Various Fiction Page 9

  Which meant, of course, a wholesale suicide.

  “Look at it this way,” Fannia said. “If a guy plans on suiciding on Earth, what do we do?”

  “Arrest him?” Donnaught asked.

  “Not at first. We offer him anything he wants, if he just won’t do it. People offer the guy money, a job, their daughters, anything, just so he won’t do it. It’s taboo on Earth.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Fannia went on, “maybe fighting is just as taboo here. Maybe they’ll offer us fuel, if we’ll just stop.”

  Donnaught looked dubious, but Fannia felt it was worth a try.

  THEY pushed their way through the crowded city, to the entrance of the cache. The chief was waiting for them, beaming on his people like a jovial war god.

  “Are you ready to do battle?” he asked. “Or to surrender?”

  “Sure,” Fannia said. “Now, Donnaught!”

  He swung, and his mailed fist caught Donnaught in the ribs. Donnaught blinked.

  “Come on, you idiot, hit me back.”

  Donnaught swung, and Fannia staggered from the force of the blow. In a second they were at it like a pair of blacksmiths, mailed blows ringing from their armored hides.

  “A little lighter,” Fannia gasped, picking himself up from the ground. “You’re denting my ribs.” He belted Donnaught viciously on the helmet.

  “Stop it!” the chief cried. “This is disgusting!”

  “It’s working,” Fannia panted. “Now let me strangle you. I think that might do it.”

  Donnaught obliged by falling to the ground. Fannia clamped both hands around Donnaught’s armored neck, and squeezed.

  “Make believe you’re in agony, idiot,” he said.

  Donnaught groaned and moaned as convincingly as he could.

  “You must stop!” the chief screamed. “It is terrible to kill another!”

  “Then let me get some fuel,” Fannia said, tightening his grip on Donnaught’s throat.

  The chief thought it over for a little while. Then he shook his head.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “You are aliens. If you want to do this disgraceful thing, do it. But you shall not profane our religious relics.”

  DONNAUGHT and Fannia staggered to their feet. Fannia was exhausted from fighting in the heavy space armor; he barely made it up.

  “Now,” the chief said, “surrender at once. Take off your armor or do battle with us.”

  The thousands of warriors—possibly millions, because more were arriving every second—shouted their blood-wrath. The cry was taken up on the outskirts and echoed to the hills, where more fighting men were pouring down into the crowded plain.

  Fannia’s face contorted. He couldn’t give himself and Donnaught up to the Cascellans. They might be cooked at the next church supper. For a moment he considered going after the fuel and letting the damned fools suicide all they pleased.

  His mind an angry blank, Fannia staggered forward and hit the chief in the face with a mailed glove.

  The chief went down, and the natives backed away in horror. Quickly, the chief snapped out a knife and brought it up to his throat. Fannia’s hands closed on the chief’s wrists.

  “Listen to me,” Fannia croaked. “We’re going to take that fuel. If any man makes a move—if anyone kills himself—I’ll kill your chief.”

  The natives milled around uncertainly. The chief was struggling wildly in Fannia’s hands, trying to get a knife to his throat, so he could die honorably.

  “Get it,” Fannia told Donnaught, “and hurry it up.”

  The natives were uncertain just what to do. They had their knives poised at their throats, ready to plunge if battle was joined.

  “Don’t do it,” Fannia warned. “I’ll kill the chief and then he’ll never die a warrior’s death.”

  The chief was still trying to kill himself. Desperately, Fannia held on, knowing he had to keep him from suicide in order to hold the threat of death over him.

  “Listen, Chief,” Fannia said, eying the uncertain crowd. “I must have your promise there’ll be no more war between us. Either I get it or I kill you.”

  “Warriors!” the chief roared. “Choose a new ruler. Forget me and do battle!”

  The Cascellans were still uncertain, but knives started to lift.

  “If you do it,” Fannia shouted in despair, “I’ll kill your chief. I’ll kill all of you!”

  That stopped them.

  “I have powerful magic in my ship. I can kill every last man, and then you won’t be able to die a warrior’s death. Or get to heaven!”

  The chief tried to free himself with a mighty surge that almost tore one of his arms free, but Fannia held on, pinning both arms behind his back.

  “Very well,” the chief said, tears springing into his eyes. “A warrior must die by his own hand. You have won, alien.”

  The crowd shouted curses as the Earthmen carried the chief and the cans of fuel back to the ship. They waved their knives and danced up and down in a frenzy of hate.

  “Let’s make it fast,” Fannia said, after Donnaught had fueled the ship.

  He gave the chief a push and leaped in. In a second they were in the air, heading for Thetis and the nearest bar at top speed.

  The natives were hot for blood—their own. Every man of them pledged his life to wiping out the insult to their leader and god, and to their shrine.

  But the aliens were gone. There was nobody to fight.

  WE ARE ALONE

  They came not as conqueror or pilferers, but seekers of companionable intelligences . . .

  HAD THE LANDING been on Earth, or any of the planets of Sol system, Magglio would have guided the ship down with studied, offhand ease. But since they were out in the big, unknown galaxy, somewhere around Altair, he gripped the throttle in a bonecrushing embrace, ready to pour on the power if anything happened. Anything—what?

  Perspiration poured down his thin, tight face as he remembered the spaceman’s legends he had laughed at. Mirage-planets, where landing distances are dangerously deceptive; living planets, planets of death. It didn’t ease his mind any to know that none of these wonders had ever been discovered, since theirs was the first ship to venture into interstellar space. Such might be there—and that was enough.

  Salzman, the navigator, was trying the impossible stunt of reading six dials with one eye, while focusing the other on the red planet rushing up to meet them. He had a hand on the auxiliary power control, in case something happened to the main drive—or to Magglio. If he had had a third eye, it would have been watching Oliver, the engineer.

  Oliver was manning the big atomic cannon, in case of attack. He had it centered on the planet, all safeties off, and his finger was dangerously taut on the instigator-switch. He had partially convinced himself, during the last few days, that an alien space armada was waiting them, hovering just out of sight around the curve of the planet. Should he fire, just in hopes of scaring them of??

  As they came nearer, Salzman could make out the rolling contour of the land; the red of the planet resolved itself into a forest of pink, red and purple. Scattered through the forest were black dots which grew into towns and villages as they screamed down through the thickening atmosphere. He noted their positions automatically he was still too busy reading dials for them to register properly on his consciousness.

  Magglio had perspiration in his right eye, but he didn’t dare release a control to wipe it, or even to blink. The surface of the planet was looming beneath them, stretched as far as he could see. Perhaps it would split into a gigantic mouth, like the bidders on Pluto-base always said. Or perhaps—he tightened at the controls, waiting for something to happen.

  The ship screamed through the atmosphere as it decelerated—

  —but on the whole it was an uneventful landing.

  Magglio regained control of himself, found an open patch and set the ship down in an elegant skid. Oliver talked himself out of his fears long enough to
switch the cannon over to safety. Shakily, Salzman raised his hand and looked at the imprint of the throttle across his palm. It was all right, no hordes of attackers, no monsters—yet; no seventy-foot dragons or green-eyed ghouls. Only the red forest, a trifle singed where the ship ploughed across the treetops, but still peaceful.

  After a moment’s silence they began pounding each other on the back, shouting from sheer release of anxiety. Salzman picked up little Magglio, grinned in his face, and tossed him to Oliver. The engineer grunted when he caught him, looked puzzled for a moment, then decided his dignity was shot for the rest of the trip anyhow, and tossed him back to Salzman.

  “Easy, you apes,” Magglio said, regaining his feet and smoothing back his hair, “or I’ll turn you over to the Ufangies.”

  SALZMAN mussed the pilot’s hair again, grinning. He knew all about the Ufangies. They were a tribe of orange and black flying reptiles with fins for underwater work, who subsisted solely on human eyeballs.

  They were also an interesting example of legend-making, a part of the complex ‘natural’ history of space. The first men on Mars had been disappointed at not finding any intelligent life, so they spun yarns about Visties and Serbens, and scared grown men with tales of what was lurking on the Jovian moons. The Jovian explorers didn’t find any intelligence either—monsterous or human—so they added the eyeball-eating Ufangies, and pushed them to Saturn.

  Now that the solar system was Earth’s backyard—albeit a wild and lonely one—the horrors had supposedly fled to deep space. They might, the stories ran, be lurking anywhere, ready to pounce upon the unwary spaceman.

  Salzman wondered just how much Magglio believed in the things; he knew that the pilot wore a little charm on his wrist specifically designed to ward off aliens. Or, for that matter, how much Oliver believed in the hordes of attackers waiting to blast their ship.

  Or how much he himself believed in them. Salzman realized that he wasn’t immune, even though he knew that, in essence, all the stories said the same thing—there is intelligent life out there, just a bit farther than we’ve gone. That, he knew, was Earth’s hope. Any sort of intelligence, just so that we’re not alone in the immensity of space.

  They had landed early in the morning, and by the time they were organized for land reconnaissance it was noon. Salzman and Oliver finished the last of the atmosphere tests, while Magglio read a comic-book he had smuggled on board.

  “It’s O.K.,” Salzman said, squeezing into the operating chamber. “Breathable, without enough deviation from Earth-normal to matter. Anyone show up?”

  Magglio shook his head. He had been watching the front vision plate for any sign of curious natives.

  “Then we’ll visit them. Full armor, sidearms, breather and radio.”

  “Who you gonna talk to on the radio?” Magglio asked, then immediately said, “Oh, no!”

  “Yes,” Salzman replied, smiling pleasantly as he unpacked a blaster. “You’ll cover us.”

  “No,” Magglio said. “I wanna explore. I’m a hero too, see?”

  “No,” Salzman said, and that ended it. “I’ll take you out tomorrow, if everything goes right. But now—full security.”

  l

  Salzman and Oliver moved out through the hatch and climbed down the ladder curving around the side of the ship. Oliver was first; he put his foot down gingerly, half expecting the earth to open up under it, even though the snip was resting solidly enough.

  When they were both on the ground they waved to Magglio, and moved toward the forest. They were breathing the air of the planet, but aside from their faces, they were completely enclosed in light, radiation-proof armor.

  “Let me lead,” Salzman said to Oliver. The engineer was fingering his sidearm nervously as they approached the forest. Following the rough direction he had noticed from the air, Salzman started toward the nearest town.

  In the forest both men were prepared for any eventuality. Oliver kept his hand on the butt of his blaster, preparing himself for savages to come swarming out from behind the trees. Salzman, with more imagination, was ready for things to come dropping out of the sky, thrusting through the ground, materializing suddenly out of thin air, and a dozen other possibilities, simultaneously or one by one.

  The wind rustled the red branches; nothing happened.

  THE TOWN turned out to be a small village, and a silent one. Its wide, stone-paved streets were bare. Not an animal showed itself, not a bird flew overhead. Weapons ready, the two men explored one of the houses. It was built of white stone and pink woods, and showed a high degree of craftsmanship. Within there were chairs and couches, tables and stands.

  “They must be humans!” Oliver cried, when the shape of the furniture struck him. He started to sit down, then leaped up. “Might be booby trapped,” he muttered eyeing the chair accusingly.

  “It would be more logical to booby trap the doorway,” Salzman commented. He lowered himself into the chair. Oliver released his breath when it didn’t explode.

  “Built for something about our size,” he said. Suddenly, irrationally, he felt like Goldilocks, sitting in the little bear’s chair—the one that fitted just right. He laughed out loud, but didn’t bother explaining to Oliver. The literal-minded engineer would think he had cracked up.

  They walked to the next room, separated by an arched doorway, and stopped short. On tire walls were paintings—with human subjects!

  “Oh brother!” Oliver shouted. “They are human! Humans!” He slapped Salzman on the back so hard he almost stumbled into a wall.

  “But where in hell are they?” Salzman asked, moving quickly from painting to painting. The subjects were blondes, brunettes and redheads, male and female. They seemed entirely human, except for a pale, ethereal look that, could have been the artist’s technique.

  They hurried on through the house, barely noting the other rooms. Urns, garments, vases, writing instruments, all would be of interest later. Right now they wanted to find people.

  In the rear of the house they found a kitchen, with food still hot. The wood fire beneath the pots was smouldering feebly. “Someone sure left in a hurry,” Salzman said.

  Quickly they searched five more houses, and found them about the same. Some of the others were less orderly. Clothes were strewn around, sandals left in the middle of rooms. In two houses food had been spilled over the floor.

  “They left in a hell of a hurry,” Oliver said finally, as they stood in the street.

  “That’s for sure,” Salzman said. He pushed back his hood and scratched his blond, balding head. He wasn’t sure what to do next. His orders from the Foundation had been general. To survey the planets of a number of G-76 suns, in a specific sector, looking for Earth-type planets. If he found an inhabited one, to make contact with the natives if possible, and if they could be approached peacefully.

  He wasn’t sure if this constituted unpeaceful behavior or not. Oliver trailed behind him as he walked slowly up the street, wondering why the inhabitants could have fled.

  “I suppose they fled because of us,” Oliver said, paralleling his trend of thought.

  “Probably. These people are civilized, but not necessarily sophisticated. Who knows what they thought when they saw this ball of fire appear in the skies? The devil descending to the earth, perhaps.”

  “That’s by our standards,” Oliver objected, “how do we know they have superstitions of that sort?”

  “We don’t. But they’re similar to us in development, which argues a like nervous system. Like inventions argue a like mentality. I know that’s dubious, but I’ll keep it for a working hypothesis until I find something better.”

  “I wonder why they didn’t leave a rear-guard,” Oliver mused. “Or arrange an ambush of some sort. Just leaving their homes that way . . . Well, now what?”

  “We track them,” Salzman said, coming to a decision. “We show them what we look like. We make peaceful gestures, and try to get them to talk.”

  Oliver nodded, and they start
ed to the other end of the village.

  THE UNDERBRUSH was trampled and torn, showing the direction in which the exodus had gone. They had no trouble following it; it was big enough to have been made by a bulldozer. On the way, Salzman called Magglio and brought him up to date.

  “If you capture a small blonde,” Magglio told them, his voice crackly in the earphones, “throw her over your shoulder and bring her back to me. But if they’re a tribe of twenty-foot Serbens, remember, I warned you!”

  “Right,” Salzman said cheerfully, and signed off.

  As they moved through the forest, something kept nagging at Salzman’s mind, bothering him. He looked around at the big, silent red trees, the slightly waving branches. Nothing wrong there. But the feeling continued, just beyond recognition. He glanced at Oliver. The big engineer was plodding along beside him, kicking up dirt with his boots. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it—and then he had it.

  “Notice something funny?” he asked Oliver.

  “What?” Oliver said, feeling automatically for his blaster.

  “No animals. No birds. No nothing.”

  “Perhaps they haven’t evolved,” Oliver said, after due thought.

  “They must have,” Salzman told him. “The humans and plants can’t be the only things on this planet. Nature was never that selective.”

  “They’re hiding, then. Timid, like people.”

  Salzman nodded, but that didn’t seem to cover it. The forest was too quiet; it seemed to be waiting for something to happen. His imagination started to play tricks on him again, weaving fantastic but plausible reasons for everything. Perhaps the forest is one big entity, he thought, and the animals and humans are symbiotes. Nuts, he told himself. Why did they build villages then?

  They walked on, sweating copiously inside their plastic armor, following the spoor of the villagers. In an hour they were out of one part of the forest, following the trail across a narrow valley. It tightened, climbing between stubby mountains, heading steadily up. Both men were winded, but they pushed on. Finally they rounded a bend in the trail and found themselves facing a blockade. It was made of piled branches and rocks, and stood about twelve feet high. On either side of it were smooth, towering boulders.