The Yellow Fraction

by Rex Gordon

  She and Ropotsky had been quick to get acquainted, and they sounded as though they were starting what might be a long and close relationship.

  “I was working in the statistics office,” Susan said. “What started me was when, doing some private research, I discovered that all the propaganda the Blue Party puts out is based on a misconception. You know what they say. The Blue Party insists that we will eventually adapt ourselves to Arcon, and to prove it they produce figures to show that people are living longer now.”

  Ropotsky took a look at the solider, and turned around while the soldier watched him. “We aren’t living longer?” he asked Susan.

  Susan too looked at the soldier. “But we are. Only I happen to be a mathematics student. It’s true that a newborn child has a longer life-expectancy now than when our people first came to Arcon. Our postnatal clinics are a lot better now than they were then. In fact, we didn’t have any clinics then. The extra life-expectancy is accounted for by the treatment of childhood diseases in the first year of life.”

  I seem to be learning more about Arcon too, in this company, Len thought

  “Are old people living longer?” he asked Susan.

  “No.”

  Len looked out of the window at the remnants of the sunset and the lack of lights on the ground that was darkening away below. They were flying north, into the uninhabited part of Arcon.

  They were fed. One of the soldiers was sent around with bowls of food, which appeared to be the army method of catering on their particular aircraft. It looked like being an all-night journey.

  Len looked around the plane. In the center of their group, a bunch of young people had their heads together. After the meal, Ropotsky began to talk to Susan again. Len looked across the aisle to where the small blonde was sitting. After eating, she had curled up on the seat and was showing both legs instead of one. Len did not mind that, but she appeared to be asleep.

  I should have got myself a seat further back in the plane, thought Len.

  Susan tapped him on the shoulder. “In response to your inquiry,” she said.

  Len turned to her, but she glanced at the soldier and kept her voice down. “We have a big man, Duncan, right under the eye of the soldiers at the other end, who is a trainee pilot. He can’t do anything. But there’s a fair-haired engineer called Sorensen, in the middle there. Don’t look now. He’s working on it. He says it will take a little time.”

  Len’s feelings went up a little. “Tell them to keep working1 on it,” he suggested to Susan, and added, “I’m an applied mathematician, by the way.”

  Susan flickered her eyelids at him. “I’m a pure mathematician,” she said, straight-faced, and turned back to her conversation with Ropotsky. Somehow, it gave Len a feeling.

  And the message was -not that things were impossible, but that it would take a little time. Len sat back and tried to go to sleep in his aircraft seat.

  It was a pity they could not get organized before they came into the plane, he thought. He had not been in company like that before. To his surprise, he found himself capable of sleeping.

  He was wakened by a nudge. It was Ropotsky that time. The time could be near dawn. Looking straight ahead, Ropotsky kept his voice down. “We have a message: would we cause a distraction, as there’s liable to be a little noise.”

  We not merely have equanimity, Len thought We are polite.

  He looked around the front of the plane. The soldier in the door to the pilots’ quarters had been relieved. The man was staring down the aircraft vacantly, and Len could see that anything that happened was liable to attract him. “We might sing,” he suggested to Ropotsky.

  “I am not very good at singing,” Ropotsky said.

  Nor was Len, but he thought they might try. There was also the little blonde across the gangway. Len moved to the edge of his seat and tapped her shoulder. When she woke and gave him an innocent smile, as though she had been just waiting for him to wake her, he leaned to her and said, “Do you think we can distract the soldier?”

  The soldier could not hear him, but he could see' him.

  At once, he moved his gun to Len and said, "You, get back there.”

  The little blonde looked at Leh and then at the soldier, and moved her dress a little. The soldier’s eyes immediately went to her. They opened wide, and it looked as though he had to tear them away to get them back to Len. Thereafter, they performed a shuttle service.

  Ropotsky burst into song. The blonde moved her legs a little more.

  I do not know what kind of group of students we are, Len thought, but we seem, to have a variety of accomplishments of the worst kinds. He waited until the soldier presented his gun full at Ropotsky and said, “Shut up, you,” before he himself burst into song.

  The dawn was breaking, revealing a view through the window of the dust-layers in the lower Arcon atmosphere, and the purple-tinged peaks of a long mountain range ahead of them in the uninhabited north of Arcon, when die next thing happened. Len had seen something on the mountain range that looked like a man-made tilted dish. With all his latent electronics interests aroused, Len was looking at the dish and wondering what it was, but he did not find out fust then.

  The plane went into an uncontrolled spin at that point

  I wonder if I was wise to ask someone to do something, Len thought as the plane went down. He could see the dark, dawn-shadowed desert spinning up toward him. I think I was just talking, he thought, and 1 did not realize that some one of us could and would do it.

  This is most unexpected, he thought as the desert continued to come up, tilting and very quickly.

  The man called Harold Sorensen must be most effective, he realized. But not a good navigator. Len himself knew that Otherwise Sorensen would have known better than to bring the plane down a good thousand miles away from the nearest settlement that was shown on any Arcon map.

  XVI

  The Shopping Lists of Mary Jean Smith:

  Arcon-fat butter ½ lb.

  Butter ½ lb

  Cake-mix

  Arcon-fruit oranges 6

  Earth-fruit oranges 6

  John’s medicine.

  XVII

  Memorandum dated January 3, 503 A. L.:

  Priority.

  Cabinet.

  Restricted Circulation to Senior Ministers Only.

  From the Office of the Commandant, Anti-Yellow Division (Capital Area) to P. Thompson, Secretary to the Cabinet Security Council.

  Dear Sir,

  In accordance with instructions from the Commandant, and further to your recent correspondence with this office, I append a list of cases covering recent months.

  case 98425: May 12, 502 A. L.

  Our Western District Officers searched the premises of one George Colimore and discovered a quantity of Yellow pamphlets together with a quantity of radio receiving apparatus and an extensive antenna array behind the suspect’s house. George Colimore explained this by saying he was a radio amateur interested in long-distance reception.

  case 99378: June 3, 502 A. L.

  Our Northern District Officers searching the premises of a farmer, V. Dubrovnik, found circumstances similar to the case of George Colimore. An extensive antenna array had been hidden among crops and scrubland, but despite obvious suspicion of a communications system, no transmitting apparatus was found.

  case 10032: June 30, 502 A. L.

  On discovery of a birdcage system of -wires in a swamp glade in the Davis City area, our Capital District officers kept watch on the location, and in due course arrested a known suspect, P. Perron, who had concealed a small cabin containing a quantity of highly sophisticated radio equipment with great ingenuity.

  Expert examination of the installations indicated that the equipment could not possibly be used for radio transmission and reception for point-to-point contact on Arcon.

  Under interrogation, P. Perron confessed that his Yellow sympathies had led him to take an interest in radio astronomy, and he demonstrated the appar
atus to our officers, showing that the antenna enabled him to keep watch on a certain area of the sky each night, on an amateur astronomer basis.

  In all these cases the suspects were held, but the radio apparatus was destroyed, as an interest in radio astronomy was considered a minor and relatively harmless Yellow activity.

  case 10257: September 9, 502 A. L.

  This case was of a more serious nature in that a group of Yellows was involved, operating from Elizabethville on the southern sea and using an island hideout which they visited independently on weekends when ostensibly engaged in hunting and similar pursuits.

  The radio apparatus was extensive, and we regret that it was destroyed by our Far Southern officers, who responded to our inquiries by stating categorically that transmitting apparatus was found and that they were convinced that they had eliminated a station in a Yellow communication chain, and they had confessions from the men concerned that this was so.

  Tape recordings found on the island were forwarded to us at our request, and these were clearly identified by our experts as consisting of stellar static, amid which a high-pitched modulated signal appeared at intervals. A rather unsatisfactory photograph of the apparatus before destruction was stated by the experts to show a “spread array” capable of being tuned in on a particular area of outer space with great accuracy.

  Following this case, all districts have been requested to take special note of all radio apparatus found in control of Yellow suspects, and not to destroy such apparatus until expert examination had been undertaken. So far there have been the following results:

  case 12131: November 13, 502 A. L.

  The apparatus in this instance is situated in a desert, artesian spring, settlement three hundred miles west of Davis City. As in the case of P. Perron, the suspect T. Willoughby claims that he just happened to become interested in radio astronomy, and he thus explains how he comes to be in possession of a rotatable summer house, the roof of which forms a steerable bowl antenna. Very careful examination of papers found in the receiver room indicates that Willoughby kept watch on a star called Vista over a period of several months.

  case 12956: December 2, 502 A. L.

  Situated over a series of fish tanks only six miles from the outskirts of Davis City, and at first sight looking like the electrical and telephone supply system of a creek farm, this apparatus, found in the possession of one E. Gordini, is now being continuously operated by our technically qualified officers.

  Though non-steerable, the apparatus locates on the star Vista every nine to eleven days, and despite static, signals have been detected corresponding to the tapes obtained in Case 10257, though the precise significance of this is yet to be determined.

  In view of the nature of these cases, I am asked to stress to you the lack of knowledge in this office regarding the space around Arcon, and in particular the fact that we have no knowledge at all of the star Vista.

  You will be well aware that our knowledge of the region of space in which our world exists is based entirely on old records of the voyage of the spaceship from Earth, which arrived at Arcon out of the continuum and did not investigate the space around it. Since this time, space investigation has been suppressed on Arcon, so that the only work done in this direction has been done illegally by Yellows. We have to admit that in this respect the Yellow Party must be far in advance of us, and it is likely that they have information not available to us, or through us, to yourselves.

  The possibility that the Yellows should have discovered life on another world in our vicinity may be remote. But that they should have had transmitting apparatus attached to one of their radio telescopes, and that they might be attempting to communicate with such alien life for their own ends, could have such frightful consequences for the rightful government that we must draw it to your attention.

  Should you wish us to pursue this matter we would our-selves set up a radio telescope economically, under absolute security, in a remote part of Arcon, and make further reports. At present we have to go through the expensive and cumbersome procedure of submitting recordings to the services laboratory, thus involving outside persons in this delicate internal security matter.

  Yours respectfully,

  G. Berkeley (Capt.)

  Acting under the Commandant

  Anti-Yellow Division Records.

  XVIII

  The Shopping Lists of Mary Jean Smith:

  See the Doctor about John.

  One-quarter pound best steak.

  One-quarter pound cheap cut.

  Inquire price of Pulmony’s Anti-Arcon Elixir*

  Ask Debby to confirm name.

  Did it make her Tom live longer?

  XIX

  SECRET. RESTRICTED.

  The Hexagon,

  June 3, 503 A. L.

  Memo from Army Chiefs of Staff Committee,

  To:

  The Secretary, Cabinet Security Council.

  Sir,

  The Chiefs of Staff Committee has authorized me to forward to you the enclosed technical report by the Services Electronics Laboratory on the recordings sent to us by the Information Office, receipt being as usual delayed.

  At the same time, the Chiefs of Staff have asked me to express to you their grave alarm, in view of the nature of the report, that this matter should still be in the hands of the Information Office. Nothing short of the Office’s incompetence could make them suggest that a recording allegedly obtained from the star Vista should be treated as an internal security matter.

  As you will see from the enclosed report, the star Vista, distant twenty light-years, must be counted as one of our stellar neighbors. Nothing is known about this star except that it was not on the path by which the starship from Earth approached Arcon; and no space research has been done since.

  The nature of the signals themselves, being a frequency-modulated carrier wave, do not coincide with any known natural phenomena.

  The modulations of the signal consist of non-rhythmic but by no means formless waves of complex character at or above the limits of human audibility. The signals appear in high speed groups, certain sequences being repeated almost exactly at irregular intervals. This would correspond either with such words as “the” or “and” being repeated in human speech, or with conventional symbols used in a sequence of messages in code.

  It would be quite impossible for these repeated signals to appear in random waves of a natural or accidental origin.

  It is impossible to disregard these signals on the general grounds of “not our business,” since the reception of the waves over a distance of twenty light-years must indicate either that they are beamed in our direction, or that they originate in a source of incalculable power. On the first hypothesis, the signals could only be a series of code or “speech” messages beamed to a spacecraft in the vicinity of the Arcon solar system. On the second hypothesis, the power required to broadcast such signals in all directions indicates a resource and a technology that, even at a distance of twenty light-years, must be regarded as a major threat to Arcon.

  The Chiefs of Staff therefore ask me to request that a full meeting of the State Emergency Council be called as soon as possible. Your attention is drawn to the inescapable fact that, in order to be received on Arcon, these signals must have been broadcast twenty years ago.

  Your obedient servant,

  Q. X. Valteufel (Col.)

  Enclosures’. Technical Report,

  Commentary on same.

  XX

  It was not only the blue early-morning sky over the far-horizon waste of the rolling Arcon desert that was blue, Len noticed. The gently-sloping sides of the hills were streaked with it. He had not been lost in the desert before.

  When he examined the aircraft, which had put its nose in the sand, it did not look likely it would take off again, so he stood around with the groups, encouraging one another and talking.

  “I suppose we could have done better,” Sorensen said, looking dubiously at the distances ac
ross the desert and the fact that it was likely to be a long distance to anywhere without the plane.

  “A little,” Duncan said. Duncan was the big-bodied trainee pilot Len had heard about, and he looked at the aircraft with an expression of regret.

  Sorensen’s lazy blue eyes lightened. He had thought of , something to exculpate him. He looked at Len with a sense of humor. “Someone did suggest that we do something.”

  “How did you do it?” Len asked.

  "With a jackknife through the cabin floor. Those control pipes are difficult when you don’t know how much to let out of the hydraulic fluid.”

  They stood around in the morning sunlight in the desert, as though they lived there, Leri thought. It was the plane crew who seemed to regard the whole thing as most unfortunate.

  “I wouldn’t do it that way next time,” Duncan explained to Sorensen. "When you break the hydraulic lines like that, you don’t know if you’ll get the elevators or the tail plane. The better way to bring down an aircraft is to cause an electrical short-circuit or start a little fire.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Sorensen said.

  Looking at the tracks the plane had made across the desert between a hill and a rocky outcrop, Len thought that the pilot had been lucky. They all had.