Communication Problem

John Christopher

By 2049, when the “Wayfarer” was launched, interstellar travel had become something of a commonplace. Rocket motors had given way to nuclear motors, and then there had come the Ku-Tsuni space warp, through which the vast distances of the cosmos could be bridged.

Journeys still took some time, because for obvious reasons the jumps were made well out of range of the solar systems to and from which the ships were proceeding. And although theoretically one could leap to the center of the galaxy, in fact exploration was confined to our own small corner, among a couple of hundred suns. One reason for this was that the warp’s accuracy decreased with distance, providing an error on the outward flight which was more than doubled on the return.

But travel to the stars in itself was taken for granted, and the “Wayfarer” was launched as a freighter. A trickle of trade was flowing, and soon would be a flood. The “Wayfarer” was scheduled for the Rigel run. She had made three round trips before she went off course.

This happened when she encountered, in hyperspace, a sub-electronic storm. This was a hazard that was known, and not usually dangerous. Transit through the outer edges of the storm provided no more than a mild buffeting, and there were instruments to show where the storm center lay, so that avoiding action could be taken.

In this case, though, the “Wayfarer” had the bad luck to land in the storm center itself, and the worse luck that her voyage had started on the day after Burns’ Night and that the duty officer was a Scot.

Don Donaldson, feeling the whole ship vibrate with the storm’s hammering and seeing the control room itself wreathed in a shimmering blue electrical discharge, slammed down the emergency lever for return into normal space. The result was a random jump, to an utterly unknown destination.

The skipper, a non-drinking Swede, restrained himself with some difficulty from clubbing Donaldson to death on the spot, and considered the situation. It was bad, but could have been worse. They could have landed inside the closed gravitational field of a sun, or even in its flaming heart. Equally, they could have found themselves a hundred light-years from the nearest possible haven. As it was, they were less than a light-year from a small sun with planets.

The rules for ships lost were simple and straightforward. One found a sun, landed on a planet, and set up a beacon which would provide a distress signal that could be picked up by other vessels traversing hyperspace. Then one sat back and waited to be traced, and for the arrival of a patrol ship with the proper co-ordinates.

The “Wayfarer” went onto nuclear drive, and headed for the bright spot on her screen. As she approached, more became clear. The sun had five planets, and the center one of these, about twice the size of the earth, showed a breathable atmosphere. This would make everything a great deal easier and pleasanter. The extra gravity would be a nuisance. But it was more than compensated for by the chance of living in the fresh air while the beacon was erected and during the several weeks that were likely to elapse before the patrol ship arrived.

They orbited the world, and the scanners mapped it. It was about half land, half water, split into four major continents and the usual scatter of islands.

The Swede started preparations for descent. These included routine checking of the retro-rockets, and this was where they had their second stroke of bad luck. The rockets were jammed, presumably as a result of the storm they had gone through. A man was sent out to inspect, and returned with the news that the damage was major: heat had welded the flaps together.

This left the Swede with a serious decision to make. It was theoretically possible to set up the beacon in space, but it would take at least ten times as long and would involve considerable hazards.

On the other hand, there was water down there, and there was the known Hansen technique for landing on watery planets without retros. The Swede didn’t take long to decide. Hansen had been a Dane, and anything a Dane could do a Swede could do better.

The answer was close orbiting, followed by a screaming lateral descent, and then skipping the water like a stone skimming the surface of a pond. This provided effective braking at the cost of being roughed up by half a dozen or more separate impact shocks. But it was nothing that the elastic landing cocoons couldn’t handle.

Surveying the map the scanners had drawn up, the Captain decided that a stretch of east-west coastline near the tropics provided his safest bet. He could skim along parallel with the shore, which meant that the amphibious craft, when launched, would have no more than a mile or two to cover.

The “Wayfarer” did her preliminary braking in the planet’s outer atmosphere, then dipped inside. Three further orbits brought her into landing position, and she screamed down as prescribed. Everything seemed right: target point, trajectory, impact velocity.

But the Captain had overlooked one extremely obvious and quite deadly fact. The Hansen landings had been specified for planets of earthsize or smaller. The “Wayfarer” would float on water under normal gravity, and float higher still under lesser gravities. But on this planet her mass was considerably greater.

Donaldson, a cautious Scot when sober, might have spotted the error. But Donaldson and the Captain were not on speaking terms. In fact, by the time Donaldson realized what was happening, it was too late for anyone to do anything.

The “Wayfarer” hit, gave one soggy bounce, and settled into the waves. She sank by the stern.

In the three minutes of grace afforded them, a handful of crewmen in the after part succeeded in breaking open one of the emergency hatches and launching a raft, in the shape of the long galley table. They grabbed what came to hand—foodstuffs chiefly—and clambered aboard.

Then the “Wayfarer” dipped, carrying all but these few into the depths.

The Captain, if he had wanted to, could have found a placid sea, but this had not seemed an important consideration. The sea in which they landed was choppy, and getting rougher, with a wind blowing onshore from the south.

The waters washed over the raft, which was only ten feet by four in size. The crewmen clung to the hope of rescue—the scanners had shown buildings, cities—but time went by and hope dwindled. First one and then another, exhausted, cold and sick, lost his precarious hold and was washed away.

Rescue, though, was on the way. The Mori, who inhabited this planet, had seen the “Wayfarer” as she circled. They had even roughly worked out her destination.

They were an intelligent race, centipedal in shape, now at the beginning of their own technological explosion. They had not mastered the air yet—the extra gravity did not help—but they were already keen astronomers.

The Mori recognized the “Wayfarer” for what she was, and launched a rescue operation immediately. This action was not entirely selfless in motive: there was no doubt in their minds that great advantages were likely to accrue from contact with a race capable of building so impressive a craft.

More than a hundred Mori ships, including a monster ocean liner, were directed or diverted to the spot. Visibility was bad, and getting worse, but hour after hour the Mori ships criss-crossed the area, hunting and finding nothing.

The spaceship, plainly, had sunk, and seemingly without trace.

Disappointed, the Mori prepared to call off the smaller vessels, since night was approaching and the Tuen would be coming up from the depths to savage anything less than fifty feet in length. The larger ships would stay, and had search-lights, but the likelihood of their finding anything at night when they had already failed by day was small.

At that point, one of the coasters saw it. A small speck bobbing on the port bow. After that, everything went quickly and smoothly.

Within twenty minutes the Mori had the raft in tow, with the solitary drenched survivor on board. He was treated with all the respect due a member of the race that had built the great galleon which had flamed three times round the planet before plunging to its death in the waters.

This respectful treatment, however, was not entirely disinterested. If only they could establish communication with this survivor, the Mori realized untold advantages might ensue. For even if this one survivor were not himself a skilled technologist, he could provide hints which might enable breakthroughs to be made in a dozen different fields.

To this end, always with due courtesy and deference, some of the finest minds among the Mori were bent to the task: biologists, psychologists, physicists, mathematicians. All worked on the project.

They were confident it would not be long before a proper contact was established. But the weeks went by, and then the months, and the alien stayed an alien, his expression inscrutable, his mind unknown.

Six months after the rescue, the two chief Mori investigators discussed matters with Preet, who held a very senior political position in the premier nation. One was Voka, a venerable biologist. The other, Sikla, was the acknowledged world expert in applied psychology.

“There must be some line we can try,” Preet said. “Mathematical, perhaps? With stones, or something. Two plus two equals four. That sort of thing.”

“One of the first approaches we used,” Voka said. “We thought perhaps we were being too simple, so we brought in Pudi. He tried some very subtle things, but it got us no further.”

“Star maps?” Preet suggested. “Drawings of the solar system?”

“That, too. But wouldn’t be likely to make much of star maps with Mora as the reference point; and he most certainly doesn’t come from this solar system.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive. He’s been breathing our air with no sign of distress. Therefore he comes from a planet with an atmosphere not markedly different from our own. But there’s no other such planet in this system.”

Preet looked sad, an expression indicated more by the rippling of his multitudinous feet than by the look on his face.

“I suppose the ship itself should have told us all this, anyway. Such power and size.”

“There’s one final possibility,” Sikla said. He was smaller than the others, paler red in color. He scratched his words in a higher key.

“What possibility is that?” Preet asked.

“That their means of communication may be quite unlike ours. It may have nothing to do with speech, or writing, or gesture.”

“Leaving what?”

“Direct mental communication.”

“Telepathy?”

“Yes,” Sikla said, reluctantly, as though the word offended him.

“Should we not try that?” Preet asked. “There are some who say this can happen, even among us.”

“We have tried,” Voka said. “We called in those who specialize in this so-called discipline.” He rippled his legs in gloomy distaste. “We’ve even tried those who claim to speak with the dead.”

“With no results?”

“None. But if telepathy really does exist, then in us it undoubtedly is at a very low level. He would be no more likely to make anything of it than we can of the blowings and gruntings of the Tuen.”

“Have you offered him tools, equipment?”

“Yes. He is not interested.”

“Do you think he could be in a state of shock still—from the landing?” Preet asked.

“If he is, then shock in his race is nothing like anything we know. He eats, and drinks, and sleeps normally, showing no distress. Look at him.”

They looked, and rippled their agreement.

“So what do we do?” Preet asked.

“Nothing,” said Voka. “Perhaps they’ll send a rescue party for him. Perhaps that is what he’s waiting for.”

The whole affair had far-reaching effects on the Mori.

Their failure to communicate produced disappointment, which in turn sparked a kind of racial despair. Could a person communicate with anyone, in the true sense? Was not even normal language between normal Mori a sign more of failure than success?

After all attempts at communication had been abandoned, the alien was housed in quarters befitting a galactic ambassador, and offered what luxuries the Mori world could afford.

The alien spurned them all.

He lived his gracious, quiet, serene life with dignity. The example he set was impressive, and the Mori were ready to follow it. All over the planet, stock markets crashed, as the bubble of the incipient Mori affluent society was pricked and the air wheezed out. Business slowed, industry stopped growing, went into reverse, ground at last to a halt. There was social unrest, which became revolution, and revolution gave way to chaos. Famine and misery stalked the lands of Mora. In ten years, apart from a few small enclaves, they were back in the Dark Ages.

In one of the enclaves, the alien lived on. Voka and Sikla were dead of old age, and Preet had been brutally depedalized when his government was overthrown; but new guardians carried out their duties, still hoping for the great ship that might come winging through space, to rescue the alien and save the Mori from themselves.

The alien himself was contented. He had warmth, and food, and ease. It was, all in all, a good life for a ship’s cat.

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