Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  [“Hoo... now he’s starting to get a little nervous.” “But why?” “The way we really are, he thinks it’s a lie.” “The way we really are is the Bluff?” “What?” “Now you’re making me nervous.”]

  Bryllw moved carefully along another line of logic. The presence of the green flying creatures meant that the Terrans had expanded across at least two solar systems, for they would not find an identical atmosphere in their own solar system, and these “Wraxtax” showed no signs of wearing airsuits. By the laws of probability, it took exploring at least five systems to find a planet with identical atmosphere. It would appear that the Terrans had done a lot of exploring before encountering the Wraxtax. The spokesman had said that they were the fifteenth species to join the Terran “Federation”. (What in space was a “Federation”?) The question was, which species dominated the other? One had to dominate, or you could never have any stable Order. The green creatures had done no work in his presence and had given only one order, which was ignored. It was all very confusing.

  “Which one of the planets of your Federation is the central one, Authority?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Chang. “Suns are central, not planets. Of course it is conceivable that a system might exist...”

  “I mean, which one carries out the government, isshues the laws?”

  “Government? Laws?” Chang considered a moment, looking at the bulky spacesuited figure. “Oh, well ...” One of the other Terrans stepped forward hastily and spoke into his ear. Chang smiled.

  “Why, it’s a federation. All worlds are central.”

  “All worlds are central?” repeated Bryllw, trying to sound merely stupid. A red haze gathered in front of his eyes, and he lowered over the Terran with his hands dangling open. It was an effort to hold himself from picking the creature up like a doll and ripping its limbs off. He had climbed to the rank of captain half a lifetime ago so that he would not have to listen to insults from anyone except the High Servants of Erdig themselves. It was enraging to have a small hairless caricature of a creature, destined to be a slave, insolently telling him obvious lies, insulting his intelligence, and probably laughing at him.

  “All worlds are central, you said, Your Wisdom?” He forced himself to be humble, though his voice was shaking. “But I like know vhich world has most power over the others.”

  “No world exerts power over any other world.” repeated Chang blandly. “Why would any world do that? It would involve a most unprofitable expenditure of energy and resources and would probably lead to hostility. While we are stopped here, would you care to look at our atmosphere control division?” He stepped through a hatchway and out of reach.

  Bryllw lumbered after him, bending his head in a determinedly humble pose. If he went amok now, his subordinates would claim he was senile. Perhaps they’d be right. He was shaking, but under control. Tewazi eased away from behind him.

  [Woof! Did you feel that rage?” “It swamped me...I almost tried to strangle someone myself.” “Me, too—Him.” “No point telling Chang how close he came.”]

  Bryllw found himself in a small room, jampacked with equipment, tanks of liquid lining the walls. The strategic captain pretended to be studying the equipment while he got his thoughts under control.

  As his breathing came back to normal and he stopped shaking, he focused on the tanks of liquid. They were glowing with intense illumination and giving forth reflected light to the rest of the darkened room. Each tank had a different form of vegetation growing in it, and each contained small golden creatures, swimming about and poking at the plants with their noses. At one side of each tank was a miniature bank of levers and dials, inside the tank.

  Bryllw stared at the tiny control boards, then at the golden swimmers. Who would use the boards in there? The fish?

  He cleared his throat, then remembered his Terran again. “What arrafp ... what do these creatures, Authority?”

  “Them I am an authority on. They are our atmosphere control experts, members of the twenty-fifth species to join our glorious federation.”

  “Forgive request, Authority, but...would inthroduce me? They such beautiful creatures...” Bryllw was thinking fast. The fish things were captives possibly, discontented slaves. Divide and rule...

  Chang smiled blandly. “I’m afraid that they don’t converse much.”

  Bryllw looked at the table. A pair of earphones lay on it, wires leading to one of the tanks. Obviously the Terrans conversed with the fish things. He hesitated.

  The Terfan moved to the door. “Shall we go to the Engine Room now?”

  Bryllw followed him. The idea of negotiating with little golden fish was utter madness. Yet, logically...Logically, what?

  (“Who thought up that earphone rig?”) (“I did.”) (“Nice work, Jukovsky, he’s reeling.”) (“Hurry the guys up with the thinbumbob, that Strategic type is coming.”)

  As they walked down the corridor, a man dashed forward from the next hatchway and spoke hurriedly to Chang. The conversation looked unnatural, as all such actions of the Terrans had, and Bryllw realized it was because there was no form of salute exchanged and neither party went to attention while speaking. They were keeping their relative status a secret from him with fantastically good acting.

  The Terran with him (the Captain?) turned from the brief conference and looked up at Bryllw, showing again those even white teeth that would be no use for anything except eating vegetables. There was something reassuring about the pacifism of his appearance. It calmed Bryllw’s wild speculations about deadly conspiracies, though it failed to clear the fog which was gathering in his mind.

  “I receive word,” said the Terran, “that my Federation would like to trade with your—ah, government—but they do not feel that the time is suitable for an approach to our planets by your ships.... difficulties of unknown germs and such problems. Therefore, we would like to choose a dead planet which is completely isolated, to meet your ships and exchange cargoes.”

  This was not a stupid proposal. Bryllw stared at the Terran calculatingly, wondering when the pretense of innocence would cease. The proposition was a practical one for potential enemies. It would be best to agree to it...Any extra time they took in negotiating would increase his chances of locating the star systems of the Federation. Also give more time to locate the real captain, for this clown was not speaking for himself, and there had been no time to communicate with the planets of their ‘Federation’ even if they had been of the nearest star to the two ships. Someone was giving him advice, and that someone knew enough to be valuable, and should be located and kept alive for questioning.

  [“Ghah! His image of questioning. And he likes it!” “No, he doesn’t ...there’s no emotion, it’s a purely mechanical concept...Much as you civilized-type people may not like it, I’m afraid we’re going to have to do something about these people. I’ve got the location of their home planet worked out. With the overcentralization these Authoritarian types have, we can knock them apart with one raid—their subject races could finish the job ...Uh-oh!” “Nice plans Hahn, but how about plans to survive this little inspection party they’ve put aboard? We don’t seem to be making it.”]

  Llyllw’s voice came into the earphone of Bryllw’s helmet as he lumbered after the small group of Terrans who were showing him the ship. He remembered he had left Llyllw in the control room, remembered with difficulty, dragging his mind from a fog of speculations. Llyllw’s voice was triumphant.

  “A most unfortunate accident seems to have occurred, your Authority...I accidentally bumped into the Terran with the weapon. He dropped it, and I most clumsily stepped on it. I am now apologizing profusely. Oh—yes, I think I see a star chart. It’s painted on a bulkhead, and is obviously ornamental, but it looks quite readable.”

  “Excellent,” Bryllw purred into the helmet mike, remembering that this was the officer who had sighted the strange ship and turned on the Infallible without orders. “Of course it is insubordination, punishable by death, to ac
t without orders, unless I officially approve of your action.” There was a tense silence from the listener at the other end of the line. Bryllw let him suffer for a moment, then added. “I approve. However, I’ll file recommendations that you be promoted—no room for insubordination on the bottom.” He added more quietly. “Be ready to seize the control room when I give the signal. Kill the birds, too.”

  Bryllw turned to the Terran beside him, “Ve thrade, dead planet, stop andh thrade there. I tell my government, it sends ships. Where live you people planets? You tell me. I pick out good star between.”

  Chang smiled. “We have the star maps up in the control room. You mark where your stars are, and our calculating machine will search the records and find the optimum star with unoccupied planets to use as a trade center between us.”

  Bryllw radiated a mental snarl that rocked the Terran telepaths. The Terrans wanted to know where his home worlds were. Possibly they had invited him to their ship in order to capture and question him. But if something went wrong with the negotiating delegation, and the Captain of the WIlyiln suspected it, he would immediately blast the Terran ship to atoms, and Bryllw with it. It would be the first thing he would decide to do. Bryllw could visualize Captain Rablyn’s pleasure at giving the order that would rid him of a Strategic Captain and leave him again master of his own ship.

  “Very sorry, Authority and Wise one, but I just trader, arithmetic-doer of trade ship,” he said stolidly, knowing he would not be believed. “I not read star maps, not understand where Nll’ni is from here.”

  Chang looked at him smilingly, a showing of teeth that suddenly seemed deadly. “Perhaps something can be arranged.” He turned and stepped through the hatchway into what looked like a machine shop. Spare parts lay around on and under benches.

  “Repairs,” Chang explained. It was a rather obvious statement, but four men were busily working with rapidity and coordination on adjusting an apparatus built into the wall, while a fifth stood by a control chair and aiming device and leaned on a very large red button with one hand. As the others worked they glanced frequently at a viewscreen centered in the apparatus. The screen had two crossed lines quadrasecting it, like a target sighter and firing device. In the center of the screen with the crossed hairs right across the middle of it, was a ship which Bryllw slowly recognized was the WIlylin.

  “Your pardon, Authority,” Bryllw walked over and stood by the working men, breathing heavily. They were in easy reach for skull-cracking. “Your pardon, but this appears to be a weapon. Would you explain to me the principle?”

  The one holding the button was further away, out of reach, Bryllw noted. He would have to be reached when the others were down.

  “Certainly,” Chang smiled. “This is our major armament, the Cosmic Regurgitator. It operates upon the Higgledy-Piggledy principle of reciprocal jabberwocky, and can undo the atomic bonds of any object it is focused on. Except of course, large planets and stars—it would only be able to lightly damage a planet for instance, perhaps destroy the atmosphere. There has been considerable speculation among astrophysicists as to what its effect on a star might be.... The whingamig here, determines the jabberwocky reciprocal of any object it is set upon, and indicates by different colors—” He waved his hand at a set of rapidly spinning colored lights.

  “That color scheme you see, for instance, indicates the jabberwocky reciprocal of your ship. It is unfortunately necessary to focus on something in order to complete certain repairs. The gunners are making test runs on your ship, since it is the nearest large object. There is however, no danger to your ship—that button there, the one that Jukovsky is pressing, keeps the weapon from Regurgitating automatically when it reaches target. Naturally he will be very careful not to let go of it. Let’s go into the engine room, shall we?”

  Saying nothing, Bryllw looked again at his ship, WIlyll’n, pictured in the crosshairs of the weapon, and at the Terran lounging, holding down the button with his left hand. He backed off slowly so as not to startle the Terran.

  On the way out he made a small gesture to the Nll’nian in a space suit who had been humbly and discreetly following them. “Stay here when I leave,” he muttered into the helmet mike. “If there is any trouble, hold down that button!” He looked back at the lumbering slowness of his crewman in the big spacesuit, and the nervous quickness of the Terran who now lounged facing their way holding down the button and watching the Nll’nian with suspicion. He looked back with gloom. If there were any trouble the WIlyll’n would be thoroughly regurgitated. Gloomily he followed Chang into the Engine room.

  Chang seated himself on a streamlined plastic housing and cheerfully began to talk. “Now, about the trading. This is a subject on which I am well qualified to negotiate a treaty, due to my Mongol ancestry. We Mongols have always been known for our sympathetic attitude toward traders. However, there remains the problem of overdeveloped and underdeveloped planets, a problem with which I am sure you and your distinguished colleagues are quite familiar, and of course its concomitant problem of the trade of colonial areas with the mother planets, as so admirably explicated by Wilberforce Throckbottom in his magnificent “Ballad of the Boston Tea Party,” a work which is regarded by my people as second in excellence only to our own national epic “Tarzan of the Apes.” But to return; all these and many other factors must of course be taken into account in any discussion of trade, and I assume you have done so as have we. Therefore, in the light of the aforementioned, we come to a question which might be, and indeed had been by many, regarded as basic—what have you got and what do you want?”

  “Well... un ... we havh rraw materialth of all tybhs...”

  “So have we.”

  “Ve havh many industries...” Bryllw was cursing mentally.

  What did this clever clown think he was doing? He remembered the button and shivered. Were they preparing something worse?

  “Perhaps something could be arranged there. It also seems that there might be a possibility of some sort of cultural exchange, such as beads, hatchets and other artifacts.”

  “What?”

  “I said that our exchange would perhaps be most wisely concentrated on manufactured goods of various types to be determined, and on cultural and scientific items, reflecting the various aspects of our two societies.”

  “Oh, oh yes... cultural and... er... scientific, by all means scientific exchange. Great, uh, mutual benefit.” Like that infernal machine in the next room, he thought. Exchange me that! But the Terran was stalling in some way—there was something phony about it all.

  [Hahn: “You guys just aren’t good liars, that’s all.”]

  “Now as to the planet for trade center...I would suggest a dead planet of one of the stars near here. It is, of course, Terran, uh, territory, but we would be glad...”

  “THE CAT!”

  All hands in the engine room came erect and stood respectfully silent. A sleek, black-furred creature, small and walking on all fours, stepped delicately into the compartment, walked about sniffing at the men, climbed to a shelf to look at the viewscreen centered on one of the tubes, ambled about for five minutes or so, then walked out. The men relaxed. One went over and looked at the viewscreen, apparently to be sure everything was all right.

  “That was the Chief.” said Chang in a low voice. “He takes a look around sometimes to make sure everything’s running all right.”

  “He’s quite small,” said Bryllw. He should have expected something like this. These Terran clowns had no rank, they were just pretending to be in charge. That creature, whatever else it was, was obviously aware of its own superiority, an officer or better.

  [“Good thing ol’ Strategic Gorilla wasn’t in the shop when the cat came in—we had to knock him off a table to keep him out of that electronic mishmash.”]

  The Terran behind Chang stepped forward and murmured something Bryllw didn’t catch. It sounded like “Hooked.”

  Chang smiled and continued. “Yes. He comes from the oldest intelli
gent race we have ever encountered, natives of the planet Erewhon. We find their advice invaluable.”

  Advice? Bryllw thought. Who are they fooling—themselves?

  [“Nice kitty... up here pretty kitty... that’s it. Go give Chang the word, I’ve got everything set.”]

  A Terran appeared in the engineroom hatchway. “The Cat says he is ready to receive the strange beast now.”

  Bryllw bristled, but he followed the messenger to a small compartment he had not seen before. The damned ship seemed to be honeycombed with all sorts of unlikely places. The room contained a viewscreen and a small bank of control knobs on a black panel, a small bookshelf at one end and a number of satiny cushions scattered about. At first the room seemed to be uninhabited, then he caught a hint of motion in the corner of his eye and whirled.

  The Cat was there, looking down at him haughtily from a plastic pillar topped with a velvet cushion.