CHAPTER II

EXPOSITORY DATA: My name is Hans Folsom. I am the captain of this expedition. The expedition is therefore known as Folsom’s Voyage and the planet will be known, eventually, as Folsom’s Planet. The Bureau is quite consistent in these policies and procedures; the commander of the voyage has the right to impose his name if not his will upon the mission. There is no megalomania in this. It is simple justice. At the cost of enormous risks one is entitled, at least, to a small piece of immortality.

There are four on this Folsom’s Expedition: Folsom himself, vigorous, cheerful, in the flower of his manhood, his mate Nina, who has already been introduced rather abruptly, and Stark and Closter, about whom more will be said presently. You will hear of them presently; they are also mates in a binding arrangement: the strict pairing as approved by the Bureau indicated that there would be no cross-matching involved. For that reason Stark and Closter, despite the fact that they are under my command, stay pretty much to themselves in one area while Nina and I, of course, manage to make our connections in another.

Folsom’s Planet itself is some eighty-three million miles from its sun, that sun (which perhaps shall be known as Folsom’s Star) being located some thirty-seven hundred and twelve light years from the earth. An appalling distance, to be sure, but the explosion of technological sophistication, the postindustrial revolution, so to speak, has resulted in devices which enabled us to make this transversion in a mere three and a half years (I cannot give you the exact calculations since we were asleep for most of the time) and by the time we are to return this may be even further reduced.

Our function is to civilize the natives of Folsom’s Planet after, of course, having made contact with them. Specographic probe of the planet conducted from 2417 through 2429 established the presence on the planet of intelligent life at stage three of sophistication, still bound to the ecology but at the beginnings of a crude technology. Optimistically, this is the best time at which contact should be made with aliens; if they fall below the stage three level, they are apt to be hesitant or unduly hostile, communication is difficult to establish; beyond stage three, clear up to six and seven, often even moving up to eight, paranoia begins to intervene: they are skeptical about the motives of the Federation and often inexcusably hostile.

What does the Federation have to gain by establishing com­munication, advancing their technology? they want to know.

Exactly why are emissaries being sent from a distant star to give them the intellectual and technological materials to join this Federation?

What, strictly speaking, is in it for them?

This is why all efforts are made to avoid the six and seven civilizations to say nothing of the duller and more pedestrian one’s and two’s: no, the three’s are proper, being at that right area between numb credulity and resistance.

We will spend approximately one year on Folsom’s Planet. After establishing communication with the natives, a task which with sophisticated linguistic devices takes usually no more than a matter of days, we will proceed, through philosophical and tech­nological orientation lectures to place skills in their hands, one by one as if they were implements. By these means they may take their rightful place amidst the races of the stars; having done this, we will leave the planet for the somnolent return journey to the Earth but our narcoticized dreams all the way back will be drenched with the feeling of fulfillment: we will have done our part to civilize the universe, to tame the forces of entropy; we will have placed within the hands of this race the means by which they can acquire skills to match our own . . . and in due time, when they create their first starship, when they voyage solemnly to the Pit in which the races themselves are gathered, when they enter the Ceremony of Music . . . when they do this it will not only be a celebration of Folsom’s Planet but Folsom himself, that skillful voyager who carried forth to them the implements by which they could take their place in the Federation.

At least that was the point and purpose of the voyage; that is, so to speak, the plan, but we are in severe difficulties of a sort which never could have been pondered before our landing and at this time the modus operandi, that simple, pure, elegant, almost compositionally architectured modus operandi which has applied to the settlement of stage three planets since the beginning of process . . . that modus operandi lies in ruins. My fornicative activities, my glossy ruts with Nina are, in fact, one of the few comforts which I have been able to derive thus far from Folsom’s Planet.

Foronething,wecannotestablishanycontactwiththenatives.

Andforanother, I am not in the least sure that even if we did, they would want any part of the marvelous devices, and advances which we can offer them.

From the little information which we can gather, their atti­tude, in fact, appears to be uniquely hostile.