Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (16 page)

Here there was canned applause. Dabney held up his hand for attention.
He thought. Visibly.

"But," he said urgently, "I admit that I am disturbed by the
precipitancy of the action that has been taken. I feel as if I were like
some powerful djinni giving gifts which the recipients may use without
thought."

More canned applause, inserted because he had given instructions for it
whenever he paused. The communicator-operator at Luna City took pleasure
in following instructions exactly. Dabney held up his hand again. Again
he performed feats of meditation in plain view.

"At the moment," he said anxiously, "as the author of this truly
magnificent achievement, I have to use the same intellect which produced
it, to examine the possibility of its ill-advised use. May not
explorers—who took off without my having examined their plans and
precautions—may not over-hasty users of my gift to humanity do harm?
May they not find bacteria the human body cannot resist? May they not
bring back plagues and epidemics? Have they prepared themselves to use
my discovery only for the benefit of mankind? Or have they been
precipitous? I shall have to apply myself to the devising of methods by
which my discovery—made so that Humanity might attain hitherto
undreamed-of-heights—I shall have to devise means by which it will be
truly a blessing to mankind!"

Dabney, of course, had tasted the limelight. All the world considered
him the greatest scientist of all time—except, of course, the people
who knew something about science. But the first actual voyagers in space
had become immediately greater heroes than himself. It was intolerable
to Dabney to be restricted to taking bows on programs in which they
starred. So he wrote a star part for himself.

The bearded biologist who followed him was to have lectured on the
pictures and reports forwarded to him beforehand. But he could not
ignore so promising a lead to show how much he knew. So he lectured
authoritatively on the danger of extra-terrestrial disease-producing
organisms being introduced on Earth. He painted a lurid picture, quoting
from the history of pre-sanitation epidemics. He wound up with a
specific prophecy of something like the Black Death of the middle ages
as lurking among the stars to decimate humanity. He was a victim of the
well-known authority-trauma which affects some people on television when
they think millions of other people are listening to them. They depart
madly from their scripts to try to say something startling enough to
justify all the attention they're getting.

The broadcast ended with a sentimental live commercial in which a
dazzlingly beautiful girl melted into the arms of the worthy young man
she had previously scorned. She found him irresistible when she noticed
that he was wearing a suit she instantly knew by its quality could only
come from Harvey's.

On the planet of glaciers and volcanoes, Holden fumed.

"Dammit!" he protested. "They talk like we're lepers! Like if we ever
come back we'll be carriers of some monstrous disease that will wipe out
the human race! As a matter of fact, we're no more likely to catch an
extra-terrestrial disease than to catch wry-neck from sick chickens!"

"That broadcast's nothing to worry about," said Cochrane.

"But it is!" insisted Holden. "Dabney and that fool biologist presented
space-travel as a reason for panic! They could have every human being on
Earth scared to death we'll bring back germs and everybody'll die of the
croup!"

Cochrane grinned.

"Good publicity—if we needed it! Actually, they've boosted the show.
From now on every presentation has a dramatic kick it didn't have
before. Now everybody will feel suspense waiting for the next show. Has
Jamison got the Purple Death on the Planet of Smoky Hilltops? Will
darling Alicia Keith break out in green spots next time we watch her on
the air? Has Captain Al of the star-roving space-ship breathed in spores
of the Swelling Fungus? Are the space-travellers doomed? Tune in on our
next broadcast and see! My dear Bill, if we weren't signed up for
sponsors' fees, I'd raise our prices after this trick!"

Holden looked unconvinced. Cochrane said kindly:

"Don't worry! I could turn off the panic tomorrow—as much panic as
there is. Kursten, Kasten, Hopkins and Fallowe had a proposal they set
great store by. They wanted to parcel out a big contest for a name for
mankind's second planet. They had regional sponsors lined up. It would
have been worldwide! Advertisers were drooling over the prospect of
people proposing names for this planet on box-tops! They were planning
five million prize-money—and who'd be afraid of us then? But I turned
it down because we haven't got a helicopter. We couldn't stage enough
different shows from this planet to keep it going the minimum six weeks
for a contest like that. Instead, we're taking off in a couple of hours.
Jones agrees. The astronomers back home have picked out another Sol-type
star that ought to have planets. We're going to run over and see what
pickings we can find. Not too far—only twenty-some light-years!"

He regarded Holden quizzically to see how the last phases affected him.
Holden didn't notice it.

"A contest—It doesn't make sense!"

"I know it isn't sense!" said Cochrane. "It's public-relations! I'm
beginning to get my self-respect back. I see now that a
space-exploration job is only as good as its public-relations man!"

He went zestfully to find Babs to tell her to leave the communicator-set
and let queries go unanswered as a matter of simple business policy.

The sling which swung out of the airlock now became busy. They had
landed on this planet, and they were going to leave it, and there had
been a minimum of actual contact with its soil. So Jamison took his
leggings—put on for the show—and he and Bell went down to the ground
and foraged through the woods. Jamison carried one of Johnny Simms'
guns, which he regarded with acute suspicion, and Bell carried cameras.
They photographed trees and underbrush, first as atmosphere and then
with fanatic attention to leaves and fruits or flowers. Bell got
pictures of one of the small, furry bipeds that Cochrane and Holden had
spied when Babs was with them. He got a picture of what he believed to
be a spider-web—it was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on
Earth—and rather fearfully looked for the monster that could string
thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine. Then he found that it was
not a snare at all. It was a construction at whose center something
undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it. Some creature had made
an unapproachable home for itself where its young would not be assailed
by predators.

Al, the pilot, went out of the lock and descended to the ground and went
as far as the edge of the ash-ring. But he did not go any farther. He
wandered about unhappily, pretending that he did not want to go into the
woods. He tried to appear quite content to view half-burnt trees for his
experience of the first extra-terrestrial planet on which men had
landed. He did kick up some pebbles—water-rounded—and one of them had
flecks of what looked like gold in it. Al regarded it excitedly, and
then thought of freight-rates. But he did scrabble for more. Presently
he had a pocket-f of small stones which would be regarded with
rapture by his nieces and nephews because they had come from the stars.
Actually, they were quite commonplace minerals. The flecks of what
looked like gold were only iron pyrates.

Jones did not leave the ship. He was puttering. Nor Alicia. Holden urged
her to take a walk, and she said quietly:

"Johnny's out with a gun. He's hunting. I don't like to be with Johnny
when he may be disappointed."

She smiled, and Holden sourly went away. There had been no particular
consequences of Johnny Simms' inability to remember what was right and
what was wrong. But Holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives
look patient. Even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to
illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. This attitude is instinctive.
It is what is called the fine, deep-rooted impulse to chivalry which is
one of the prides of modern culture.

Holden settled dourly down at the communicator to get an outgoing call
to Earth, when there were some hundreds of incoming calls backed up. By
sheer obstinacy and bad manners he made it. He got a connection to a
hospital where he was known, and he talked to its bacteriologist. The
bacteriologist was competent, but not yet famous. With Holden giving
honest guesses at the color of the sunlight, and its probable
ultra-violet content, and with careful estimates of the exactness with
which burning vegetation here smelled like Earth-plants, they arrived at
imprecise but common sense conclusions. Of the hundreds of thousands of
possible organic compounds, only so many actually took part in the
life-processes of creatures on Earth. Yet there were hundreds of
thousands of species prepared to make use of anything usable. If the
sunlight and temperature of the two worlds were similar, it was somewhat
more than likely that the same chemical compounds would be used by
living things on both. So that there could be micro-organisms on the
new planet which could be harmful. But on the other hand, either they
would be familiar in the toxins they produced—and human bodies could
resist them—or else they would be new compounds to which humans would
react allergically. Basically, then, if anybody on the ship developed
hives, they had reason to be frightened. But so long as nobody sneezed
or broke out in welts, their lives were probably safe.

This comforting conclusion took a long time to work out. Meanwhile Babs
and Cochrane had swung down to the ground and went hiking. Cochrane was
armed as before, though he had no experience as a marksman. In
television shows he had directed the firing of weapons shooting blank
charges—cut to a minimum so they wouldn't blast the mikes. He knew what
motions to go through, but nothing else.

They did not explore in the same direction as their first excursion. The
ship was to take off presently, as soon as this planet had turned enough
for the space-ship's nose to point nearly in the direction of their next
target. They had two hours for exploration.

They came upon something which lay still across their path, like a great
serpent. Cochrane looked at it startledly. Then he saw that the round,
glistening seeming snake was fastened to the ground by rootlets. It was
a plant which grew like a creeper, absorbing nourishment from a vast
root-area. Somewhere, no doubt, it would rear upward and spread out
leaves to absorb the sun's light. It used, in a way, the principle of
those lateral wells which in dry climates gather water too scarce to
collect in merely vertical holes.

They went on and on, admiring and amazed. All about them were
curiosities of adaptation, freaks of ecological adjustment, marvels of
symbiotic cooperation. A botanist would have swooned with joy at the
material all about. A biologist would have babbled happily. Babs and
Cochrane admired without information. They walked interestedly but
unawed among the unparalleled. Back on Earth they knew as much as most
people about nature—practically nothing at all. Babs had never seen any
wild plants before. She was fascinated by what she saw, and exclaimed at
everything. But she did not realize a fraction of the marvels on which
her eyes rested. On the whole, she survived.

"It's a pity we haven't got a helicopter," Cochrane said regretfully.
"If we could fly around from place to place, and send back pictures ...
We can't do it in the ship ... It would burn more fuel than we've got."

Babs wrinkled her forehead.

"Doctor Holden's badly worried because we can't make as alluring a
picture as he'd like."

Cochrane halted, to watch something which was flat like a disk of
gray-green flesh and which moved slowly out of their path with
disquieting writhing motions. It vanished, and he said:

"Yes. Bill's an honest man, even if he is a psychiatrist. He wants
desperately to do something for the poor devils back home who're so
pitifully frustrated. There are tens of millions of men who can't hope
for anything better than to keep the food and shelter supply intact for
themselves and their families. They can't even pretend to hope for more
than that. There isn't more than so much to go around. But Bill wants to
give them hope. He figures that without hope the world will turn
madhouse in another generation. It will."

"You're trying to do something about that!" said Babs quickly. "Don't
you think you're offering hope to everybody back on Earth?"

"No!" snapped Cochrane. "I'm not trying anything so abstract as
furnishing hope to a frustrated humanity! Nobody can supply an
abstraction! Nobody can accomplish an abstraction! Everything that's
actually done is specific and real! Maybe you can find abstract
qualities in it after it's done, but I'm a practical man! I'm not trying
to produce an improved psychological climate, suitable for debilitated
psychos! I'm trying to get a job done!"

"I've wondered," admitted Babs, "what the job is."

Cochrane grimaced.

"You wouldn't believe it, Babs."

There was an odd quivering underfoot. Trees shook. There was no other
peculiarity anywhere. Nothing fell. No rocks rolled. In a valley among
volcanoes, where the smoke from no less than six cones could be seen at
once, temblors would not do damage. What damage mild shakings could do
would have been done centuries since.

Babs said uneasily:

"That feels—queer, doesn't it?"

Cochrane nodded. But just as he and Babs had never been conditioned to
be afraid of animals, they had been conditioned by air-travel at home
and space-travel to here against alarm at movements of their
surroundings. Temblors were evidently frequent at this place. Trees were
anchored against them as against prevailing winds in exposed situations.
Landslides did not remain poised to fall. Really unstable slopes had
been shaken down long ago.