Great Stories of Space Travel

by Groff Conklin (Editor)

  A message arrived at the Department of War.

  SMALL SPACE CRAFT DETACHED ITSELF FROM INVADING VESSEL AT INSTANT OF STRONG UNTUNED WAVE DISTURBANCE. SMALL CRAFT MAKING GUIDED FLIGHT TOWARD PLANET FOUR. WILL LAND ON DARK SIDE NORTHERN AREA FIRST CONTINENT. REQUEST ORDERS.

  The Department of War was newly organized and had not time to acquire traditions of pomposity and bureaucratic delay. Within minutes its orders went back:

  EVACUATE ALL POPULATION FROM AREA IN QUESTION. HAVE GROUND VEHICLES ATMOSPHERE FLIERS READY TO TEST ARMAMENT OF CRAFT. BROADCAST APPEAL FOR VOLUNTEERS, GIVING DUE WARNING OF PROBABLE DEATH. NO SPACE CRAFT TO BE USED. NO HINT OF ADEQUATE DEFENSES MUST BE GIVEN TO ENEMY UNTIL FULL-SCALE OPERATION BY ENTIRE SYSTEM.

  The population of the Masa Four had had one experience of invaders from beyond. Some twenty-five million citizens began a swift, orderly evacuation— as a precaution against the landing of an unarmed lifeboat.

  Buck waked from an uneasy doze when the lifeboat descended to the planet’s dark side. Every observation device known to man was at work to gather information, but Buck was not interested in technicalities. He yawned elaborately, even as scanner beams were noted. He stretched as the scanner beams cut off abruptly. He shook himself comfortably as the analyzers reported the atmosphere to be Earth-type, with a considerable excess of the inert gases but well inside the comfort range of oxygen-nitrogcn mixtures.

  The lifeboat went down carefully, feeling for dangers. Infrared equipment reported the shore of a sea and oddities that could be the equipment of a harbor. Maynard sheered the tiny craft away. He actually neared ground only a hundred-odd miles away. It was his job to get himself killed if the local population could manage it, but it was not his job to make them. If they knew the seeming comet out in space was a spaceship, they’d be on the alert. If they were the race that had murdered the Capellan colonists, they’d try to keep him from getting back to his ship. If they weren’t—

  The lifeboat grounded with infinite caution in what the scanners declared was a jungle of feathery-leaved vegetation. For long, long minutes Maynard sat tense, prepared to fling the little craft skyward at any sign of action against it. Nothing happened. The outside microphones transmitted noises, to be sure, but they were the random sounds of wild jungle life. After a long time Maynard cracked a port. Still nothing.

  “If anybody wants to volunteer to get biological specimens,” said Maynard, “he can step out. In case of alarm, though, I’m going to take this boat up and try to wriggle back—to find out what they’ll try to use to stop us.”

  Voices answered. There was the clanking of an unlocking door. Buck trotted back to it. Fascinating smells came in the opening. Men stepped out—armed and cautious. The exit door stayed open. One man stood by to shut and dog it if the lifeboat shot skyward.

  It took courage for men to venture out, knowing that they might have to be abandoned so the lifeboat’s mission of drawing enemy fire—if this race was inimical—could be carried out. But Buck was fascinated by the smells. He would have liked to get back to Holden, of course, but these men were his friends, too. If they went out into this place of innumerable novel smells—

  He jumped lightly to the ground. His nose was instantly busy. The ground had a different smell from that of Earth. The plants were new. There were scents which must be animals, but not any animals Buck had ever scented before. He heard a man moving nearby, taking samples of vegetation. Very much could be inferred from the types of starch and cellulose this planet’s vegetation contained. But Buck could have told much more, from what his nose discovered. Here a little carnivore had trailed a skittering small thing which periodically darted up into overhanging vegetation, and as periodically darted down again. There a small herbivore had made a vast, terrified leap for no apparent reason—which meant that a flying thing had made a swoop at it, and missed. And here a thing which had almost the smell of a snake moved in distinctive hops, while there was a definite smell of a warm-blooded animal in something which left a completely continuous trail by traveling on its belly.

  Buck explored, utterly absorbed in this world of literally new smells. From time to time he heard the sounds made by the men, and was reassured. But he strayed farther and farther from the grounded lifeboat—only sometimes he stopped and listened to it— and he had found the burrow of some living creature and was sniffing absorbedly at its entrance when the really significant noises began.

  One noise began at the horizon and swept toward the zenith. It was a dull, humming rumble, like the motors of atmosphere fliers Buck had heard back on Earth. It was mechanical and, therefore, of man, and, therefore, not to be feared or suspected. At the same time there came distant clankings. And they were like bulldozers and other machines of men, and they were not to be feared, either. Buck sniffed fascinatedly at the burrow.

  Men’s voices called sharply. Had Holden called him, Buck would have gone bounding instantly. But he owed a lesser obedience to other men. He sniffed again and again, lingeringly. Then, as he trotted unhurriedly in response to the call, he heard the zooming roar of a lifeboat drive in atmosphere. It shot toward the sky. It did not occur to Buck that he might have had to be left behind—as a man would have been abandoned under like circumstances—because the lifeboat had to test out the deadliness of armaments on this planet, but had to be aloft to test them fully.

  When he got back to the place where the lifeboat had been, though, it was gone.

  Buck was simply bewildered. The droning above grew to a thunderous, circling roar. There were many flying things overhead, and they cruised back and forth in the darkness in a pattern which would have made it difficult indeed for the lifeboat to have escaped without coming under radar-aimed fire. At the same time, the clanking mechanical noises came closer from at least three directions.

  Buck smelled incredulously at the place where the lifeboat had been but where it was no longer. He ran uneasily along the scent trails left by the men who had gathered biological specimens. It was completely unthinkable that the men had deserted him. He came back again and again to the place where the lifeboat had rested. He was unhappy, of course, but it was not possible for him to imagine himself abandoned. He waited uncomfortably for the men to notice that he’d been left behind and to come back after him.

  Roarings circled in the overcast sky above him. Clankings approached in the encircling dark. Those were things of men—not his men, perhaps, but certainly men who would be friendly to a large, brown, well-mannered dog with a collar around his neck which said he belonged to Holden. They might even help him get back to Holden. But meantime he trotted uneasily about the place to which the lifeboat had not returned. The noises and clankings grew louder.

  When the noises were very near, a blindingly bright white light abruptly shone down from a low-flying plane which spun in dizzy tight circles overhead. The light showed everything with a pitiless clarity, and Buck blinked dazedly. But he was not alarmed. Machines and bright lights and flying things meant men. And a self-respecting dog has a perfectly comfortable relationship with all men, though it is a special relationship with the crew of his ship, and his tie to his master is unique.

  Buck moved prudently out of the way as machines with glaring lights came clanking through the jungle, thrusting aside the feathery trees with a powerful violence. He moved out of their path, but he did not dodge into the shadows. He blinked and wagged his tail abstractedly and prepared to greet the men in the machines with due courtesy. Of course they would help him get back to Holden!

  A machine stopped, and something got out of it. But the figure was not a man. Buck sniffed incredulously. Then his hackles rose. It was not possible! Machines were handled by men! Only by men! The Masan moved toward him. Buck growled warningly. Unbearable light smote upon him. He growled again, bristling, a big brown dog growling in warning that members of a mere race which might have been sniping Earth ships and massacring Earth colonies had better not bother him! Buck, of course, knew nothing of missing ships
or massacres. He was a dog, a man’s dog, and he could imagine no creature which was not inferior to man and which a man’s dog could not reasonably defy.

  It was an extraordinary picture. Alien and unlikely jungle trees rising toward an overcast sky in which a bright white light whirled in dizzying circles. Huge, gleaming machines with lights—very bright lights— stabbing through the jungle’s feathery leafage and casting innumerable sharp shadows. The Masans, inhabitants of the fourth planet of Masa Gamma—not too much unlike men, to be sure—staring at a place in the jungle where a ship’s lifeboat had landed and where a big brown dog stood warningly at bay and growled at them of the wrath of his masters.

  There was a pause. A race which has space radios, and interplanetary ships, and radar, is not likely to be altogether stupid. And there were scanners in the ground vehicles, too, which carried back to record rooms everything the machines saw. The best brains of the race watched this meeting. And perhaps it was back where the scanned picture of the event was seen that someone realized that Buck’s paws were not made for the handling of machinery or the making of spaceships. Or perhaps something more subtle—

  There were sounds which Buck somehow knew were language, though he could not understand them as words. He turned sedately from the first figure, which had halted at his growl. He blinked dignifiedly at the surrounding lights. None advanced toward him. Buck emitted sundry small, confident, admonitory rumblings. His men had been here. They had gone away. They would come back for him. Of course. He was going to wait for them. He was not arbitrary about it. He would allow the machines to pass as fhey pleased. Men probably wished the machines to do thus and so, and he would not interfere. But he would wait here.

  He deliberately turned himself around twice and lay down on the ground. But his head stayed erect and he blinked at the lights. He calmly and confidently settled down for men to notice that he’d been left behind and to come back for him.

  But he hoped desperately that Holden would be with them.

  A report went to the Department of War on Planet Four. It was a highly accurate report, covering the landing of a small space craft on the northern area of the First Continent. The footprints of men were accurately transmitted, as well as the impression left by the spaceboat in the soil. There were motion pictures of Buck. Most of the report, naturally, was about him.

  " . . . Limited but definite intelligence,” said the report. “Is aware of social relationships neither hostile nor friendly, but tolerant. Is familiar with machines and regards them without fear but without interest. Has an extraordinary air of self-confidence and seems justified in opposing the wishes of more intelligent beings, though offering no hostility unless an attempt is made to force it to comply . . . Appears to be a member of a subject species to the makers of the space craft, though its utility is not clear, since it has neither prehensile claws nor any apparent technical aptitude for the supervision of machines ... We are setting up psychoscanning devices to attempt to extract information from its memories, of course without its awareness of the process. Meanwhile we are making every effort to leave it emotionally undisturbed. . .

  A later report:

  “... Psychoscanners have been able to secure excellent pictures and sound memories from the animal. It is of a species which lives in symbiosis with the creatures operating the space craft. Its utility to the superior race is not yet clear, but its subservience to them—they are not much unlike us—is proven by the records forwarded with this report. The animal’s vision appears to be comparatively poor, but its hearing and smell are excellent. Its memories of smells, in particular, are especially vivid. We have vision-memory records of various members of the spaceship’s crew, but smell-memories of every individual. Apparently, however, little or no technical information can be had from the animal because of the disinterest of the ‘Buck’—this is the auditory memory of the animal’s name for itself—in such matters. Memories of the naval base and of the presumed home planet of the invaders are concerned almost exclusively with smells. It is extremely concerned with trees and posts and the smells associated with them. . . . We regret that no useful technical information can be had. . . .”

  An order from the Department of War:

  URGENT. FIRST ATTENTION. THIS ORDER SUPERSEDES ALL OTHERS WHATSOEVER AND CLAIMS THE OBEDIENCE OF EVERY CITIZEN BEFORE ANY OTHER ACTIVITY WHATEVER.

  The Planetary Council has decided that information obtained from the Buck will determine our attitude toward the invaders. The fullest data must be secured concerning the relative loyalty of superior and inferior. Subject races can be psychologically conditioned to loyalty to tyrannical superiors. To what extent was this done to the Buck, and how? To what extent are rights conceded to the inferior race? What punishments are inflicted for mistakes of the race of inferior intelligence? What social stigma attaches to them? To what degree does the Buck expect loyalty to his kind from the superior race? What is the nature of the compact between the two—explicit or implied—and to what extent is it observed by the superior? What . . .

  The order continued in exhausting detail. It was based upon the realization that Buck—as a domestic animal—contained within his skull an absolutely objective picture of the human race. Buck would not be unbiased in his contemplation of his memories, but his memories would be right. A dog’s-eye view of humanity would be, within its limits, an extraordinarily revealing view.

  The Planetary Council accepted the conclusion that no technical or military information could be had from Buck. But what information it could obtain would be priceless. No man could be truthful about his own race, talking to an alien entity. But a dog— The Planetary Council pushed its preparations for war. It had very little hope of anything but never-ending battle through all the centuries of the future. But what hopes it had were centered in Buck.

  Buck himself found life confusing. The place where the lifeboat had landed was fenced in now, and he was inside the fence. The things which were not men treated him with respect, and he treated them with the self-respecting courtesy of a well-mannered dog. They pointed things at him, and he was bored. But presently they had a loud-speaker which made noises. Once it barked at him in exact similitude of another dog—in fact, Buck remembered a dog at the Rigel base whose bark had sounded exactly like that. He barked back angrily. But the loud-speaker did not bark again. Another time, Holden’s voice came out of it. And Buck leaped in frenzied joy, his tail wagging until it was almost a blur, and gave tongue in such howlings of heartbroken joy as a dog does give when his master returns after many days. When he realized that it was the loud-speaker, he could not accept the disappointment. He went whimpering about the enclosure, searching for Holden.

  There were other stimuli applied to Buck, too. One of the Masans brought him food. At first Buck sniffed at it gingerly. If he must eat of unfamiliar things, he preferred food of his own killing. But ultimately he tolerated the Masan and ate. The Masan had a loudspeaker attached to his body, and it said “Buck” on various occasions, and at first Buck’s tail wagged joyously at the familiar syllable. But even when the Masan himself mastered the articulation of the name, Buck did not accept him fully. He wanted men. Especially, he wanted Holden. He dozed, and dreamed of Holden. He slept, and sometimes his dreams were such as to make his paws make tiny, jerking, frustrated movements, and sometimes he barked or whimpered or whined in his sleep. But the whinings were of the desperate joy he felt when in his dreams he saw Holden.

  He had no idea that the things pointed at him by the Masans made records of his memories as they were evoked by the increasing stock of stimuli the Masans were able to apply. Buck had understood the meaning of well over a hundred words, when combined with certain tones of voice. These words invariably provoked similar responses as the loud-speaker uttered them from the record of Buck’s memories.

  While the preparations for the destruction of the Kennessee went on, the Masans studied Buck intensively. With their increasing comprehension of his brain, they tried to w
in his friendship. The one Masan assigned to the task tried painstakingly to fill the part of Holden. He used the memory-recordings of Holden’s voice. He tried to reproduce the strokings that Buck’s memories said caused quiverings of ecstasy. Once he tried to tussle with Buck, as Holden did. And that took courage, because Buck was a big and powerful dog and the Masan was slight and relatively frail.

  But Buck would not play. He was polite and he was amiable within the limits a dog sets for himself toward other animals also useful to man—horses, for example, and cows and sheep and very occasionally a cat. But a dog will not play with a gamboling lamb nor run with a freed colt. Buck was reserved. His loyalty to man, and especially to Holden, could not be broken. And though he did eat, and condescendingly tolerated the Masan scientist—considered to have one of the two or three best brains in the system —who tried to replace Holden in his affections, he began to pine away as days and days passed by and began to stretch into weeks. He grew thin, though he was abstractedly aware that the people who were not men had begun very definitely to like him.