CHAPTER IV

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES: For three years in transport to Fol­som’s Planet we lived as if under the gauze of a dream, the thick blanket of somnolence lying over us as on automatic the ship hurled itself outward. Every six months one of us would be arisen by the machinery for a period of three days to tend the ship, to make sure that the converters were working properly, to reestablish communications with the Bureau, to make sure that the life support process continued as previously. These duties were shared and thus it was only necessary to arise once through the course of the three years meaning that only three days were stripped from my own chronology by duties. The Bureau is thoughtful and considerate about this. The Bureau understands that life is precious, time its only ingredient, and that if we were forced to expend much more of it than that minimum three days there would be even less enthusiasm for the probes than there had been already. The probes, as they are, are a difficult enough sit­uation: one must leave family, friends, life, work to spend some seven or eight years away from all of them in the establishment of a bridgehead with backward races; returning to the Earth after that lapse means that life has so severely changed that it is almost impossible, outside of the controlled life of the Bureau, to enter into it. If on topof this dislocation the penalty of lost years were also imposed, it is possible that the only staff the Bureau could find for the probes would be misfits, those who would be just as happy to have no contact with the outer culture at all.

That would be bad of course. If we are to bring the fruits of our civilization to backward races (who, perhaps, I will refer to in the future asbr ’s for economy of space; there is only so much room in the transmission belt) then it stands to reason that the carriers should be those splendidly adopted to the society, equally well adopted to the rigors of the Federation and its obligation to carry the word of union to the furthermost race . . . but those splendidly well-adjusted personnel would object to losing one tenth or more of their irreplaceable lives sitting in the small space of bulkheads, listening to the transistors” hum. No, it is necessary for the Sleep to be imposed so at least none of the juices of mor­tality are expended during the great voyage. But alone in the ship at my own interval, two and a quarter years deep into the voyage, I could feel the stirring of animals deep in the network, the sounds of forces so great that I could not even apprehend them and after a brief look at my sleeping companions (Stark and Closter side by side in their room, their bodies disgustingly intertwined as they had requested; Nina lying in a position made almost lascivious by unconsciousness, her limbs disjointed, falling open, her mouth pursed in anO that might have been a cry or a kiss, and though slack with disuse the slow muscles of desire nevertheless con­tracted within me) I ascertained that the sounds were not caused by them and that they had no reference at all to these other bodies in the ship. I wandered into the control room, that small and vital stage in the midst of machinery that carried the shipever deeper into the night and there at the heart of the transistors.

I looked into the blank and empty spaces of the universe which surrounded us like a blanket, and swaddled them within I asked, “Why have we come out here? Why are we carrying the good news of technology and integration to the natives of Fol­som’s Planet? Is there any need for this? What is the source of the missionary impulse?”

Because it must be done, a voice which might have been my own answered. Perhaps it was not my own. Perhaps is was some other presence in the ship although if this were so, this flat pro­jection would have indicated that I was insane and I do not think of myself as being insane. Not yet. Not just yet. Do not question the missionary impulse, the voice said. Consider only what must be done.

“Three years,” I said, listening to the whir and the whine. “Three years out and three years back; a year or more in settle­ment on a planet we have never seen and for what?” I was rather self-pitying. Two years in suspended animation will do this to one; it seeps the joints with the humors of self-pity in an almost meta­physical fashion. “There must be some reason for this, above and beyond the simple fact of being. Am I right?”

The Federation reigns supreme, the voice pointed out. The Federation consists of all the known races of intelligence living together in harmony and trust. Races which show primitive in­telligence but have not been absorbed into the Federation must be for their own protection. If not, they might emerge into sav­agery and barbarism, attack the Federation with great weapons which were beyond their true means to control. They would have to be eliminated, billions upon billions of sentient creatures. Better to absorb them into the Federation.

“That’s easy enough for you to say,” I responded. The ship took a dislocative lurch: a feeling of tumbling and revolving slowly in weightlessness came over me. I began to feel a loose sense of easy disconnection through me along with the self-pity, an aqueous twitch to the joints. How I revolved in the air! Yet my little mouth continued to emit its peeping and protesting syllables. The urge of man to establish his will even in the most perverse circumstances is remarkable. “After all you’re merely a voice. You bear no responsibility. I do. I’m the captain. This is Folsom’s Voy­age. We are going to Folsom’s Planet.”

Go back into suspension, the voice said.

“I can’t do that. You know that as well as I do; I’ve got to remain conscious for three twenty-four hour cycles. That’s part of the policies and procedures.” I had managed to stabilize, tightened my wrists and elbows around my knees, managed further to cease the rotation so that I floated like a fetus in the clear dim light of the hatch, the walls closing in on me. “Anyway, I don’t believe in you. You’re just a voice. Go away.”

You started this, the voice said rather petulantly. I was just going about my business being the spirit of the ship; you were the one who started this discussion. Personally I don’t care whether you talk to me or not. I’ve got my own tasks.

“Maybe the natives of Folsom’s Planet feel the same way about us,” I said suddenly, stricken by an idea, that idea, the first one in two years and three months assuming proportions of ex­citement that were, perhaps, somewhat beyond its legitimate due. “Maybe they don’t want to be interfered with. What right do we have to impose upon them? That’s what I’d like to know. For that matter what right do we have to call it Folsom’s Planet? They don’t call it that I’m sure. Even though, I added with a certain amount of pride, “it is going to be known, of course, as Folsom’s Planet through the rest of eternity.”

Indeed, the voice agreed, so there’s your answer right there.

“What? What answer?”

The answer to your question. Why is the Federation imposing its will upon Folsom’s Planet? So that it canbe Folsom’s Planet, safe throughout the rest of eternity, fulfilling its place in the great and peaceful confederation of all the races of Man.

“Circular,” I said vaguely, “that strikes me as being rather circular reasoning; that seems to be a flaw of logic, saying that the purpose of this is to incorporate Folsom’s Planet into the great and peaceful confederation of all the races of Man when really it’s the federation of all the races of Man which wants to incor­porate Folsom’sPlanet . If you see what I mean.” I said and gulped rather indelicately, feeling a sudden surge of revulsion, a contraction of the intestines sending a sheer stream of bile through the anterior portions of the intestine and then up by degrees into the cavities of the chest, into the esophagus itself. “Excuse me,” I said, “I feel rather ill.”

That’s all right, the voice said, you can be as ill as you want, it has nothing to do with the essential situation.

But too late, too late, whirling in the air, the weightlessness impinging upon me, I could feel the quiverings and the quaver­ings of the stomach and underneath that, the understanding that I might evacuate; there was the danger of vomiting under the state of weightlessness of which we had all been apprised before the voyage, and which our training itself had made additionally clear. Vomiting in weightlessness equaled suffocation and so I concentrated desperately upon holding my gorge within me, re­volving slowly, holding myself together, and all thoughts of the expedition, or our obligations to the natives of Folsom’s Planet, of the ethicality of the mission itself were subsumed in this larger necessity to control myself. No thoughts of the foundation, no thoughts as well of the other sleepers in the ship, nor of the hum from the transistors: the only thought being of control itself, the holding within and spinning then in the dank air deprived of gravitation. I feel unconscious overwhelming me once again, not an unconsciousness this time of the sedatives and the machinery which have controlled me but rather the sheer blank of disloca­tion, overwhelming, humming with the transistors, and at the cen­ter of this perhaps is some understanding of what or who the voice might have been . . . but there is no time to think of that at all as the powerful and deadly machines carry me to that mystery known as Folsom’s Planet where all, at last, will begin.