New Writings in SF 18 - [Anthology] Read online

  Jerman said nothing and after a minute’s silence he heard the Captain breathing quietly as he slept.

  The Jubilee drove on for two space-days, swallowing the emptiness between the planets, the glowing butt of its nose aimed at the system’s red dwarf sun.

  Bell, a heavy man with the same hard eyes as his captain, dropped into the cabin and woke the uneasy sleepers there.

  ‘Sir, we’ve picked up a planet that’s within the prescribed graph range.’

  ‘Has it been rechecked?’

  ‘Yes. The spectrum indicates vestigial atmosphere of nontoxic gases and the presence of surface liquid.’

  The Captain scrambled up. While Bell took over the control console he and Jerman watched the planet’s approach on one of the scanners.

  The Captain checked the instruments himself. He reached a decision rapidly. ‘Lieutenant, have all hands stand-by. We’ll try to go into orbit immediately and identify a suitable site for landfall.’

  It was a difficult manoeuvre for the crippled ship, but several hours later Jubilee was orbiting the planet within a band of numerous asteroidal satellites on a track which took it diagonally between the poles.

  ‘Water,’ said Bell. ‘It looks to me like all damn’ water.’

  It was very dark—night-blue or violet at the distance from which they observed it.

  ‘I thought I made out something different in Red Sector last time round,’ said one of the ratings.

  ‘What?’ asked Bell.

  ‘Kind of islands or rocks or atolls or something, sir. Water seemed to be breaking.’

  ‘Concentrate all your viewers on Red Sector,’ the Captain ordered. ‘If you see anything enlarge it on the screen here.’

  They orbited again. The domestic circuits had all been drained to summon sufficient power to operate the control instruments and the emergency drive equipment. There was no hot food; light and power in the living quarters had been eliminated and the gravity drag was so reduced that any sudden action had to be carefully controlled.

  They tracked over the vital sector yet once more. ‘There!’ shouted Bell and Jerman together. ‘There it is!’

  The rating closed the tuning control. Red Sector came up on the captain’s screen and expanded as the instrument enlarged the crucial spot to full capacity.

  ‘Hold it,’ cried Bell. ‘It won’t go any more.’

  ‘It’s a chain of small islands,’ murmured the Captain. ‘We’ll put an instrumented slave rocket in to check them. Bell, you see to it.’

  ‘Will our radio be strong enough to pick up the signals though?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to take a chance anyway. Fortunately the range is short.’

  ‘Where shall I put it in, sir ?’ One of the ratings stood by ready to push the blast button.

  ‘Try that large atoll—the one like a broken ellipse.’ The Captain’s eyes were hard, icy again. ‘Hell! That sea’s as dark as night—huh?’

  The psychiatrist looked at the Captain. He jerked the wisps of hair back out of his eyes and looked around at the crew. He seemed to be the only one who had found the Captain’s comment significant. The crew were all impassively about their business. Rigid training compelled each one of them to concentrate on the job in hand and only that. Imagination had no part in their everyday affairs.

  Hardly daring to trust his own imagination, Jerman got out of his seat carefully and floated from the cockpit. He fancied that the Captain rewarded him with a brief glance of annoyance as he went, but he couldn’t be sure of this.

  With the words still echoing in his head, he made his way to Cornel’s cabin. The sedative he had given the sick man would certainly have worn off by now. Jerman dreaded having to open the padded door to hear again those prophetic cries. But when he looked through the peephole into the cell it was much worse. Cornel was peacefully asleep for the first time in weeks; and there was an innocent smile on his face. He looked like someone who had come home after a long, hard journey.

  * * * *

  The planet upon which Jubilee finally achieved a landing enjoyed a long day and a brief unnatural night illuminated by a mauve glow from its numerous attendant asteroids.

  While the crew worked at the damage to discover its true extent and repair it if they could, the Captain made several exploratory journeys in the uni-jet cutter. There was nothing within range to be found. Apart from the string of small atolls where the Jubilee now rested uncertainly on its landing probes, the surface of the planet in that vicinity seemed to be covered by a tideless sheet of liquid, empty of marine life. For want of a better name this came to be known to the travellers as The Sea and its constituent water. In fact it was neither, being of a composition which defied analysis.

  As a routine measure on any new landfall, planned or not, the Captain ordered samples to be taken up and sealed. But the liquid defied capture. It either spontaneously destroyed itself or changed structurally under unfamiliar conditions and environment. The containers were always perfectly empty, perfectly dry within a few hours of being filled.

  The ship had been on the planet several Earth-long days when the Emissaries arrived. No one recognised them as such. Jerman, in fact, suffered a disappointment.

  His patient had been enjoying a period of strange, almost lucid tranquillity since landfall. When the powerful voices began to speak to him, the mind therapist didn’t recognise them at first as in any way extra-human. He just believed that poor Cornel’s madness had returned.

  Only the failure of his most potent drugs disturbed him sufficiently into taking careful notice of Cornel’s ravings.

  After checking to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, he called the Captain.

  We convert er to you speech through this er your colleague. Cornel’s lips didn’t move. The strange sounds, distorted and with a marked reverberation like a maladjusted loud-speaker system among mountains, issued from his throat.

  We welcome you er to (here the name, syllable after syllable of it, was lost upon the human ear). We are all er around you but cannot manifest er as our planes existence separate from er yours and dangerous to adjust er. We intend you no harm. we repeat er no harm. Your vehicle damage is not er repairable without er our assistance.

  ‘Bloody nonsense,’ snarled the Captain. ‘You didn’t just drag me here to suffer the ravings of this madman, I hope ?’

  Jerman didn’t reply. The message boomed on heedlessly.

  We er recommend you take er account of our terms for assistance your safe conduct back to er your being.

  ‘The hell! I won’t listen to any more.’ The Captain flushed angrily to the roots of his grey hair. He wrenched open the door of Cornel’s cell and stalked away.

  The voices in Cornel insisted without a pause. They seemed now to be directed at Jerman.

  You er of the unclosed mind have heard. WE return er tomorrow and repeat once more our terms. You must er convince your commander we are reasonable and terms will also be reasonable. we salute you. Until tomorrow.

  Jerman got his mouth open to reply, but the words stuck in his dry throat.

  Cornel was a crumpled heap on the couch. He looked like a puppet flung down after a performance, its strings released. Jerman, looking even more like a scolded schoolboy, licked his lips and crept out to find the Captain.

  That night the section of feed line which it had taken days to shape and link, dissolved at the welds and the Jubilee was left as crippled as when it had landed.

  Grimly the Captain rationed the ship’s supplies. He divided the crew into watches and they worked round the clock to repair the mischief, but their sophisticated tools, although they continued to function perfectly, now had small effect on the damage. It seemed as though a screen had dropped between them and the ship. Showers of orange sparks fell to the ground and vanished as they laboured in vain.

  Each evening Jerman returned to Cornel’s cell to maintain contact with the Emissaries. The madman seemed hardly to have an existence of his own. He was silent
all day, a vehicle for communication only; empty except when the planet’s visitors had use for him.

  Each time they returned, their demands for discussion with the Captain became more urgent, their language more uncompromising.

  Three days after the first visitation the Captain finally abandoned the attempt to repair Jubilee. He issued a double ration of food and drugs to the exhausted crew.

  Nearly everyone slept where he had eaten. Only Jerman sought out the Captain in the deserted radio cockpit where his latest efforts to arouse a response had encountered the now perpetual silence.

  Their eyes met. ‘You’ve admitted to yourself that they exist, haven’t you?’ said Jerman.

  The spacer looked away. He looked older and his pale eyes less resolute than when the emergency had first hit Jubilee. ‘I can’t understand what it is they wish to do with us. What do they want? They have us here at their mercy. They can take whatever it is—the ship, our lives—everything !’

  ‘You’ll never know what it is unless you come and talk to them.’

  ‘How can you expect me to go in there and hold a conversation with a madman?’

  ‘It isn’t Cornel who’s speaking,’ Jerman urged. ‘You know what—I think they’ve chosen him because of his affliction. Reason left his mind and gave them a loophole to enter it. Maybe they’ve been waiting for centuries. I believe they ambushed us when they knew what we were carrying in our sick-bay. Now they have a purpose for us.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said the Captain. ‘We’ll find out.’

  The two men traversed the sleeping ship. At the cell door Jerman cautiously opened the peephole. Cornel was moving restlessly on his couch.

  ‘Open the door,’ ordered the Captain. He preceded the psychiatrist into the cell. Cornel subsided into a motionless heap.

  We all salute er you. Captain. We salute er you. The Emissary voice—or was it a chorus of voices ?—spoke from the depths of other worlds through the breach in the wall which they had awaited so long and chosen so fastidiously.

  Politely but uncompromisingly the terms for the safe conduct of Jubilee were outlined.

  The Emissaries—they had no name which humans could understand—had for centuries watched the progress of humanity across the galaxy. Now at this frontier the time for demarcation had come. Human expansion might continue in other directions, but there must be no encroachment upon sections of the galaxy long since the heritage of the Emissaries’ own, distinctive culture.

  The powers of the Emissaries in their own sphere were sufficient to prevent the repair and departure of the humans’ space craft. Its arrival had been carefully planned and engineered (as Jerman had suspected) because of the presence on board of Cornel.

  In return for the saving of the expedition the Emissaries required the Captain to return to the human colonised parts of the galaxy taking with him the Emissaries’ demarcation warning.

  ‘But why can’t our two evolutions come together and cooperate?’ asked the Captain. Having drowned his scepticism on the possibility of other, reasoning beings he found his space-ethical training surfacing once more. ‘Two cultures such as yours and mine could exercise a tremendous force for good. Great gaps in the knowledge of both our creations—our development and the universe we share—all these could be closed in a single co-operative act.’

  You, a human, have er the audacity to suggest this ? So far as human emotions were identifiable in the Emissaries, the question seemed to contain both incredulity and mirth. What happened to every evolutionary movement with which humanity has come into contact? IT has been destroyed. We do not choose to argue. (The Captain choked on the retort that came to his lips.) We er offer you these terms.

  We cannot destroy you but you will destroy yourselves if er you refuse to carry our warnings back to your kind. The link er between you as you are now and you as you were is very tenuous.

  The Captain shrugged. ‘I can’t guarantee that my civilisation will believe me or even if it does that it will take notice of your warning.’

  We ask only that you carry the message.

  ‘I shall do it.’

  There is one condition more.

  The Captain didn’t respond and the voices continued: You will leave er to us and in our care the man cornel through whom we speak to you.

  The Captain opened his mouth to reply but closed it again before any sound escaped. Jerman couldn’t tell from his expression whether the response was to have been a flat negative or an indifferent assent.

  What do you say. Captain ?

  ‘No member of our race may be left in the hands of strangers.’

  But this being is already alien to you. His brain we know has not the reason which distinguishes yours.

  After a short silence the Captain said, ‘I must have time to consider this.’

  One hour ?

  ‘I shall return tomorrow.’

  Jerman caught his arm. His hair flopped down over his anxious, boyish face. ‘Agree now,’ he whispered frantically. ‘It’s our only hope of getting out of this.’

  ‘I shall return tomorrow,’ said the Captain as though he hadn’t heard.

  Commander, we salute er you. Until tomorrow. We shall await you er here.

  Their last echoes faded down the long corridors through which they came. The Emissaries were gone. Cornel stirred, woke, looked at the two men who so unexpectedly shared his cell and began to laugh uncontrollably.

  * * * *

  Can they hear us? Can they see what we think? Jerman wrote out the questions with a shaky hand on a page ripped from a calculation block and shoved it across the table to the Captain.

  They were in the Captain’s cabin with Bell. The crew had been informed of the new developments in their predicament. Time was running out and still the Captain hadn’t revealed his decision.

  He looked at the young psychiatrist compassionately. He didn’t answer the question. He said calmly: ‘I can’t give them Cornel. You know that.’

  ‘But why not? He’s lost to humanity already. We only had a certain time-margin to get him to New Erin. That must have run out by now. Even with his mind in the care of the best doctors we have it couldn’t be saved now. You can’t sacrifice all the rest of us....’

  ‘The procedure is quite clear,’ said the Captain. ‘Article 18. No human organism, living or dead, must be abandoned where it may fall into the possession of powers alien to the human race.’

  ‘Cornel is useless to them,’ cried Jerman. ‘He’s not even human any more.’

  ‘Precisely. And why is he not ? Because his mind is shattered. Tell me: what carried us from the old seas of Earth to walk upright, to conquer Solar and stretch out among the stars? Reason! Awareness of ourselves. Now then, if you were another reasoning life form which saw in Man only a threat to your existence how would you cripple Man?’

  ‘You’d take away his reason,’ said Bell. The chunky lieutenant’s face was screwed up anxiously as he looked at his commander. He looked resigned. Trained in the same thought patterns as the Captain, he had readily foreseen how the argument must end.

  ‘No,’ said Jerman. ‘No—I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s why they want Cornel,’ said the Captain patiently. ‘They will take his mind apart to discover how they may be able to alter all human minds. When they’ve done the research they need to do they’ll be able to speak in all our minds just like they speak now in Cornel’s. It will be a weapon against which humanity hasn’t even begun to consider defences.’

  ‘But haven’t they done it already?’ argued Jerman. ‘They’ve already found their way into Cornel.’

  ‘Yes. But I think that until they can get him outside the ship and start the process of transmuting him to the same plane of existence as themselves and their damned water they won’t be able to get down to details and analysis. Perhaps at the moment they know how but not why. They’ve only scratched the surface of their purpose.’

  ‘We’re going to miss an opportunity w
hich may never occur again in our lifetime. We could be the ones to carry back to humanity the news of another powerful reasoning force in the universe!’

  ‘The price is too high,’ said the Captain. ‘And maybe we would be carrying the seeds of destruction of our own intelligence at the same time.’

  ‘Suppose their motives are purely defensive?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve considered that. For heavens’ sake! Do you think I don’t want to go on living, too, Jerman? What logic tells me is that any intelligence which so carefully plans and awaits its opportunity isn’t likely to remain defensive and content in its own sphere for ever.’