only the dominant species on Aiolo, they were its flora and fauna and everything else.
But one day there came a screaming, far away in Aiolo’s thin air, and out of the purplish sky a dark object came hurtling horribly. For a time it traveled almost parallel to the ground, but gradually it descended, struck and bounced upward like a skipped stone, struck and bounced again, and then struck a third time and ploughed a monstrous furrow in the soft earth for a quarter of a mile before it stopped. It killed thousands of the plants of Aiolo in its plunging.
After it was still for a long time, four men came staggering out of gaping rents in its plating and gazed dazedly about them. And all the planets within view turned their faces to regard them curiously.
Hours after their landing, the four men built a campfire in the great furrow dug by the Copernicus’ shattered hull. They brought out shattered burnable litter from the ship’s interior to use for fuel, because, of course, the plants would not burn. As they cooked, the sun sank abruptly and the formerly faintly-visible stars came out with astonishing brilliance. The only light anywhere on the ground was that of the campfire. The flames licked high and burned with more than ordinary brightness. The atmosphere of Aiolo was only five percent nitrogen, and despite its thinness men could breathe without air tanks, and fire could burn.
The men moved about the fire with stiff and painful motions as if badly bruised and shaken. Around them the round flower faces turned toward the flames or the men or both. They made an effect of innumerable marveling listeners. The men had found their stalks too tough to be readily brushed aside, and they camped in the cleared furrow for convenience.
“After thinkin’ it over,” said one of the men ironically, “an’ even allowin’ for the fact that we’re still alive, I still say we’re in a fix! Slade musta been crazy!”
A second man—Caxton—said meditatively, “No-o-o, Burton. He planned it too carefully. Some of his explosives must have been set before we left port. And he pushed off in the lifeboat before they went off. They were exactly calculated to wreck the Copernicus from stem to stern. He had some scheme in mind, but just what—”
“It was just murder!” said Burton stubbornly. “He was a killin’ lunatic. There were forty-eight men in the ship, countin’ him. Forty-three of ’em died right off. We shoulda died, too. He just meant to kill everybody. What’d he gain by wreckin’ the old ship fifty light-years from anywhere?”
A third man, Palmer, said heavily, “There’s twelve million stellars worth of iridium on board. If he figured he could get away with that somehow—he might figure on coming back to loot it. He’d have the Copernicus’ course and speed.”
“Yeah?” said Burton scornfully. “How’d he reach any place to come back from? All he had was a lifeboat! An’ what’d the ship’s course an’ speed be by the time he did get back?”
Caxton nodded. “I agree on that, Burton. If you don’t find a wreck pretty quick you don’t find it. But still I think Slade had some scheme in mind. He wasn’t just a maniac killing people. A maniac likes to see people die, and he left hours ahead of time.”
They ate as they talked, but the food was not really cooked. The boiling point of water in the thin air of Aiolo was well below two hundred and twelve Fahrenheit. The food was hardly more than well-warmed, save where it was burnt. The coffee could be drawn straight from the boiling pot without scorching one’s tongue.
Presently they fell silent gazing into the fire. Their situation was completely without hope of betterment. The hull and drive of the Copernicus was shattered far past patching. The ship’s fuel was gone to the last ounce. The wrecking of the ship in midspace had been a triumph of ingenuity and skill. At one instant the freighter had been droning along comfortably at cruising speed on overdrive, taking a direct line between Algol IV and the Briariades. And then, without warning, there was one shattering explosion, then two more, and then a monstrous blast which seemed like the end of all things. Within seconds the Copernicus changed from a well-found, space-worthy vessel to a riddled, airless, powerless hunk, its overdrive off, and therefore next to no forward velocity.
The four men beside the campfire on Aiolo were the only survivors beside the man who had set off the blasts by machinery. They had happened to be off watch in the only two compartments of the ship which were neither cracked open by the explosions nor emptied of air by the jamming of self-sealing doors. Their situation had seemed hopeless then.
Even now it was hardly better, though something like a miracle was responsible for their being still alive. No possible astrogator could have calculated a landing such as they had made, nor could any wreck have grounded approximately in one piece on any planet less featureless than Aiolo. The derelict had hit the atmosphere traveling west to east at the flattest of conceivable angles. Moreover, it had overtaken the planet in its orbit so that both orbital speed and the speed of rotation could be subtracted from the relative motion of h
ulk and planet. It had hit within an impossibly small margin of the incredible, at a rate which would allow the atmosphere to slow it without burning it up, and at an angle which allowed it to reach ground like a skipping stone. It bounced twice, ploughed a huge ditch in soft earth, and came to rest.
But the four men who still survived the shaking-up were in no enviable position, at that. They were marooned on Aiolo, which had been visited by men exactly once before in all galactic history. They had no hope whatever of ever leaving it. And their situation was the work of a shipmate who had caused it and then set out, seemingly, to travel fifty light-years in a lifeboat powered for seven.
The night grew chill, even beside the fire. It would be horribly cold presently. Horribly! But in the bright starlight the plants stayed erect and the flowers open, their round faces staring at the fire and the men.
“We might as well turn in,” said Caxton presently. “We’ll think of something we can do, sooner or later.”
The statement was a lie. There was nothing to think of but endless chilly days and endless frigid nights to come, on a planet on which every square mile seemed to be exactly like every other square mile. They would live here, and grow old, and die. Perhaps in a thousand or a million years another cosmographic expedition would land on Aiolo and find the rusted wreckage of their ship. But that was all they could look forward to.
They had sleeping bags ready. They crawled into them and zipped the flaps shut. The fire died down and died down—
* * * *
Starlight shone on the broken hulk, and on the four sleeping bags; and on the plants. The flowers stirred subtly. They made tiny, quite imperceptible sounds. Presently those nearest the gouged-out furrow leaned toward the sleeping men. They drooped in tiny jerkings; not at all like the smooth movement of muscle, but they moved. Three of the four men were far beyond their reach, though the nearest flowers strained toward them, but Caxton had happened to sleep with his head quite near to undisturbed ground. Hannet was fairly close to some flower stalks, and one leaned far over and out to approach him, but it could not. Half a dozen or more, however, could hover over Caxton. Their blooms bent down and bent down until they almost touched the cloth of the sleeping bag above his head.
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack Page 29