Collected Short Fiction, page 423
“Expel these beings from the ship! Order a retreat! Earth will be unlivable for us!”
Rocha repressed a chuckle. Behind him, the airlock door swung open, and the mighty fist of the energy grapple, operating in reverse, hurled him out once again into space.
Not into gray nothingness, this time. Into true space. The bright glory of the heavens was spread out before him. He saw ringed Saturn and red Mars, whirling in their distant orbits.
And he saw Earth.
HE drifted.
The energy grapple had imparted a high inward velocity to him. Clad in his protective suit he sped across the orbit of Mars, heading Earthward.
It was a cosmic joke, he thought. The aliens had had some superstitious fear of radioactivity—enough, in any event, to frighten them away and end their invasion plans.
He saw the splendor of Earth through his faceplate—a great green ball, spinning slowly, with the moon keeping silent company. He was alone. His companions had each gone sprawling in a different direction, Curtis to Jupiter, Graham inward toward the Sun. They were long since out of radio range now.
Rocha meditated on the irony of it; for the second time in his life he had been cast forth because of his affliction, and now he was returning to Earth. Because of his radioactivity, he had saved the world that had thrown him forth—and they would never know it. They would always think that his radioed warning had been some jeering hoax. They would never know how close Earth had come to enslavement, nor by what a slim margin it had been saved.
He was drawing close to Earth now—a tiny object in a spacesuit. His suit was not made for high-velocity entry into a planetary atmosphere. He knew what would happen to him. He did not care.
Rocha entered the atmosphere, and felt the heat rise up about him. He smiled once; then his suit burst into flames and he was consumed. On the Earth below, it looked like a shooting star, blazing fitfully and quickly burning out.
Rocha had come home at last, to the world that did not want him.
THE END
The Cold-Blooded Ones
The intelligent life on Xhcenna was reptilian in form, and beneath those scaly hides beat hearts in different rhythm from the warm-blooded human beings—from Earth
THE natives of Xhcenna were cold-blooded beings, intelligent reptiles who walked on their back legs, and that made Survey Corpsman Mark Hennessey suspicious of them from the start. And since Hennessey was Coordinator of the six-man Terran survey team, his opinions carried a lot of weight.
Even so, the members of the expedition were overwhelmingly in favor of giving a positive report on Xhcenna, where they had stayed for eleven weeks. A positive report would mean opening of Xhcenna to Terran trade and commerce, and even to tourists if there were any tourists who cared to make a nullspace journey across a gulf of more than two hundred light-years.
In the Meeting Room of the survey ship, which stood tall and gleaming in a broad clearing a mile outside the nearest alien village, Mark Hennessey called the members of his team together to discuss plans for the oncoming departure date. Twelve weeks was the normal maximum time any survey team spent on a single planet; Terra Central figured that if they were still undecided about a planet’s virtues or dangers after that time, it was best to mark the world off as undesirable and try a new one.
Hennessey faced the other five members of his team: Julia, his wife, biologist; Don Farrell, geologist and his wife Moira, chemist; Paul MacDonald, communications specialist and Gala, his wife, ecologist. Hennessey himself held the post of sociologist. The Survey Corps insisted on sending out only teams consisting of married couples, but even so every member of the team had to practice a needed specialty.
Hennessey locked his thick, powerful hands together and said, “As you know, we’ll be leaving Xhcenna in seven ship days. I’m simply confirming what I unofficially announced last time.”
His wife said, “Mark, will there be a rearranged schedule? After all, I can’t get my biological specimens in order if I still have to spend half my day out on field trips.”
“Same here,” Farrell said. “We’ll have to redistribute our time.”
“Exactly why I called this meeting,” Hennessey said. “It’s time to make a first tentative decision on our ultimate report for this planet. When that’s taken care of, we can figure out new work-schedules for the final week of study.”
He leaned forward. He was a big man, heavy-set, with tangled dark hair and oddly piercing blue eyes. He said, “Let’s hear from you first, Paul. From a communications aspect, what can you tell us about this planet that will help us to judge it?”
MacDonald cleared his throat noisily. He was short and thin, with a constant nervous quiver. “Well—ah—it’s this way,” he began. “The natives have a complex but easily understood language of the agglutinative type. It is quickly learned by Earthmen, as I think we’ve all proven. It indicates a fairly high level of civilization—on a non-technological level, of course.”
“Of course,” Hennessey echoed. “Let me interject at this point that as a sociologist I find the Xhcennans a well-developed people who because of the non-metallic nature of their world and because of their own physical characteristics have developed a largely non-technological culture. There’s a strong tribal organization and a fairly advanced kind of religion. Don, do you want to talk about the geological angles?”
“Simple enough,” Farrell said cheerfully. “The planet’s rich on light elements, poor on middle-sized ones, and absolutely a blank on the heavy ones. That means it’s out as a source of radioactives. It’s a fairly old planet. No active volcanoes that I could find, no worthwhile geological faultlines, in short no indications of any great geomorphic disturbances in the recent past or in the foreseeable future. A quiet and stable planet, geologically speaking of course.”
Hennessey nodded. “Moira?”
Moira Farrell said, “Chemical analysis shows that the planet’s inhabitable by human beings. Slightly low oxygen content in the air and a minute fraction more carbon dioxide than we’re accustomed to, but in both cases the difference from Earthnorm is not significant. As on Earth, the lifeforms have carbon-base molecules.”
“Julia?”
“Biologically speaking, this is pretty much an Earth-type world,” Julia Hennessey said. “Similar microorganisms, similar genetic patterns, similar life-processes. Most of the native foods are edible by Earthmen, though one or two would seem to be violently poisonous—I haven’t finished testing those in the lab. I’d say the planet was definitely livable.”
Hennessey glanced around the room, his heavy brows furrowing. He looked at Gala MacDonald and said, “I guess we’re missing only the ecologist’s report, and then we’ve made the circuit. Go ahead, Gala.”
“The balance of life here is similar to that on Earth,” Gala MacDonald said. “With the one glaring exception that mammalian creatures never evolved here. The dominant form of intelligent life is reptilian—upright saurian, of course—and the minor animals, household pets, and the like, are reptiles too. There are large predatory reptiles in the jungles, and a few dangerous amphibious beasts in the seas. There is evidence that birds did evolve and became extinct, and perhaps when we’ve done further paleontological research here we’ll discover that the entire mammal family did develop here but died out. As for the flora, it’s fully evolved through the spermatophytic range. I guess that covers everything I have to say right now, Mark.”
Hennessey was silent for a moment when Gala had finished. His eyes roved around the ship’s cabin, out the big viewport to stare at the thick alien-looking jungle, then at the five people facing him.
Finally Julia said, “Well, Mark? We really haven’t heard from you, you know. What’s the sociologist’s report on the situation?”
“Yeah,” MacDonald said. “Your word is the most important.”
Hennessey was conscious of that. He had veto power over all the rest; no matter how suitable for Terran use a planet was, the sociologist-coordinator of the team could cause a planet to be closed off if he saw fit.
Right now he could not make up his mind.
“I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “I’ve studied the Xhcennans and I know them pretty well. . . . I think. They seem to be a virtuous and kind-hearted people. But. . . . I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean by that?” Farrell demanded.
“I don’t think I can phrase it.” Hennessey waved his big hands futilely, groping for the words. “I—just don’t fully trust these aliens, somehow.”
“Oh, Mark—”
Hennessey cut the protest off at once. “I haven’t made any official statement yet. I need a few more days to reach my decision, and in the meantime we’ll go right ahead without waiting. I take it the sense of the meeting is that there’s nothing much wrong with Xhcenna, and that pending my own report we can consider the planet approved for Terran contact. Any discussion?” There was none. Hennessey waited a moment, then rose. “In that case I’ll declare this meeting adjourned. We leave Xhcenna in exactly a week. Until I’ve reached my final conclusion, we’ll let the tentative findings of this meeting stand.”
THE next day was slightly cloudy, as most of the days were on Xhcenna. The sun was a pale gold, of the same spectral type as Sol but not quite as intense, and a layer of drifting fleecy clouds seemed to hang constantly in the atmosphere. On a hotter world, the sun would have burned those clouds away before midday; here, they clung not far above the surface of the world all day.
Hennessey took the jeep down the winding dirt road that led from the clearing where they had landed to the small Xhcennan village nearby. For the past eleven weeks he had been making daily visits to the Xhcennans, studying them as he learned their language, getting to know their customs and way of life. It was important to have a firm estimate of any alien creatures of intelligence, Hennessey knew.
So far, the surface of what he had seen impressed him. But Hennessey was too shrewd and too cautious to be content with surface impressions. He wanted to get to know the Xhcennan way of thinking well enough to be able to read the deeper motivations. It takes time before you can learn from a man’s eyes and lips that he’s lying; it takes even longer to develop the ability of interpreting the mannerisms of an alien being whose blood ran cold and whose eyes were yellow lipless feral slits.
Hennessey parked the jeep at the edge of the village, which consisted of ten concentric circles of thatched wooden domes radiating outward from a central town hall. A couple of Xhcennan “children”—it was hard for him to think of small lizards as children—congregated at a respectful distance, staring at the vehicle. There was no motorized transport on Xhcenna at all; they simply had never developed a technology complex enough to handle the job of developing even a primitive internal-combustion engine.
What little metal they mined was used for hunting-weapons, and the like. The Xhcennans didn’t even have gunpowder; but they had raised the technique of knife-wielding beyond the status of a fine art to that of an elaborate science.
They were calm, peaceful people, Hennessey admitted. But he thought darkly that it was foolish to take them on face value.
They’re cold-blooded reptiles. Don’t be fooled by the peaceful villages or the little children or the calm, philosophical way of life.
Look carefully. Look for the hidden things, the dark things, the cold-blooded things. Earth people will settle here. You wouldn’t want them to be massacred one moonless night by the Snakes.
As an automatic gesture Hennessey checked the magazine of his hundred-shot repeater pistol. Then, reassured, he walked forward into the Xhcennan village.
TODAY he was spending several hours with old Truzzk, the venerable religious leader of the community. Apparently word of Hennessey’s arrival had travelled rapidly through the village, because long before the Earthman had reached the House of the Sun he saw the old priest come shuffling toward him, followed closely by the small two-legged reptile that was a sort of sacred pet.
Truzzk was very old: exactly how old, Hennessey had never been able to find out. But the green of his scaly body had long since darkened almost to a rich leathery brown, and his eyes, once golden, had dimmed and faded. A withered bunch of flesh dangled at the old reptile’s throat. He was slightly taller than Hennessey, and walked upright on two thickthighed legs. Two other limbs hung kangaroo-like over his chest, and he balanced with a powerful, muscular tail.
“Sun’s warmth upon you, Earthman,” the priest said when he was close.
“May the clouds part above you, Truzzk.”
The alien beckoned, leading Hennessey onward into the domed hut that was known as the House of the Sun. It was both the priest’s residence and the village temple; through a hole in its roof the sun’s rays could enter, beaming down upon an altar set in the ground. The Xhcennans had worked out a split-second schedule of the moments during each day when the sun would be directly overhead the House of the Sun; it was considered the holiest moment of the day, and it was then that worship took place.
Like all of his people, the old man was naked. He wore only the ceremonial sword belted round his waist, a gleaming steel weapon with deadly barbed edges.
The old priest said without further preamble, “I hear that you are leaving us.”
Immediately Hennessey became suspicious. “Where did you hear that, Old One?”
Truzzk shrugged ambiguously. “It—it is in the air, so to speak. I feel it. You will be leaving us soon. Is this not right?”
In a tense voice Hennessey said, “We’ll be leaving Xhcenna at the end of this—” He fumbled for the alien word meaning “week,” and gave up. The aliens had little sense of time in the formal meaning of the word. “We’ll be leaving very soon,” Hennessey said lamely. “In only a few more sunrises.”
The dim reptilian eyes fastened piercingly on the Earthman. “Why do you leave? Are you not happy here, Hennessey?”
The way the alien said his name was a drawn-out hissing whistle that brought shivers of revulsion to the Survey Corpsman. He said, “We’ve enjoyed our stay, Old One. Your people have been very cooperative.”
“Then why must you leave?”
“We—must return to our own people,” Hennessey said. He began to feel uncomfortable in the musty dankness of the House of the Sun, and he searched for ways to change the subject. “Yesterday we spoke of the Nine Laws of Righteousness, and the Seven Tables of Justice. I’d like to discuss these a little further with you.”
“What would you know?”
“Your philosophy of vengeance, for one thing. You began to recite the chapter to me yesterday just when it got dark.”
The alien’s eyes filmed over for a moment; then, in a sonorous monotone, Truzzk said, “Thou shalt deal out fairly to him who dealt fairly to you, and evil for evil. He who causes a breach in your body armor, so shall ye rend his scales; he who treats all with justice shall himself receive justice from all.”
HENNESSEY recorded all that the old priest said, on a minorecorder strapped to his left wrist. It was the universal basic ethical statement: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, a rule that in one form or another seemed to crop up at the heart of every philosophical teaching.
But there were undertones of vengeance here, more than an echo of the Old Testament creed of retaliation, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. There was no question of love among these poeple, thought Hennessey, either in personal relationships or in ethical formulations. Everything about the Xhcennans was remorselessly rational, logical, unemotional—
Cold-blooded.
Which was not surprising. They were reptiles; their metabolisms, their means of reproduction, their internal plumbing, all differed vastly from the human and humanoid patterns.
Hennessey spoke with the old priest for several hours. At the end of that time, he had achieved a clear understanding of the Xhcennan philosophy, and he thought he knew a little more about what made the alien beings tick. He was still unsure.
As he rose to leave, Truzzk said, “In truth, you and your people will be leaving us shortly?”
“Yes. I told you so already.”
“You did not tell us why you found it necessary to leave Xhcennan.”
Hennessey took a deep breath. He said, “We’re simply advance scouts, you know. Not permanent settlers.”
“This was understood.”
“Well, it’s time for us to go back to Earth and report on our findings. Our job is to decide whether or not Xhcenna should be opened to unrestricted traffic from Earth.”
“And will you return to Xhcenna after you have made your report to Earth?”
“Probably not,” Hennessey said. “We’ll have to go on to other planets and carry out the same task there. But perhaps other Earthmen will come here.”
The great reptilian head swivelled in the alien gesture of understanding. “You said you were happy here; that means you will urge your fellow Earthmen to come here. Soon there will be many Earthmen on Xhcenna.”
Hennessey said nothing, neither affirming nor denying. This was one point he had grave doubts about. Suppose the aliens didn’t want Earthmen coming to their world? He wished he knew whether he could trust these aliens. They seemed so innocent, so virtuous—but yet, they carried barbed swords.
Were they waiting, readying themselves for the massacre? It was impossible to tell. They held their true feelings masked behind those unreadable saurian eyes.
Time was running short. Soon Hennessey would have to make a decision, he knew. The planet was a good one for Terran use—but could the aliens be trusted to receive visitors without demur? That was the key question, on which all else hung.
I wish I knew, Hennessey thought. He muttered the courtesies of a formal Xhcennan farewell, bowing three times to the old alien being, and made his way back to his jeep wrapped deeply in the indecisions of his own mind.
