The Ethical Engineer

That mores is strictly a matter of local custom cannot be
denied. But that ethics is pure opinion also...? Maybe there
are times for murder, and theft and slavery....

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reasons spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Alexander Pope
Essay on Man

Jason dinAlt looked unhappily at the two stretchers as they were
carried by. "Are they at it again?" he asked.

Brucco nodded, the scowl permanently ingrained now on his hawklike
face. "We have only one thing to be thankful for. That is—so far at
least—they haven't used any weapons on each other."

Jason looked down unbelievingly at the shredded clothing, crushed
flesh and broken bones. "The absence of weapons doesn't appear to make
much difference when two Pyrrans start fighting. It seems impossible
that this damage could be administered bare-handed."

"Well it was. Even you should know that much about Pyrrus by now. We
take our fighting very seriously. But they never think how much more
work it makes for me. Now I have to patch these two idiots up and try
to find room for them in the ward." He stalked away, irritated and
annoyed as always. Jason usually laughed at the doctor's irascible
state, but not today.

Today, and for some days past, he had found himself living with a
persistent feeling of irritation, that had arrived at the same time as
his discovery that it is far easier to fight a war than to administer
a peace. The battle at the perimeter still continued, since the massed
malevolence of the Pyrran life forms were not going to call a truce
simply because the two warring groups of humans had done so. There was
battle on the perimeter and a continual feeling of unrest inside the
city. So far there had been very little traffic between the city
Pyrrans and those living outside the walls, and what contact there had
been usually led to the kind of violence he had just witnessed. The
only minor note of hope in this concert of discord was the fact that
no one had died—as yet—in any of these fearsome hand-to-hand
conflicts. In spite of the apparent deadliness of the encounters all
of the Pyrrans seemed to understand that, despite past hatreds, they
were all really on the same side. A distant rumble from the clouded
sky broke through his thoughts.

"There is a ship on the radar," Meta said, coming out of the
ground-control office and squinting up at the overcast. "I wonder if
it is that ecology expedition that Brucco arranged—or the cargo ship
from Ondion?"

"We'll find out in a few minutes," Jason said, happy to forget his
troubles for the moment in frank admiration, since just looking at
Meta was enough to put a golden edge on this gloom-filled day.
Standing there, head back searching the sky, she managed to be
beautiful even in the formless Pyrran coverall. Jason put his arms
around her waist and exacted a great deal of pleasure from kissing the
golden length of her up-stretched throat.

"Oh, Jason ... not now," she said in exasperation. Pyrran minds, by
necessity, run along one track at a time, and at the present moment
she was thinking about the descending spaceship. With a quick motion,
scarcely aware of her action, she pulled his hands from her and pushed
him away, an easy enough thing for a Pyrran girl to do. But in doing
so she half fractured one of his wrists, numbed the other, and knocked
Jason to the ground.

"Darling ... I'm sorry," she gasped, suddenly realizing what she had
done, bending quickly to help him up.

"Get away, you lady weight-lifter," he growled, pushing aside the
proffered hand and struggling to his feet. "When are you going to
realize that I'm only human, not made of chrome steel bars like the
rest of your people...." He stifled the rest of his words in disgust,
at himself, his temper, this deadly planet and the cantankerousness of
its citizens that was scratching away at his nerves. He turned and
stamped away, angry at himself for taking out his vile mood on Meta,
but still too annoyed to make peace.

Meta watched him leave, trying to say something that would end this
foolish quarrel, but unable to. The largest blank in the Pyrran
personality was an almost complete lack of knowledge of human nature,
and her struggle to fill in the gaps—gaps she was only just beginning
to realize existed—was a difficult one. The stronger emotions of hate
and fear were no strangers to her; but for the first time she was
discovering how difficult and complex was this unusual feeling of
love. She let Jason go because she was incapable of any other action.
Of course she could stop him by force, but if she had learned anything
in the past few weeks, it was the discovery that this was one area
where he was very sensitive. There was no doubt that she was far
stronger than he—physically—and he did not like to be reminded about
it. She went back into the ground-control room, almost eager to deal
with the impersonal faces of the dials and scopes, material and
unchanging entities that posed no conflicting problems.

Jason stood at the edge of the field and watched the ship come in for
a landing, his anger forgotten temporarily in the presence of this
break in routine. Perhaps this was the shipful of scientific eggheads
that Brucco was expecting; he hoped so. It would be a pleasant treat
to have a conversation with someone about a topic more universal than
the bore dimensions of guns. With practiced eye he watched the landing
which was a little sloppy, either a new pilot or an old one who didn't
care much. It was a small ship so not many people would be aboard.
Then the spacer turned for a moment, in a landing correction, and he
had a quick glimpse of a serial number and tantalizingly familiar
insignia on its stern—where had he seen that before?

The ship touched down and the flaring rockets died. There was only the
click of cooling metal from the ship: no one emerged, nor did any of
the Pyrrans seem interested enough in the newcomer to approach it.
That must mean that no one had any business with it, and, of course,
no curiosity either, for this along with imagination was in very short
supply on the war-torn planet. Since no one else was making any moves,
Jason went forward to investigate for himself.

A stingwing that had escaped the perimeter guards dived towards him
and he blasted it automatically with his gun. The corpse thudded to
the ground and the soil churned around it as the insectile scavengers
fought for the flesh; only bare bones remained by the time he had
taken two paces.

A muffled whine of motors told him that the lower hatch was opening,
and Jason watched as a hairline crack appeared in the thick metal,
then widened as the heavy door ground outwards. Through the opening he
had a glimpse of a figure muffled in a heavy-duty spacesuit. That must
be Meta's work, she would have contacted the ship by radio while it
was on its way down and explained the standing orders that no
off-worlders were to be allowed out of their ships unless wearing the
heaviest armor. Since the armed truce between the human inhabitants
there had been a lessening of the relentless warfare the Pyrran life
forms waged against the city, but only to a slight degree. Deadly
beasts still abounded, and the air was thick with toxic diseases. A
stranger, unprotected, would be ill in five minutes, dead within
ten—or much sooner if a horndevil or other beast got to him in the
interval.

Jason felt a justified pride that he could walk this planet under his
own power. The natives, adapted to the deadliness and heavy gravity
since birth, were still his superiors, but he was the only off-worlder
who could stand the dangers of Pyrrus. His gun whined out of his power
holster into his waiting hand as he searched for some target to use
his talents on. An armored piece of nastiness, with a lot of legs, was
crawling into hiding under a rock and he blasted it neatly with a
single shot. The gun snapped back into the holster and he turned to
the open door of the spacer, his morale greatly improved.

"Welcome to Pyrrus," he told the ungainly figure that clumped out of
the ship. There was a hefty maser-projector clutched in the armored
gloves and whoever was inside the suit, the face was invisible behind
the thick and tinted faceplate, seemed exceedingly nervous, turning to
look in all directions.

"Don't worry," Jason said, fighting to keep a tone of smug
satisfaction out of his voice, "I'll take care of things for you. I
don't know what kind of horror stories you may have heard about
Pyrrus—but they're all true. That's a nice looking heat ray you have
there, but I doubt if you could move fast enough to use it."

The figure lowered the gun and fumbled for a switch on the front of
the space armor, it clicked and a speaker diaphragm rustled.

"I'm looking for a man called Jason dinAlt. Can you tell me if he is
on this planet or if he has left?"

It was impossible to tell the speaker's tone from the rasping
diaphragm, and no face was visible that might betray an emotion. This
was the moment when Jason should have shown caution, and have
remembered that there were thousands of policemen scattered across the
galaxy who would heartily enjoy putting him under arrest. Yet he
couldn't imagine any of them going to the trouble of following him
here. And certainly there could be very little danger from a
spacesuited man with a rifle, not to the man who had learned to take
Pyrrus on its own terms, and live.

"I'm Jason dinAlt," he said. "What do you want me for?"

"I've come a long way to find you," the speaker rasped. "Now"—the
gloved hand pointed—"what is THAT?"

Jason's reactions were instantaneous, conditioned to move without
thought. He wheeled, crouched, the gun in his hand and finger
quivering lightly on the trigger, pointed in the indicated direction.
There was nothing unusual to be seen, just an empty field and the
control building at the edge.

"Whatever are you talking about ..." Jason asked, then stopped as it
became very obvious what the stranger had been talking about. The
large, flanged mouth of the maser-projector ground into the small of
his back. His own gun snapped halfway out of its holster, buzzed
briefly, then slipped back as he realized his position.

"That's much better," the stranger said. "If you attempt to move,
turn, lower your gun hand or do anything I don't like I'll pull this
trigger and...."

"I know," Jason sighed, careful to stand with every muscle frozen.
"You will pull the trigger and burn a nice round hole through my
backbone and intestines. But I would just like to know why? Who is it
that is so interested in my worthless old carcass that they were
willing to pay interstellar freight charges to send you and that
oversize toaster all the way here in order to threaten it?"