Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Kandro nodded. “That is so,” he said. “Well, then, let us receive them with the courtesy that is their due. After all, they’re probably our ancestors.”

  “I hope not,” Afram replied, “but you may be right. Still, I’d hate to think that anything that ugly could be my forebear.” He stroked his red hair with smug satisfaction and Kandro, watching him, grinned a toothy smile.

  “Well, sir, they have come to us—now let. us go to them.”

  “A good idea. Get a couple of the crew and stand by the main lock. I’ll have you covered with projectile weapons just in case they might be violent.”

  “Me and my big mouth,” Kandro said disgustedly. “Probably I would have missed this detail if I’d—”

  “You would,” the captain said. “Now go get a helmet and get going. You’re the biggest one in the crew and should be able to hold your own physically with that fellow, even though you’ll have to look up to do it.”

  “I could break him in two with one hand,” Kandro grumbled—but like a good sailor, he obeyed orders and presently the airlock door swung open.

  Sub-coordinator George Smith was expecting something human when the airlock door swung open, but the sight of a full grown male gorilla flanked by a gibbon and a baboon carrying guns nearly cost him his sanity for a brief period while his mind tried to digest and absorb the incredible message conveyed by his eyes! Smith knew what the creatures were, although he had never seen one before. He was an expert on Earth History, which was why he had been selected for this mission. Although he had never seen the planet of his origin, he knew more about it than perhaps any man in the Domes. And his mind held an encyclopediac amount of information.

  The origin of these creatures was unmistakable! They differed but little from their ancestors except for somewhat larger braincases—but physically they were much the same. After all, a hundred thousand years is but a brief span in evolution, even though it is speeded up by intense nuclear bombardment from a poisoned Earth.

  As Kandro watched, the Ancient touched a stud on the heavy belt encircling his thin waist. “STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” the thought blasted into the engineer’s mind with stunning force—and then more quietly, “You are from a world that is poison to my race. Do not land from your ship until we have established a decontamination station. The radiation carried in your bodies can kill us. For your own safety as well as ours please remain aboard your ship until we are ready to receive, you.”

  Kandro, half paralyzed with the force that invaded his mind stood rigid in the entrance port, his two guards beside him, their weapons drooping limply in their hands.

  What sort of creature was this who could speak without words?

  The Ancient read his thought. A chuckle injected itself into Kandro’s mind. “I am speaking over a menticom—a mental communicator—and I had the intensity too high at first. This is direct mind to mind contact, and if you stop withdrawing you will find that it works both ways. If you wish, you may search my mind and see that I bear you no ill will.”

  Kandro gingerly directed a question at the Ancient, and recoiled with instinctive delicacy from the pictures spread before him—but not before he learned that the Ancient thought the truth. There was amazement and a little shock in the Ancient’s mind, but no enmity—just a curiosity as bright and inquisitive as his own. The brief glimpse had revealed a mind incredibly flexible and powerful. It reminded Kandro of the restless sea beating on the cliffs below his home on earth. It made his own quick and agile brain seem dull by comparison, and his was one of the better intellects of earth—nearly as good as Captain Afram’s—and Afram was the late Arn CXVII! For the first time in his life he felt inferior, but oddly enough, the feeling didn’t rankle. There was no basis for comparison.

  “It will only be a few minutes,” Smith’s voice sounded in his mind. “Our robots will soon be here with the equipment.”

  Kandro energized his communicator to inform the ship. But it wasn’t necessary. The Ancient’s message hadn’t stopped with him. Everyone aboard had heard it!

  Minutes later, a truck came from the dome, rolling swiftly on fat tires, bearing two large metallic figures shaped much like the Ancient, and a strange boxlike device. The two set it up easily, using portable force rods to manipulate the obviously heavy box. One of them twisted a few dials on its surface, looked at the control panel and then nodded to Smith.

  “All right,” Smith said. “Come down one at a time and enter the box. As you pass through the decontaminator, you will be safe for us to associate with.”

  “And if we don’t?” Kandro asked.

  “You have two choices. Either leave or—” Smith didn’t appear to say anything, but a slim tube on the roof of the ground car swiveled, steadied, and a red dune a hundred yards away whiffed into nothingness!

  Kandro grinned. “We can’t go home without landing—so I guess we’ll go through your box.”

  “A wise decision,” Smith applauded.

  As the crew descended Smith took inventory—an Orang Utan, a Gorilla, two Chimpanzees, three Gibbons, two Baboons, and a Barbary Ape! He passed a pale hand across his forehead—unwilling to believe his eyes. Six intelligent species! It was impossible! Only one existed before the Blowup, and the conflict between individuals of that one had nearly destroyed the Earth. And if that weren’t enough, these six species had come to Mars in a ship that bore on its bows a gaudy copy of the Great Seal of the United States! It was too much . . .

  But there was more. The Orang, whose name was Afram apparently, stepped up to him after passing through the decontamination chamber. “Ancient Smith,” the red furred ape thought. “I not you recognize the Emblem on the nose of our ship.”

  “I do.” Smith replied. “The colors are not right, but the design is perfect.”

  “You know its origin then?” Afram asked eagerly.

  “Of course.”

  “Then you can tell me,” Afram was almost quivering with eagerness, “What is the meaning of the message carried in the beak of the Bird?”

  Smith looked at the primate curiously. “Why do you ask this?”

  In a flashing series of mental pictures Afram told the story of the Sword through his late reign as Arn, and as the tale unfolded, Smith became very still. A fine beading of sweat dotted his brow as the parallels unfolded.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Smith said dully. “I’m a descendent of the people who made the original of that emblem you have adopted. Your Sword could have easily been carried by one of my ancestors. Such matters are not discussed among us.” He shuddered slightly as his thoughts turned inward, and Afram, too curious not to scan, looked into the Ancient’s mind.

  He was shocked and sympathetic—and appalled! It was like breaking a privacy barrier back on Earth! There was a frustrated hell of regret and longing in the Ancient’s mind, a warring emotional complex that Afram could hardly believe. Somehow it reminded him of the famous lines of Quarth, the immortal poet of the Reconstruction Period:

  “Fair?

  Why—the very skies proclaim

  this is a place beyond compare!

  Bright?

  Why—the Sun can hardly vie in

  radiant beauty to the sight!

  Sweet?

  Why—the Fields of Paradise can

  offer joy scarce more complete!

  Dear?

  Why—no word of tongue or pen

  can show my love as I draw near!

  From my far wanderings on a

  foreign strand—

  To the place of my heart—my

  native land!”

  Smith nodded. “The words,” he said slowly, “are written in a tongue called Latin—one of our ancient languages.” He read them aloud “E Pluribus Unum—From many—one!”

  Afram would have stopped him there, but Smith went on, a hell of anguish in his thoughts. “There is a lesson there in those words that is equally good for apes or men. We had our chance to learn it, but we did not.” Smith
shivered. “It cost us our homeworld! Yes, Earth still glows in the sky, but to us it is forbidden. God, I suppose, is merciful. He gave us this refuge, but it is not Earth—nor will it ever be. So perhaps He is not merciful, but is in truth a God of Vengeance.” Smith’s thoughts were weary. “We will speak of this no more.”

  Afram nodded. A wave of sympathy for the Ancient stirred inside him, and with its birth, the feeling of inferiority vanished. He was immeasurably superior to the old one. He had a home. He wondered briefly what it would be like to be forever barred from it. That would be bad, but to be barred from it by his own acts would be undiluted hell! He shrugged—a peculiarly human gesture. The two-thousand-year quest was finished. He had learned the last secret of the Sword—and in reality it had never been a secret at all. But the People wanted to know, and now they would be satisfied. “E Pluribus Unum”—he rolled the strange words in his mind. It was a good motto—an excellent one for the six species that shared the Earth and the greatest nation the old world had ever seen.

  THE FAST-MOVING ONES

  The natives of the new planet moved so incredibly fast that there was no means of contacting them. They moved like things out of a nightmare—just blurs of speed!

  THE alarm rang suddenly and violently! The sound jerked Dale Borchardt awake. He came to his feet, Kelly in hand, staring sightlessly into the blinding glare of the fanlight until his pupils adjusted in the light. From outside the lighted area came the cough of a blaster and the ripping explosion of a minimum aperture bolt.

  “Drop it! You thieving snake!” Vassily Konev’s high voice split the quiet air. There was another cough,—another explosion. Borchardt ran toward the sound,—and then remembered. This was planned. Fie was to watch the lighted area. And it was well that he did, for the two rail-thin manlike natives moved like something out of nightmare. They were halfway across the area to the stack of supplies before he levelled the blaster, and had nearly reached their goal when the bolt erupted at their feet. Without slackening speed they separated and dashed for the blackness outside. Vassily appeared at the edge of the lighted area. His shot struck at the feet of one of the figures. The native swerved and put on a fresh burst of speed, his thin body literally blurring as it dashed for the safety of the darkness. Borchardt meanwhile had bracketed his target with two well-placed shots that had turned it back from the edge twice, when the native turned and ran straight at him. There was no time for a third shot as he and Borchardt collided. The man was knocked off balance and the native whizzed past and leaped to safety through the light.

  Borchardt picked himself up from the ground, swore briefly and then chuckled. “Well, we gave the slippery sons something to remember this time!”

  Vassily Konev shook his bullet head. “Not quite, Dale. The advantage isn’t all ours. The first one got away with the box of torch tips.” He stood balanced on the balls of his big feet, jaw athrust, an expression that might have been either a smile or a grimace of anger drawing his wide lips back over large square teeth.

  “The cutting heads?” Dale asked dully.

  Vassily nodded. “I don’t give a damn what Doc says, we should booby trap this area.” His voice was grim. “The thieving sons’ll ruin us.”

  “They already have. That was our only box of heads, and we can’t cut that mess away with a welding torch.” He pointed to the crumpled wreckage of the number three stabilizer, suspended a foot or so above the ground by the landing jacks. “You know how tough duralloy is.”

  Vassily nodded. “Well, that leaves us the final alternative. We’ll have to ask the Patrol to haul us out of here.”

  “Like hell we will! We’re not that bad yet. The BEE’s washed its own rags since the beginning, and hasn’t asked for help from the military yet, and I’m damned if my ship’s going to be the first!”

  “Well, what are we going to do? Ultrasonic barriers don’t stop them. They move so fast that they’re through them before the paralysis works. We’ve tried drugging baits, but chloral and the barbiturates have the effect of so much water. They absorb it and come whizzing back for more. We could shoot a few of them, of course, but we aren’t here to do that, and besides they could make hash of us if they really got mad. We haven’t a chance against their speed. Right now they think it’s a game, and so long as they keep thinking that way well be all right, but if they got the idea that we were serious—” Vassily shrugged, his heavy shoulders rising and falling in a gesture that meant more than words could express.

  Dale sighed, “We couldn’t kill them anyway unless they threatened our lives. We’re conditioned against it.”

  “We could booby trap a few baits with gas. Maybe that’d work.”

  “I doubt it. Nothing else has. They’d probably think it’s some sort of rare perfume.”

  “If we could only get one of them.—just one!” Vassily groaned. “Ten minutes in the Educator would be all that would be needed. We could plant a compulsion that’d make the fellow bring back every last thing,—including his fellow citizens.”

  “HOW do you catch a shadow?” Borchardt asked bitterly. He scratched his close-cropped yellow head.

  “It’s like that old recipe for rabbit stew,—you know, first catch your rabbit—” his voice trailed off into silence as he looked around him. “Where’s Doc?” he asked finally. “I know lie doesn’t like shooting, but he should be down by now.”

  “He’s out there,” Vassily said indifferently, gesturing at the darkness with a thick thumb. “He came outside about an hour ago muttering something about ecology, took the floater and left.”

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Me?” Konev said.

  “I suppose not. After all. he’s the boss of this party.” Borchardt grimaced. Well, I suppose he’ll be all right, if the natives don’t steal his transmission while he’s rolling around. He went down to the village, I suppose.” Borchardt nodded toward the invisible cluster of stone huts set in a straggling line above the seashore a couple of kilometers away. The village was hardly worth the name, but it was an ideal spot for a contact, which was why they were here.

  Vassily nodded. “That’s the way he was headed.” He shivered a little as an icy blast off the hills behind them whistled through the lighted area. “Reminds me of Siberia in late fall,” he said. “And Doc says that it’s midsummer here. Wonder what it’s like when it really gets cold.”

  “If we don’t get that stabilizer patched up, we’ll have an opportunity to find out,” Borchardt said grimly. “How come they grabbed that box?”

  “Probably wanted the bronze. They make spear points out of the stuff. They chase down fish and animals for food, according to Doc.”

  “Wonder if the animals travel as fast as these fellows?”

  “Faster, maybe.”

  Borchardt grimaced. “It’d be hard to get a steak around here. Lift a Kelly for a point blank shot and the next thing you know the target’s out of range.” He sighed. “Well, I suppose the next thing to do is see if we can make up another cutting head. There’s some bronze stock in the toolshop, and we have a lathe. Maybe in a week or so we’ll be able to get to work again.”

  “Providing the natives don’t steal us blind by that time—”

  “Maybe Doc’ll come up with an answer,” Borchardt said.

  His tone indicated that he doubted it. Borchardt was one of the old-time senior pilots, and he didn’t have too much faith in the new products of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Exploration’s Academy back on Earth. The new style ecologists with their encyclopediac memories were nothing more than walking card indexes. Push the right button and they came up with the answer, but someone had to push the button. So far no one, not even Dr. Wilson Chang himself had found the button that gave the answer to the problem of the high speed, pilfering, colddwelling natives of Ariel. Ariel was an iceworld, a frigid polar-type that could support organic life only in a narrow band in the equatorial region, and that life made its terrestrial relatives look like something little f
aster than snails. The BEE, for reasons best known to itself, had decided that it was time for a contact, but why the Bureau figured that a three-man team of pilot, engineer and ecologist were enough to make it on this world was one of the mysteries lost in the maze of bureaucratic red tape. Possibly somebody goofed, or maybe it was for economy reasons, but for Borchardt’s money, the BEE should have used a battle-wagon, a couple of troop transports and about twenty miles of electronic fence if it wanted to make contact with these people. He stretched his lean body and sighed unhappily.

  This mission had been jinxed from the start of setdown. The hidden rock outcropping that had smashed the steering jet was just the beginning. The shock had warped the inner hatch and they were forced to unbolt it with hand tools, since the Fourth Echelon repair kit was stored in the upper hold of the damaged fin. Then, they had to unload the fuel in the lower hold in order to get at the engine, a messy job at best since the big spools of metallic tape that fed the jet’s engines weighed nearly two hundred pounds apiece. And of course they had to unload the small stores in the upper hold to get the fuel spools out.

  Then Doc had to take the floater and investigate the village which they had selected for Contact. The natives had seen him and followed him back to the ship,—and then their troubles really had begun. A whole case of small special tools disappeared almost immediately,—and the makeshifts they were forced to use caused one delay after another. And now, when they were finally ready to cut in and rerig the jet, the natives had stolen the heads for the cutting torch! Borchardt swore mildly under his breath. For a First Contact, this deal was taking on more of the aspects of an Advance Tarty.

  FIRST Contact was important—but it was strictly an in and out affair. Earlier exploration sweeps recorded the physical, topographical and gross ecological details. This information was processed and held in the BEE files until someone decided to open the world to direct Exploration.