Star Science Fiction 4 - [Anthology] Read online

“Yeah,” he admitted. “We Seminoles don’t have emotions at all, Bill. We’re so unemotional we refused to sign a treaty. And we go around to this day bragging that we’re still technically at war with the United States. Let’s get that coffee!”

  * * * *

  They were just coming out of the garage when they saw the alien ship.

  Sam stared at it unbelievingly through the polarized plastic of his helmet. His mind jumped back ten years to fears that should have been long gone. Russians—coming to blow us off the Moon! His hand was pawing for a gun he hadn’t carried for a decade, before he checked the motion. It was a long time since that mess of politics had been cleared up; for that matter, there were a dozen Russian scientists with this expedition.

  But it certainly was no ship that he’d ever seen. It was neither a winged trans-atmosphere rocket, a cylindrical ferry, nor one of the piles of girders and tanks used to reach the Moon. Instead, it seemed to be simply a huge sphere, maybe a hundred feet in diameter, and gleaming a bright blue all over. It was coming down in a great curve, slowing steadily, but there was no sign of atomic or even chemical exhaust

  It passed over his head and slowed to a stop over the expedition ships—hovering a hundred feet off the ground! Then, as if making up its mind, it began to settle gently beside the largest of the five ships.

  There was a babble of voices in Sam’s headphones; others had seen it. But the words made no sense. It certainly wasn’t one of their scheduled supply ships, and the nonsense about flying saucers had been finally disposed of before the station was built

  Sam heard Larsen ordering somebody back. He glanced around toward the main dome, to see a few men in space-suits moving reluctantly back inside. It made good sense to wait until they saw what developed. But the commander was moving forward himself.

  Sam fell in step with him, the hair on the back of his neck prickling faintly. “Martians?” he asked. It was a fool question, and he expected to be told so.

  But Larsen shook his head. “Don’t ask me, Sam! Mars couldn’t produce any advanced technology with her atmosphere—I think. But that thing never came from Earth. Wrong orbit, for one thing. See anything like weapons?”

  “I don’t see a thing,” Sam told him. “What’ll you do if they turn up with ray guns?”

  Larsen snarled: “If they turn up with bows and arrows, I’ll surrender. This expedition has a total armament of one .38 automatic with seven bullets—in case someone falls into a crater where we can’t rescue him. Wait a minute!” Larsen came to a stop, pointing.

  * * * *

  A crack had appeared in-the side of the blue sphere. Now it widened and a section peeled downward, to form a curved ramp to the surface. Under it was a gray substance of some kind, from which something that looked like a flight of folding steps shot out. The final step had barely appeared when the gray stuff seemed to give way.

  A figure emerged from it.

  Whatever it was looked human.

  Sam grunted in surprise. He was ready for anything except that. A winged octopus wouldn’t have bothered him. But a man? If any place on Earth had a ship like that and let the Moon expedition take off with the old atomic style rockets, something rotten was really going on! Better a monster than some types of human beings!

  Then he wondered. The figure was in a glaring white space-suit of too slim a build—more like a man in tights than in one of the heavy suits he knew. And there was something wrong about the way it walked. Something almost rubbery, as if the legs bent all over instead of at fixed joints.

  Larsen and Sam moved forward again. Another figure came from the strange ship, carrying something. This one gestured toward the two men, but it turned toward the expedition ship, following the first figure. It was running as it neared the ship, holding out whatever gadget it was using.

  There was a ten second conference between the two. Then both turned and headed back toward Sam and Larsen.

  “Wallah!” Sam’s harsh voice seemed to echo in his helmet, and he felt Larsen tense beside him. But he had eyes only for the face in the other helmet nearest him.

  * * * *

  ii

  The creature’s head looked as if someone had managed to cross a man and a frog; a smooth, hairless skull, almost no nose, a wide mouth now partly open in a straight line, eyes that seemed to have independent motion, and a smooth, hairless skin that was so purple it seemed almost black.

  The incredible part of it was that the thing was beautiful. Grotesque as it seemed in its blend of human and non-human, it had a certain innate lightness of good design about it, as a racehorse or a cat has.

  Abruptly, fifteen feet away, it spread its arms straight out, with hands seeming to droop. The hands, he saw now, had only three fingers, set at even intervals around the palms, all more or less opposed.

  “Peace,” Sam guessed. He’d seen various human races use signs that were all different for the same idea, but all with some of the same idea behind them. “Better do the same, Bill—and pray it means what I think.”

  The two men moved forward to the two aliens. Sam stopped three feet away from his opposite, but the creature came on until their helmets touched.

  “Ssatah!” it said.

  “Hello yourself!” Sam answered. It hadn’t been an unpleasant voice, from what he could tell by sound that had traveled through two helmet shells. It seemed to match the velvety quality of the skin he could see. He tapped his chest, then his head. “Sam!”

  The straight slit of the mouth narrowed and opened. “Sam.” The alien motioned toward the commander. At Sam’s introduction, the same mouth gesture was repeated. “Birr. Va. Sam t’ Birr.” One finger tapped its chest. “Ato. Ato t’ Mu’an.” A gesture indicated that the second name applied to the other alien.

  Then finally Ato stepped back, and motioned to the ship. A lithe leg moved over the ground, drawing circles into a haze around a central point. Beside it, another picture that could only be a crude schematic of a rocket appeared. Ato waited, as if expecting a reaction, then made a gesture curiously like a shrug. He put his hands together, began lifting them and spreading them out, sketching a slim upright with a big circle at the top.

  “VvvvPWOOMB!”

  Sam jumped, feeling cold chills run up his back. He had been so busy watching the hands that he hadn’t seen the other alien bend forward to touch helmets with him. Then the meaning of it all suddenly registered, and his pulse quieted down again.

  But Larsen was ahead of him. He could have heard the sound only faintly, but he’d decoded the symbols. “He’s figured out the ship rockets are atom powered!” His voice came over Sam’s phones. “That gadget they’re carrying must be some kind of radiation detector.”

  Abruptly, his voice sobered. “Sam, maybe I shouldn’t have agreed. Damn it, that was an atom bomb explosion he was signaling. They must have used atomics for weapons.”

  “Might as well concede what the other side already knows,” Sam told him. Down inside him, the amazement was just beginning to register. Aliens! Martians, Venusians—starmen— here! Alien friends to lead them across space—or alien enemies to attack from God knew where. Aliens—and Sam Osheola, a quarter million miles from the swamps where he’d been born—a billion cultures, perhaps, farther apart than he’d been from any human race he’d met!

  And over his mind, the old defense mechanism was dropping down. This didn’t matter, any more than football had. It was all a game—a play he was acting in—he had to go through the motions, say the right lines, but it couldn’t really affect him, because things like this didn’t really happen to Sam Osheola.

  * * * *

  Other men in spacesuits were coming out now, clustering around them, and other figures from the blue ship, all in the same white, slim suits. Larsen swung around to direct the men of his command, as Ato seemed to be doing to his.

  Nothing escaped the alien. One eye swiveled slightly toward the commander, and Sam was sure what passed over the purple face was surprise. Ato was guilty o
f picking the wrong horse, and he was just realizing it as he saw Larsen giving commands instead of Sam.

  At least that meant the things weren’t telepaths.

  This time Ato made no mistake. He headed for Larsen, motioning to his own ship. With one hand beside his mouth, he made opening and closing signs, then used his other hand to repeat the gesture beside the commander’s face. With hands facing each other, he pantomimed a conversation, and again pointed to the ship. Larsen’s gesture toward the main dome brought a complicated set of signs that were probably refusal and explanation of some sort, then another motion toward the blue ship.

  Finally, Ato swung on his “heels” and headed toward it alone. His fellows watched him, making no move to follow. When the alien reached whatever served as an airlock, he stopped and stood waiting patiently.

  “Maybe he’s got some kind of educating machine there, Bill,” Sam offered. “He’s pretty insistent. We could use one —it took me three months to learn Arabic, and that’s a human language!”

  The back of his mind was warning him that he was stepping over the line. Leave the guesses and suggestions to the brass, it told him, just as it had ordered him to stay on the ground when the space station began, or to stay clear of the girl who could teach him to read Arabic—or the little crook in Burma. . . . Some day his curiosity would get him killed.

  Larsen took the bait, probably deliberately. “All right, Sam. I’m no linguist. If you’re willing to volunteer, see what he wants.”

  Ato still waited as Sam started across the pumice and dust toward the blue ship. If the alien was surprised at the switch, there was no sign of it. But that was only good dickering. “Don’t let ‘em get your signals,” Sam muttered to himself.

  Then he wondered what equivalent of that could exist in Ato’s language. A speech was more than semantic noises— it was a whole history of culture, and you couldn’t know a thing about anyone until you knew how he thought in his own tongue.

  * * * *

  Disappointingly, the steps and what showed of the hull section looked no different from the normal alloys Earth used. The gray stuff was some flexible plastic. Earth had been experimenting on flexible locks that would let a man go through without losing air or taking up much space, but so far none had worked. Still, the principle was familiar enough.

  Sam nodded as Ato touched his shoulder and backed through. Sam followed. The gray stuff molded to him without too much resistance, and then he was inside a metal-walled, featureless passageway and the alien was shedding his suit

  Underneath, it was plain that Sam’s first impression had been right. The purple man’s bony structure hadn’t fully ossified; the joints seemed to be sections where a flexible cartilege permitted bending. It would make for neater spacesuit design, of course. His nude, purple body was that of a slim, graceful watersprite, but there was an air of strength and endurance to it.

  From a cabinet, Ato took out a mess of equipment He studied Sam’s suit for a moment, then located the escape valve for exhaled air and got a sample. Things moved, changed color, and precipitated, until a series of dials began registering. The alien studied them silently, then wiggled his mouth. “Val”

  At his gesture, Sam reached for his helmet snaps. He was consciously brave. Look at the way his ancestors had faced danger and torture without a whimper . . . no, damn it, those were the Sioux and the Apache! And besides, he was no dratted savage. . . .

  He suddenly realized that he was holding his breath.

  He let it out with a whoosh. When he breathed in, there was an odd odor, somewhat pungent, a trifle sweet, that seemed to come from the alien. But his lungs accepted the atmosphere gratefully. It was a bit heavier than that used in the domes and suits, and it felt good.

  They went down hallways and up some kind of elevator, to reach a room that obviously had something to do with the control of the ship. There were indicators in panels along the walls, television screens showing the outside in color but with too much emphasis on blue for human eyes, and instruments that only vaguely made sense to Sam. Two other purple-skinned men were working in obvious haste on a complicated maze of wiring, with tiny bumps that might have been transistor, coils and other parts. It was obviously electronic, and they were changing the circuits.

  One of them stopped to rattle off a string of high-pitched words to Ato, indicating a device on a table.

  Ato nodded. He motioned to a three-legged chair that proved surprisingly comfortable, then took a seat across the table. He moved a button connected to a wire between them, then drew a switchboard from the machine within easy reach. His other hand picked up a slim shaft and made hasty marks on a writing surface with it. Apparently his palm was flexible enough to let any two fingers oppose a third. He held up the shaft.

  “Ssompa,” he said carefully. He made marks again. “Pir,” he said. Then he pointed to a cluster of marks at a time, repeating: “Edomi.”

  It wasn’t even well-organized speech instruction, much less anything as wonderful as a mechanical educator!

  Sam felt the disappointment thicken in him as he drew out his own pen and wrote down a group of words. “Va—yes. Va—yes. Ssompa pir edomi. Pen write word. Va. And you’d better let someone who knows how take over, Ato, or we’ll be here until hell freezes over finding out how to tell each other useless sentences. Now, one!”

  * * * *

  Ato shrugged and let the control pass to Sam. They went through the numbers and common operating words of arithmetic, the simplest nouns and verbs, and a negative—Ato apparently picked one from several.

  Sam had already decided that grammar could go out of the window. He elected pidgin English as the simplest, most consistent language he knew. The vocabulary was limited, the rules were simple, and anything they needed to say could be conveyed by it. Anyhow, it gave him an ace up his sleeve— Ato would have a deuce of a time figuring out Sam’s cultural pattern from it, no matter how clever he was.

  Then he began to suspect that Ato was doing something of the same nature.

  But when he finished his basic list of words and began going through applications of them to fix them indelibly in their memories, Ato would have none of it. “No!” he said firmly. “Make word.” He was stubborn about it.

  Sam frowned, but went on. If the aliens had memories that would let them master a vocabulary from a single hearing, they had him beaten. He hunched forward, sweating a little as he tried to force his mind to memorize every word and phrase. But it couldn’t be done! The harder he tried, the more he lost.

  Sometime during the long hours, one of the technicians sweating over the electronic panel went out and came back with a package for Sam and a bowl for Ato. Larsen must have sent the food over. Sam wolfed it down, stalling as long as he could while he went over what he could remember. Then the exchange of words resumed. At least by now they had a few basic expressions they could use to clear up doubtful points, and things moved faster.

  Sometime during the session he began smoking.

  Ato went into a dither until the smoke had been analyzed with the aid of a quick glittering little machine, then paid no more attention to it. He seemed to understand the coffee that was sent over, though, and began drinking a reddish liquid himself. But even with the coffee, Sam was almost dead with fatigue when Ato carefully and experimentally stretched his wide lips into what must have been meant for a human smile and leaned back. “Good,” he said. He patted the machine in front of him, touched a button, and listened as Sam’s voice came out of it

  “Va—yes. Ssompa pir edomi. Pen write word. One, two, three, four. . . .”

  Sam watched a technician remove one of the two spools inside the machine and thread the thin plastic into a duplicate machine, showing how it worked with a few simple gestures. He’d been a fool! Of course the aliens had perfect memories —so did men, since the invention of the tape recorder!

  * * * *

  He was still cursing to himself as he threw the machine they gave him onto a bench and
began shucking off his clothes in his little private cubicle. While he was working on his shoes Larsen came in, bringing glasses and a small bottle. The commander looked worried, but he was grinning.

  “I know it’s illegal to give whiskey to an Indian, Sam,” he said. “But maybe the law won’t reach this far.”

  “It’s illegal to give anything to an Indian, Bill. You’re supposed to take things away from them. Luck!” The liquor seemed to cut through his stomach and into his nerves at once, reminding him he hadn’t picked up supper. He needed this more, though. He took a second glass, then reported briefly what had happened, playing a bit of the “tape” back. “What gives here?”

  Larsen shook his head. “I wish I knew. Sam, even with this it’ll take a week to get on real speaking terms, won’t it? Umm. Why are they willing to spend all that time and effort? What do they want from us?”

  “Why do they have to want anything?”