HELL-PLANET

by John Rackham

Author John Rackham has been noted for many years as a British writer who produces novel ideas in the science-fiction field. In this new novelette he presents an alien’s viewpoint to the barrage of radio and TV broadcasts put out from Earth every twenty-four hours.

One

The whole ship surged, gently and rhythmically, as the circuit-breakers fell out in sequence and the warp-field decayed by powers of ten. Collective man-power held its breath, all the way from the youngest battery-boy up to Captain Egla Forsaan himself. On the bridge, his eyes were as anxious, his ears as keenly cocked, as anyone’s. He knew his aura was showing gut-chilling fear, despite all he could do to mask it, and the knowledge was a source of obscure anger. Apprehension on a drop-out into real space was a normal and expected thing, but this crouching fear was new, and nasty. Fear such as this was rarely encountered in Fah’een life anyway. Fah’een ships had traded between the far-flung stars for longer than there were records to measure, and trade was a way of life to them, not a desperate venture.

But this trip had gone awry right from the start. Its objective was reconnaissance, more than trade, and the ship was burdened with three high-status passengers. Other things had gone wrong, too. Terrible things.

The final warp-stage let go. There came that unmistakable, indescribable “sense” of real space, along with the faint pure chime of zero-clear. And nothing else. No sudden twists. No screaming alarms. Just a normal, straightforward drop-out. Drendel lay at rest, silent against the jewelled night of space. Egla Forsaan let out his long-held breath, eased the clamps on his emotions, and let them dissolve away in relief. It was all right, this time. He sensed the same let-down of tension all round him, and, perversely, his caution tempted him to call out against it. Let’s not fall over backwards, he thought, not now.

But First-Officer Pinat was already taking care of that. Nils Pinat, stolid and reliable, had been space-faring almost as long as Forsaan, and would be commanding his own ship soon, now that the Fah’een were expanding again. Respecting protocol, Forsaan sat still and observed as Pinat got on with it. Press and speak to engine-room.

“Finished with warp, Mr. Felder. Re-set and stand-by for planetary.”

“Engine-room to bridge.” That was Wistal Felder’s gentle voice, mild and gentle, no matter what. “Report. No. 4 outer field-generator o/c. The core has gone. For good, this time. Am re-setting for reaction-mass.”

Release and press to acknowledge. Turn to the sensor-board, to where old Art Bovy ought to be sitting. But old Bovy was no more than a puff of molecules, now, spinning for ever round a distant sun. In his place there was Stam Hoppik, emergency promoted from assistant to full Sensor-Officer, and radiating his anxious determination to justify the leap. Tow-haired, startle-faced, but dogged.

“Bearings and fix, into the plot, as soon as you can, Mr. Hoppik.”

“Figures coming up right away, sir,” and a brisk thumb-salute. Pinat swivelled his chair to overlook the dark face of the plot, a great read-out disc as broad as a man might span with both arms outstretched. Forsaan spun his own chair, squinting at the patterns as they came up, and saw that his caution had been justified. The troubles were not over yet, by a long way. He met Pinat’s eye, sensed the other man’s quick concern, and agreed with it.

“That’s not so good, is it?” he murmured. “Get Felder again. I’d—like him to see this.” Pinat put his thumb back on the button.

“Mr. Felder? Would you overlook the plot, please?” He let go, eyed the plot-pattern again. “We had to make allowances for instrumental error, considering the boiling we got…”

“Of course!” Forsaan dismissed the question of reasons. Past was past. This problem was now. A bleat from the group-board announced Felder in position to observe on remote.

“We’re the devil of a long way out, Felder, as you can see. With one generator out of commission, and the others suspect, a short “Twist’ is out of the question. So we must run on planetary. At a rough estimate, it will take us three complete cycles of watches, at quarter-drive. How will that leave us, for fuel ?”

“We can do it.” Fetter’s voice was milder than ever. “But only just. It’ll run our charge pretty low, too.”

“Hmm!” Forsaan mused a moment, then, to Hoppik, “Give us a read-out of the records on this system, Mister.” The plot darkened then glowed again with a schematic of the planetary system. Forsaan put a finger on the plate. “This one, the fifth out, should provide what we need in the way of fuel-mass. That will still leave us well outside any reasonable plasma-density, so let’s not be too heavy-handed with the batteries until we can recharge.”

“Right!” Pinat nodded. “Course for the fifth planet, at quarter-drive, and ready-up for cometary-and-scoop…”

“Time enough for that when we’re closer in. We can use the interval to make a thorough structure-check. Get all the off-watch hands on it. You can do likewise with your department, Felder. Let me know how we stand with the rest of the generators.” He got up, thumbed acknowledgement of Pinat’s salute, and paused by Hoppik’s board. The youngster’s tension was almost tangible. Forsaan, understanding, did what he could to allay it.

“It’ll be a long slow pull,” he said. “Once you’ve got out the course-data and ETA you’ll have your chance to check over all your circuits and get them clear. We want a full-spectrum analysis of this system, all the data we can get, and let’s be sure that it’s right, this time.”

He went on, dismissing the memory-picture of old Bovy at that board, forcing himself to realise that grief for the passing of an old shipmate would achieve nothing. Into the quiet of the log-room, he settled at his desk, switched on the recorder, fed in the absolute time from the ship’s chronometer, and began dictating. Routine phrases came easily.

“Drop-out achieved without incident. Due to allowance for possible instrumental inaccuracy, we are placed approximately twenty system-diameters distant from target-area. Running in at economical speed to conserve reaction-mass. One field-generator out of commission, crystallised core…”

Below the level of habitual responses his mind was a turmoil of random thoughts. The long run-in, tedious and wasteful, had its good side. In the utterly unreal state of warp it was futile to attempt anything as concrete as structural repair, much as Drendel needed it. Urs alone knew just how badly the main fabric had been strained in those frantic moments at Troyarn. Forsaan checked the recording for a moment, as furious emotions welled up and threatened his control.

Troyarn! The mere recall of the name revived the fear all over again. For an awful moment Forsaan thought of his son, Janna, First-Officer of the Maldex. The ancestors forbid that Janna should run into anything like the inferno of Troyarn. Then, in the same breath, he cursed those other ancestors whose carelessness had made the Troyarn incident possible. The two senses of the term “ancestors” were quite clear-cut in his mind. His prayer, worn smooth by usage, was to those semi-legendary ursinoids who, in the dim mists of bygone time, had made the evolutionary leap into hominid form. From that distant moment, the Fah’een had begun, had taken over the worlds of their planetary system, in by the heart of the Galaxy, and had then, down the ages, become the accepted masters of commerce and trade throughout the Galaxy. Wherever man-like life grew to the point of uniting a planet, there the ships of the Fah’een came, bringing trade, culture, and social links with all the rest. It had gone on so long, and was so much a part of the scheme of things that no one really knew just how it had all started. Nor did anyone care much.

But those other, more recent ancestors, ah, that was a different set of feelings. In any trading empire, accurate and detailed records are the real wealth, and Forsaan had such a set of records under his hand, as he sat. And they were false. Not deliberately so, but by carelessness. Some twenty generations ago, because of a temporary trade recession, provoked by short-sighted economics, the Fah’een had been compelled to pull in their outposts, abandon some of their routes, shut-down some of their step-stone bases. Troyarn had been one such. And now, with business once more on the up-swing, it was Drendel’s task to retrace one route, to visit the seven step-stone bases on the way to Sami, far out on the Rim. Troyarn had been the fourth. It was listed in these records as a fair planet, rich in ores, with good air and water, and plentiful vegetation. Its dock facilities had been left in good preservation order in readiness for those who would need them, later.

And so, unsuspectingly, Drendel had twisted out of warp, into a raving hell of swirling incandescence. Emergency trips and overloads had snatched her out again in split seconds, with her hull-sensors crippled, her main-spars wrenched and strained, and everyone aboard in shock and sickness. They had all taken massive doses of anti-radiation drugs, the crew had slaved like dogs, and they had got the battered ship into something like trim, the while they hung at a safe distance and watched a sun that had gone nova. That was when Bovy had died—from shock, overwork, old age—and, Forsaan knew, from irrational guilt. He was a good sensor-officer, one of the best. Somewhere, twenty generations or so in the past, another sensor-officer had been careless, had failed to record the instability of Troyarn’s sun. Status-pride was non-rational, but none the less real, for all that. Forsaan had it himself. As a status-three executive, he had the responsibility of the ship on his shoulders, and it weighed heavy.

He felt a gentle touch at his attention, and looked up to see Pinat in the doorway.

“I’ve set watches, sir, and we’re on course. The ETA is a shade more favourable than we’d hoped. I’m just about to take a squad forward, to start checking on bulkheads…”

“Good!” Forsaan got up. “Look,” he said, “I suggest you start with the passenger-space and get that over with. Our guests are not going to enjoy the coming cometary and I’ll do what I can to prepare them for it, but let’s not have anything falling apart where they can see it.”

“Right!” Pinat flicked a thumb, and his amusement was obvious. Guests—passengers of any kind—were a novelty on Drendel. Forsaan carefully hid his own distaste. These were very important people and one had to make certain allowances.

“Anything more from the engine-room?”

“Yes, sir. Felder has made a rough check, estimates we will have to strip down all eight of the outers. The inners may be sound, but not sure yet. He’s checking those.”

“Hmm!” Forsaan led the way back on to the bridge. “We had better plan to do the job up right, I suppose. Mr. Hoppik, as soon as we are near enough to get hard data, look out a suitable body where we can set down for low-G repair. Inside the plasma-cloud, if possible. Check with Mr. Felder for the minimum parameters.”

“I’ve just had a call from Professor Marn, sir, wanting to know if I had any data on the ringed-planet yet.”

Damn Professor Marn, Forsaan thought—and his ringed-planet. I’m running this ship. But he kept the reaction decently private.

“Just take your orders from myself or Mr. Pinat,” he said firmly. “We have a cometary to prepare for; batteries to recharge; massive repairs to do. In that order. Scientific curiosity can come later. Get on with it, mister, and be sure you call me, at once, in the event of anything irregular.”

He thumbed, briskly, cast a sharp eye round the bridge space, then turned and went out, down and around the spiral ramp to his cabin-suite, silently consigning his V.I.P. guests to the swamp of perdition. Didn’t he already have troubles enough, that he had to be stuck with, one, a high-power, free-thinking status-one cosmologist and savant, two, a low-power status-one ethnologist-anthropologist, female, and, three, a senior status-two technology expert. Truly, none of them had any official reason to be on board and were along strictly for the ride, a kind of vacation. And Troyarn had given them far more thrill than they had bargained for. But Forsaan was still stuck with them and the fact that any one of them outranked him for status didn’t make life any easier.

As he paused by the door to adjust his harness he could hear Marn’s precise tones.

“… not to formulate a new theory for ring-phenomena, at all. The aim is to obtain more data and then to examine the many existing theories in the light of the new facts.”

“And to show how wrong they all are, of course!” That was Hoggar Buffil, gruff and disapproving, as always. Forsaan went in just as Marn was retorting, quite cheerfully, “But naturally. That’s the whole point. A theory is only as strong as the data from which it is drawn, and there are, after all, only three other instances of ringed-planets. This one is bound to afford something new.” He cocked a mischievous eye at Forsaan. “If it’s still there, that is? After Troyarn, anything is possible.” Dikamor Marn had a sense of humour all his own. Forsaan was not amused. He settled in a chair.

“This system seems stable enough, so far,” he said. “But we will not be in a position to observe your rings—or your simians. Miss Caralen—for some time.”

“There’s something wrong?” Caralen Buffil asked, with a smile that rode over her mild anxiety. Forsaan couldn’t help returning the smile any more than he could avoid sensing the anxiety and admiring its restraint. In this, his first close contact with high-status people, he was still being impressed by the mildness and purity of their emotional reactions.

“Not wrong, exactly. We have made a bad emergence …” and he went on to explain to them the prospect of a long run-in and the need for a cometary operation. All three listened intently and this was something else he had noticed, the way they listened with complete attention, their own emotions almost totally suspended. He directed his explanation to Caralen, finding her most in need of it. For “official” purposes, her father had brought her along as his secretary-assistant. Hoggar Buffil, technologist, was the only one of the three who had anything like a valid reason for the trip, that being to inspect and pass judgment on the abandoned installations. It was a slim excuse, for Wistal Felder could have done the job just as efficiently. Caralen’s excuse was even thinner, for she knew next to nothing of technology. Her interest was all with the account, brief and improbable, that the previous base-staff had seen “simian hominids” on this planet. For now, however, her interest was with what Forsaan was saying.

“This ‘cometary run’ sounds dangerous,” she said. “Is it?”

“There’s always some danger,” he said honestly. “If our field-generators were reliable we could pick up reaction-mass in comfort and we usually do. A cometary is one of those things more done in theory than in practice and there isn’t any easy way of doing it. The point is, I must ask all of you to keep to your cabins and strap down securely during the operation.”

Buffil eased his bulk in his chair. “Then we’ll proceed to target and put down, eh ?”

“No. I plan to overhaul my generators first.”

“Oh, but see here, we were looking forward to fresh air and sunshine, and some decent food! Can’t we do the repairs on-planet ?”

“My first consideration must be the safety of my ship and the people aboard.” Forsaan let his determination stand open to them. “I’m not putting Drendel down anywhere unless I can be sure of being able to lift off again, fast.”

“Isn’t that a bit ultra-cautious, Captain?” Marn suggested. “We all remember Troyarn, of course….” Forsaan gave him a hard look.

“I lost an old shipmate there, Professor. I’m not likely to forget that in a hurry. What is more to the point, my men are uneasy and on edge. We’re traders, not devil-may-cares. I have to bear such things in mind.”

“But …” Buffil spread his hands, appealingly, “… there’s perfectly good assist-equipment already there, left by our predecessors. We’ve already checked it out on three previous bases.”

“And the fourth?”

“That was a different matter entirely. That was nothing to do with base-equipment at all.”

“It was an error in records. I am not about to take chances on another error. This planet’s equipment may be in perfect order, and then again, it may not. For all I know, those simian hominids may have torn it down, ruined it— anything!”

Marn snorted, audibly. “Myths don’t tear down material equipment.”

Forsaan braced himself. He had managed to avoid a conflict of authority thus far, but now there was nothing else for it. “I am aware,” he said, “that you are all superior to me in birth-endowment. That is as it should be and I would not have it otherwise. But I am in command of this ship. That is my field and function. So far as it concerns the safety of my ship and the people on it, I will make the decisions!” He let the statement hang there, sensing their responses, wondering how they would take it. To his relief, and chagrin, the over-riding impression was of mild amusement. All right, he thought, let them laugh. Just so long as they understand that I mean what I say.

Into the strained silence came an imperious beep from his wrist-speaker, and his emotions flattened, immediately. Touching the switch, he said, “Yes?”

“Hoppik, sir. I’m picking up radio-signals!”

“From … ?”

“The system ahead…” his tone added “Where else?”

“Thermal noise, or guide-beacons left by our ancestors?”

“No, sir!” Hoppik’s voice was shrill. “These are modulated transmissions, all over the wave-bands.”

“Can you identify any of them ?”

“Not so far. It’s a different system from any I know, and there’s a hell of a lot of interference. But they are signals!”

Forsaan made a quick decision. He didn’t care for the sharp edge in Hoppik’s voice. “I’ll be right up. Inform Mr. Pinat. Keep tuned… .” Releasing the switch, he stood up abruptly.

“A moment. Captain …” Marn got up, too, and the change in his aura was startling. All the tension of the previous moment was gone now, submerged in curiosity. “This is odd, isn’t it ? Radio—here ?”

“Odd ? It’s impossible. Hoppik has picked up some freak effect, or it’s an instrumental error. Still, I shall have to attend to it.”

“May I come along? I know a little of radio. I’m curious…”

“As you wish,” Forsaan shrugged. He’d made his point about authority. He could afford to relax a little now. He stood aside, courteously, to let Marn go ahead.

Two

The atmosphere on the bridge was almost tangible. Pinat had already taken over command, with watch-officer Klegg hovering close-by. At his busy board, Hoppik held his head on one side, listening to the plug in his ear, the while his fingers felt over his controls. Before him, a screen glowed with jagged-edged light-streamers. Marn went to peer over his left shoulder, Forsaan followed on the other side.

“Is that it?” he asked, and Hoppik put up a warning finger, made a tiny adjustment, and nodded.

“I think I’ve got it, now. I can’t cut out all the interference—but I’ve got it into audio. Listen to that!” He moved a toggle, and a wash of sound poured out of the panel-speaker. Over the spit and crackle, which faded as Hoppik manipulated dials, there came a voice. It was human, male, deliberate. Forsaan listened, and vestigial hairs lifted along his spine. In the course of his long career he had graduated all the way from fresh-faced cadet to mature command, had met superstitions and learned to discount them, but this—this wrongness—stirred up all the old forgotten things. He could sense the same chill in Marn, although to a lesser degree. For this thing was impossible.

This was a positive and prosaic human voice, reading from a script, by the sound of it. And it should not be, here in the middle of nowhere. What added the final touch of ice was the fact that the language was like nothing he had ever heard before. Like all Fah’een, Forsaan was an accomplished linguist. As a senior executive, he was better than most. He was fluent in all the forty-eight major tongues and could make himself understood in ten times that many minor ones. But this—for all it sounded hauntingly familiar, made no kind of sense whatever.

Marn said, “I never heard anything like that before.”

“Nor me. Hoppik, can you pin that down to a source, a planet, yet?”

“No, sir. We’re still too far out to get a separation. But that’s not all. Listen to this …” and he twisted a dial. The voice faded, gave way to another. Again, it was human, male, but different. Incomprehensible, but obviously different from the first, in tone, cadence, phrasing. Then there was another, and yet another—and then a female and another male, a cackle of unmistakable laughter, the roar of a crowd. Forsaan winced in front of this barrage of impossibilities. It was as if all the diverse cultures of the Galaxy had come to a focus, just here, to shout at one another in gibberish.

Despite himself, he was reminded of one of the more spine-chilling favourites of mess-deck myth-spinning, the “greely” places, the regions of non-logic. In legend, those ships which failed to come out of “twist” were said to have blundered into a greely place, a nightmare region where the sane laws of space-time didn’t apply, and anything could happen. The “anything” was always horrible and as no one ever came back to tell, the only limits were set by the imagination of the tale-teller. Forsaan shivered, thrust away the haunts with an effort, and realised that Marn was speaking.

“I must have recordings of this, for analysis. As soon as we know the planet of origin, we must investigate, and it will help enormously if we can understand…”

“We’re not going to investigate anything,” Forsaan said flatly. “This is no time for research. Whatever those noises may mean, I am reading them as a danger, a threat!”

“And so … ?” Marn’s smile was quick, and mocking.

“So we get away from here, just as quick as ever we can. The safety of my ship …” Forsaan caught himself. That phrase was beginning to sound worn, even in his own ears, and Marn was ahead of him, in any case, had seen in a flash what he was just catching now.

“We can’t leave, not in safety, until you’ve fueled up— your cometary run, remember? And charged up the batteries. And repaired the generators. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, but as soon as ever we’ve done that…”

“Of course. But, in the meantime, given a little cooperation, I would like to study this phenomenon. Is that too much to ask? Will it endanger your precious command at all?” Whatever retort Forsaan might have made was lost as Hoppik, still twisting the dials, brought in a great storm of music. Caught breathless, Forsaan listened, recognising various effects. There were plucked strings, hollow pipe-sounds, percussions, and riding over it all, a strident, insistent rhythm.

“Great Urs!” Marn breathed, his eyes shining. “This is fabulous. Note the high degree of skill, of sophisticated design, and yet the overall motif is positively primitive. It’s as unlikely as Caralen’s simian hominids, yet there it is.”

“Very well, Professor …” Forsaan’s voice was too loud against the fading music, and he softened it. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t investigate whatever you wish, within reason. As for cooperation, what had you in mind ? I can’t spare Hoppik’s section, or his equipment.”

“That would be all right, sir. I’m getting this on a spare circuit. It isn’t anything we would regularly use. I could box something up, make a portable unit…”

“Thank you, Mr. Hoppik,” Forsaan interrupted, icily, and the young sensor-officer went pink. “Very well. Let Professor Marn have what he wants and be quick about it. I see no reason why you shouldn’t use the analyser and language-library, too. If you’re to make any sense out of that babble, you’ll need them. I hope you’re successful. I shall be interested to learn what you discover, just so long as you don’t interfere with ship’s operations in any way!” With which, he swung away abruptly and went across to stand by Pinat.

“Proceed as planned,” he growled, “but have all hands stand by, first-stage readiness to warp.”

“To warp?”

“That’s what I said. Judging by that gabble Hoppik has picked up, this system is swarming with something. Space knows what, but I want to be ready to warp out of here without notice.” He fingered the engine-room button. “Mr. Felder? Cancel any generator investigations and start boxing-up. We may need to warp-out, in a hurry.”

“I’m just finishing a capacity-check on the last of the inners,” Felder sounded cheerfully unmoved. “They all test-out fine. It’s only the outers we need to worry about.” Nothing will ever worry that man, Forsaan thought, keeping his finger on the button.

“Good! Thank you. That means we can have a fifty per cent field, does it?”

“Any time you like.”

“It will be the hell of a long pull to sixth base, on half-warp,” Pinat said gloomily, “what with missing a break at Troyarn, and now here.” Forsaan needed no reminding. No matter how well-found a ship might be, there was no real substitute for the refreshment of planetary air, food and water, and the tonic of escaping from confinement, with honest ground underfoot. The human system was geared for the process of interchange and reaction with a complex, living environment. Too much time in warp, in the artificial sameness of a ship, made for psychic unbalance, neurosis, and ultimate danger. On top of that, the men were already shaken by the disaster of Troyarn, but that insane chatter on the radio, where none should be, was just as much a danger of a different kind.

“We have very little choice,” Forsaan said, grimly, “but at least we will know what we’re dealing with, in warp. Urs alone knows what may lie at the other end of those voices. Marn’s going to try decoding them. I hope he succeeds, but I’m not counting on it. Keep the men busy, Mr. Pinat.”

There was plenty to be done, so Forsaan had little difficulty in arranging things so as to avoid anything but the most fleeting contact with his guests for the next few watches. Rumours abounded, but he knew enough to be able to discount most of them. The voices were still coming in, and Marn had roped in his colleagues to work on the problem of understanding. The rumours had nothing to say about what he had discovered, if anything. Marn was seemingly keeping his own counsel, but Hoppik had been steadily on the job and had reported nothing unusual. That, by itself, was odd, and the more Forsaan thought about it, the odder it seemed. No beacons, no challenges, no sign of ships flitting to and fro. By the time it came to the last quiet meal before the cometary operation, he was frankly curious.

Attending to business first, he gave his three guests warning of times and repeated his instructions about keeping clear of the crew. “There will be periods of quiet,” he said, “as we bounce out of the gas-cloud and trim our tanks. Do not assume that it is all over. Be sure not to move until you hear the zero-clear chime.”

“What a pity we won’t be able to see anything,” Caralen sighed. “It must be a tremendous spectacle. You are to be envied.”

“On the contrary. There won’t be anything to see except dark shadows, patches, and swirls of gas-particles. The spectacular part is now, as we approach, and afterwards as we go away. During the operation, none of us will ‘see’ anything, except meter readings on instruments.” He paused, then turned to Marn. “On ‘seeing’, I gather you’ve identified some of those mysterious signals as visuals ?”

“A conjecture, only,” Marn’s aura showed frustration. “They have a distinct form, are obviously informative and are not audio. Perhaps, when your sensor-officer is less busy, we may be able to analyse the scanning system. I have only an amateur’s knowledge in that field.”

“And the languages—anything there ?”

“Very little. Very little indeed. We have all struggled with the enigma. We have managed to eliminate certain redundancies, we’ve found a large number of regularities, but that’s all.”

“There are at least eight different tongues,” Caralen said. “Yet all have certain similarities.”

“You surprise me. What little I heard struck me as familiar and not nearly as foreign as some I’ve heard. Didn’t the analyser give you anything? Or perhaps your samples were not…”

“Permit me to know how to use analytical processes, Captain,” Marn was sharp. “I assure you, this chatter is not as simple as it sounds.”

Forsaan made apologetic gestures. “Just the same, though,” he murmured, “it sounded familiar. Except that I couldn’t understand a word of it, it sounded very like our own native tongue….”

Marn sat up, radiating sudden excitement. “You may have hit it, Captain. If you have, I deserve to be demoted to fourth-status ignominy for not seeing it myself. You see, I ran selected samples, by phrase and phoneme, against all the forty-eight major language forms, looking for matches. But it never occurred to me to run a comparison with our own!”

“Why should you ? The analyser is designed to translate other tongues into ours. There’s no reason to suppose that this stuff is a variant of …”

“No reason why not, either. It’s a legitimate possibility and I’ve committed a scientific crime in making an un-justified hypothesis, an assumption—oh, never mind…” he was on his feet and moving, now. “I must try it, at once!”

“You’ve not finished your protein-concentrates!” Buffil called.

“Swamp take the concentrates!”

“Professor,” Forsaan called, “don’t get too involved. There isn’t much time left!” Marn vanished, giving no sign of having heard.

“I’m worried about him,” Caralen sighed, passing her platter into the disposal slot, and taking out a scribble-film from her pouch. “He doesn’t seem to be able to think of anything else but this new mystery.” Forsaan diagnosed a fine case of pique. During the earlier part of the trip, she and Marn had made no secret of their mutual attraction and no attractive young woman likes to play second fiddle to an abstract problem. But he was wrong. She doodled a line of fire on the film, then looked up.

“There are all sorts of wrongnesses here, aren’t there ?”

“Perhaps,” Forsaan said cautiously. “What had you in mind?”

“Tell him the technical one, father.”

“All right,” Hoggar Buffil shifted, heavily. “I’m only status-two, and my brain-power isn’t up to their level, but I do know my own field. Technology runs in fairly definite patterns, and it is right against the run to find radio-level on a multi-culture planet. There are all sorts of reasons why, the chief one being the nature of radio itself. A radio-level culture argues a planetary culture. If those odd signals Marn talks about really are visuals, then that makes it even more positive.”

“You mean all those signals are coming from one planet?

“Oh yes. Definitely. From the third. Our base. Didn’t you know?” Wryly, Forsaan recalled telling Hoppik, in anger, to get on with his duties and “let’s hear no more about ghost signals, if you please!”

“A detail,” he said lightly. “I’ve had other things, but, you know, this ties in with something from my field. We traders have axioms, too, and one is that only a fool tries to do business with a divided planet. There are good reasons for that, too. Where you mix in with two or more cultures, you find rivalry, jealousy, competition, and, sooner or later, conflict. When that starts, you, the trader, are caught in the middle. You’re an interloper and lucky if you get away with a whole skin. So, although we do observe up-and-coming cultures, from time to time, we never have anything to do with them until they have reached the united-planet stage. This is where your point comes in, because I can’t recall ever finding a multi-culture planet with radio!”

“Ah!” Buffil nodded, and sat back.

“That’s one paradox,” Caralen made another fiery doodle, cancelled it with a tug at one corner. “The indecipherable language is a second. And there’s a third. Those old records report simian hominids. That’s really why I’m here. Dikamor will have it that a simian hominid origin is neither more nor less improbable than the ursinoid one of our tradition, and I am hoping to get some positive data, one way or the other. There were no qualified anthropologists among the staff, when those old records were made, so their observations are crude and suspect.” Forsaan controlled his distaste and tried to be patient, although the very thought of monkey-things aping humans was unpleasant to him. Sensing his discomfort, she hurried on.

“The point is, they did observe something and they were quite sure that they saw—not one—but several simian types, all into the fire-and-tool stage. Now we find several high-level cultures….”

“In twenty generations?” he interrupted. “But that’s ridiculous. The very idea of a simian hominid with intelligence is straining things, but to believe that they could leap from primitive to this stage….”

“With help?” he asked, softly, and he stared.

“Help? How do you mean? Who?”

“The records, such as we have, were brought home when the big trouble began, as you know. But they were brought by the first-wave evacuation party. The tail-end clear-up group never got home. Something happened to them. Suppose, just suppose, they never left at all. We’re assuming they were lost in warp, but were they ?”

Forsaan shivered. Cases had been known of base-staff amusing themselves by playing tricks on the primitive inhabitants. The practice was strictly forbidden, the punishment severe, and the results demoralising to both sides.

“It’s too much for me, altogether,” he growled. “Too many insanities. Just as soon as we’re fit for it, I’m warping out of here and noting the system in my log as ‘dangerous; keep clear’. I’ll thank you to keep these speculations to yourselves, in the meanwhile.”

“Naturally,” Buffil sighed, and stared at the unappetising scraps on his platter. “But it’s a pity, just the same. I was looking forward to some decent food….”

“We could all do with a planet-break,” Forsaan got up, “and the sooner we can get safely into warp, the sooner we’ll have it. Now, time’s getting on. I suggest you make yourselves comfortable, before the fun starts!”

Three

The ship buckjumped viciously through the whole of her fabric and the tooth-edged scream of strain from her gauss-screens hit a new high for a moment. Then it rapidly dwindled into silence, the shudders became a throb, then nothing more than a buzz. Captain Forsaan stretched himself wearily in his chair, aching in every bone and sinew. He had the bridge to himself, and was glad there was no one else there to see his weariness. “Clear-out for the fifth time,” he muttered, leaning forward to tap the screen gauges. “Can’t need many more. Can’t do many more. The batteries are almost flat, now.” Quick feet at the door snapped his head round. Here came Nils Pinat, on the run for his chair while the lull lasted. He looked weary, too, but still active.

“Forward hold is sprung,” he reported. “The pressure is away down. It won’t hurt, though. There’s only jewellery and small ornaments in that section.” Settling into his chair, he went on, “Surely we’ve got enough, by now? Or Felder’s gang have been sleeping on it!”

Just the thought of sleeping through the lurching nightmare of the past two watch-cycles made Forsaan grin tiredly. He had been continuously on watch, all the time, because the business of tangenting through the boil of outer atmosphere called for a degree of delicacy, judgment, and “feel” that were too crucial to be delegated to any junior. Cometaries were not so common that there was a standard operating procedure for them. In all his space-faring career, Forsaan had known only a score, and not one of them as rigorous as this one. “Or am I getting old?” he wondered.

His wrist-speaker beeped cheerfully and then there was Felder’s mild voice. “Engine-room to bridge. That’s the lot. Mains and reserves up to capacity.”

“Thank Urs for that. Any damage, casualties?”

“A bruise or two, a few burns. One compressor seized. Nothing very serious.”

“All right. Thank you. We will proceed into parking orbit right away and run idle for two cycles. I want all hands to get a spell and a meal. That means you, too, Felder. We’ll worry about repairs later.” He let go the switch, stood up, and felt a new set of aches take hold of his body.

“You need that rest too, sir,” Pinat said, gruffly, “I can take over here. Stable orbit and automatic alarms set up, and then general stand-off for two cycles?”

“That’s it!” Forsaan thumbed, wearily, and went out and down to his cabin, feeling the ship surge and shudder gently in response to drive. On the edge of his bunk, he felt for his carefully-hidden flask of zinth, hoarded against just such a moment as this. Just a taste of the tangy-sharp fermented berry-juice from his own home orchard, enough to skin the fur from his mouth, then he replaced the stopper and hid the flask again. He kicked off his boots, stretched himself out luxuriously and could hear, through the fabric of the ship, the one-two-three buzz of “finished with engines”. Fast and efficient, old Pinat. He let his eyelids droop when there came a sharp, peremptory rap at his door.

Smothering a curse, he sat up again. “Who’s that?”

“Ah, there you are. I heard the zero-clear… .” It was Marn, all aflame with excitement, lugging a box of equipment. “I’ve got the languages—the major ones, anyway. And those were visuals. Captain. Would you like to see some of the pictures I have recorded? Fascinating stuff, completely non-rational…”

“Not now, Professor,” Forsaan growled. “I have put the whole ship into rest for two cycles. I’ll see you at the end of that time.”

“But—but this is the most fascinating thing you ever saw. These are humans, just like us, and completely insane, unbelievable…”

“I believe you, readily. Now, will you go away and let me sleep?” Marn hesitated, then admitted the inevitable and withdrew. Forsaan shook his head, tiredly, stretched out again and was asleep in seconds.

“I am neither superstitious nor a fool,” Hoggar Buffil’s voice indicated determination. “I merely make the point that where there are so many contradictory features there is obvious reason to believe that we are trying to deal with something that is quite beyond us, and we should, therefore, not meddle.”

“A typical technologist’s outlook,” Marn retorted. “I refuse to admit that anything is, of itself, beyond me. I have had individuals, in my classes, from every one of the major and minor cultures of the Galaxy. I have lectured to them, made myself understood to them and learned to understand them in consequence. I am not prepared, therefore, to admit that this gathering of strange cultures is in some way beyond understanding….”

“Just that the answers you get are screamingly ridiculous,” Buffil interrupted. “It amounts to the same thing.” Forsaan, who had paused outside the door again, thought it a good moment to make an entrance. By the sound of it, this argument had been going on for some time. There was silence as he made his way to his seat at the head of the table and began eating.

“Captain!” Marn’s voice and aura were a delicate blend of innocence and shrewdness. “What is our immediate programme?”

“Recharge batteries. Find a suitable small body and put down for generator-repair…”

“Preferably within the plasma-cloud?”

“Naturally. Why.”

“I have been studying the system-data. The solar-wind, of the density we need, extends only as far as the third planet and begins to tail off very rapidly beyond that. At the orbit of the fourth planet it is almost negligible.” Forsaan stopped eating. In his mind’s eye he could get a fairly accurate recall of the system and it was as Marn had said. He had been so busy thinking about the cometary and deliberately not thinking about the monkey-chatter, that the point had escaped him.

“Are you suggesting that we put down on our target-planet, after all. In spite of those crazy radio-signals?”

“No, no. Not at all. But our planet does have a satellite, a large one. It is almost a two-planet system, in fact. I have checked with your sensor-officer. The satellite is barren, airless. I have also checked with your engineer, and its mass is suitable for low-G operation.”

“You’ve been busy,” Forsaan growled. “So you think it would be quite safe to put down on this satellite, in full view of the ‘simians’ ?”

Marn snorted violently. “We can dismiss that old myth, for a start,” he said. “These people are no simians. They’re every bit as human as we. And we would not be in their view at all. The satellite has no relative spin of its own. We could put down quite safely on the blind side. We could, in fact, make our approach within the shadow-cone cast by the body and thus be quite safe from detection.”

“Safe?” Forsaan pounced on the word. “What have you found out that we should be afraid of, Professor?”

“Fear doesn’t come into it,” Marn denied, irritably. “My idea is to observe without being seen, that’s all.”

“Oh come, now!” Buffil could contain himself no longer. “Caralen and I have seen your pictures and learned the languages, the major ones—and there is plenty to fear. Why not admit it? Captain, from the evidence of radio and visuals, we know quite a lot. For instance, we have identified cities, transport by land, sea and air, radio and visual communications linked by orbital relays, fission-stage atomics, and much more. Yet, on that planet, which is slightly smaller than our own home world, there are almost three billion people, at least five major cultures, Urs knows how many minor ones—and all in savage conflict with each other.” Forsaan went cold as the bulky technologist elaborated.

“We have seen the picture-records, blatantly transmitted. They use, and are using, explosive devices, lethal gases, radiation and poisonous bacteria against each other on a massive scale. Worse still, they seem to rejoice in this hideous activity and award respect and status to those who show themselves skilled at it.”

“But that’s not possible, surely,” Forsaan clung to as much commonsense as he could. “If they practise wholesale slaughter on that scale—how can so many survive?”

“They breed in proportion,” Buffil growled. “Like animals. And they squander materials at an incredible rate. So far as one can judge, their one aim seems to be to consume as much as possible.”

“But that doesn’t make sense either,” Forsaan frowned. “For one small planet to support such immense numbers, they would have to practise the most stringent economies. That must be obvious.”

“Of course it is!” Marn broke in excitedly. “You see, Buffil, even Captain Forsaan can see, at once, the manifest contradictions. Our information must be wrong somewhere. That is why I insist we need to examine this whole thing much more closely. The data we have …”

“Is quite enough to convince me that we have no business here. Tell him about the breeding, Caralen. That’s more your line.”

“First, we had to adjust our time-scale,” she said, “and discover their terms for time-units. We have concentrated on one major culture for detail, but the general pattern is common to all. Like us, they are in rhythm with planetary revolution, active during illumination, sleeping during the dark, calling these ‘day’ and ‘night’. They also use ‘day’ for one complete revolution and ‘year’ for one complete period of orbit. Taking that as a convenient unit, we have compared their year with our basic unit, which is a ‘generation’. As you know, we have a double meaning, here, too. One generation is one individual’s accepted life-span in social activity. Beyond that period, he is free to do just as he chooses with the rest of his life. So far as we can tell, these people have a similar pattern; a period of useful-to-the-community life and then freedom after that.

“Now, we also use ‘generation’ to denote one-tenth of a total revolution of our home system around the Hub. In round figures, it works out at one thousand of their years. More precisely, Dikamor is three hundred and thirty years old. My father is about seven hundred. You, Captain, are about seven hundred, too. And I am a little younger than Dikamor.”

“These figures are meaningless,” Forsaan said impatiently, “without some other reference.”

“That’s the point,” she nodded. “You see, with these people we are studying, a life-span is, at the most, about eighty years!”

“What!?”

“That is what our studies show. Furthermore, they are plagued with a great number of mysterious afflictions which make their incredibly short lives miserable in the final stages. But what is even more fantastic, for all their undoubted sophistication, they seem to be completely insane in their breeding habits. Our figures are not quite as reliable, here, but it seems they are physically competent to reproduce at about the twentieth year and there seems to be no modifying ethic in this. They just go ahead and produce young, apparently at random and in any number they choose. I have run a sample extrapolation here. It is probably in error, but not by much, and, on what we have seen, it would be possible for one couple, living to eighty years, to survive and know some thirty direct descendants !”

“That’s beyond all reason!” Forsaan stifled his feelings of disgust. Very few Fah’een ever expected to become grandparents. A man mated when he was mature enough to have learned the ways of society. He fathered two cubs; in rare cases, a third. He gave them a good home, a sane upbringing, and saw them properly launched into society. At the same time, he had his own contribution to make. That was a full life for anyone. It was enough.

“Of course it’s beyond reason!” Marn was still indignant. “Such figures do not make sense, forwards or backwards. See here, it is twenty generations since our people were last this way. In terms of this culture, that is something more than twenty thousand of their years. Run Caralen’s figures in reverse for that period and you get negative values, which is nonsense. Run them forward for an equivalent period and there would be congestion in the Galaxy at such numbers. It’s ridiculous!”

“I’m sorry,” Forsaan muttered. “I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at. Either your studies show what they show—or they don’t…”

“They show that we have caught hold of partial data,” Marn declared. “We have a mass of contradiction. Their breedings, life-span, numbers, their trade and commerce— they seem unable to transact any business whatever without elaborate material symbols and safeguards, yet, in the same breath, they do everything they possibly can to evade the safeguards they have set up. No, it’s so, I tell you …” as Forsaan grunted his disbelief. “They have a special class of people who do nothing else but handle such things…”

“They have a term for ‘Trust’, yet they seem utterly unable to trust anyone or anything,” Caralen put in, puzzledly.

“You see? Another contradiction. And their technology, as even Buffil will agree, is insane. They have power, just as we have, but the major part of their generation-system seems to be heat-exchange. They have a small back-up of fission-power, but even that is simply glorified heat-exchange. Power they have, but they seem to throw it away as fast as they make it. Now, any culture advanced enough to be able to generate power on such a scale simply must be sophisticated enough to practise conservation at the same time. The two things go together. But not here!”

“So I say this is a mad place, and we should have nothing to do with it,” Buffil repeated. “I feel as if we were prodding at an unstable pile. This situation is explosive, I tell you.”

“And I’m telling you,” Marn retorted, “that our data must be wrong. We must be getting a false picture. We have to know more. And if we put down on their satellite we will be practically on top of them, able to see and hear much more than we are doing now.”

“I’m prepared to leave it to Captain Forsaan,” Buffil growled. “I’m pretty sure he’ll see it our way.”

But Forsaan, as much to his own dismay as anyone else’s, was caught by the hard facts of the matter.

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” he said. “I doubt if anyone on the ship is going to like it, but Professor Marn has the right of it. We need power for our batteries, in order to do any heavy repairs at all. And we must repair or twist at half-warp for the next base. That’s a long pull. We’d run short of food and water and air, without batteries to power our processing. We’re caught with no choice. We must get into dense plasma—and that satellite seems to be the only suitable body. You’ll excuse me, I want to check this with the charts. If there is any other possible way, I’ll try it.”

He found Pinat in the log-room, patiently coping with details of the ship’s state and progress. A buzz brought Felder to join them in person, small, neat, easy-going Felder, who lavished affection on his engines like a mother on her cubs and was unable to get worked up over anything else at all. Together they studied the charts, revised and corrected by Hoppik during the long run-in.

“It’s the ideal spot,” Felder declared. “See, the planet’s magnetic field serves to bunch-up the plasma, which is all to the good, for us. And the surface-G is right, too.”

“There’s nowhere else,” Pinat shook his head, “but it’s too damn close to that mad place for my liking. The men aren’t going to like it, sir.”

“I know that,” Forsaan snapped. “I don’t like it myself. We shall just have to figure out some way of keeping them occupied. For the moment, there’s the problem of a course. We want to strike the most favourable approach and hit that cone of silence just as far out as ever we can. What’s our position, right now?”

Four

In the watches which followed, Forsaan could sense the growing tension throughout the ship, feeding and growing on rumour and half-truth. It affected him to the point that he was unable to sleep properly. He knew he had to do something, or there would be a moment when the smoulder would burst into flame. He had seen men go space-sick and had no desire to see it again. But his brain refused to serve up any practical solution.

Drendel was swinging into the long slow curve that would bring her into intersection with the orbit of the third planet when a shrill alarm jerked Forsaan out of troubled sleep into his boots and up to the bridge before he was properly awake.

“All right, Klegg,” he mumbled, “what is it?” Before the second-officer could say, Hoppik came stumbling in, knuckling sleep from his eyes, to displace his junior at the sensor-board.

“Something out there, sir. Too small to identify, but it’s putting out signals of some kind,” Klegg said, shivering.

“Let’s have it on the plot, Mr. Hoppik,” Forsaan ordered crisply and moved aside as Pinat came tramping in. Together they watched a pin-point of light slide and settle into the centre. From the sensor-board came a shrill, irregular trilling.

“Sounds like a data-relay,” Hoppik mumbled. “Distant three point eight light-seconds and coming closer.”

“Collision course?”

“No, sir. On these readings, it should pass us at about two seconds.”

“All right. Keep reading. Steady as we go, Mr. Klegg. What d’you make of it, Pinat? Can’t be more than a pimple of a thing, surely ? About half the size of one of our lifeboats, eh?”

“Same sort of shape, too, so far as we can see. Would hardly be manned, this far out. Spy-station, d’you think?”

“We’ll soon know. Keep monitoring those signals, Mr. Hoppik. Let me know if they show any significant change. If that thing has eyes to see us, there should be some appreciable modification….”

They waited long breathless moments as the tiny thing came to its nearest point and then began to fall rapidly away again. The twittering from the speaker swiftly lost volume.

“Going away fast, sir. Orbit elliptical, focused on the primary. No significant change in signals. Nothing on optical or magnetic.”

“Didn’t see us, then,” Forsaan scraped his chin, thoughtfully. “You were probably right, Hoppik. A data-relay. From the hell-planet…” he bit his lip as his own personal phrase slipped past his tongue. “Point is, why? Are they just being inquisitive, or is this the prelude to something else ? How far are we from shadow, Mr. Klegg ?”

“Practically on it. I was just about to call you, sir.”

“All right, you can stand down. I’ll take over. Mr. Pinat, turn out all hands, give them time for a snap-meal and then full alert stations.”

Back in seconds, to take up his position, Pinat asked, “What are you expecting, sir?”

“Trouble, in one shape or another. If that data-relay was, as I suspect, a prologue to space-flight, then their next logical step would be a short hop to their own satellite, wouldn’t it? Our charts give it as airless, waterless, and barren, but that is not necessarily so, now. We’ve got to be ready for anything.”

Half-way through the next watch, Marn came wandering i up to the bridge, sleepy-eyed but curious, demanding to know what was going on. Forsaan told him, in brief words.

“A probe ? Out here ? I must see the records–-”

“Later, Professor. There’s no time for that now. We’re in shadow and beating up for planet-fall. You get back to your bunk and strap in. We may have to twist without warning.” So Marn went grumbling away and tension grew and thickened on the bridge. The blind side of the satellite filled the plot-disc by now.

“We need to pick our spot very carefully,” Forsaan mused, studying the screen. “Just safely inside the libration area—out of sight, but not too far away from the edge. No point in making it harder for Marn’s instrument-party. About here. Let’s have a blow-up and surface-scan… .” Hoppik manipulated controls and the picture ballooned, rushing the area into large scale. Blurs became yellow-red patches, hills lifted into jagged mounts, cold, bleak, and uninviting. The surface-probe chattered quietly, Hoppik translating.

“Dust-layer, then igneous-porous, solid under that— average about six-seven spans down—hah?” his voice choked off as the probe gave a quick “ping”.

“Hold!” Forsaan snapped. “Get that again, Hoppik!”

“Small object, metal—got it—on the plot now….”

Forsaan scowled at it. “Looks very like that other thing, the data-relay. Came down hard, by the look of it. Any intelligence from it?”

“Metal-echo is all,” Hoppik mumbled. “Dead, otherwise.” Forsaan spent one taut breath in gambling a dozen things all at once, in his mind.

“As you were. That thing isn’t going to hurt us. Might do us a bit of good in fact. Mark its location. We might be able to take a closer look at it, later.”

Gently, steadily, Drendel went down, to touch and settle into the dust and stop. Second checks were made. Then thirds, just to be sure. Then Forsaan pushed the switch for zero-clear and sighed.

“So far, so good. Stand-down all hands, Mr. Pinat. I shall have a general announcement to make, just as soon as I’ve had a discussion with my guests. So far, we have been doing all the work. It’s time they did some.”

In his cabin-suite, he waited until all three had answered the summons by his steward.

“We are down, safely,” he said. “We’ve located another probe, on the surface this time, not far from where we are now.”

“Space-flight, of course,” Marn said promptly “Obviously.”

“It’s not at all obvious,” Buffil contended. “The energy-technology needed for space-flight comes a long way after planetary unification. This is more in line with their profligacy of power and materials…”

“Please!” Forsaan put up a hand. “We can argue such things later. For now, I have a proposition to make. You say you have studied one of these cultures in detail?”

“We chose by language that one which gave us maximum coverage. It appears to be a federation of similar cultures, calling itself the United Americas, or some such name.”

“Good enough. Now, I would like you to keep concentrating on that one and to cooperate with me in supplying a basic vocabulary that I can pass on to the whole ship.”

“Why?” Marn asked, curiously. “What are you up to?”

“I am taking a desperate remedy, to deal with a desperate situation. I do not like the state of mind of my crew. Rumours have been rife and all sorts of dangerous nonsense is being repeated, about this mysterious planet. Now we are sitting practically on top of it. I must do something to change the atmosphere. The position is difficult enough, just as it stands. You see, in space, a ship is functional and every man has his job to do. On-planet, in the normal course of events, a different routine takes care of things. There are stores to check and move, there is business to be done, checks and repairs to make, and, above all, port-leave. Here, I can do very little, apart from repairs. Idle hands and idle minds find trouble just as surely as a wasp finds sugar. That, plus the superstitious rumours, adds up to a situation I cannot tolerate. So, I propose to use the mystery to defeat itself.”

“I don’t quite see….” Marn shook his head.

“It is merely a switch on a routine device,” Forsaan explained. “When we are about to enter a system, we take care to adopt the basic elements of the culture. We shift into their time-sequence, language, customs, dress—it helps us to deal with them, to ‘Think’ the way they do. I propose to do the same thing here. With your data, plus relay broadcasts throughout the ship, once we have the observational complex set up, we will try to be as familiar with this culture as we are with so many others. We will speak as they speak, dress the way they do, stores permitting, and take up their rhythm of life as far as we possibly can. Fear is the product of ignorance. Once my men get to know this culture, they will no longer fear it.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!” Buffil exclaimed, but Marn was smiling to himself and Caralen was nodding, too.

“It would certainly be interesting,” she said. “It’s the next best thing to an on-the-spot investigation. What do you think, Dikamor?”

“I think,” Marn said dryly, “that our good Captain is far more shrewd than he would have us believe. Don’t you see it? Instead of just two or three of us struggling to resolve the enigmas of this culture, we will have—what—fifty? All participating, sharing, combining their observations. Fifty different points of view, all sparking off each other. I think it’s a brilliant idea. I congratulate you, Captain.”

“Thank you, Professor. I only hope it works as well as you think. Now, if you will get busy with those basics, I have several projects to get in hand and I want to pass this thing on to the crew, myself, as soon as possible. Then Hoppik will go out with a gang, to set up observation-posts while the primary shadow is in our favour. I’ll have a couple of men take the mobile hoist and bring in that crashed probe, too….”

The “days” went by, became a “week”, and Captain Forsaan was no longer so sure that it was a brilliant idea. Marn had said the culture was irrational, but he hadn’t managed to convey the half of it. Possibly, he hadn’t known the full extent of it himself. Almost from the beginning, sound radio had been abandoned in favour of the much more graphic “television”, and there were screens on all mess-decks and recreation-spaces. And they were seldom quiet.

“There’s too damn much of it!” Pinat declared. He had his broad back to the screen, which was silent, in any case. This was the senior executives’ mess-room. Forsaan had been taking his meals here for some time, preferring to leave his guests to their own company, in his suite. He looked, guiltily, at the silent screen and nodded.

“It’s certainly compulsive. Even now, I get the stupid feeling that I may be missing something.”

“You’ve got to do something, sir. I can’t get a thing done, can’t turn my back for a moment but what my deck hands are all goggling. Felder is in the same fix. We’ll never get those generators back at this rate. And I have a man laid off, injured.”

“How did that happen ?”

“Two of them, Mowry and Bok, thought they’d play one of those games we see such a lot of. You know, where two disputants stand face to face and strike, with ‘fists’ ? Bok struck first, hitting Mowry in the face. He is suffering from mild concussion now, as well as various cuts and bruises. I’ve had to give him the ‘quiet-cap’. Bok has a sprained hand….”

“Yet, in the pictures, these people seem to suffer only minor discomfort. You know, Pinat, this is all of a piece with the rest.”

“How do you mean, sir ?”

“That what we are seeing is illusion, in some way. It is not real. None of it is real. It is all a grand deception.”

“Nothing deceptive about the way the work is being neglected….”

“Yes. Well, we can deal with that very simply. Even these illusory Americans have some sort of concept of work-hours, haven’t they ? Nine till five, I think. Something like that. Right ? Issue an order, Pinat, to that effect. Work will be done, between nine in the morning hours and five in the evening hours.”

“How are you going to stop them watching the pictures?”

“Hoppik is to be responsible for switching off, at the master-set, at the right time. Where is he, by the way? And Felder?”

“They went out together, to look at the sensor-array. Some problem Hoppik has run into. Professor Marn isn’t going to like this, sir. Cutting off the pictures, I mean. If we are to study this culture thoroughly…”

“I’ll have a word with him on that, right now!” Forsaan got up, grimly. “He will just have to be made to see it my way.”

He found Marn and the Buffils, father and daughter, in an atmosphere of strain that made his stomach sag to feel it. Marn, looking up, had lost all his air of cheerfully confident superiority. Instead, he looked drawn, and wearily resolute.

“I wanted to see you, Captain,” he said. “Come and sit down.” Forsaan took his seat, cast a quick glance round and realised that all three of them had their emotion-fields shut in. His own indignation fled. This was something far more serious than his problems of discipline.

“I must go down there, Captain. Down on to the surface of that planet and mix with the people, in person.”

“Please tell him it is impossible!” Caralen cried. “We have tried all the arguments we can think of, but we can’t move him.”

“But it is possible,” Marn declared, flatly. “I have investigated that side of it. And I must go. It is the only way to be sure.”

“Sure of a quick death, you mean. Respect to your status, Marn, but this carries scientific integrity to ridiculous lengths. And for what?”

“May I deal with the physical side of it first?” Forsaan said, and his voice was quite steady. The emotional side of this proposal hadn’t begun to register yet. “It would be a simple, routine operation to put down a lifeboat and recall it. We usually do it from parking-orbit, when we have need to observe a developing culture…”

“As I have already told you,” Marn said wearily.

“But, in the name of all the ancestors, why?” Buffil roared. “What will you achieve? We have enough—too much—information, already!”

“I don’t agree. We have copious information, yes. But it is biased, in some way that we cannot correct for. We are getting this planet all wrong, I tell you. On the information we have, this culture is a stark, raving impossibility. …”

“Or an illusion,” Forsaan put in, “An elaborate pretence. …”

“Yes, that had occurred to me, too. But, whichever way, we are getting a false picture and answers which don’t make sense. Contradictions leap out as soon as one probes beneath the surface for values and themes. For example, they extol thrift and waste in the same breath. They value honesty and deceit; peace and conflict; security and danger. Take their universal value-symbol, money. They expend constant effort to amass it and throw it away almost as fast as they get it And there is something deeper than this. There is a pervading sense of ‘drive’, of insatiable restlessness, of pressure. Part of it, I believe, derives from their pitifully short life-span. Only by hard driving can an individual learn the patterns and modes of the culture in time to make some worthwhile contribution before his speedy end. But there is more than that. Notice how they are incessantly seeking something ‘new’, reaching out all the time? It is not clear what they are looking for. I suspect they do not know themselves. But they go on. And that opens the basic questions of all. Why are they here ? Where did they come from? Who or what is driving them and to what end? I must know. And the only way to find out is to go down there and see for myself. You agree it can be done….”

“Wait!” Forsaan had got his mental breath back. “I said it was a physical possibility. But not here!”

“Ah!” Buffil sighed, and leaned back. Caralen’s eyes opened wide. Marn looked thunderstruck.

“Not here,” Forsaan repeated, marshalling his thoughts. “A pod carries three men, at the outside. We put it down and pick it up again by remote, from the ship. That part is fine. But that is not any primitive civilisation, down there, Professor. Their air is thick with radio-signals. The surface is networked with roads, transport towns, and cities. They have weapons, as we have seen, and police, and a short and violent way with strangers.”

“They also have extensive wilderness regions and tourists… .” Marn retorted. “Whatever you put up, I can contradict it.”

“Suppose you were detected and taken, and they proceeded to check back on you and your transport?”

“All right, suppose they do? Then what? Would they believe my story? If they did, have they the technology to reach out as far as this and cause any embarrassment? You are as easy to read and as illogical, Captain, as an elderly ‘she’ with an ailing cub. Let me put it flatly. There is danger, yes, but it will be danger to me and to one of your lifeboats—nothing more.”

“You take unfair advantage of your status, Professor,” Forsaan bit back on his rage, compounded and multiplied by the strains of the past days. “I am still master of this ship. I was learning to curb my impulses before you were able to walk. You may feel fit to behave like a spoiled cub among your peers, but it won’t go with me. I do not propose to sacrifice a lifeboat, the time, and safety of my crew, the integrity of my ship, or your life—just to solve your academic problems, or to gratify your curiosity!”

Marn went as pale as death, and the beat of his anger was almost a visible thing. Forsaan set his jaw and matched him, rage for rage. The air of the small suite crackled in thick silence. Then, like the snapping of a wire, Marn laughed and leaned back.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “You force me to be heroic, against my will. Another contradiction, oddly. Because you are all quite right, and quite wrong. Let me explain. Truly, if this exploit was simply to gratify my curiosity, my academic curiosity, it would be madness. And you’d be quite right to oppose me. But it is more than that. How can I make you see it? There is danger here, grave danger. You have all sensed it, in one way or another. It’s real and positive. But you are all trying to evade it, to ignore it, or you want to run away from it. And that’s not the way!”

“You admit there’s danger?” Buffil growled.

“Of course. More than you realise. Despite all the contradictions and confusions, one thing is clear. This is an explosive situation.”

“And yet you insist on going down there,” Caralen cried.

“Why are you all so blind? What would you have us do, run away?” Marn swept them with a scornful glance. “Buffil, if you have a power-plant which begins to behave dangerously, do you run away from it? Of course not. You try to find out what is wrong first. You cannot hope to deal with it intelligently until you know, exactly, what is wrong. Now, suppose we run from here, back to our home-worlds. And report—what? What would we tell them?” He paused, waited, but there was no answer. Forsaan felt his tongue thicken and stick as he tried to argue.

“We have very little positive information, certainly not enough to let us estimate the true nature of the danger. And until we have positive data, we cannot act rationally. I propose to get that data, in the only way left to us. It is not a matter for argument, but a necessity.”

Forsaan flogged his wits hard. The reasoning was solid and he could find no fault in it, but his every instinct screamed out against sending a man, in a pod, down there. It had to be stopped, somehow.

There came a rap at the door and he got up, went to answer it.

“Pinat! And you, Felder—Hoppik—what’s wrong?”

“Something I think you ought to hear right away, sir.”

“Not here. If it’s urgent…”

“I think it’s urgent, sir.” Pinat was being his impassive best. “And I think our guests ought to hear it, too.”

“Oh! All right, come in, find seats.” There was barely room round the table for all of them. Forsaan waited until they were settled.

“Now!” he said. “What’s it all about? Hoppik?”

“That planet, sir,” the young sensor-officer’s aura was unsteady with surmise and fear. “It’s shielded!”

“What in space do you mean, shielded?”

“It was the unusual interference, sir. I wanted to check up on it, just curious. So I set up a dish-detector. And then I got Mr. Felder to come and check my findings. There’s a total belt of hard radiation all round the planet, sir. A shell!”

“A radiation-interaction zone, where the planetary magnetic field distorts the solar atmosphere,” Marn suggested. “That’s nothing new, is it ?”

“Ah, no, sir,” Felder corrected mildly. “Interaction-zones are common enough. I’ve seen plenty. They bunch up the plasma-field very handily, too. But this one is a brute. The particle-density is a hundred times greater than it has any right to be, and the energies involved are out of all reason.” He pulled out a scribble-film, spread it on the table and touched the side at a “memory” spot, to restore a series of glowing figures. “Here’s some of the flux-readings we got.” Marn bent his head close, to study the figures, as Felder pointed them out. Buffil craned over intently, too. Forsaan watched them curiously. Hoppik might be discounted, but Felder wasn’t likely to make rash statements.

“You think it’s artificial, then?”

“Can’t think of any other way you’d get that concentration. “I’d say there’s been a massive injection of heavy, unstable particles, some time in the past. No way of telling just how long ago, but some considerable time.”

“But these…” Marn pointed, “… are recent, surely?”

“They certainly look that way,” Buffil agreed, twisting round to get a better view. “Different values altogether.”

“Those other, older, figures are almost certainly thorium-230 and decay-products. This lot I can’t account for at all.” Felder shook his head.

“I think I can,” Marn sat back, a curiously excited expression on his face. Forsaan coughed, catching their attention.

“Will somebody explain, please?”

“It’s quite simple,” Marn smiled wryly. “The planet is enclosed in a dense shell, or series of shells, of lethal radiation.”

“And, I gather, you have reason to believe that it is artificial? Well, that seems to answer your original question about visiting the place, doesn’t it ?”

“Forget that, for the moment. Captain. What is bothering me, now, is why? Someone put that shield there. Now, was it to keep them in, or to keep us out? Not us, personally, you understand, but outsiders in general. I wonder which, and why ?”

“The second answer is favourite,” Felder replied easily. “That radiation-belt is lethal enough, as you say, but only if you don’t know about it ahead of time. Presumably, the people down there don’t.”

“I think they may suspect,” Marn murmured. “I think those irregular particles may be traces they’ve left. We know they have fusion-explosives. We know they are sending up probes, because we’ve examined one. We know they have crude methods for detecting such radiation. It’s quite possible that they may have exploded some such device within the radiation-concentration, in an attempt to destroy it, or affect it in some way. In short, they are trying to get out!”

“But there’s nothing of this in their transmissions!” Pinat objected.

“I suspect those transmissions the more I think of them,” Marn sighed. Then, to Felder, “Why did you say that radiation-belt would be lethal only if we didn’t know about it?”

“Because we can screen against it. Remember Troyarn? The only reason we got such a bad dosage there was because we were running on minimum screens. Naturally. We weren’t expecting anything like what we got!”

“Is that right, Captain? Does that mean that it is still possible to put down a manned lifeboat, with appropriate screening?”

Forsaan nodded, unwillingly. Pinat stiffened, staring. Even Felder was jolted for a moment out of his calm.

“You mean—you want to go down there, in a pod?” he demanded. He turned to Forsaan. “You’re never going to agree to that, sir, surely? It’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Respecting your status, Professor, but you can’t mean it. You don’t know what you’re saying!”

Five

Perversely enough, it was Felder’s rare emotion which turned the scales in Forsaan’s mind. Something of the Professor’s argument was beginning to irritate his sense of reason.

“I think I am going to agree to it, Felder. Professor Marn has the right to make the attempt, and I think I can see why he wants to. Now wait a bit…” he put up a hand as Marn began to enthuse. “It’s not as easy as all that. Let’s treat this as a hypothesis and try our best to break it. That way we ought to be able to work out all the snags ahead of time. Pinat, give my steward a shout, will you? Have him brew us something to drink, and some snacks. This is going to be a long job. Now, Felder, about the screen-generator for the lifeboat…. ?”

The arguments, pro and con, the suggestions and examinings, went on for a long time, until Hoppik made a trial estimate of the most favourable times for depart and recall and discovered they had less than three days of grace. Then the pressure became furious and Forsaan had reason to feel a touch of pride for his crew. Once the fact was established, everyone who could contribute anything at all to the success of the trip came forward eagerly.

“The pod will run herself, Professor. All you have to do is sit tight and watch for a good spot, at the last minute.”

“Be sure and pick a place with trees, on a hill-top, if you can….”

“Suppose somebody says to you ‘a quarter’, how much is that?”

“These things are ‘necklaces’, the metal is platinum, the stones are zircons. Don’t try to hock too many of them in any one place. Spread them around.”

“Let’s just go over this road-map again, now…”

“How about these for sandals, Professor, comfortable?”

“Suppose we run through the operation of this emotion-damper just once more, eh?”

The last-mentioned was a device quite new to Marn, although Caralen had met it before and was able to explain it to him…

“It’s just a variation of the ‘quiet cap’,” she said. “You know about that, surely? It’s a small unit, used extensively in therapy, which puts out a field to interfere with and damp-down emotional reactions before they reach sensation-level. In that way, the natural recovery mechanisms of the body can proceed without pain, distress, or interference from the patient.”

Forsaan, standing by, said, “We gave it to old Bovy, remember? He was past recovery, of course, but it helped him pass away without distress and in conscious peace right up to the last.”

“Now this version,” Caralen resumed, “projects a field out from the wearer, damping down emotional responses in any person within range. The subject will remain apparently normal, aware, and responsive, but he won’t feel fear, hostility, or curiosity. He won’t remember very clearly, afterwards, either.”

“I hadn’t realised,” Marn said wryly, “that curiosity, too, is an emotion!”

Collectively, they worked on his pod, his equipment, his clothing and trade-good supplies, his speech, posture, and attitudes, everything they could think of. The crucial moment came all too soon. In spite of his reasoning, Forsaan couldn’t repress the chill of apprehension he felt as he sat by the remote-control board and gave Marn his last words. A chronometer ticked away the last seconds.

“Remember, now, on landing and making sure all is well, close the red switch. That will be our only signal from you. Then, be sure to be back in the pod and secure, before the deadline moment. Reverse that switch, which will tell us all is well with you. And leave the rest to us. Good luck, and may the ancestors take care of you.” He gestured to Caralen who stood by his side and she came close to the microphone.

“Good fortune, Dikamor. Take care, and come back safely.”

“I will try my best,” Marn’s voice was steady. Relays clicked over, there was a subdued hiss and sigh of power and the capsule shot up and away in a slow curve, into the dark limb of shadow. Minutes later, Hoppik caught the bright dot in his detectors and held it until it was no longer distinguishable against the background “noise”.

Four “days” later, Forsaan was able to dictate into his log, “Our batteries are fully charged and the ore-extraction plant and our essential needs are being supplied by direct induction from the plasma. The generator-overhaul proceeds with dispatch, and we should be space-worthy well before the recovery date. Today we will set up sheet-metal screens and dust them, as protection from the direct rays of the primary. Television-watching has been cut to a few hours in the evening, although Hoppik’s section is maintaining a constant radio-survey. There has been nothing to indicate that Marn has been discovered. Everyone on the ship is constantly thinking of him and wondering how he is faring. Oddly, this has had the effect of subduing the spirits of the men, but, at the same time, is inspiring them to work hard. Perhaps we, too, are susceptible to the influence of a hero-image, as these Earth-people seem to be. Their activities, as we observe them, seem as incomprehensible as ever, otherwise.

“Miss Caralen has been deeply affected by Marn’s absence, but she is keeping busy and cheerful. She and her father are about some ploy of their own, just now….”

On the thirteenth day, the “ploy” became a small bombshell under Forsaan’s nose, when Caralen came to see him.

“I’ve been studying those old records again,” she said. “They mention a ‘platform-unit’. My father has explained this as a plasma-converter unit, mounted on a convenient satellite, for transmitting power down to the surface for base operations.”

“That’s so,” Forsaan nodded, patiently. “It depends on local factors whether they use that method or another. We are using direct induction at the moment. The platform technique is all right, if you have a handy source for a base. In this system, now, there is a big asteroid belt, so that was probably the reason why our predecessors adopted that….”

“Yes,” she said. “I understand that much. But if there was a platform unit, as it says in the records, where is it now?”

Forsaan had his mouth open to answer, and had to close it again, and think. Because there was no ready answer, at all. The base had been shut down, put into preservation, yes, but there would be no sensible reason for doing away with the platform. In a stable orbit, it would stay where it was, swinging its silent vigil round the planet until required again. He looked at her, frowning.

“There have been so many things, it’s not surprising we missed that one. But it certainly is odd. Did you ask your father about it?”

“He’s just as baffled as you seem to be.” She hesitated a moment, then, “I’m not qualified in such a field, but I keep seeing connections. That platform, so far as I can tell, was roughly where that radiation-belt is now.”

“That’s where they would locate it, yes.”

“And now that belt is full of lethal particles, which should not be there. And the platform is missing. And the final clear-up party never returned from this base. And the surface of this satellite, especially on the planet-facing side, is heavily pock-marked with impact-craters!”

The more Forsaan thought about it, the less he liked the picture she had drawn for him. It was horribly plausible.

At last he said, “A moment. Let’s have expert opinion on this,” and he touched his wrist-speaker, got Felder on the second try. The grey old engineer heard the theory, impassively as always, and nodded.

“Could happen that way,” he declared. “Planting a pickup right in a bunched field, like that, is the quick way, but it’s ticklish. Tolerances are a lot smaller, just as the power-gradient is steeper. Another thing in favour is that thorium-230 concentration. That’s the main constituent of the pick-up elements they would have used. And there’s a third point I can make a check on. Been bothering me, anyway.”

“Oh. What’s that?”

“We are ore-extracting, as you know. The percentage of heavy elements ought to be low, here. It is, for the most part, but every once in a while we get a pocket of heavy stuff. Now, I could have my gang take some sample cores from a crater or two …”

Forsaan, after Felder had gone away taking Caralen with him, sat for a long time, pondering this latest twist. What they had diagnosed as a “biological shield” and imputed to some deliberate and diabolical agency, was now going to turn out an accident! Unfortunate, certainly, but just as certainly not ominous. Nothing to be afraid of. How many more, he mused, of the seemingly insane aspects of this planet would prove to have quite simple, rational explanations?

Next morning, the fourteenth day, with half of Marn’s time gone, there came a shock of a different kind altogether, something to banish philosophy to the far corners of his mind and put urgent anxiety in its place. The news-reader’s voice was held deliberately flat, his face impassive, as he said,

“The strictest news-blackout of a decade was lifted, early this morning, with the announcement, made simultaneously from NASA’s spokesman in the White House, and Moscow’s Kremlin, that the US and the USSR will cooperate fully on ‘Project Moonloop’, a shot that is intended to throw a highly sophisticated, heavily instrumented capsule as far as the Moon, there to make two, possibly three, controlled orbits, scanning the surface of the Moon at close range; then to recall the capsule, which, it is hoped, will make a safe re-entry, bringing its precious information back with it.

“So thoroughly and efficiently has this project been classified and protected that, with this, the first public announcement, we learn that the giant boosters are already in place and being checked out and that the shot itself is confidently expected to take place in fourteen days’ time… .” The rest of the message washed past Forsaan’s ears in a blur, with intermittent highlights. The date! That was the dagger in his mind. Fourteen days would place this cooperative “shot” at precisely the time pre-set for Marn’s recovery.

He called an immediate conference. Hoppik, grey-faced, confirmed the times in a schematic, hastily drawn out of figures provided by the bridge course-computer. “If they blast-off on schedule, here,” he indicated, “then orbit and aim, discharge their capsule—it will coast most of the way. And it will get here just about the same time that lifeboat will be triggering our controls. Neck and neck!”

“With every antenna and telescope down there watching us like eagles,” Forsaan growled. “The moment we cancel his screens to take over control, they can’t help seeing him!”

“But,” Hoppik was suddenly excited, “even if they do see our lifeboat, they can’t do anything about it. Can they?”

“Can’t they?” Felder retorted, gently. “You’ve seen their transmissions, heard their talk. You know what they do with an experimental rocket that gets out of control, that could be dangerous. They explode it. They buildin that capacity, as a safety measure. And, as they hope to bring this one back after orbit, you can bet they will have thought of that angle. There will be a ‘destruct’ capacity there.”

“But they wouldn’t destroy their own capsule, just because of a strange sighting, would they?”

Nobody bothered to answer. Forsaan studied the fire-lines, grimly, seeking some way out.

“We could hope for bad weather down there,” Pinat said heavily, “to put their schedule back a bit.”

“If we break that shield earlier and then boost his drive… .” Forsaan muttered. “We will need a completely new set of flight-figures, just in case. Hoppik, you had better be working on that angle. Pinat, there’s another thing. Just supposing that spy-rocket does make its orbits?”

“Yes,” Pinat agreed, at once. “It can’t miss seeing us here, the way we are. Camouflage! I’ll get the men on it, right away.”

“And, Felder—push the repairs. I want everything on first-order readiness. Everything! Just as soon as ever that lifeboat is aboard, we go!” If we get it aboard, he added to himself, when the others had gone. It was going to be a very close thing.

Six

“This is Jupiter Control,” the voice came, hard and steady, from the speaker by Forsaan’s elbow. “Current reports from Moonloop capsule are good. The seventy-two hour coasting period will be completed in two hours’ time. At that moment we will endeavour to steer the capsule into lunar-orbital attitude. All signals are favourable at this time…”

Hoppik crouched over his controls, striving to disentangle the all-important from the background mush. Forsaan, by the plot, was impatient.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. “We ought to be getting that lifeboat, by now.”

“The shielding is against us,” Pinat said softly. “It doesn’t leave much trace to pick up. Not like that Moonloop thing …” the bright spot of the Earth capsule seemed to hang motionless on the screen.

“Got him!” Hoppik cried, and Forsaan saw the tiny spot at that same moment. As he watched, critically, it crept and brightened and his keen eyes guessed its path; estimated its relation to the other capsule, strained to arrive at probable values. And he waited.

“We ought to have enough data now. Let’s have a course-projection, Mr. Pinat, on both of them.” Seconds later, bright fire-lines drew curves on the plot, superimposed on the two bright points and all three men drew deep sighs of relief.

“Urs be thanked for that,” Forsaan growled. “They are aiming at the opposite limb, see? Marn is coming up fast. He should be within our grasp just as that other capsule is jockeying into orbital attitude. There’ll be more than the total diameter of the satellite between them. That’s good enough for us….”

“This is Jupiter Control. One hour to orbit-time and all information is still good….”

“We’ll cancel his shielding here,” Forsaan put his finger on the plot. “Take control, whip him over the hump, around, down here, into the lock—on clamps, batten down, lift-off, and be well away before that lumbering spy-eye is a quarter the way round. I want two good men in that lock, Pinat. This is no time for fumblers.”

“Control coming over to you—now!” Hoppik threw a switch and Forsaan wrapped his steady hands around the remote-control levers, eyes intent on the board in front of him. The lifeboat was swinging in at a great rate. He juggled it deftly, killing momentum, nudging it into true match with the guide-beam.

“Lock open and ready,” Pinat reported, softly. “Coming down like a feather…”

“This is Jupiter Control. Orbit-attitude has been successfully achieved. Moonloop is now into the first stage of first orbit. We anticipate losing contact when the capsule passes into the shadow….”

At precisely the right moment, there was a gentle shudder through the ship’s fabric and a green indicator flared on the board. In the boat-lock, two men leaped forward, lugging the power-and-communication cable, to ram it home securely in its socket. Another green sprang up on the board. Forsaan touched a switch.

“Professor Marn—can you hear me—are you well ?”

“Captain Forsaan—it’s good to hear your voice again. Yes, I am well. Weary, but quite well.”

“Good. Let’s have you out of there as quick as you can, please. All other stations, stand-by to lift!”

“No! Wait!” Marn’s voice crackled. “Wait!”

“We can’t wait,” Forsaan snarled. “If you shake it up, we can be up and away before that blasted spy-eye gets round here…”

“But you can’t do that. You must wait until you’ve heard. In the name of humanity, Captain, hold on!”

Forsaan mumbled awful things below his breath. Part of his mind wondered what “humanity” had to do with it. The rest of him froze in anguished indecision. Then, angrily, he slapped the “general stations” switch again.

“Belay the last order,” he growled. “Belay. Take-off is postponed. The two hands in the boat-lock will secure and then restore camouflage. Be quick about it. Everybody else will stand-by!” He broke the connection again, swung round in his chair.

“This had better be good,” he said to no one in particular. Seconds later the tramp of feet heralded Buffil and Caralen, hurrying into the bridge-space. And then, from the crew-side, came Marn, dusty and dragging his feet, weary, haggard, but with fire in his eyes and his aura bright with purpose.

“It’s good to be back,” he said, and stood there, looking round. As if gorging himself on impressions, Forsaan thought. “I feel as if I’d been away half a lifetime. If you only knew the temptation—but this will not do, at all. Captain, how quickly can that lifeboat be recharged, reset, or whatever it is, for a return trip ?”

“Not long. An hour, possibly, depending on the state— you mean … ?”

“Yes. I’m going back. For good, this time. I only came now, to let you know that I was well and what I’ve found out. To collect an oddment or two. And to place these in your safe-keeping.” He held out a set of record-cylinders, laid them on the plot-housing. “And then I’m going back. I must go back.”

From the corner of his eye, Forsaan saw Caralen sink down miserably beside her father, on the bulkhead seat-cushions. His own feelings were too chaotic to register anything. He stood off from them, forced himself to be rational.

“I assume you have good reasons. I hope so. I shall want to hear them. In the meantime—Hoppik, where’s that damned spy-eye, now ?”

“Just coming up into our horizon now, sir.”

“Keep track of it. Let me know if there’s any sign that we’re spotted. Mr. Pinat, get that lifeboat ready to turn round. Check with Felder on the drive-units. We are going to have to sit here until that thing has completed its three orbits, now. That should give you time enough, Professor.”

“A drink—something to eat …” Marn shook himself, moved to sit by Caralen, to put his hand gently on her shoulder. “You and your simians,” he gibed softly. “They are simians, you know. And so are we, for what difference it makes.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Buffil said, not unkindly. “It must have been severe, down there.”

“It was, but I am not babbling, I assure you. Quite the contrary. If anything, my senses are sharper than they have ever been. And what I said just now is absolutely true.” He gave them all a hard stare. “Between twenty and twenty-five thousand years ago, at about the same time our predecessors left here, these people were pre-human simians, living in caves and making crude experiments with tools and fire. And now, this. Such tremendous psychosocial development, in such a short time, may well seem incredible to you. It did to me at first. Until I saw the evidence with my own eyes. You must realise that these people are so close, in time, to their primitive origins that the concrete traces, the records, the actual remains, are still there to mark the story. I have seen them myself. There can be no doubt about it at all. Nor can there be much doubt that we, too, were simians once. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a triviality beside the other things I found. Fabulous things—and dreadful ones, too.”

A shrill twitter from the board interrupted him. Pinat moved, lifted his head to report. “Camouflage all in order, sir. Work in hand on the lifeboat. New batteries ought to take care of most of it.”

“The Moonloop capsule almost overhead,” Hoppik reported. “No sign of any irregularities.”

“All right,” Forsaan flicked his thumb, swung back grimly on Marn again. “That’s my side of the business, Professor. Now, we are still waiting to hear yours. The important parts.”

“There’s so much.” Marn paused to sip from the goblet a silent steward had set by his elbow. “It’s all there, in detail, in those records. I’ll give you the gist, though. Never mind the thousand and one alarms and frights I had, the silly mistakes I made. It would take as long to tell them as it took me to do them. Briefly, the boat landed exactly as planned, on a tree-covered hill-top near their cultural centre. From there on, it was a matter of walking, asking my way, hitch-hiking, posing as a foreign tourist, just as we had planned. More by luck than skill I eventually reached the great city and found my way to their great centre of records, a museum. That, alone, was worth all the perils. There, all arranged and laid out, is their history, the whole story. There, too, I had my stroke of incredible good fortune.” He paused again, took another sip and sat thinking. Forsaan saw his aura dwindle for a moment into gentle warmth.

“I made a friend,” Marn said, and smiled. “It was the simplest thing. There I was, studying the preserved skulls of primitive men and this elderly man, noticing my interest, spoke to me. We fell into conversation and close understanding almost at once. I learned that he had, at one time, worked in this very institution, had done research, but was now retired. Had just called in to visit, to renew old associations. Too, he had been a teacher, in fact a Professor, like myself. We had—we have—much in common. Think of it, this total stranger, on the basis of an hour’s enjoyable discussion, ranging from atomic structure to galaxies in collision, invited me home with him, has made me his house-guest…”

“And he doesn’t suspect—anything?”

“I’m quite sure he does,” Marn chuckled. “I’m sure he thinks that I am a fugitive from some other nation. Apparently, such things are not uncommon. And I know, too, that he is extracting all sorts of intriguing ideas and information from me. But I don’t mind that in the least. I have not tried to tell him the real truth, because his guess is near enough anyway. What does matter is the wonderfully warm-hearted generosity and hospitality of these people—his wife, his two adult sons, and their children-all have made me welcome in the most natural, unassuming way.”

“Then the impressions we got from their television are false?”

“No. They are quite true, in a different sense.”

Forsaan snorted his disgust. “You haven’t found anything. Professor, except additional contradictions…”

“This is Jupiter Control. We have regained contact…”

“Turn that damned thing down!” Forsaan roared. “Professor Marn, time is wasting. You haven’t told us anything,’ so far, that gives reason for your insane desire to return.”

“Captain Forsaan,” Marn sat up, weary but determined. “Tell me, what is my emotional state at this moment? Oh, I know it is not considered proper, with us, to speak about such things, but I ask you, just this once, to break a convention. I have a very good reason!”

“You’re tense,” Forsaan groped for inadequate, faintly indecent words, feeling his face go red. “You are under pressure of some great urgency and you are controlling it. You are determined, strong—and clear without distortion —you know what I mean! There aren’t any words….”

“Precisely!” Marn’s voice was like a whip. “You know what you mean. I know what you mean. Everyone here knows, and knows furthermore, whether you speak true or not, as far as is possible to speak such things. Because, of course, there are no adequate noises for ‘feelings’. That is why we do not discuss them. We know. Now, think of this. Those people down there, the Earth-people, have no auras at all!”

“But that is ridiculous!” Caralen said at once. “Either they are people like us, in which case they must have auras, or they do not have them, and they are not like us and everything you have said becomes meaningless!”

“Not so quickly, my dear,” Marn cautioned, and took out of his pocket a small thing they all recognised. “Remember this? I had to use it once or twice, unwillingly. It works on them exactly as it does on us. That’s good evidence of relationship, by itself. But there’s something else. Imagine a field somewhat similar to this, not stultifying emotional linkages in the brain itself, but creating interference and distortion outside the body. If I may put it this way, imagine how it would be if I was trying to whisper to you, in a thunderstorm of continuous noise!”

“I’m sorry—I don’t quite get that,” Forsaan mumbled.

Hoppik leaned forward. “That wouldn’t be too difficult to do….”

It was Caralen who first caught the full implication. “You are suggesting that these people are exposed, in some way, to such a field of interference ?”

“Continuously,” Marn said, grimly. “I have been submerged in it for twenty-eight days. I have learned to tolerate it, after a fashion. At first, though, it was hideous. I felt amputated, crippled, as if half my life had been cut off. I was frightened as I have never been frightened before. Then, when I realised that these people have lived like this, from the cradle to the grave, generation after generation, never knowing anything different, only half-alive, I didn’t know whether to weep or to curse the infamous fiends responsible.”

“Don’t they have any emotions, then?” Hoppik asked, foolishly, and cringed at the blaze in Marn’s glance.

“They are as emotionally sensitive as we, if not more so. I have had plenty of time to ponder this thing, to think about it very deeply. I am convinced that this one awful factor, by itself, accounts for almost all the seeming contradictions, the inconsistencies, of these people. Imagine how they have lived. Think of being completely cut off, walled up inside the shell of your own emotions, never able to know, to sense, to feel what anyone else is feeling. Your only contacts the pitifully inadequate interpretations of gesture, attitude, facial expression, and words. This, I tell you, is why their languages are so tortuous, so complex. This is why their values are so twisted, why they cannot trust or understand anyone, why they are hostile, suspicious, aggressive, and divided. They can never be sure of anyone else. And, by being driven in on themselves, they can never be sure of themselves, either.

“I am convinced, too, that this is why their lives are so pitifully short, hectic, and imperfect. Their medical science is almost the equal of ours, is superior in some ways, and yet they are plagued, bedevilled, and hag-ridden by the products of their trapped and frustrated emotional needs. Just thinking of the incredible amount of suffering they must have known, all through their history, is enough to make one sick!”

“And yet you say you want to go back?” Pinat demanded. “Into that hell ?”

“Yes, it is a hell, in some ways. Yet, in a back-handed sort of way, in spite of their handicap, or possibly because of it, they have won something wonderful, something we lack. They have a breathtaking determination and stubbornness, defiance, self-confidence, a sense that they can achieve anything. It’s as if they knew, unconsciously, that they are being restrained, and are refusing point-blank to accept it. This very Moonloop project is a case in point. The more impossible an idea seems, the harder they go for it. It’s a driving quality which makes us seem half-asleep by comparison.”

“But they don’t know,” Buffil demanded. “They aren’t aware of this interference ?”

“How can they know? Does a fish know that water is wet? And yet, they do know, vaguely, that extra senses exist. Odd phenomena do manage to break through, from time to time.”

“Have you any idea what’s causing this ‘interference’ effect?” Forsaan asked, and Marn nodded, suddenly intense.

“Oh yes. That’s the whole point. It’s a by-product of those artificial radiation-bands. The whole planet is drowned in the effect. And that, you see, is why I must go back. See now, these people have come up tremendously fast. They are only a stumble away from so many things; warp-drive, climate-control, fusion-power; it needs only a calculated nudge in the right direction, that’s all, and they will ‘discover’ our technique for tapping power from plasma, by induction. You see? They are hungry for power. They consume it at a tremendous rate. This, a new source, will be snatched at eagerly, and, once they put up their grids, and begin sucking down the power, the interference will dwindle….”

“And then what?” Forsaan interrupted. “Granted you can do this, that the frequency is critical and that it will not take much to upset it—and that when it is reduced, these people will be able to—will be als we are, as you might say. Then what? I know it can be counted as a fine, humane gesture. I appreciate that. But is that justification enough? What of the consequences? Are we right to interfere?”

“We have already interfered!” Caralen burst out indignantly. She turned to Marn. “We know, now, how those bands were set up. We are to blame. Our ancestors, at any rate …” and she told him the story, the results of her researches and Felder’s findings from the dust-samples. Forsaan, watching, saw the strain-grooves on Marn’s face deepen as Caralen spoke. The savant-cosmologist seemed to age, visibly, and his aura was heavy with grief.

“I am not altogether surprised,” he said, very quietly, when she had finished. “I had already guessed something of the kind, although the details were not clear. There were too many coincidences, you see. It had to be connected with us, in some way. Buffil, you’ve seen pictures on the television, of their ‘pyramids’, haven’t you? They are the oldest known built structures. They are found, to the puzzlement of their archaeologists, in two widely separate regions. Doesn’t that shape remind you….”

“Of course! Now you mention it!” Buffil gasped. “That’s the shape of an assist-grid scaffolding!”

“Quite! But we haven’t answered Captain Forsaan’s question…”

“Moonloop is just swinging into her second time round, sir,” Hoppik had a listen-plug in his ear and was struggling to pay adequate attention to two crucially interesting things at once.

“You are quite correct in pointing out that sentiment is not a proper basis,” Marn said carefully. “A sense of guilt; kind intentions; my personal friendship and admiration for the people I have come to know, these are my personal concern and not valid here. So, I will put this to you. There are three billion people down there, in ferment. To use their own expressive phrase, something has got to give, and soon. The alternatives are clear. Either they will utterly destroy themselves and their planet or they will be driven to make unitary agreements, out of sheer self-preservation. That capsule which is circling round us at this moment, is a straw in the wind. It is an indication that the two major powers down there have taken another hard step towards sinking their differences, towards agreement. Self-preservation is a powerful incentive.

“So, what will follow that? You’ve seen, on their television, what potential they have, what kind of people they are. You’ve seen one face, at least. I have seen another. But one thing is sure. They cannot stay still. They will, inevitably, explode out into the Galaxy. Think again of that capsule, and believe me when I say they are on the verge of discovering warp-theory. Soon now, they will be out, expanding, coming to confront us, face to face. The question you have to answer is this. Which do you want? Do you want a plague of savagely hostile, suspicious, aggressive, destructive and deadly mental-cripples swarming through our trade-routes, descending on our quiet, peaceful cultures? Or would you rather have them strong, sane, friendly, curious, inspiring, helpful—bringing a healthy injection of zest and excitement to our staid and sluggish ways? I tell you this much, positively. Only a hair divides one from the other. And one, or the other, you are going to get, like it or not!”

“You seem to think very highly of their potential for reformation,” Forsaan said. “Isn’t that a trifle optimistic, in view of their generations of deprivation? How can you be so sure that they are not hopelessly set in their irrational ways and values?”

Caralen sat forward, anxiously. “It does sound a little idealised, Dikamor,” she agreed. “With such a history, it is hard to believe they can have preserved any ethical values at all, or even that they have ever really had any.”

Marn shook his head at her. “You’re not thinking, you know. Remember how we studied their language and found it full of contradictions? How they have terms and values for things that, to the eye, didn’t exist in their lives? The reason is quite simple, once you have the missing factor. Within the individual human, in his mind, is a knowledge of ‘Truth’, ‘honesty’, ‘integrity’, and all the other abstract values which we respect. They try to put such things into effect, even though they lack the senses to carry them out. As one of their great poets has put it, ‘To thine own self be true; thou canst not then be false to any man’. They try to do this, despite all the obstacles in the way. Not all of them, I grant you. But the really surprising thing is that so many of them achieve a certain measure of ‘Trust’ on nothing more tangible than the burning desire to believe that it is so. They call it ‘faith’. Professor North, and his family—yes, even the tiny grandchildren—have accepted me on nothing more tangible than their own, inner-felt values.” He swung round on Forsaan. “Give me time—five years perhaps—to bleed off that deadly radiation—”

“Can you count on that long ?”

“I can’t count on anything. I can only try. I claim I have the right to do that much.”

“All right,” Forsaan yielded. “You’ve convinced me that you’re sincere. And I can’t see where it can do any great harm. I only wish it wasn’t a matter of going off and leaving you all alone. That doesn’t sit right.”

“He will not be alone,” Caralen said, quietly. “That lifeboat will take three, I understand? I am coming with you, Dikamor.”

“I was half-afraid you’d say that,” Marn sighed. “But it wouldn’t be fair to let you. It’s not—pleasant—being cutoff, not being able to feel what other people are feeling.”

“I am not going to let you go away again, without me,” she said flatly. “These past, days have been empty without you. You know that. And you will never need to know how I feel!”

“That’s true,” he said, gently. “Just as there is no need for me to tell you how glad I am. I could never have asked you, of course, but if you want to face it, with me …”

“Room for three!” Buffil wheezed, sitting up. “It will be a bit of a pinch, but you’re going to need me in there, Marn. You’re never going to be able to teach these people the practical side of building plasma traps. The theory is all very well, but you need a technologist!”

Marn put out his hand, to clasp Buffil by the shoulder. . “You’ll be welcome,” he said. “Thank you. And …” with a momentary recall of his old confident manner, “… I can promise you some first-class fishing. And these people can cook, too…”

The Moonloop capsule drifted, as a dot of light, away to the edge of the plot, Forsaan watching it.

“While they’re busy radioing their signals,” he said, “we’ll lift that boat up and around the other way. Sure they’re all set, back there?”

“All ready,” Pinat nodded. “Bit of a squeeze, what with the three of them and a package of scribble-films and those Omlik spices old Buffil asked for, but they’re all secure enough.”

“You reckon they’re all crazy, sir?” Hoppik demanded, as he made last minute checks on the course-readings. “You wouldn’t get me going down there, among that lot, for the rest of my life!”

“No, I can understand that,” Forsaan muttered. “That’s because we are status-three people. They don’t think the same way we do. You do your job, Mr. Pinat does his and I do mine. And that’s enough, for us. But those high-status people aren’t like that. If they see that something needs doing, and they know what to do, then they just do it, naturally. It’s the way they are and we’ll never be able to understand that.”

“Any minute now,” Pinat warned and Hoppik concentrated on his job. The Earth-capsule reached its free-fall limit, there was a mumble from the radio and Forsaan took the controls of the lifeboat, sending it lifting and speeding across the face of the satellite and on its long, one-way trip.