by Sam Smith
“First let me apologise for being late. Circumstances beyond my control. Now,” she took a deep calming breath, “I have some startling news. So startling in fact that I beg you not to react hastily. This may seem unnecessarily dramatic,” she blushed, “but I want to ask each of you to promise not to leave this room until I have fully explained all the implications of my news.”
The three heads inclined in assent.
“I will first explain how I came to discover all that I have, so that you may understand my subsequent reasoning.”
Tulla told of going out to Ben, of searching through its library for other instances of disappearing moons; and, finding none, how she had begun searching for planets similar to Happiness.
“I soon discovered,” she said, “that several of those planets, whose land masses and seas corresponded to the distribution of Happiness’s land masses and seas, and who were without moons, had been colonised by the Nautili.”
Nero’s attentive smile dropped, and he paled. The two other men remained expressionless.
“In this galaxy,” Tulla continued, “of the 74 planets like Happiness, 17 are known to have been colonised by the Nautili. Of the remaining 57 some, I now believe, have been colonised. Although the majority are far from the spread of their colonisation. The pattern, as it has emerged, shows Happiness to have been a prime candidate for colonisation. Except that it had a moon. The Nautili have, therefore, removed that moon.”
“How?” Jorge asked her.
“That I don’t know. But I do know what they have done with it. Somehow they masked it from our scanners, in a similar way I assume to how they are now blocking Happiness’s transmissions; and when the moon was in partial eclipse on Happiness, they took the moon towards the sun and fed it piece by piece into it.”
“This you discovered at the platforms?” Jorge said.
“Two weeks after the moon disappeared power to the platform screens increased — as the first parts of the moon were sent into the sun, thereby causing explosions, thereby increasing the sun’s radiation. It took them 22 days to dispose of the moon in this manner. The power to the screen adjusters peaked, levelled out, and gradually diminished as the fissionable surge degenerated. Average surface temperatures on Happiness, though not so clearly discernible, show a similar increase over the same period. Had the Nautili fed the whole moon into the sun at once we could have had a nova, at the very least a substantial flare. Nautili are not, I emphasise, are not unintelligent.”
Inspector Eldon Boone was staring at the floor.
“Are you saying,” he asked her, “that the ships that have disappeared were attacked by Nautili?”
“Yes,” Tulla said. “I believe that it is part of their strategy to isolate the planet while their colonisation is under way. Further research, I am sure, will support this.”
“A police ship,” Eldon looked up at her, “has been there and back three times now without being impeded.”
“I believe I may have the answer to that.” Tulla sat forward, “If I can first digress?” Eldon opened his palm to her. “We have known of the existence of the Nautili for almost five hundred years; and I think it’s safe to say that we know very little more about them now than we did then. They are utterly alien to us. No-one has yet seen a Nautili. We do not know on what planet they originated. An eight-to-one guess, but no-one knows which of those eight for certain.”
Jorge moved to contradict her, decided against it.
“Our meetings with the Nautili,” Tulla continued, “have always been accidental. They are a sea-based intelligence. We are a land-based intelligence. As we, the most intelligent land species, have colonised the dry surfaces of the planets, so, at this moment, are they, the most intelligent marine species, colonising the warm seas of the planets. That we originated on similarly habitable planets is our only common bond. That we have both conquered space travel makes us equals. Yet we still have not the remotest idea how their ships are propelled. Theories aplenty, but none I’d trust. Yet they exceed light speeds.”
Tulla paused, wetted her lips,
“As you are aware we fought them once, over three hundred years ago. Since then we have both pursued a policy of wary coexistence. If they leave us alone, we’ll leave them alone. Of course there have been many attempts to communicate with them, attempts to observe them. All have failed. Nonetheless they are intelligent. But different. They may have attempted to communicate with us, to observe us, and failed. What I am trying to say is that, so different are we, that they are probably as ignorant of our ways as we are of theirs.”
Inspector Eldon Boone was becoming visibly impatient.
“What we do know,” Tulla said, “is that their ships once fought a battle with our police ships. Police ships today, though of a different design, still carry the same unmistakable insignia that they did then. Then both sides withdrew from the battle on the tacit understanding that enough was enough. Maybe the Nautili believe that police ships are of a different species to other ships, and they are under instructions not to attack those ships.”
“It does explain,” Eldon pushed his bulky self to his feet, “Belid Keal not seeing any gun flashes. That’s commensurate with Nautili weaponry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will alert the relevant authorities.”
“No!” Tulla was across the room, holding onto Eldon Boone’s tunic sleeve, “You promised to hear me out. I don’t believe, provided no more ships try to leave Happiness, that anyone else is in imminent danger.”
“No ships, by your own orders,” Jorge reminded Eldon, “except police ships, are allowed to or from Happiness.”
“There are three million people down there,” Eldon said to Tulla. “Within this Department, and adjoining Departments, are another ten million. The city is three days from here. There are over thirty million more people there. This station alone has 300,000 inhabitants. We can’t afford to take risks.
“I’m trying to save lives Inspector,” Tulla said. “Believe me, if we react hastily now our whole civilisation could be placed in jeopardy. Because, from the pattern of their spread, the Nautili are going to proceed right through our civilisation. Please sit down.”
Eldon studied her earnest entreating gaze. Through his taut sleeve came the tremors of her suppressed agitation. She released his sleeve. Eldon turned his gaze onto Jorge, then massively resumed his seat. Tulla, releasing her breath, returned to the Director’s chair.
“I don’t believe,” she said, “contrary to first appearances, that the Nautili mean us any harm. I’d like to remind you that they are capable of masking and removing a whole moon, of hiding their presence from us, and yet all that they have harmed are eleven civilian ships. If my calculations are correct, they took the moon within 500 kilometres of one platform. To move a body of that mass requires colossal powers. Powers unknown to us, alien to us. Yet I believe that their sole intention is to peacefully colonise the seas of Happiness. I also believe that, if a fleet of police ships were to suddenly arrive here, the Nautili would, defensively, attack them. What defence would you have, Inspector, against ships that you couldn’t see?”
Eldon played with his beard. Jorge lowered his leg to the floor,
“I’d like to remind you,” he said mildly to Tulla, “that the Nautili are known to have flooded one planet, that they also fatally shifted one outstation, and that there are many recorded instances of them slaughtering whole primitive communities. What makes you believe that the inhabitants of Happiness are not in any danger?”
“The planet the Nautili flooded was four hundred and seventy years ago. They have flooded none since. Incidentally this gives weight to my assertion that the Nautili are responsible for events on Happiness. They flooded that planet by moving its orbit closer to the sun and thus melting its ice caps. Nothing else we have encountered, nothing at all in fact, including ourselves, is capable of deliberately moving a planet out of its orbit. That aside, I believe that that was an act of desperation. And, as I have said, that was
four hundred and seventy years ago. We have no evidence that they have made use of that planet since. Maybe they made a mistake. We too have made many mistakes in that time.”
“The outstation too,” Jorge said, “that was an act of desperation?”
“That the Nautili were responsible for moving that outstation has never been proved. I concede that they were known to be in the vicinity; and, as I have already said, they are capable of moving such a body. But the siting of that outstation was controversial to begin with. Don’t forget that it was a scientific station studying an asteroid belt. There is no direct evidence whatsoever that the Nautili were involved. The only reason they were linked with it, I believe, was because they provided both a convenient scapegoat and good sensational copy for the media.”
Jorge nodded, gestured to her to proceed.
“If one studies the Nautili’s outward spread, from the original eight planets, it readily becomes apparent that they move outward in concentric circles, of a hundred billion kilometre width, over a forty year span. Slow enough not to be alarming to us. In the outer circle, for the forty year period, in which that planet was flooded, there were no suitable planets. At their present rate of spread, in eight years time, and for the following eighty years, they will encounter a similar dearth of suitable planets. We’ve got to help them over that latter eighty year period. Help them jump that gap.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jorge said.
Tulla frowned. Eldon was shrewdly assessing her. Nero was staring stunned into the centre of the room.
“Why,” Jorge reminded her, “are the inhabitants of Happiness not in any danger?”
“Because those communities that the Nautili have attacked have all been primitive peoples; and the inhabitants of Happiness are not carnivorous savages. They do not fish in the seas, they do not even bathe in those seas. The communities that have been attacked were always attacked in retaliation for fishing in their seas.”
“They were still human beings,” Eldon said.
“How do we know that the fish those savages killed, and ate, were not Nautili? We don’t.”
“We do, however,” Jorge said, “know that those are our people down there. Naive and sentimental maybe, but I don’t want any harm to come to them.”
“Exactly,” Eldon’s beard jutted in aggressive agreement. “Do the Nautili know that they’re our people and not bloody savages?”
“I don’t know.” Tulla clenched her fists, pressed them onto her legs, “All this is what makes me say that we are as ignorant of them as they are of us. They may simply not have connected two-legged land creatures with the ships of Space.”
“You can’t have it all ways Miss Yorke,” Eldon said. “A moment ago you were claiming that they thought police ships another species. Just how many species are we supposed to be?”
“I know, I know,” Tulla held up her hands, accepting his criticism. “And please don’t think that I’m trying to convince you one way or the other. I have no intention of becoming their champion. All I am saying is how hard it is to understand them, and warning you what a mistake it is to assume that they share our knowledge, or our logic. What I’m also saying is that their understanding of us is probably as imperfect as is our understanding of them. We can judge them only externally, on what we think they appear to be. And because they do not live in space, but on planets, we tend to assume that they are inferior to us, a lesser species than ours. And it is an understandable, a forgivable assumption. We originated on planets, planets are far behind us in the mists of antiquity, so we assume that all planetary life is primitive. Even of our own kind. People who want to settle on planets we look upon as retarded in some way, as simpletons. And because the Nautili do not build in space we tend to think their expertise inferior to ours. Interesting yes, but inferior. That is a mistake. They can move moons. And they knew what they were doing. If they had moved that moon while any two of the planets had been in conjunction the effect would have been critical. As it is the absence of that moon is minimal, barely affects the orbit of the host planet.”
“None of this,” Eldon said, “alters the fact that they have destroyed eleven of our ships.”
“It does. For all we know they could regard unmarked ships as being unmanned. Possibly they mark only their manned ships. Nor were they that wrong in not engaging our police ship. Had battle been joined we’d no doubt by now have had squadrons rushing to our defence. So, we have to assume, the Nautili don’t want a war. Then again they might. The shooting down of those eleven ships may have been a deliberate act of provocation. I don’t know. I can offer suggestions only. Guesswork. For instance they might have thought the ships they attacked were unmanned mail ships. That would tie in with their policy of holding the planet incommunicado.”
“Mail ships are interspace only,” Nero Porsnin spoke.
“How do the Nautili know that?” Tulla asked him.
“They do kill though?” Nero persisted, glanced to Jorge for approval. “And anything that gets in their way?”
“No they don’t,” Tulla exercised patience. “They kill only that which threatens their own existence. As we obliterate such pests as bacteria and viruses.”
“A small matter of degree,” Jorge smiled at her.
“Yes,” Tulla hotly conceded. “I’m just trying to explain their possible perception of us.”
“Do they,” Jorge by his practical tone sought to calm her, “normally hold the planets they’re colonising incommunicado?”
“Not so far as I know. But neither do they normally remove moons. Possibly, realising we have a Space settlement there, and realising that we would investigate the moon’s sudden disappearance, they have chosen to delay that investigation and so are holding Happiness incommunicado. I don’t know.”
Eldon was rotating his hands,
“In this circle of their spread now...” he frowned with the effort of expressing himself. “Exactly how many suitable planets are there?”
“I’ve gone back, in detail, only over the last twelve decades,” Tulla said. “For every three planets in one forty year circle they take four in the next. That’s an average. At that rate of expansion, though, they were two short in this present forty year circle. During the next two circles, the next eighty years, they’ll more than make up for it. Incidentally, I believe that these forty year spreads indicate that they are not capable of travelling any greater distance. If that is the case then they don’t know what lays ahead of them in the next eighty years, where there is an abundance of suitable planets. If they’d known that I can’t see them having bothered with Happiness.”
Inspector Eldon Boone was shaking his shaggy head, more at his own failure to understand rather than a refusal to believe what she was telling him.
“What I don’t get,” he said, “is why no-one else has noticed this spread?”
“Easy to answer that one Inspector,” Jorge assured him, “they probably have. Somebody probably suggested this years ago. And somebody else, somewhere else, has probably been sitting on that information ever since. Or it got tagged into some obscure file and has been as good as forgotten. So far as Service records go forty years is a long time buried. You agree Nero?”
“It could also be,” Nero sought to flatter Tulla, “the novel presentation that Miss Yorke has now given the facts. Though,” Nero made a grimace of glum certainty, “your original explanation is most likely the case.”
After only five days of Jorge Arbatov’s company Nero had acquired some of Jorge’s cynicism concerning the Service; and Nero was beginning to enjoy knocking down some of his old idols, was getting some small satisfaction avenging himself on the ungrateful powers-that-be.
At the same time Nero feared Jorge’s cavalier utterances, and trembled before his own temerity in imitating them. Yet he could not desist, found himself, as if mesmerised, speaking against his will. Because Jorge Arbatov’s indiscriminate disregard for everyone and everything fascinated Nero, with the
same fascination that any potentially dangerous object, such as a gun, has for the rest of us. Even news of Nautili within his Department hadn’t seemed to have unduly bothered Jorge. Nero knew of others who’d have been hiding under their desks by now — himself included. But like Jorge had said, “Don’t be afraid of decisions. The worst that can happen is that you’ll get it wrong.”
“Actually,” Tulla said, “when I worked it out I couldn’t understand why no-one else had seen it earlier, hadn’t warned us. It’s so obvious. Look,” she began tapping at her case.
The three men rose and examined the screens as Tulla called up star charts. Those planets the Nautili were known to inhabit she had marked in red, those she deemed suitable for Nautili colonisation were coloured blue. She guided the three men through the forty year time spans, varying the projections, until they came to Happiness. Happiness was marked in red. When the charts were shown for the next eighty years the expansion was ringed with blue. The eighty years beyond that, though, displayed very few blue spots.
“What,” Jorge asked her, “are the criteria for a planet suitable for Nautili?”
“It has to be approximately a hundred and forty million kilometres from its sun, surface temperatures suitable for us, and, of course, no moon. It also has to have at least one landlocked sea. Or two separate oceans. Those planets where the oceans are joined by river systems, by ancient canals, by lowland marshes even, they haven’t colonised. One ocean on all their planets has to be completely isolated. And, on Happiness, there is just such an inland sea in the Northern Hemisphere.”
“How many planets will they need here?” Eldon pointed to the band eighty years hence.
“Ninety two,” Tulla said, “There are only three there. But look beyond that eighty year stretch,” she tapped buttons, “and there are hundreds. Somehow we’ve got to help them leap that eighty year gap. Or, purely from a selfish viewpoint, if they start removing moons in there there’s no knowing what mischief they might cause. Because in that barren eighty year stretch there are seven cities. That’s why we’ve got to be so careful now. Why I don’t want us to make enemies of them.”