Worst Contact

by Hank Davis

  “Well,” he said, “since I’ve got nothing better to do . . .”

  He searched the index references, found Paulsons in quantity, but no mention of his dishonored ancestor.

  “Odd,” he said, “He couldn’t have been such a scoundrel that they destroyed his records.”

  He prowled through the building, sampling the priceless military secrets of a lost civilization, getting himself lost, becoming more frustrated by the hour. He sat down to analyze his problem.

  “Permanent records,” he mused. “Those would be records that are complete. In other words, when a man’s service was terminated, they filmed his records and put them in the permanent file. There would be another file for those on active service. Which means that old Grandfather Paulson was still considered on active service when it happened. Which is odd, because he left with the colonists. Could that mean the colonists . . .”

  Impossible. A shipload of colonists wouldn’t kill off the civilization that mothered it, and then leave for the stars in search of breathing room—even if it had the power.

  He continued his search, and eventually he found active records of the military services. They were crudely kept files containing paper documents and records and even these were only abstracts of service records. He comprehended, at length, that the complete records were kept with the man at his point of service. What a prodigious amount of effort to devote to such a simple matter as record keeping!

  “Paulson, Paul,” the file said. “Space Navy. Serial Number 0329 B9472 A8974.”

  Paulson took the file and carried it out into the fresh air, to a plot of tangled grass where there were no bleached bones to dishearten him. He settled down to read of the bright development of a promising military career that had ended in disgrace.

  Paul Paulson had held the rank of captain in the Space Navy. He was a pilot of the highest qualifications. He had served with distinction on a number of dangerous missions. His last assignment had been the Space Navy Base on Callisto, Jupiter Command. The record concluded with the notation of a court-martial on a charge of insubordination, and the terse verdict: Guilty.

  Accompanying the file was a smaller folder, labeled, “Summary of Court-Martial Proceedings Against Paul Paulson.” The contents of the folder had been withdrawn for study, a notation informed him. He opened it and found a single sheet of paper that had been overlooked or unwanted.

  Paulson said to the captain, “Have they found anything?”

  “They found one thing. This happened just about two Earth months after the colonists left Pluto Base. I remember something in the old records about their communications with Earth breaking down sooner than they’d expected. Now we know why. It looks as if the human race missed extermination by an eyelash. What have you been up to?”

  “I found a personnel file on Grandfather Paulson. I suppose no one will object to my taking it.”

  “None of the natives I’ve met will object. Have you vindicated the old man?”

  “He received a court-martial for insubordination. That would be no disgrace in our family. Funny thing, though: the trial summary is missing, except for one statement by Grandfather Paulson. Interested?”

  “Let’s have it.”

  Captain Front took the paper and read. “To whom it may concern: It is true that I have refused to obey the orders of the Scientific Mission, in spite of the fact that my commanding officer ordered me to do so. It is true that I made a serious attempt to break the neck of the Scientific Mission’s chairman, Doctor Harold Dolittle. It is also true that I sincerely regret this attempt.

  “I hold nothing personal against Doctor Dolittle. Scientists have been playing at exterminating the human race for centuries and it’s probably only an accident that one of them hasn’t succeeded before now. And since Doctor Dolittle actually has succeeded, breaking his neck would not help the situation. It was bound to happen sooner or later, anyway.

  “When I was a kid back in Minnesota, there was a boy on our street named Fitzharris Holloway. We all called him Fizz and he wasn’t a bad kid except that he was just too curious to live. Let a bunch of us stand around a puddle and it would always be Fizz who would drop a big rock and splash mud all over our Sunday clothes and get the lot of us whipped. He’d drop it just to see what would happen. The average mentality could figure that out without the experiment, but Fizz’s mentality wasn’t average. It was scientific. He had to see for himself. Let us find a hornets’ nest and it would be Fizz who had to punch a stick into it. He’d get stung, of course, but so would the rest of us.

  “You’ve heard that old gag about throwing an egg into an electric fan? Almost everyone has, I guess, and been satisfied just to hear it. But Fizz had to see for himself. He got egg splashed all over himself and his ma’s new dress, and he wore a pillow to his meals for the next three days.

  “They’ll never forget Fizz at old Central High School. The scars he left in that chemistry laboratory will last as long as the building. All the teacher had to say was, ‘Don’t do this.’ And there would be Fizz out in the lab trying it out.

  “I figure now that Fizz was just a natural-born scientist. Most of us are curious about things as children—curious within limits, that is—but we outgrow it. A scientist never outgrows it, and the law of averages gives us a certain number of irresponsible scientists. Fizz met his end in a bar one night, when he dropped a lighted cigarette into the bulging front of a woman’s dress. She picked up a bottle and broke it over his head, and the jury called it justifiable homicide. If all natural-born scientists had run squarely into the consequences of their curiosity at such an early age, the human race might be no further along than the Bronze Age, but at least it would have a future.

  “I attempted to resign my Space Navy commission when I first learned that I was to assist Doctor Dolittle in his experiments. Contrary to normal procedure, my resignation was not accepted. I am now requesting permission to resign and join the star colonists. They have an opening for a reserve pilot and will favorably consider my application. I believe the risks of star colonization to be considerably less than those of remaining in this solar system. Doctor Dolittle has been poking at a hornets’ nest, and the more light-years away I am when the hornets come out, the better I’ll like it.

  “Respectfully yours, Captain Paul Paulson.”

  * * *

  Captain Front stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “So they let him go. And then, two months after the colonists left, this happened. What sort of experiments was this Scientific Mission carrying on?”

  “The only thing I could find was Grandfather’s statement.”

  “I wonder if they were conducting some kind of solar experiments. I never thought of the sun as being a hornets’ nest. What comes out when you poke a sun?”

  “Grandfather was attached to the Jupiter Base Command, on Callisto. We might find more information there. Any chance of hitting Callisto again on the way out?”

  “We’ll see what we find here. If this looks like a likely clue, we’ll have to follow it up. So far, there haven’t been any other clues. Let’s see what Walter says about this.”

  Vainly they searched such mute records as Earth had to offer. They sifted the bones of the Venus colonists and looked in at Mercury Base, where death had interrupted the lonely vigil of a small group of scientists and soldiers. Then they turned back. Mars again, then an asteroid base, and then Callisto.

  And the complete file on Captain Paul Paulson.

  Paulson searched further and found the records of the Scientific Mission. He carried an armload of document to Captain Front.

  “Found any answers?” the captain asked.

  “Not all of them,” Paulson said, “but enough.”

  “Solar research?”

  “No. Jupiter research.”

  “Odd,” the captain mused. “Whatever happened hit everything from the Jupiter moons through the system clear to Mercury.”

  “This Doctor Dolittle,” Paulson said, “was doing some i
ntensified research that concerned Jupiter. First, he used a series of atomic warheads to test the depth of the atmosphere. Then he wanted someone to pilot a ship on a tight parabolic orbit that would take him closer to Jupiter than any human had ever been before. As an added twist, the ship was to be paralleled closer in by a guided missile that could broadcast instrument readings. Grandfather Paulson was ordered to pilot the ship. He refused. He was tried for insubordination, convicted and sentenced to a prison term.”

  “But he left with the star colonists.”

  “Yes, by escaping from confinement. He got out to Pluto Base and stowed away on the starship. Jupiter Command was furious when it found out what had happened. The commandant ordered the starship to turn around and bring him back. The starship was out of the system then and it refused.”

  “Well, that’s an interesting bit of family history, but it doesn’t explain what wiped out humanity.”

  Paulson said grimy, “Doesn’t it?”

  “Does it?”

  “Grandfather Paulson said Doctor Dolittle had been poking at a hornets’ nest. He was poking at Jupiter, and it was vigorous poking—he used atomic warheads. Then, when Grandfather refused to pilot Dolittle’s ship, Dolittle found another pilot who would. They went into their orbit and made the trip successfully, but they lost their guided missile. Then, a few weeks later, they found it again.”

  Captain Front said blankly, “They lost it on Jupiter—and then they found it?”

  “The missile came shooting back at them,” said Paulson. “I gather that it was only a piece of luck that let them capture it, because the mechanism had been altered in a way they called ‘astonishing,’ and it used an unknown fuel. Its speed was something they couldn’t believe. It represented several hundred years’ progress for them at one crack, and it gave them the secret of star travel. They went to work on it, and they were too enthused to give much thought to what else might come up from Jupiter.”

  The captain walked over to a port and looked out at the sky. “Jupiter?”

  “It must have been hell for something native to Jupiter to take to space travel, but someone—or something—was as mad as a hornet. Atomic warheads wouldn’t soothe anyone’s feelings.”

  “So it—or they—headed toward the sun.”

  “At unbelievable speeds,” Paulson said. “Those on the outer planets either had time to try to escape, or maybe to come to help.”

  “And all the humanity they could find—how did they do it?”

  “I hope we never know. How did they ever get off Jupiter? Not even our starship could manage that. What’s the escape velocity?”

  “Too much.”

  “Well, I found the study they made of the missile. It’s an advance in mankind’s knowledge—at the price of mankind.”

  “I’ll have Walter go over it.”

  “Where is he?” Paulson asked. “I haven’t seen him for days.”

  The captain stiffened. “My God! He’s down on Amalthea, conducting some Jupiter experiments!”

  The desolate rock-strewn surface of Amalthea curved sharply away from them to its shallow horizon and the light in the sky was Jupiter. The huge disc of the planet hovered menacingly above them

  The churning bands of clouds writhed and struggled like live beings in the throes of mortal agony. Even as they watched, the colors deepened and faded, yellow clouds boiled into the brown of the North Equatorial Belt, and the enigmatic, so-called red spot shimmered with a repulsive, grayish pinkness.

  “Grandfather must have had come kind of apprehension about it,” Paulson said. “Just the sight of it is enough to scare a man to death. I feel as if it were going to gobble me up.”

  He turned expectantly to Doctor Walter, and the scientist said nothing. Behind the tinted thickness of his faceplate, his eyes bulged and sparkled.

  “I feel,” Paulson said, “as if I were on a disabled ship that is likely to crash at any second.”

  The scientist took a step forward—toward Jupiter. “Out, damned spot!” he muttered. “Out, I say!”

  Paulson jumped, and came down slowly. “How was that again?”

  “Shakespeare,” the scientist said.

  “I said I feel as if I were on a disabled ship—”

  “I heard you. Nonsense. It’s true that this little moon is falling toward Jupiter, but it’s only an inch and a fraction a year. Fifty million years from now, it’ll be a few miles closer. Eventually it’ll go all the way but you won’t be around to worry about it.”

  “No one will be around to worry about it,” Paulson said. “Do you think someone down there will think it’s another bombardment when the moon falls, and come up to see who did it?”

  Walter said shortly, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You have to admit that was a stupid way to experiment on an unknown planet. Atomic warheads!”

  “Who would have imagined anything could be living down there?” Walter said.

  “But what could they learn?”

  “I’m sure they had some definite objective. You don’t think they did it just for the fun of it, do you?”

  Paulson turned, “Your hour’s up. Let’s get going.”

  They made long, slow-motion bounds across the crumbling surface. Suddenly Paulson missed Walter, and turned to find him motionless, staring at Jupiter.

  “You said an hour was all you wanted,” Paulson said sharply. “We’re jumping off at midnight, you know, and I only have half the computations made.”

  “All right,” Walter said. “I was just looking.”

  When they reached the tiny lifeship, Walter turned again, before he entered the airlock. “I’d give a lot to know what’s down there. With all the study that Scientific Mission put in, they really found out nothing about the planet.”

  “I can tell you how to manage it,” said Paulson.

  “How?”

  “Give us about a six-month start. Then fly down and see for yourself. We’ll leave you the lifeship.”

  Walter turned abruptly and entered the airlock.

  Paulson followed him. “Sure, it’s a fascinating thing,” he said. “And I’m glad the planets in our own solar systems run Earth-normal and smaller. Otherwise, some scientist might decide to conduct some experiments. I’m glad Jupiter is light-years away from my home town, but after this I’ll never feel easy about it. Who can say that they won’t come out again someday, and take to star traveling?”

  They took off, and Paulson set course for Callisto Base. A moment later Walter got up and left the control section. When Paulson got curious and went back to look for him, he found the scientist pressing his face against a porthole, staring at Jupiter.

  PROTECTED SPECIES

  by H. B. Fyfe

  When is a first contact not a first contact? When, as John W. Campbell wrote introducing this story in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1951, one side has “an inadequate understanding of the facts.”

  ***

  Horace Browne Fyfe, Jr. (1918-1997) seems to have eluded the biographers of science fiction, and I wish I had more information about him. The ponderously formidable Nicholss-Clute encyclopedia mentions only that his first story was “Locked Out” in 1940, his career was interrupted by army service in WWII, and afterwards he wrote a series about the Bureau of Slick Tricks, in which clever humans outwit dim-witted aliens. In 1962 he published his only novel, D-99, which continues in much the same vein as the Slick Tricks series. “The tone is fortunately light,” the Nicholss-Clute tome comments. James Gunn’s less ponderous New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction mentions that he was a laboratory assistant and draftsman. Other sources give little more than bibliographical information. Please note, however, that the aforementioned “Locked Out” has the distinction of appearing in the Golden Age Astounding Science-Fiction, and dealt ingeniously with the problem of a space pilot on a solo mission who accidently becomes locked out of his ship, with nothing around but hard vacuum. Over a decade later, Fyfe published “Manners of the Age” in Galaxy
, with a light tone, but also hilariously and ingeniously exploring the possibility of a future when people communicate electronically and hardly ever see each other in person, with resultant behavior that will be familiar to anyone who’s observed the temper tantrums, bullying, and flame wars that’ are common on the Internet. And it may be “fortunate” that the Bureau of Slick Tricks stories are humorous, but if “Protected Species” is humorous, it’s entirely the gallows variety.

  The yellow star, of which Torang was the second planet, shone hotly down on the group of men viewing the half-built dam from the heights above. At a range of eighty million miles, the effect was quite Terran, the star being somewhat smaller than Sol.

  For Jeff Otis, fresh from a hop through space from the extra-bright star that was the other component of the binary system, the heat was enervating. The shorts and light shirt supplied him by the planet coordinator were soaked with perspiration. He mopped his forehead and turned to his host.

  “Very nice job, Finchley,” he complimented. “It’s easy to see you have things well in hand here.”

  Finchley grinned sparingly. He had a broad, hard, flat face with tight lips and mere slits of blue eyes. Otis had been trying ever since the previous morning to catch a revealing expression on it.

  He was uneasily aware that his own features were too frank and open for an inspector of colonial installations. For one thing, he had too many lines and hollows in his face, a result of being chronically underweight from space-hopping among the sixteen planets of the binary system.

  Otis noticed that Finchley’s aides were eying him furtively.

  “Yes, Finchley,” he repeated to break the little silence, “you’re doing very well on the hydroelectric end. When are you going to show me the capital city you’re laying out?”