“The quickness of their reaction to our landing, the fact everything was ready,” he went on, “shows that this pattern had to be prepared. But over the centuries and the generations, it must have become hardened into something like a ritual dance they went through without question and almost without thought. I think it’s pretty clear that I reacted in a way they didn’t expect with that bear image they confronted me with.”
“In a way they didn’t expect?” asked Walt, his deep voice striking like the sound of a gong into the conversation.
“Yes,” said Ben. It was emotionally painful to speak of his experience in the hands of the Gray-furs even now, but he put his head down metaphorically and plowed on. “They got the image of the grizzly bear from my mind by stimulating the part of my brain, concerned with the reflexes of flight and fighting. Everyone has his own basic emotional image of what fear looks like. The bear was mine. I was supposed either to retreat from it, or attack it, in spite of the fact that intellectually I knew that doing either thing meant falling off the platform. When I stayed where I was until the bear came to me, I violated the pattern.”
“What was the pattern?” Walt asked.
“If the subject retreated, ran away at any cost, he was of an emotional type like the Gray-furs,” said Ben. “If he attacked the image of his fear, clearly, he was of a Golden People type. They had to face the fact that I, their representative human, was neither.” Walt nodded, thoughtfully, as if some inner thoughts of his own had just been confirmed.
“But what’s this got to do with why we were able to get away from the Gray-furs?” Coop asked.
“Think about it!” said Ben, sharply to him. “Use your head! They were faced with a breakdown in their pattern of handling alien visitors. A certain step in the pattern had failed to produce the information it was supposed to produce. Any thinking minds not crystallized into a rote-pattern of behavior would have stopped immediately at that point and begun to question and examine the pattern itself. They’d have begun immediately to stimulate other reflex areas of my brain, looking for other differences in reaction.”
“Instead, they sent you back here to the ship,” said Nora, suddenly. “I see! They ignored what they couldn’t understand, pretended it wasn’t there and that it’d go away.” She looked at him with a curious light in her brown eyes. “And you figured out all that—while they were putting you through what they did.”
Ben cleared his throat harshly.
“The point is,” he said, looking back at the others and away from Nora, “that the same thing held true for the Gray-furs with the weapons covering us. The pattern told them to stand guard against any attempt by the ship to lift off or any try by its crew to step over the yellow line on the ground. We were supposed to recognize the fact we were prisoners, and accept it. The thought we might not accept it, that we might try to do something about it was simply not considered by the Gray-furs. Maybe those on the weapons even heard or smelled us coming at them along the cliff tops—but because they didn’t have any idea of what to do in an unpatterned situation, they simply stood and let themselves be knocked on the head.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in on Ben’s listeners. But when it did, the next objection came from the thin face of Lee.
“Even if that’s true, though,” said Lee, “the Golden People are still the race that drove the Gray-furs out of their home worlds when the Gray-furs weren’t yet acting by pattern and rote.”
“Exactly,” said Ben, turning briskly to him, “—they were the race that drove the Gray-furs off their home worlds. But that was a hundred thousand years ago, fort hem too. The Gray-furs have had time to reduce themselves to the lowest common denominator of their racial character. So, maybe the Golden People have too, by this time. They may even have killed themselves off. In any case, there’s more than a dozen habitable worlds whose location we can determine by studying the film we made—and we’re going to have a look at them.”
The last words came out flatly—flatly enough to close the mouths of Coop and Lee, who looked to be on the verge of continuing their protests.
“I think that’s all then,” said Ben, recognizing the psychological moment for putting a definite end to the conference. “Coop, you take charge of the business of making the star charts from the film. Nora, I wish you’d take inventory of our stores and give me an estimate of how many more days of food and supplemental water supplies we have—as well as listing any unusual shortages in other stores. Walt, you take over as full-time duty officer until Coop has the star charts made. Lee, I wonder if you’d stay a few more minutes, I’d like to talk to you about the business of taking the tape decks out.”
The members of the conference awoke to the fact that Ben’s words were a polite dismissal of everyone but Lee.The others got up from their seats and left the office. As the last door shut behind those leaving, Ben looked across his desk at Lee.
“Coop can just as well go on holding down his turn as one of the duty officers,” said Ben. “But meanwhile—are you sure you feel up to getting back to work on something like this tape-deck change?”
For a moment the ghost of the former buccaneer’s smile returned to the bony face before him.
“Never felt better in my life,” said Lee. But the smile slipped away and the voice did not have the old vibrancy and enthusiasm. Several months of constant pain had filed away at the full strong body of that voice and made it thin and a little ragged. “Anyway, there’s no real job to changing those tape decks. No problem, I mean. It’s just a matter of some rather complicated disassembly work.”
“I see,” said Ben. If Lee was willing to get back to work it would be no kindness to stop him. “All right then, what do you suggest about a gadget to destroy the tape decks if that turns out to be necessary. . .” In a moment they were deep in a discussion of explosive packages and radio fuses.
What was finally decided on—and put into practice in the last days of the following week, after the main computer had carefully been half disassembled to get the tapes out of the memory bank—was an explosive package containing the tape reels and two fuses. One was a radio fuse keyed to a small transmitter that Ben could carry in his pocket, and the other was a fuse wired directly to the locking mechanism of the safe itself.
Meanwhile, the laborious, and tricky job of reassembling the main computer was being completed. The tapes had not been designed to be replaced anywhere but at home on the surface of Earth, with the phase ship itself partly dismantled for general overhaul. Theoretically the tapes were good for five years of ship operation, and in fact Ben had had to smuggle the replacements aboard originally. He found some small cause for self-congratulation about this, now, but it did not have the effect of cheering him up so much as of increasing his worries. The thought of it reminded him of all that he had foreseen that was, presumably, yet to come; and he was left to wonder if his provisions for those situations still in the future would be as good as this had been.
But meanwhile, the star charts made from the images the Gray-furs had shown to Ben of their defeat and exodus from their home worlds, were also finished. Magnification of the film of those images for detail had turned out to be limited only by the grain of the film itself.
“I’ve never seen anything like it!” said Kirk Walish, genial for once with enthusiasm, spreading the star charts out on Ben’s desk for Ben’s inspection. “We couldn’t have done any better if we’d taken the ship there ourselves.”
“Then we’re ready to go?” Ben said.
“As far as Observation’s concerned, we are. Sir,” said Kirk, almost happily.
“Computation will take about three days for the first gross shift,” put in Coop, who had come in with Kirk.
The first gross shift, in fact, came five days later, rather than three. But as if in compensation it took them, both by luck and by virtue of the new star maps, within less than a dozen light-years of the first of the star systems they wanted to investigate. This particular
star system had only one habitable planet, according to the star-maps made from the Gray-fur images.
“We can put the ship in orbit around that planet in three shifts,” said Walt.
“All right,” said Ben. “But I’d rather approach in a larger number of shifts and make sure when we come in that the last shift to orbit the planet is from a safe distance out. How far out can we be and still make the shift to orbit the planet in one jump?”
"I'll check with Observation,” said Coop.
Observation, consulted, gave its opinion that the maximum distance from which it could pinpoint a jump into orbit, close enough for detail picture-taking of the world in question, would be about eight hundred million miles. Or slightly less than the mean distance between the solar system orbits of Earth and Saturn.
“Then make it four shifts to orbit,” said Ben. “Three to the eight hundred million mile approach position and one from there to orbit. Then one full second of camera work and jump immediately to a distance of three light-years.”
They moved in. The first three shifts took place without a hitch.
“There it is,” said Kirk Walish, coming back from Observation to point to the screen above Tessie Sorenson. Ben looked. Among the starlights thick on the screen, Kirk’s long, tapering forefinger indicated a small, bluish pinprick of light.
“Thanks,” said Ben. “How soon can we shift into orbit?”
“Right now,” said Walt behind him.
“All right, prepare to shift, then.”
The chant of orders before shifting rang in Ben’s ear. As always, the moment before shifting brought a slightly cool feeling to the back of his neck.
“Cameras ready?” he asked over the intercom to Kirk in Observation.
“All ready.”
“Shift!” ordered Ben, watching the screen.
Suddenly, before them was the day side of a world with one sprawling rectangular continent in its northern hemisphere connected to two southern continents by narrow land bridges. Here, from four hundred and fifty miles up Ben could see no signs of civilization, but the cameras of Observation would find out. Ben forced himself to stand impassive. But the blood pounded in his ears with each beat of his heart and he found himself counting the seconds by it, all the time his imagination was evoking lances of fire, or dark shapes of strange missiles leaping up at them from the tranquil surface below.
Then, the automatic shift away. His stomach reacted to the jump and without warning the screen was filled with nothing but the peaceful stars.
He heard the sound of breath being exhaled in relief from Tessie below him and Coop behind him. The tiny sounds woke him to the fact that he, too, had been holding his breath during the minute of their close orbit.
He caught himself just in time from making the same audible exhalation.
“Call me as soon as the pictures are ready,” he said stiffly to Coop, and went off through the door from the Control Section into his office—where at last he could sigh in privacy. It was a little thing, but he was determined to regain as much ascendancy over the rest of those aboard as he must have lost by their seeing him jerking and weeping in the control of the Gray-furs. Here in the territory of the Golden People the phase ship’s real challenge was probably still before it, and his power to command could be more vital than ever for the sake of everyone’s lives.
He went across the room to the log cabinet to make an entry noting the recent close orbit and picture-taking in the official ship’s log. He was just finishing the entry,when there was a knock behind him and the door from the Control Section opened.
“Pictures ready,” said the voice of Coop.
“Thank you,” said Ben. He closed the log and locked it away, then turned and followed Coop back into the Control Section and through Computation into Observation.
In the oval-shaped Observation Section, the shutters were closed over the observation window overhead, but the large, curving screen in one side of the room was alight. Before this sat Polly Neigh, with Ralph Egan across the room in the other chair. Beside these two seated were Walt and Kirk standing, which made with Ben, himself, and Coop, in all six people in the small section. Moreover, there was an air of expectancy in the room like a bubble about to burst; and with his uncomfortably sensitive emotional perceptions, Ben understood instantly that it was directed at him.
They had discovered something they thought would please him. It was as if they were all only waiting for the moment to leap up about him and yell “Surprise!” He writhed inwardly at the thought of being that easy to manipulate—it was his embarrassing exhibition of helplessness in the power of the Gray-furs that had given them the idea—and looked desperately about for some excuse to show himself arbitrary and unpredictable. As luck would have it, he was able to spot some whiskers poking out of the darkness under the desk board of the control panel above Polly’s feet.
“What’s that cat doing in here?” he snapped—and Polly’s face fell instantly into an expression of guilt.
“He just likes to lie by my feet,” she said, stooping to pick up an unwilling Sprockets, who glared and hissed around the room with fine impartiality as he was passed from hand to hand until he could be thrust out through the door facing the Lounge.
“Polly’s trying to teach him to purr in time to save his reputation when we spot a habitable world,” said Kirk, waspishly. Ben was surprised to see not only Polly but Coop look furiously at the balding Observation Section Leader. Evidently the old prediction that Sprockets would purr for the first time when they sighted the world that would fulfill their mission had come to be a matter of gibe and counter-gibe aboard.
“He’ll purr!” said Polly, angrily. “You’ll see. Maybe not for the world, but he’ll purr!”
“Have Coop build him a mechanical purrer—” Kirk was beginning.
“All right!” snarled Ben at him, interrupting. “Are the fun and games over with?” They were, he noted with a sort of mean satisfaction. For a moment he felt guilty—then he reminded himself that anything was better than to let them all think that they had a commander who could be manipulated. “Let’s see those pictures.”
“Here,” said Polly, indicating the screen.
Ben turned and saw what they had all been waiting for him to discover and react to, on discovering. On the screen was a view from an apparent height of two hundred feet, courtesy of the telescopic equipment of the Observation Section’s cameras. It showed a city such as Ben had seen the Golden People building in the images shown him by the Gray-furs.
Tall, slender buildings. Narrow arches. Walkways looking as thin as spider thread, without protective railings, and stretching at throat-tightening heights from one high tower to another. A city of concentric streets, streets with curving, spiral-making connections between them. A city of reds and yellows and grays.
Then Ben’s attention suddenly sharpened. He had been about to look for signs of life among the circling streets and the narrow buildings. He had not seen any yet, and he saw now why there might well be none there. At first sight the buildings and streets had seemed as clean and colorful as if they had been built yesterday. But now that he looked closer, he saw marks upon them—not only the marks of time, but the marks of destruction.
Vegetation stained their lower walls. Here and there a spider-web walkway had parted and the air gapped between broken ends. Also, here and there, a wall had fallen inward on towers or lesser buildings, and—now that he looked very closely—Ben could trace lines of destruction, like monstrous whip-marks up to a quarter mile in length, scarring the face of the city, below.
“You were right!” said Coop at Ben’s shoulder. The words seemed to explode out of him, as if they had finally refused to be bottled up any longer. “They’ve killed themselves off! The Golden People’ve killed themselves off. There’s no one down there.”
Ben felt a sort of thrill race through him that was hot and cold at the same time. He got a firm grip on himself and kept his voice flat as he straighte
ned up and turned to Coop.
“There’s not?” he demanded. “And why do you think you can be sure about that?”
“No heat images!” said Coop, in triumph. “Heat radar shows no moving images, and no images the size of a man.”
“They could be in the buildings,” said Kirk, across the room. “They could all be under cover.”
“All?” said Coop, turning on him. “In a city that size? Even if they’d known we were there when we popped into orbit position, they couldn’t have all gotten out of sight in sixty seconds.”
There was a silence in the Observation Section. Ben turned fully and looked at Walt. Walt’s face was as impassive as ever. He could call a conference, thought Ben—but no, his instincts told him this was not the time for a conference.
“All right,” he said, turning to Coop. “Ready a shift to the next closest Golden People world, and call me when you’re ready to shift.”
Coop stared at him for a moment, then blinked. He wet his lips. Clearly, he was working up the courage to ask a question. Ben waited for it. He wanted the whole ship to be informed of his reasons.
“You aren’t—” Coop fumbled. “Isn’t the ship going to land?”
“anything down there, doesn’t mean there’s nothing down there. It may only mean that whatever’s down there is something that we’re not clever enough to find.”
With that he turned on his heel and went up the silent Sections toward his own office, congratulating himself on regaining some of his Gray-fur-impaired authority. Once the door from the Control Section to his office was shut behind him, however, he found himself gulping with excitement.
It must be true that somewhere in this arbitrary and unfeeling universe, chance had to fall their way on occasion, rather than always turning against them. Why shouldn’t it turn out that for once there were no unpleasant surprises below and that the Golden People had conveniently all been killed, or had killed themselves off? After all his planning, all his risks and efforts, why shouldn’t luck favor him, just once?
Mission to Universe Page 14