Collected Short Fiction, page 342
If only the big planets were available for Terraforming! But it was impossible. Saturn and Jupiter and Neptune simply were not fit for human existence, and no sort of tinkering with the atmosphere and soil chemistry was going to change that. It couldn’t be done.
No. Humanity at present was limited to the three small inner worlds, Mars, Venus, Earth. Mercury was too close to the sun; present techniques couldn’t cope with the dayside-nightside situation. Chemists could strip away Venus’ cloud-layer and turn that formaldehyde-soaked world into a lovely imitation of Eighteenth-Century England, but there was no way of adjusting the solar constant or alleviating the pull of gravity.
Not yet.
They had traveled for hours; the Outworlders had seen mile on dismal mile of close-packed houses and factories. About noon, the copter hovered over the dark green waters of the Gulf of Mexico; the jets cut off and the rotors came into play.
“Are we going to land down there?” Ludwig asked.
“Yes. I’m taking you to a Food Station floating in the Gulf. You may find it instructive.”
The copter came to rest on a broad landing apron attached to Food Station 117, a gleaming metal island drifting in the Gulf. McClellan gestured for the trio of Outworlders to step down.
“We have little cultivatable land left, and what we have won’t produce enough food to feed our population. But there is one high-yield area now coming under intensive cultivation for the first time—and high time it is, since it’s an area covering a good chunk of the planet. We’re farming the sea.”
A heavily-tanned man in overalls emerged from a blockhouse on the artificial island. He strode toward the little group, grinning.
Secretary McClellan?”
“That’s right. You’re Haverstraw.”
The man nodded. To the Outworlders, McClellan said, “Mr. Haverstraw is the engineer-in-charge at this station. He’ll show you around. I’m pretty much . . . ah . . . at sea here, you know.”
Haverstraw took charge. He guided the by-now weary-looking colonials over the entire sprawling bulk of the Food Station, showing them the fully-equipped lab, explaining how the chemical composition of the sea governed the food yield, discoursed on the importance of the phosphate index and deep-sea turbulence and the myriad of other nutrient factors he and his men watched over.
McClellan listened beamingly; most of this was as confusingly strange to him as it was to the Outworlders, but he knew the right idea was being conveyed: man on Earth was desperate for food and for living space. And the Outworlders, who reveled in their lebensraum, had a moral obligation to repeal the Exclusion Acts.
A drab-smocked technician appeared, bearing trays.
“These are plankton steaks,” Haverstraw said. “Still in the developmental stage. The steaks are synthesized chiefly from copepods—small creatures, very much like near-microscopic shrimp. The bread at the side of each plate is baked from phytoplankton meal. Taste it.”
They tasted. McClellan found the plankton foods nearly flavorless, and what little flavor there was was offensive. From the expression on their faces, it seemed the Outworlders felt the same way.
Haverstraw grinned. “Pretty punk, isn’t it? We think so too. But it’s awfully nutritious, and there’s a darned near limitless supply. Which is more than we can say of animals, edible or otherwise.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Ludwig said.
“I’ve seen very few animals so far. How come?”
“We’ve discovered that a kind of Law of Conservation of Life holds true,” McClellan said. “The quantity of living things on one planet remains fairly constant. And if one species—such as us—decides to spread over every square inch there is, the other species start vanishing.”
“I see,” Ludwig said gravely.
“Anyone care for more plankton steak?” Haverstraw asked.
McClellan winced. “I doubt it.”
They returned to New York shortly afterward. The final demonstration was carefully calculated to be the coup de grace; the psychometrists had chortled long and hard over it when it left their drafting boards. The pilot let them off on the roof of a building in the heart of metropolitan New York. It was 1530; the afternoon rush was just about to get under way.
“Aren’t we going back to the United Nations headquarters now?” Castellani asked, almost plaintively.
“Yes. The pilot’s going to fly back; we get off here. We’re taking the subway. It ought to be fun, just about this time of day.”
It was and it wasn’t. McClellan had never so enjoyed a subway ride in his life, watching the Outworlders’ discomfiture. At least three hundred people were crammed into the capacity-two hundred subway car; with a fifty per cent overload, the car’s air conditioning was utterly futile.
They emerged looking like somewhat dehydrated sardines. McClellan’s nerves were quivering; he was sure the Outworlders were near collapse. But the demonstration was over. He led them to the liftshaft and proceeded swiftly with them to the relative solitude of his office.
“You have now seen Earth,” he said. “I’ll correct that: you’ve seen North America. Be assured that it’s much worse in other places. Why, in Asia alone—”
“Please,” Rockwood said wearily. “No more statistics. We’re amply convinced. Whoever devised this little tour is a shrewd demon indeed.”
Castellani nodded. The plump man looked completely wilted. “You’ve made your point. Over and over again.”
McClellan smiled in self-satisfaction. He had been of the private opinion that the tour as planned was a bit on the childish side, but he hadn’t made formal objection. An Assembly resolution, after all, was an Assembly resolution.
“I suppose you’re waiting for our decision now,” Rockwood said. His sharp eyes flicked rapidly from McClellan to the shiny desk. “Let me review: When you people set up the three colony worlds about a hundred fifty years ago, it was with the proviso that the original group of volunteer colonists could be supplemented by further groups at annual intervals. During our first hundred years of existence this worked to our mutual benefit—the men who came were able to fit right into our program.” He paused.
“Fifty years ago, we discovered we were reaching a maximal population—and it was then that we instituted the system of tests for prospective colonists. This reduced the flow—somewhat.” Sadly, the Martian added, “It came to our attention, though, that the mother world was taking steps to circumvent our system of criteria. Furthermore, we had now reached the point where, rather than welcoming new colonists, we were more anxious to control increase than stimulate it. It became necessary to take legal measures if we were to have things our way. Therefore we passed acts in Congress revoking the immigration proviso of the original charters and prohibiting all further immigration from the mother world.”
“Exactly,” said McClellan hoarsely. “Whereupon the governing body of the mother world requested you to reconsider. For the past century we’ve regarded the colonies as our one safety valve for overpopulation—but now that we need to use that valve we discovered it’s shut down tight.”
“We’ve seen Earth,” Ludwig said. “We agree that it’s a terrible, terrible situation. However—”
McClellan tensed. He feared what was coming, although he had expected it from the start.
“The population of Callisto,” Ludwig went on, “is, at the moment, some four hundred million. This, for a world only a little over three thousand miles in diameter, approaches a maximal figure of comfort—inasmuch as our death rate is exceedingly low, thanks to the medical advances of the past century and the fine soil and atmosphere the Terraforming engineers provided. Naturally we have to keep careful watch over birth rates to maintain normal population distribution.”
“The same is true of Venus,” Rock wood said. “And, I assume, of Mars.”
“Of course,” said Castellani.
In the sudden silence McClellan felt unnerved; his composure was giving way around the edges. The Outworlders had abruptly ceased to be gauche colonials. Now they were self-confident men who knew what they were doing and why they did it.
Rock wood, the spokesman, stepped forward and leaned his hands on the precious wood of McClellan’s desk.
“We’re deeply moved and highly sympathetic to your plight,” he said. “We’re filled with pity: the pity we’d have for an idiot who, when given a loaded gun, proceeded to blow his brains out.”
“What’s that?” McClellan asked, astonished.
“Earth is vastly overcrowded; agreed. We knew that before we undertook your tour. Has it occurred to you that we haven’t grown overcrowded—and won’t?”
“We have small worlds,” said Ludwig, the Callistan. “If we allowed ourselves to breed at Earth’s.”
“Exactly,” said Rockwood. The Venusian scowled. “We of the Outworlds have seen the inescapable need for certain self-restrictions, basing our ideas on your mistakes. And we’re damned if we’ll let you upset our way of life because you’re too foolish to admit the existence of limitations. You can’t or won’t understand the nature of your own problem, and we pity you—but we won’t cut our own throats for you.”
McClellan’s tongue felt dry. “You refuse to consider repeal of the Exclusion Acts, then?”
“Obviously.”
This was the moment McClellan had feared; he knew it was coming, but yet, somehow, he had irrationally expected the colonists to give in when they saw Earth’s plight. Well, he would give it a last try.
“You see no moral obligation to accept some of our excess population?”
“On the contrary—we see a moral obligation to refuse,” Rockwood said vehemently. “We’re right—and helping you to alleviate your overcrowding at our expense would be an unsane act.”
McClellan knotted his fingers tightly together and allowed his eyes to slip closed for a moment. Sighing, he said, “In its instructions to me, the Assembly made a few remarks which might be of interest. I was told to exert any means within my power to induce repeal.” He paused. “Earth, I’m afraid, has more spacegoing armed vessels than your three worlds combined.”
There was an explosive hush in the room. Finally Rockwood said, “You’d use force, then? War?”
“The implication’s there,” McClellan admitted. “But it’s not war, friend. It’s survival. You have country estates, rolling green fields. We don’t have a free inch of space on Earth.”
“And so you’ll fight us to make us let you in,” Rockwood said acidly. His voice was cold. “You’re bigger fools than I thought you were, then. Nine billion of you crammed onto one world, and a mere two billion of us, scattered over three. Why, a war would ruin you. We’d bomb you in a shotgun spray and knock off a hundred thousand no matter where we struck—while you’d have to pry us out of nooks and crannies.”
“We’d lose perhaps a hundred million people,” added Castellani. “You’d lose billions. I think we could risk it. You’d be crippled long before we were. Of course, that might help solve your population problem—until the next war.”
McClellan stared at them coldly. They had him whipsawed neatly. The threat of war didn’t frighten them; in this case, there was weakness in numbers. He shuddered faintly at the image of Outworlder bombs landing at random on Earth, killing millions.
After a long moment of silence Rockwood said, “Think over what we’ve told you, Mr. Secretary. The implication’s clear: you’re committing suicide. All of you.” He smiled grimly. “We of the colony worlds have learned that some laws can’t be broken; you don’t admit that yet. You think you can breed unlimitedly.
“Well, you can’t. You’ll find that out soon enough. A limitation exists: and if you don’t enforce it yourself, it will be enforced from outside you. There’s no escaping it.”
McClellan stared blankly at the Martian for a second or two, his mind a little dazed. Finally he said: “I don’t imagine there’s any further negotiating we can do, gentlemen. I’ll arrange for your immediate return to your home planets, and thanks very much for . . . for—”
His voice trailed off. He was unable to utter the hollow diplomatic formalities required of him. Scowling, he kicked his foot hard into the thick carpeting, and jabbed down on the communicator button.
When they were gone, he reached for the intercom.
“I want Dr. Kingston, in Research.”
A moment later the physicist’s crackling voice could be heard. “Tester? We’ve been expecting you down here. You said you’d come down at 1630, and it’s nearly—”
“I know,” McClellan said. “Bernie, can you come up to my place instead?”
“Well, if it’s necessary . . . but I want you to see a model that we’ve—”
“I’d just as soon not,” said McClellan. “Will you come up?” He broke the contact, making the polite request a direct command.
While waiting for Kingston to arrive, McClellan stared moodily at the tips of his fingers, trying to sort out all the Outworlders had said, trying to rebuild his shattered framework of belief.
They refused to repeal the Exclusion Acts. And they dared Earth to go to war.
Suppose, he thought,. Earth did go to war—and suppose, then, that despite heavy losses, Earth won. In a century or so, Mars, Venus, and Callisto would be as swollen with people as Earth herself. What then?
Kingston, down in Research, thought he had the answer: the stars. But Kingston was wrong. McClellan saw the answer with naked clarity for the first time now. We’ve deluded ourselves too long, he thought.
War was a short-range solution; a few generations of breeding at this pace and war’s gains would be wiped out. The stars? It was the same. They would never find enough planets to contain mankind.
The solution, McClellan admitted bitterly, did not lie in the stars; it lay right here on Earth. Earth had ducked around the problem with subterfuges. The Outworlders had solved it. Farm the sea?
The door opened. “Hello, Bernie,” McClellan said wearily. “Sit down. Tell me how this drive of yours is coming.”
The wiry physicist smiled happily. “I think we’ve got it licked, Lester! The field equations show—”
“No equations, Bernie. How long do you think it’ll take before you’ve got a working f-t-l drive?”
“Maybe a week, maybe a month. No more than a year, certainly.” McClellan fought coldness within. He leaned forward heavily. “Bernie—will you do me a favor?”
“Possibly.”
“When you have your ultradrive, hide it. Don’t destroy it, because we’ll need it some day, but hide it. Put the schematics away until I give the word, and don’t publish your findings. Because once people know there’s an f-t-l drive in existence, we’re all doomed.”
“Have you gone crazy, Lester?”
“No,” McClellan said. “I’ve sudden gone stark raving sane. The ultradrive is a dodge, a subterfuge. It’s a substitute for the real answer to our problem. Today there were men from the three Outworlds here. They’re controlling population increase up there, Bernie. They know what has to be done. We’ve been looking the other way. And we won’t start looking the right way until we’re forced to. I know.”
Kingston was frowning. “So—?”
“So we suppress the ultradrive. So we stop trying to bludgeon the colonies into taking emigrants. So we sit here, and wait.” McClellan smiled faintly. “Some thing will have to give. Earth’s a plague spot: the plague is uncontrolled birth. Our cousins on the Outworlds don’t want our cancer, so they’re closing the lid; if you’ll sit on your spacedrive there’ll be no way out at all. And either Earth cracks wide open—or it grows up. There’s no middle course.”
Kingston rose, his face livid. “You’re suggesting that I destroy my life’s work deliberately, that I keep from mankind the spacedrive that’ll give them the stars—”
“Temporarily, yes,” McClellan said. “Until this mushroom of breeding is controlled. Then we’ll need your spacedrive. Now it can only hurt us.”
“No. I absolutely refuse. You can’t meddle with science this way, McClellan.”
“Very well,” the secretary general said tiredly. “I hereby relieve you of your post and discharge you from the Research Bureau, effective today.” Kingston recoiled as if slapped. “On what grounds?”
“Insubordination. Your successor will be a man more capable of taking orders. Perhaps he’ll be a little less competent, too, but that’s all right. The stars can wait a while for us.”
Kingston glared bitterly and without comprehension at McClellan for a moment, then turned wordlessly. The secretary general flinched as the door slammed.
After a while he rose and walked to the window. Firing Kingston had been a tough, ruthless step—but McClellan and the UN had been gentle much too long. Ruthlessness would have to be the order of the day now and forever.
A big job faced him, he knew now. The time had come to stop talking and begin acting, and he was in the driver’s seat. An order would have to be imposed—and enforced. Ruthlessly.
No. Not ruthlessly. Sanely was the word he wanted. And the program would work, for mankind was basically sane. McClellan had spent a lifetime unwittingly preparing for this moment. Now all his diplomatic guile, his shrewdness, his real reservoir of strength, would be needed in the struggle to give humanity that which it desperately needed and which it obstinately refused to accept.
McClellan glanced outward. Night had fallen, now; two or three bright stars broke the haze of city lights. McClellan drew a deep breath and stared out at the darkness, seeing, not the billion billion bright lights of the teeming city, but the three faint twinkling hopeful dots that were the stars.
THE END
We, the Marauders
The beings that dwelt on Ganymede didn’t use metals, but they didn’t want to deal with Earthmen, either; and Earth needed those metals. The Ganymedeans were harmless primitives, but that wouldn’t do; pacifying such aliens, and grabbing their metal, wouldn’t go with the public. So Ted Kennedy, of the Steward & Dinoli agency, found himself assigned to produce the biggest sell in history—convince the public that the Ganymedeans were not pathetic, somewhat cute, aliens, but vicious monsters that had to be subdued!
