Space Trap

by Juanita Coulson

  Ken replied unhappily, “I don’t have the answer to that yet. We don’t have a lot of words in common.” R.C. snorted, unimpressed. “Well, don’t, let the stars get in your eyes, Ken. We can’t count on anything. These aren’t mere Capellan Thought-Wings. This is a highly developed telepathic race. That’s what we’re up against.

  “Does it have to be ‘up against’, Captain?” Ken protested softly. “First contact. It’s a great opportunity to establish peaceful relations with these people.” Then he paused, remembering. “But maybe we aren’t their first contact with Terrans. I saw a dead alien; a Terran killed him with a needler.”

  Morose, R.C. nodded. “Yes, I got the same message, when I first woke up in this cell. I felt a lot of anger riding with it. We’re lucky they didn’t kill us outright.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” Ken countered. “Thayenta was our defense lawyer. It’s hard to communicate with her, but in time it will work. Sooner or later she’ll explain the significance of this blurry area and why its gravitic effect made us crash.”

  R.C.’s response shook Ken. The man solemnly wagged his head and said, “Not necessarily. It might have been … something else.” For a moment he seemed lost in bleak thoughts. Then he looked up and forced a smile at the woman. “Thayenta. That’s a pretty name.” It was a labored attempt at diplomacy, and it didn’t come easily to the gruff space vet.

  “She really is trying to help us, Captain,” Ken vowed. “We’ve got to trust her.”

  “Interesting. If she hadn’t shown herself to you out by the shipwreck we might not have fallen into this trap.”

  Defensively, Ken flared, “Trap? We had already fallen into the trap when we entered this solar system. We didn’t have a prayer once that gravity field locked onto us. Once we were down, Briv had control over us. We ought to be grateful to Thayenta for pleading our case.”

  He hesitated, surprised at his bluntness. His response had bordered on insubordination. But discipline and formality were lax on two-man Survey teams. A rugged, easy-going camaraderie went with the job, which kept a man from going mad for lack of human sociability.

  To his relief, R.C. took no offense. “You called him Briv. Good. Now we’ve got a name to work with. All right, I’ll concede at least one point — if the woman hadn’t intervened, we might be dead by now.”

  A series of unwelcome questions persisted in Ken’s mind. There were too many mysteries — and not all of them concerning the aliens. Ken checked off the unanswered questions in his mind: a Terran with a needler weapon, a detour to a planet not on the Survey schedule; the diversion R.C. had set up, causing the ship to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Growing impatience with their predicament forced Ken over the protocol line again. “You never did answer my question, Captain. Why were we coming into orbit around NE 592?”

  Thayenta was troubled, dismayed by impending conflict between the two Terrans. Ken felt her concern lap his mind, a desire for peace.

  Then the wall nearest him melted. There was no mere ovate door this time but a disappearance of the white plastic. It simply ceased to exist.

  Ken stared out into a chamber with no discernible boundaries. Horizons vanished into space-black shadows; planes and angles became lost in stygian darkness. In the center was a haven of light, seemingly suspended in a void. A cluster of aliens knelt around a glowing transparent dome, a couple of meters in diameter.

  Nine aliens — six males and three females. Thayenta made ten. Was this all of them? If it was an alien colony, it was a damned small one.

  Another possibility popped into Ken’s mind. Maybe the aliens weren’t colonizers but rather an expeditionary force, an advance exploration team for future colonists — as Ken and R.C. were.

  “Council,” R.C. said, sotto voce.

  Ken agreed. The aliens formed an inward-facing circle around the glowing dome. Their hands were clenched into fists and resting on their thighs, their eyes squinted. Were they concentrating, putting out telepathic effort?

  Thayenta edged close to him and Ken caught a scent that hadn’t been there moments before. It was sweetly redolent and very strong. An old phrase seemed appropriate — the scent of fear.

  What was the subject of this council? Were they debating the humans’ fate? Briv knelt at the far side of the circle, and his countenance wasn’t reassuring. That bony face was taut and the dark eyes squinted into nothingness.

  Ken put his arm around Thayenta, drawing her close. She was trembling. Was she afraid for herself, or for him? It was comforting to think she cared about what happened to him — an alien, and a member of a species who had apparently murdered one of the jewel-skinned people.

  But her concern was probably practical and personal. Briv had knocked her aside during that fracas near the ship. He had silenced her up as though she were an inconsequential nuisance, or an apprentice. That was a situation he could empathize with. In some systems, an apprentice was tightly bound by rules and regulations. Thayenta had broken the rules and presumed above her station, warning the Terrans of danger, and speaking out of turn.

  How much had she risked by taking the humans’ side? Was it a generous impulse that might cost her dearly? For all Ken knew, her life might be on the line as a result. And her gesture was futile from the first. Once that gravity trap closed on their ship, there was nothing Ken or R.C. could do to avoid crashing on the planet. Thayenta must have assumed human technology was much more formidable than it actually was.

  He was being dragged forward: he and R.C. and Thayenta were telepathically hustled into the shadowframed chamber. Ken scruffed his boots along the uneven plastic floor, resisting, but to little avail. Too much power pulled at him.

  Briv got to his feet, and the other aliens turned to face the new arrivals. All wore masks of flesh; absolutely nothing showed in their expressions — neither hatred nor friendship.

  Briv walked around the glowing dome, coming toward the humans and Thayenta. He jerked up his left arm and the dome disappeared. In its place stood a concretion of scintillating light, an iridescent blob, unlike the transparent dome.

  Ken found himself unable to look at it. It hurt his eyes merely to catch sidelong glimpses of the bright rainbow-colored object. He winced away from a direct stare.

  Held in rigid telepathic manacles, Ken was unable to move a muscle. He sensed a terrible tension among the aliens and felt Thayenta’s fear as forcefully as if she’d screamed.

  Briv plucked at the air again, and some of the unbearable brightness faded from the brilliant blob of color. Ken could see it clearly, though he had to half-shut his eyes. The thing behaved like a prism — shattering white light into the spectrum. How it did so, and where the source of the white light lay, Ken couldn’t begin to guess. Despite the prismatic function, the object resembled a shapeless lump, its form shifting constantly.

  Then Ken saw that Briv was holding a metallic object, a smooth oblong contrivance, roughly ten centimeters long. The alien leader’s moss green clothing molded itself to his body, leaving no margin for pockets. Where had Briv gotten the metal object?

  Had he plucked it out of the air, perhaps?

  That made a crazy kind of sense. Briv had grabbed the air, causing the lumpish prism to lose some of its glitter. The prism must have transmitted the metallic oblong to this chamber from somewhere else. An alien matter transmitter!

  But Briv didn’t aim the object at the helpless humans. Instead he lifted it toward his throat. The green moss of his clothing changed form, growing a tendril, a mossy cord on which to hang the metal oblong. Ken goggled with admiration. If you need a pocket or an extra sleeve just think it into existence. If only humans had such abilities!

  Briv spoke. His lips moved, but the words weren’t coming from his mouth. They issued from the metallic oblong slung against his chest, and the words were Terran. Inflectionless, mechanical, shimmeringly filtered.

  “You will know and we will know many questions and many answers. You are the same as the death-bringers. Th
en tell us: why do you not deserve death for what you have done to our brother, Hli?”

  CHAPTER 6

  “A translator!” Ken exclaimed.

  “And beautiful miniaturization.” R.C. agreed with his usual detachment.

  Ken growled, “Why the hell didn’t they use that in the first place? Why have we had to flail around like this, trying to guess what they’re saying?”

  “Wait,” the captain warned. “Listen. We’ve got to dig for every nuance. Don’t miss anything.”

  True. One misinterpreted syllable, and the humans might die.

  Loudly, addressing Briv, R.C. said, “We want to know what happened, too. Why do you call us the death-bringers? We brought you no death. We do not even carry weapons.”

  A risky revelation, but probably necessary to gain the aliens’ trust. The aliens didn’t look at each other. All of them stared hard at R.C. Ken presumed the translator worked both ways, converting human speech into the aliens’ own tongue — or into their thought patterns.

  “Death-bringers. Your kind,” and Briv pointed accusingly at the two Surveymen. A corroborating image rammed into Ken’s mind. Thayenta’s telepathic pictures were gentle, flowing softly. Briv threw his mental communications like barbed spears.

  Ken saw himself, R.C., and a number of other humans. Except for the two Surveymen, the Terrans were indistinguishable, their features vague. The clothes were identical. At first the cookie-cutter sameness of the people puzzled him. Then an old joke cropped up in his mind: “All those aliens look alike to me.” Briv lumped all humans together with bigoted disdain.

  Then a second telepath intruded into the strange conversation. A softer “voice” fleshed out the unknown humans somewhat. They didn’t acquire individuality — as had Ken and R.C. in the images — but they came alive.

  Thayenta piped up. An apprentice timidly worming her way into a high-level alien conference, she was speaking out of turn, again.

  The telepathic picture broadened. The humans were in a natural setting, moving about in a valley with purplish grass and other flora indigenous to planet NE 592.

  “Humans,” he said incredulously. “Here. On this world. They’ve seen other humans right here!”

  It didn’t make any sense at all. Or did it? The last images Ken had spotted on his mapping screen, just before the ship lost total control up there in space, were of structures of some kind — buildings. “R.C.,” Ken said uncertainly. “That doesn’t surprise you, does it?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” the pilot temporized. He concentrated on the immediate problem, talking to Briv. “We did not know these people were on this planet. I assure you, we did not know —”

  Invisible claws raked through Ken’s brain. Talons of pain and pressure dug into his temples and along the surface of his scalp wound. He felt rather than heard R.C. groan under a similar assault. It was a massive invasion; the telepaths pawed relentlessly through the humans’ minds, seeking information.

  Battered by pain, Ken dropped to his knees. Thayenta clutched his arm sympathetically, tears spilling from her black eyes. The cruel interrogation raged on, about to crack his skull.

  R.C. told them the Surveymen weren’t armed. They hadn’t drawn first blood. Why were they being subjected to this torture?

  But maybe other Terrans had killed one of the aliens. Who was the human with the needler? Since Briv lumped all humans together into the same file and labelled it “Killers,” Ken and R.C. had to suffer for that crime.

  Fresh pain hit Ken, a deep, emotional wrench that tore a phantom limb from his psychic body. Thayenta was staggering across the vast chamber, her hands out, palms upward in appeal.

  Ken forced a cry past his constricted vocal cords. “Thayenta! No!”

  Even as he spoke she was driven downward, falling to the floor and writhing. Briv hadn’t struck her with his fists. But a telepathic blow was just as potent.

  Fury hit Ken in a red flood. Adrenaline charged energy into his shaking body enabling him to move. He half-crawled across the room to the alien woman and knelt beside her.

  There was no mark on her, but her pain was real. She sobbed in agony.

  Enraged, Ken gathered himself to smash fists into Briv’s hard face.

  Instantly, the pain in his head was gone, leaving a receding pool of acid dribbling away from his consciousness.

  “We see. We know.” Briv, using the alien translator, deigning to speak. And for the first time there was a conciliatory expression softening Briv’s bony features.

  His peacemaking gesture came almost too late. Ken stomped forward, wanting only to avenge the recent telepathic outrages. Against that, Ken was inundated with new, warm emotions. Was it an apology? A definite shift in mood emanated from Briv and the other aliens circled around the bright prism.

  “Ken,” R.C. appealed. Ken glanced behind him. Thayenta wasn’t writhing any more, and the pilot helped her to her feet. R.C. too, released from telepathic bondage, was able to move now.

  Another voice added its weight to the captain’s. Thayenta held out a hand, supplicating. “Ken …” Calmness washed over him, soothing his rage. The combined alien goodwill campaign was effective. Thayenta clinched it with, “Ken, we see,” repeating Briv’s announcement.

  Gradually, Ken’s lethal fury melted. But he threw Briv one last glare.

  The pleasant, apologetic “vibes” continued unabated. Was it possible Ken had scored a telling point?

  R.C. was supporting Thayenta. She still looked a little shaken. And the pilot’s face was pale, testimony to the pain he’d endured.

  “We had not realized this of you,” Briv’s translator was relaying. “You Terrans are very different from our kind.”

  Ken got the distinct impression Briv had almost called them “death-bringers” again, then changed the description. Another concession? Briv didn’t appear to be someone who would make many of those.

  “What didn’t you realize?” R.C. cut in. “That we would fight back, if we could? That we didn’t kill one of your people? That we really didn’t know there were other humans on this planet?”

  Briv’s dark gaze shifted calculatingly toward R.C. “You did not know. Yet you came here to look for them.”

  The remark left the Survey pilot very uncomfortable. It was a temptation, an opening Ken had to resist manfully. He had some questions along exactly those fines himself. But now it was necessary to present a united front, to convince Briv the two humans agreed on everything. Later, when he and R.C. were alone, Ken intended to find out the answers.

  But the likelihood of their ever being alone on a planet they shared with ten telepaths was slim. That was an aspect of human-alien contact that Ken had never considered before this survey.

  Briv and Thayenta looked at each other intently. Ken felt a subliminal tingling. Was he picking up more telepathic slopover? He might be a sensitive, with a latent talent for detecting such communications. There was little opportunity to practise the skill among humans.

  But the result was a frustrating partial deafness. Ken felt the play of emotions back and forth — stem resolution, tolerance, a desire for satisfaction in some grim matter, and a willingness to compromise. But no details, no specifics came through.

  An odd expression reshaped Briv’s hard face. He seemed amused, a man listening to a child’s humor or a teasing passage of music. Then, abruptly, he plucked the translator off his clothing. The moss green fabric instantly reshaped itself, absorbing the thong it had created. Briv offered the precious metallic oblong to Thayenta.

  She didn’t smile, but her joy winged its way to Ken, and he read her surprise and pleasure in the heightened color of her skin and the sparkle in her eyes. She raised the translator to her throat, and her pink robes formed a thong suitable for holding the object. He noted wryly that her telepathic dress designing was done with a woman’s touch: the translator was suspended from a cord shot through with silvery threads intertwining with the leaflike pink.

  The tr
anslator reduced language to toneless phonemes, totally impersonal. But Thayenta’s words meant something still. “We did not know you would suffer such pain. Real pain. It is because you have no … no shields.”

  Of course. If the telepaths could wield mental weapons against each other, they must have developed self defenses over the millennia. Maybe Thayenta hadn’t been in such agony as she’d seemed. The puny humans, on the other hand, were wide open for telepathic attack. Their evolution had taken a different turn; they relied on speech rather than thought transmission.

  “He attacked you with the pain, too,” Ken accused, glaring at Briv.

  “That is another matter,” Thayenta said, glancing nervously at the alien leader. Briv was listening closely. It must be an effort for him, this abnormal method of communication. The aliens didn’t seem to use speech much at all — except for Thayenta.

  R.C. cleared his throat and said loftily, “Then may we assume you apologize for our ill treatment?” Ken envied the pilot’s aplomb. The captain spoke as calmly as if they were all seated around a conference table.

  Ken felt a bubble of telepathic discussion among the circle of aliens. At last they gave instructions to Thayenta. He was relieved that she was to act as their spokeswoman. She said, “Yes. We are sorry for your pain.” She gave certain words emphasis by pronouncing them loudly, and the translator duplicated her volume. “That is our way to find truth. But we did not know your minds were so … fragile.”

  Thayenta’s statements were broken with awkward as she sought for precise phrases. Was she afraid she’d make a mistake? Ken knew the feeling. An apprentice is always putting his foot in it. Only during this past year, out from under the Academy’s smothering influence, had Ken himself gained polish and confidence, losing his greener mannerisms. Was Thayenta fresh out of an alien Academy, still unsure of herself?

  “You look just like the death-bringers,” Thayenta explained. “Briv — we assumed you had come to join them, to bring death, as they did.”