Store of Infinity

by Robert Sheckley

  “That’s what we’re here for,” Haskell said cheerfully. “The job I have in mind for you, Mr. Perceveral, is listed in our catalog as Extraterrestrial Explorer.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Extraterrestrial or alien-planet explorer,” Haskell said. “The explorers, you know, are the men who make the first contacts on alien planets, the primary settlers who gather our essential data. I think of them as the Drakes and Magellans of this century. It is, I think you’ll agree, an excellent opportunity.”

  Perceveral stood up, his face a dull red. “If you’re finished with the joke, I’ll leave.”

  “Eh?”

  “Me an extraterrestrial explorer?” Perceveral said with a bitter laugh. “Don’t try to kid me. I read the papers. I know what the explorers are like.”

  “What are they like?”

  “They’re Earth’s finest,” Perceveral said. “The very best brains in the very best bodies. Men with trigger-quick reactions, able to tackle any problems, cope with any situation, adjust to any environment. Isn’t that true?”

  “Well,” Haskell said, “it was true back in the early days of planetary exploration. And we have allowed that stereotype to remain in the public eye, to instill confidence. But that type of explorer is now obsolete. There are plenty of other jobs for men such as you describe. But not planetary exploration.”

  “Couldn’t your supermen make the grade?” Perceveral asked with a faint sneer.

  “Of course they could,” Haskell said. “No paradox is involved here. The record of our early explorers is unsurpassed. Those men managed to survive on every planet where human survival was even remotely possible, against overwhelming odds, by sheer grit and tenacity. The planets called for their every resource and they rose to meet the challenge. They stand as an eternal monument to the toughness and adaptability of Homo sapiens.”

  “Then why did you stop using them?”

  “Because our problems on Earth changed,” Haskell told him. “In the early days, the exploration of space was an adventure, a scientific achievement, a defense measure, a symbol. But that passed. Earth’s overpopulation trend continued—explosively. Millions spilled into relatively empty lands like Brazil, New Guinea, and Australia. But the population explosion quickly filled them. In major cities, the population-panic-point was reached and produced the Weekend Riots. And the population, bolstered by geriatrics and a further sharp decrease in infant mortality, continued to grow.”

  Haskell rubbed his forehead. “It was a mess. But the ethics of population increase aren’t my business. All we at the Board knew was, we had to have new land fast. We needed planets which—unlike Mars and Venus—would be rapidly self-supporting. Places to which we could siphon millions, while the scientists and politicians on Earth tried to straighten things out. We had to open these planets to colonization as rapidly as possible. And that meant speeding up the initial exploratory process.”

  “I know all that,” Perceveral said. “But I still don’t see why you stopped using the optimum explorer type.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? We were looking for places where ordinary people could settle and survive. Our optimum explorer type was not ordinary. Quite the contrary, he almost approximated a new species. And he was no judge of ordinary survival conditions. For example, there are bleak, dreary, rain-swept little planets that the average colonist finds depressing to the point of insanity; but our optimum explorer is too sound to be disturbed by climatic monotony. Germs which devastate thousands give him, at most, a bad time for a while. Dangers which can push a colony to the brink of disaster, our optimum explorer simply evades. He can’t assess these things in everyday terms. They simply don’t touch him.”

  “I’m beginning to see,” Perceveral said.

  “Now the best way,” Haskell said, “would have been to attack these planets in stages. First an explorer, then a basic research team, then a trial colony composed largely of psychologists and sociologists, then a research group to interpret the findings of the other groups, and so forth. But there’s never enough time or money for all that. We need those colonies right now, not in fifty years.”

  Mr. Haskell paused and looked hard at Perceveral. “So, you see, we must have immediate knowledge as to whether a group of ordinary people could live and thrive on any new planet. That’s why we changed our qualifications for explorers.”

  Perceveral nodded. “Ordinary explorers for ordinary people. There’s just one thing, however.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know how well you know my background…”

  “Quite well,” Haskell assured him.

  “Then you might have noticed that I have certain tendencies toward—well, a certain accident-proneness. To tell you the honest truth, I have a hard time surviving right here on Earth.”

  “I know,” Mr. Haskell said pleasantly.

  “Then how would I make out on an alien planet? And why would you want me?”

  Mr. Haskell looked slightly ill at ease. “Well, you stated our position wrongly when you said ‘ordinary explorers for ordinary people.’ It isn’t that simple. A colony is composed of thousands, often millions of people, who vary considerably in their survival potentialities. Humanity and the law state that all of them must have a fighting chance. The people themselves must be reassured before they’ll leave Earth. We must convince them—and the law—and ourselves that even the weakest will have a chance for survival.”

  “Go on,” Perceveral said.

  “Therefore,” Haskell said quickly, “some years ago we stopped using the optimum-survival explorer, and began using the minimum-survival explorer.”

  Perceveral sat for a while digesting this information. “So you want me because any place /can live in, anyone can live in.”

  “That more or less sums up our thinking on the problem,” Haskell said, smiling genially.

  “But what would my chances be?”

  “Some of our minimum-survival explorers have done very well.”

  “And others?”

  “There are hazards, of course,” Haskell admitted. “And aside from the potential dangers of the planet itself, there are other risks involved in the very nature of the experiment. I can’t even tell you what they are, since that would destroy our only control element on the minimum-survival test. I simply tell you that they are present.”

  “Not a very good outlook,” Perceveral said.

  “Perhaps not. But think of the rewards if you won through! You would, in effect, be the founding father of a colony! Your value as an expert would be immeasurable. You would have a permanent place in the life of the community. And equally important, you might be able to dispel certain insidious self-doubts concerning your place in the scheme of things.”

  Perceveral nodded reluctantly. “Tell me one thing. Your telegram arrived today at a particularly crucial moment. It seemed almost—”

  “Yes, it was planned,” Haskell said. “We’ve found that the people we want are most receptive when they’ve reached a certain psychological state. We keep close watch over the few who fit our requirements, waiting for the right moment to make our presentation.”

  “It might have been embarrassing if you’d been an hour later,” Perceveral said.

  “Or unfruitful if we’d been a day earlier.” Haskell arose from behind his desk. “Would you join me for lunch, Mr. Perceveral? We can discuss final details over a bottle of wine.”

  “All right,” Perceveral said. “But I’m not making any promises yet.”

  “Of course not,” Haskell said, opening the door for him.

  After lunch, Perceveral did some hard thinking. The explorer’s job appealed to him strongly in spite of the risks. It was, after all, no more dangerous than suicide, and much better paying. The rewards were great if he won; the penalty for failure was no more than the price he had been about to pay for failure on Earth.

  He hadn’t done well in thirty-four years on Earth. The best he had shown were flashes of ability m
arred by a strong affinity for illness, accident and blunder. But Earth was crowded, cluttered and confused. Perhaps his accident-proneness had been not some structural flaw in him but the product of intolerable conditions.

  Exploration would give him a new environment. He would be alone, dependent only on himself, answerable only to himself. It would be tremendously dangerous—but what could be more dangerous than a glittering razor blade held in his own hand?

  This would be the supreme effort of his life, the ultimate test. He would fight as he had never fought before to conquer his fatal tendencies. And this time he would throw every ounce of strength and determination into the struggle.

  He accepted the job. In the next weeks of preparation, he ate and drank and slept determination, hammered it into his brain and wove it between his nerves, mumbled it to himself like a Buddhist prayer, dreamed about it, brushed his teeth and washed his hands with it, meditated upon it until the monotonous refrain buzzed in his head waking and sleeping, and began slowly to act as a check and restraint upon action.

  The day arrived when he was assigned a year’s tour of duty upon a promising planet in the East Star Ridge. Haskell wished him luck and promised to stay in touch by L-phase radio. Perceveral and his equipment were put aboard the picket ship Queen of Glasgow, and the adventure was begun.

  During the months in space, Perceveral continued to think obsessively of his resolve. He handled himself carefully in no-weight, watched his every movement and cross-checked his every motive. This continuous inspection slowed him down considerably; but gradually it became habitual. A set of new reflexes began to form, struggling to conquer the old reflex system.

  But progress was spasmodic. In spite of his efforts, Perceveral caught a minor skin irritation from the ship’s purification system, broke one of his ten pairs of glasses against a bulkhead, and suffered numerous headaches, backaches, skinned knuckles and stubbed toes.

  Still, he felt he had made progress, and his resolution hardened accordingly. And at last his planet came into view.

  The planet was named Theta. Perceveral and his equipment were set down on a grassy, forested upland near a mountain range. The area had been pre-selected by air survey for its promising qualities. Water, wood, local fruits and mineral-bearing ores were all nearby. The area could make an excellent colony site.

  The ship’s officers wished him luck, and departed. Perceveral watched until the ship vanished into a bank of clouds. Then he went to work.

  First he activated his robot. It was a tall, gleaming, black multipurpose machine, standard equipment for explorers and settlers. It couldn’t talk, sing, recite or play cards like the more expensive models. Its only response was a headshake or a nod; dull companionship for the year ahead. But it was programmed to handle verbal work-commands of a considerable degree of complexity, to perform the heaviest labor, and to show a degree of foresight in problem situations.

  With the robot’s help, Perceveral set up his camp on the plain, keeping a careful check on the horizon for signs of trouble. The air survey had detected no signs of an alien culture, but you could never tell. And the nature of Theta’s animal life was still uninvestigated.

  He worked slowly and carefully, and the silent robot worked beside him. By evening, he had set up a temporary camp. He activated the radar alarm and went to bed.

  He awoke just after dawn to the shrilling of the radar alarm bell. He dressed and hurried outside. There was an angry humming in the air, like the sound of a locust horde.

  “Get two beamers,” he told the robot, “and hurry back. Bring the binoculars, too.”

  The robot nodded and lurched off. Perceveral turned slowly, shivering in the gray dawn, trying to locate the direction of the sound. He scanned the damp plain, the green edge of forest, the cliffs beyond. Nothing moved. Then he saw, outlined against the sunrise, something that looked like a low dark cloud. The cloud was flying toward his camp, moving very quickly against the wind.

  The robot returned with the beamers. Perceveral took one and directed the robot to hold the other, awaiting orders to fire. The robot nodded, his eyecells gleaming dully as he turned toward the sunrise.

  When the cloud swept nearer, it resolved into a gigantic flock of birds. Perceveral studied them through his binoculars. They were about the size of Terran hawks, but their darting, erratic flight resembled the flight of bats. They were heavily taloned and their long beaks were edged with sharp teeth. With all that lethal armament, they had to be carnivorous.

  The flock circled them, humming loudly. Then, from all directions, with wings swept back and talons spread, they began to dive. Perceveral directed the robot to begin firing.

  He and the robot stood back to back, blasting into the onslaught of birds. There was a whirling confusion of blood and feathers as battalions of birds were scythed out of the sky. Perceveral and the robot were holding their own, keeping the aerial wolf pack at a distance, even beating it back. Then Perceveral’s beamer failed.

  The beamers were supposed to be fully charged and guaranteed for seventy-five hours at full automatic. A beamer couldn’t fail! He stood for a moment, stupidly clicking the trigger. Then he flung down the weapon and hurried to the supplies tent, leaving the robot to continue the fight alone.

  He located his two spares and came out. When he rejoined the battle, he saw that the robot’s beamer had stopped functioning. The robot stood erect, beating off the swarm of birds with his arms. Drops of oil sprayed from his joints as he flailed at the dense flock. He swayed, dangerously close to losing his balance, and Perceveral saw that some birds had evaded his swinging arms and were perched on his shoulders, pecking at his eyecells and kinesthetic antenna.

  Perceveral swung up both beamers and began to cut into the swarm. One weapon failed almost immediately. He continued chopping with the last, praying it would retain its charge.

  The flock, finally alarmed by its losses, rose and wheeled away, screaming and hooting. Miraculously unhurt, Perceveral and the robot stood knee-deep in scattered feathers and charred bodies.

  Perceveral looked at the four beamers, three of which had failed him entirely. Then he marched angrily to the communications tent.

  He contacted Haskell and told him about the attack of the birds and the failure of three beamers out of four. Red-faced with outrage, he denounced the men who were supposed to check an explorer’s equipment. Then, out of breath, he waited for Haskell’s apology and explanation.

  “That,” Haskell said, “was one of the control elements.”

  “Huh?”

  “I explained it to you months ago,” Haskell said. “We are testing for minimum-survival conditions. Minimum, remember? We have to know what will happen to a colony composed of varying degrees of proficiency. Therefore, we look for the lowest denominator.”

  “I know all that. But the beamers—”

  “Mr. Perceveral, setting up a colony, even on an absolute minimum basis, is a fantastically expensive operation. We supply our colonists with the newest and best in guns and equipment, but we can’t replace things that stop functioning or are used up. The colonists have to use irreplaceable ammunition, equipment that breaks and wears out, food stores that become exhausted or spoiled—”

  “And that’s what you’ve given me?” Perceveral asked.

  “Of course. As a control, we have equipped you with the minimum of survival equipment. That’s the only way we’ll be able to predict how the colonists will make out on Theta.”

  “But it isn’t fair! Explorers always get the best equipment!”

  “No,” Haskell said. “The old-style optimum-survival explorers did, of course. But we’re testing for least potential, which must extend to equipment as well as to personality. I told you there would be risks.”

  “Yes, you did,” Perceveral said. “But…All right. Do you have any other little secrets in store for me?”

  “Not really,” Haskell said, after a momentary pause. “Both you and your equipment are of minimum-survival qu
ality. That about sums it up.”

  Perceveral detected something evasive in this answer, but Haskell refused to be more specific. They signed off and Perceveral returned to the chaos of his camp.

  Perceveral and the robot moved their camp to the shelter of the forest for protection against further assaults by the birds. In setting up again, Perceveral noted that fully half of his ropes were badly worn, his electrical fixtures were beginning to burn out, and the canvas of his tents showed mildew. Laboriously he repaired everything, bruising his knuckles and skinning his palms. Then his generator broke down.

  He sweated over it for three days, trying to figure out the trouble from the badly printed instruction book, written in German, that had been sent with the machine. Nothing seemed to be set up right in the generator and nothing worked. At last he discovered, by pure accident, that the book was meant for an entirely different model. He lost his temper at this and kicked the generator, almost breaking the little toe of his right foot.

  Then he took himself firmly in hand and worked for another four days, figuring out the differences between his model and the model described, until he had the generator working again.

  The birds found that they could plummet through the trees into Perceveral’s camp, snatch food and be gone before the beamer could be leveled at them. Their attacks cost Perceveral a pair of glasses and a nasty wound on the neck. Laboriously he wove nets, and, with the robot’s help, strung them in the branches above his camp.

  The birds were baffled. Perceveral finally had time to check his food stores, and to discover that many of his dehydrated staples had been poorly processed, and others had become a host to an ugly airborne fungus. Either way, it added up to spoilage. Unless he took measures now, he would be short of food during the Thetan winter.

  He ran a series of tests on local fruits, grains, berries and vegetables. They showed several varieties to be safe and nourishing. He ate these, and broke into a spectacular allergy rash. Painstaking work with his medical kit gave him a cure for the allergy, and he set up a test to discover the guilty plant. But just as he was checking final results, the robot stamped in, upsetting test tubes and spilling irreplaceable chemicals.