All Judgment Fled (3 page)

 

 

"Don't talk when I'm interrupting, dammit . . . !"

 

 

For perhaps five minutes Control battled against the static with a complete
lack of success, then the colonel's voice came again.

 

 

"P-One to P-Two. You may break contact with Control without their
permission. I take full responsibility."

 

 

For a long time they simply luxuriated in the peace and quiet, then Walters
said angrily, "You know, that noise was bad. You, sir, were practically
tying yourself in knots and the doctor had his eyes squeezed shut and
all his teeth showing. This is not good. Noise, any loud or unnecessary
or unpleasant noise, especially in a confined space like this, makes
me irritable. I'm beginning to dread these lectures three times a
day. Somebody should do something about them. Somebody with authority!"

 

 

"I agree," said McCullough.

 

 

"Of course you agree!" Walters' voice was high-pitched, almost shrewish.
"You always agree, but that's
all
you do . . .!"

 

 

"I think Morrison intends doing something," Berryman said quickly. He looked
worriedly from Walters to McCullough and back, then went on. "And the doctor
is
a rather agreeable man, if a little hard to pin down at times.
Myself, I expected him to look clinical occasionally and perhaps talk
a bit dirty. At very least he should have spent a few days mentally
dissecting us, explaining the real truth about our relationship with
our first Teddy bear, and generally showing us what monstrous perverts
we are under our warm, friendly exteriors. But he doesn't talk like a
psychologist, or look like one or even admit to being one."

 

 

Berryman was trying hard to smooth things down and he was succeeding,
but with his eyes he was asking the doctor for a little help.

 

 

"Well now," said McCullough gravely, "you must understand first that,
if anything, I would be an Eysenckian rather than a Freudian psychologist
and so would never have had an occasion to use a couch professionally.
But there was one period when I did some valuable research, if I do say
so myself, on the behavior and psychology of worms.

 

 

"There were some quite intriguing incidents," McCullough went on. "They
had numbers instead of names, so there is no question of an unethical
disclosure of privileged information, and they had such a low order of
intelligence that to get through to them at all we had to stimulate the
clitellum with a mild electric . . ."

 

 

Berryman shook his head.

 

 

"Well, I did try," said McCullough, projecting a hurt expression. He went
on, "As for making noises like a psychologist and pushing your mental
buttons, this would be a waste of time. You are both well adjusted,
self-aware, intellectually and emotionally honest and already well versed
in the terminology, so that any problem which arises is immediately
recognized, classified and dealt with by the person concerned. So there
isn't anything for me to do even if I was supposed to do it."

 

 

For perhaps a minute there was silence, then Walters said, "I'm sorry I
blew up at you, Doctor. If I'd been using my head at all, I should have
realized that anyone who turns nasty with a psychologist ends up being
flattered to death."

 

 

"My point exactly!" said McCullough to Berryman. "He can even see through
my subtle attempts at manipulation by flattery!"

 

 

Berryman nodded and said, "Now if only the aliens on the Ship are worms
. . ."

 

 

The crew of P-Two were back to normal.

 

 

But on a wider, more objective level the situation was definitely not
normal. The space inside P-Two not taken up with control, communications
and life-support systems, left very little room for either movement
or privacy. Their total living space was a hollow cylinder seven feet
in diameter and four deep, and this was further reduced by couches,
control consoles and instrumentation which projected into it. Nobody
could move more than a few inches without sticking an elbow or a knee in
someone's face or stomach. Even the sanitary arrangements gave visual
privacy only. And because their tanked oxygen was restricted, trips
outside the ship were kept down to a total of two hours per week, and
they just could not be alone for the length of time required by normal
introverts. Instead they lay strapped loosely into their couches for an
hour or so each day, pitting one muscle against another, talking or not
talking, listening to incoming signals and smelling to high heaven.

 

 

In living quarters which compared unfavorably with the most unenlightened
penal institutions, the crew of P-Two -- and P-One, presumably -- shared a
not always peaceful coexistence. They tried to be polite and considerate
to each other, but not too much so. The effort of guarding one's tongue
continually, of
always
being polite, would have been so much of a
strain that the emotional backlash would have led inevitably to violence.

 

 

Instead they were normally bad-tempered or sarcastic, while remaining at
all times sensitive to potentially dangerous changes of atmosphere. If
they sensed that the subject of their displeasure or sarcasm was becoming
too strongly affected by it, the remarks were allowed to grow to ridiculous
and laughable proportions. They became adepts at walking this psychological
tightrope. But they were subject to severe external pressures as well.

 

 

Earth had decided to investigate the Ship with a group of trained
astronauts rather than a cross-section of the best scientific brains,
and all things considered, it had been a sound decision. But Earth
desperately wanted things to go right at the Ship. They wanted a smooth
social and cultural contact and they badly wanted to find out everything
they possibly could about alien science and technology. As a result,
they were trying to cover themselves both ways by doing everything
possible to make scientific investigators out of their astronauts.

 

 

The low signal to noise ratio during some of the lectures was merely an
added irritant. The real trouble was that the lectures themselves were a
constant reminder to every one of them of what lay at the end of the trip.

 

 

Any well-adjusted person could face up to a problem once it was defined.
But when nothing at all was known about it other than that it is in
the life-and-death category and that it
must
somehow be solved,
even the sanest personality could show signs of strain.

 

 

They were now three weeks away in time from the alien Ship . . .

 

 

After one lecture so speculative that it was almost pure science fiction,
Walters said, "It would be nice if we could simply hold our hands out
in the universal gesture of peace. But what is the universal gesture of
peace to an octopus or an intelligent vegetable?"

 

 

McCullough said, "We don't usually make gestures of peace at animals
or vegetables, so their gestures toward us are either defensive or
hostile. Tortoises retreat under their shells, octopuses squirt ink at
us, and plants grow thorns if they are able. Offhand I'd say that if an
animal or being behaves normally when it is approached by a stranger --
that is, if it doesn't take any offensive or defensive action -- then
it is either peacefully inclined, or suffering from an impairment of
sensory equipment or brainpower. But this is an unsatisfactory answer,
since it may involve a being whose normal reactions will be just as
strange to us as its abnormal ones. I don't know."

 

 

"Let us suppose," Berryman said, "that the Ship is solidly packed with
a vitamin-enriched sandy substance -- except for certain hollowed-out
areas for power and control systems -- with provision made for renewing
the food element and eliminating wastes. Furniture, bedding and so on
would be virtually nonexistent, and control levers and -- and push pads
they would have to be, rather than push buttons -- would be positioned
all the way around and perhaps inside the mechanism they were designed
to control. This being would curl itself around and insinuate itself
into the machine it was operating . . ."

 

 

"Not worms again," said Walters.

 

 

"I'm talking about an intelligent, wormlike life-form," the Command Pilot
went on. "A worm who stayed out of its burrow long enough to look up and
wonder at the stars . . ."

 

 

"Oh, very poetic," said Walters.

 

 

"Shuddup you . . . A worm who developed intelligence and the degree of
cooperation which made possible civilization and technological progress.
And now, Doctor, suppose you were confronted by a member of such a species.
With your specialist knowledge of the physiology and motivations of what
amounts to the aboriginal ancestors of these beings, could you arrive
at an understanding with them?"

 

 

McCullough thought for a moment, then said, "An analogy would be an
alien able to understand a human being from data gained while examining
a baboon. I don't think it is possible. In any case the intellectual
and evolutionary gap between your star-traveling worms and mine is much
greater than that between a man and a baboon. This is why we are being
subjected to these lectures on the mating habits of armadillos and things
. . ."

 

 

"Things, he says." Berryman made a face and began passing out lunch.

 

 

They nearly always ate after a discussion about the beings on the Ship,
but Berryman and Walters had stopped mentioning the psychological
connection between feelings of insecurity and eating. The only person
to speak at all during the meal was Walters, who said thoughtfully,
"You know, Doctor, there must be
something
you can do!"

 

 

Three days later something came up which the doctor
could
do. Something, apparently, which
only
the doctor could do.

 

 

"Morrison here. Put the doctor on, please."

 

 

"Yes, sir," said McCullough.

 

 

"Captain Hollis is having trouble. A -- a skin condition, among other
things. He won't sleep without heavy sedation and we're running out of that.
I realize it is a lot to ask, but I'd prefer you to see him rather than
prescribe from where you are. Can you come over to P-One, Doctor?"

 

 

Instinctively McCullough looked out at the stars. He could not see P-One
because it was visible only on the radar screen. The last time anyone
had seen it was when they were being inserted into orbit above Earth.
He cleared his throat and said, "Yes, of course."

 

 

"At this distance there is an element of risk involved."

 

 

"I realize that."

 

 

"Very well. Thank you."

 

 

When the colonel had signed off, Walters gave McCullough a long, steady
look, then held up three fingers. He said, "One, you're stupid. Two,
you're brave. Or three, you've been brainwashed."

 

 

 

 

chapter four

 

 

The personnel launcher was a light-alloy rigid pipe fifty feet long, built
up in sections and slotted together without projections of any kind. It was
assembled forward so as to form a continuation of the center line of the
ship, and the charge which tossed its human missile into space was matched
by an equal thrust directed aft so as to avoid the necessity of course
corrections. On this occasion the whole ship had to be aimed at the target
on a radar bearing rather than a visual sighting.

 

 

Berryman threaded the launching harness onto the first section of pipe
and, while Walters completed the erection, the command pilot harnessed
McCullough to the stupid contraption. It was a little odd that McCullough
regarded it as a contraption now, when on Earth, after studying drawings
and operating principles and seeing the demonstration films, he had
considered it an ingenious and foolproof device.

 

 

The harness itself was a somewhat lopsided fabrication of thin metal tubing
built around the hollow cylinder which fitted over the launching pipe,
with the bulky oxygen and reaction tanks grouped on one side and the body
webbing on the other. But when a man was attached to the harness with
his arms drawn back and joined behind him and his legs bent vertically
at the knees -- there were special cuffs and stirrups fitted so that
this could be done comfortably -- the device began to assume a degree
of symmetry. With the man added the center of thrust roughly coincided
with the center of gravity so that the system had only a slight tendency
to spin after launching.

 

 

"The push will send you off at just under fifteen miles per hour,"
Berryman told McCullough for the third or fourth time, "so if our shooting
is very good and you hit P-One at this speed, it would be like running
into a brick wall. You would hurt yourself, you might damage or rupture
your suit and the impact could wreck the other ship . . ."

 

 

"Don't joke about things like that, Berryman! Besides, you'll make him
nervous."

 

 

"I wasn't joking, Colonel," the command pilot replied. Then to McCullough
he went on, "I was trying to make you cautious rather than nervous,
Doctor. Just remember to check your velocity with respect to the other
ship in plenty of time. Start decelerating when you are about a mile off,
come to a stop not too close, then edge in on your gas motor. You have
a good reserve of reaction mass, your air will last for six hours, and
the trip will take roughly three and a half hours since P-One is over
fifty miles away . . ."