The Robert Silverberg Science Fiction MEGAPACK® (14 page)

I’m sure you are, I thought.

“We have only begun our return to space travel,” said First. “Thus far we have encountered no other intelligent races. And so we regard this meeting as fortunate. It is our wish to initiate contact with you. Quite likely some aspects of your technology would be valuable to us. And there will be much that you wish to purchase from us. Therefore we would be glad to establish trade relations with you.”

As you did with the Garvalekkinon people, I said to myself.

I said, “We can speak of that tomorrow, Captain. I grow tired now. But before we break contact for the day, allow me to offer you the beginning of a solution to the mystery of the disappearance of the blue sun.”

The four eyes widened. The slitted mouths parted in what seemed surely to be excitement.

“Can you do that?”

I took a deep breath.

“We have some preliminary knowledge. Do you see the place opposite the iron star, where energies boil and circle in the sky? As we entered this system, we found certain evidence there that may explain the fate of your former blue sun. You would do well to center your investigations on that spot.”

“We are most grateful,” said First.

“And now, Captain, I must bid you good night. Until tomorrow, Captain.”

“Until tomorrow,” said the alien.

* * * *

I was awakened in the middle of my sleep period by Lina Sorabji and Bryce-Williamson, both of them looking flushed and sweaty. I sat up, blinking and shaking my head.

“It’s the alien ship,” Bryce-Williamson blurted, “It’s approaching the black hole.”

“Is it, now?”

“Dangerously close,” said Lina. “What do they think they’re doing? Don’t they know?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I suggested that they go exploring there. Evidently they don’t regard it as a bad idea.”

“You sent them there?” she said incredulously.

With a shrug I said, “I told them that if they went over there they might find the answer to the question of where one of their missing suns went. I guess they’ve decided to see if I was right.”

“We have to warn them,” said Bryce-Williamson. “Before it’s too late. Especially if we’re responsible for sending them there. They’ll be furious with us once they realize that we failed to warn them of the danger.”

“By the time they realize it,” I replied calmly, “it
will
be too late. And then their fury won’t matter, will it? They won’t be able to tell us how annoyed they are with us. Or to report to their home world, for that matter, that they had an encounter with intelligent aliens who might be worth exploiting.”

He gave me an odd look. The truth was starting to sink in.

I turned on the external screens and punched up a close look at the black hole region. Yes, there was the alien ship, the little metallic sphere, the six odd outthrust legs. It was in the zone of criticality now. It seemed hardly to be moving at all. And it was growing dimmer and dimmer as it slowed. The gravitational field had it, and it was being drawn in. Blacking out, becoming motionless. Soon it would have gone beyond the point where outside observers could perceive it. Already it was beyond the point of turning back.

I heard Lina sobbing behind me. Bryce-Williamson was muttering to himself: praying, perhaps.

I said, “Who can say what they would have done to us—in their casual, indifferent way—once they came to Earth? We know now that Spargs worry only about Spargs. Anybody else is just so much furniture.” I shook my head. “To hell with them. They’re gone, and in a universe this big we’ll probably never come across any of them again, or they us. Which is just fine. We’ll be a lot better off having nothing at all to do with them.”

“But to die that way—” Lina murmured. “To sail blindly into a black hole—”

“It is a great tragedy,” said Bryce-Williamson.

“A tragedy for them,” I said. “For us, a reprieve, I think. And tomorrow we can get moving on the neutronium-scoop project.” I tuned up the screen to the next level. The boiling cloud of matter around the mouth of the black hole blazed fiercely. But of the alien ship there was nothing to be seen.

Yes, a great tragedy, I thought. The valiant exploratory mission that had sought the remains of the Nine Sparg home world has been lost with all hands. No hope of rescue. A pity that they hadn’t known how unpleasant black holes can be.

But why should we have told them? They were nothing to us.

THE ISOLATIONISTS

Originally published in
Science Fiction Stories
, November 1958.

As the small planet took shape in his screens, Andersen felt the usual twitch of anticipation. Once, as a boy on Earth twenty years before, he had contemplated a boulder by the side of a swift-flowing stream for a long moment, then tipped it over. Revealed in the moist soil beneath the boulder were wonders: white grubs three inches long, with sparkling green eyes and furious little mandibles. Anderson had never forgotten that incident. It was written large on his mind every time he prepared to make a first landing on an unexplored planet; one never knew what gaudy surprises might lie hidden and waiting.

Andersen checked his charts. The planet was the fourth of a fourteen-planet system, but it was the only one of the fourteen that looked habitable. The Mapping Corps had ticketed it for future survey. The calibrating computer keyed into his ship’s mass-detector told Andersen that the planet was of 0.75 Earthmass; a 7000-mile diameter, but therefore lower in density and short of heavy elements. Andersen set up landing coordinates at once. His instructions were to visit every reasonably Earth-type planet along the sine-wave curve of his tracking course; he was to file a report on the status of the planet’s inhabitants, if intelligent, and on the feasibility of Terran colonization thereof.

The planet was inhabited. The little red star on his master chart told him that much. Andersen wondered what particular grubs would lie hidden underneath this stone. Inhabited planets were always full of surprises. First contact came as a different sort of shock to different kinds of beings.

His ship dropped lower. It swung into a landing orbit. It roared through the thickening atmosphere toward the tawny land below. Perhaps, he thought, the alien beings of this world were gathering to mark his blazing path through their skies.

On his tenth orbital pass he selected a continent. He activated the braking jets. The small ship’s tail dropped into landing position.

A stretch of clear flat land beckoned. Andersen jabbed the landing buttons. Flames sprouted beneath his ship. He dropped down on a fiery cushion. The ship gentled itself to a square upright landing.

He had arrived. The stone had been tipped. Now to see what was beneath!

* * * *

The aliens did not arrive on the scene for nearly two minutes, which allowed Andersen something of a breather in which to look around. He did not roam far from his ship. The samplers had shown him that the planet’s atmosphere was a chlorine-hydrogen one, with lesser quantities of nitrogen and the inerts. He wore a breathing-helmet strapped over his uniform, since no more than two good whiffs of that atmosphere would be enough to scald his throat and rot his lungs.

The sky was a light yellow—due partly, Andersen decided, to the murky wisps of chlorine drifting above, and partly to some refractive trick of the atmosphere. It was an oddly pleasing effect, at any rate. The landscape was strangely rugged, with bare rock scooped into shell-like depressions by erosive action. Strange, almost surrealistic trees sprang up high, jointed and involute, twisted grotesquely, crested with bizarre and disturbing-looking flowers. In the distance, Andersen saw buildings, sleek and colorful, fashioned, evidently, from some form of pink coral. A few birds drifted in the sky. Andersen watched one come to light in an angular tree; the bird landed on a spatulate limb in an inverted position, as if it had sucker-pads instead of claws, and began to nibble on the pendulous fruits.

After his first detailed glance at the landscape, Andersen unshipped the portable Translator and set it up. He busied himself over the installation, jacking the input to his instrument belt and rigging up a booster in case the aliens refused to approach near enough for the Translator’s amplifier to reach them.

But his precautions were unnecessary. A voice said in crisp and unaccented Terran, “There will be no need of that machine, Earthman. We will be able to understand you fully.”

The nine-year-old Andersen had gasped in awed delight at the sight of the writhing grubs beneath the stone. The twenty-nine-year-old Andersen whirled like a startled cat when the firm voice spoke.

“Who said that?”

“We did.”

Andersen turned and saw the aliens. There were seven of them in a tight group about a hundred yards to his left. Andersen had not seen them approach. And, he thought, at this distance and in this sort of atmosphere, it was odd that he had heard them so clearly.

They were beings as angular as the trees—six and a half or seven feet tall, Andersen estimated, with rich purple skins. He doubted if any of them would weigh as much as a hundred pounds under Terran gravity; here, they were even lighter.

They did not seem to have any flesh; they were merely skin stretched over bone, and light bone at that. Their heads were diamond-shaped and hairless, with long solemn chins and tapering pointed skulls; their nostrils were but slits, their mouths dark slashes, their eyes cold and hooded, their ears nonexistent. Andersen guessed that they were a cold-blooded race. There was something reptilian about them. Their legs were like sticks, terminating in splayed claws.

They walked toward Andersen in a group.

The Earthman looked uncertainly at the advancing aliens, then at his Translator.

He said, “You speak my language?”

“We speak all languages.” It was impossible to tell which member of the group had spoken. Perhaps none of them had; perhaps all.

“You must be telepaths, then.”

“Yes.”

Can you understand what I’m saying
? Andersen thought. There was no response.

“I’ve just thought a message at you,” said the Earthman. “Didn’t you get it?”

“We can only respond to subliminal projection from you, Earthman. We reach the deep layer of your mind but cannot detect surface thoughts.”

Andersen frowned. He didn’t care for that sort of arrangement. But he had dealt with telepathic races before. In a way, it made things a good deal easier, for if they could see the deep layers of his mind they would not have to worry about his sincerity. They could tell whenever he was lying, and Andersen did not intend to lie.

He said, “I’m not a telepath myself.”

“Of course. But we can communicate with you.”

“Good. Since you’ve looked deep into my mind, you know I’ve come here for peaceful purposes.” There was no reply, and Andersen went on with somewhat less assurance: “You
do
know that I’m here for peaceful purposes. I’m a representative of the Terran Confederation, a group of one hundred ninety worlds of the galaxy, offering mutual benefits and harmonious fellowship. Now, since this is the first landing an Earthman has made on your planet, you undoubtedly want time to think matters over, and—”

Andersen was on the verge of launching into the standard
take-me-to-your-leader
pitch when the calm voice of the aliens—he saw now that the voice was collectively emanating from the group—interrupted him.

“You are not the first Earthman to land here.”

The statement, taken at its face value, made no sense. According to the charts, the planet was unexplored. Had the Mapping Corps outfit made a planetary landing? Unlikely. Had a previous Surveyor visited the planet and neglected to report the fact? Implausible. Had an unauthorized Earthman made an independent landing on an unexplored world? Impossible.

“I don’t understand,” Andersen said. “How could other Earthmen have landed here? I mean—”

“You are the third one. The other two came in ships just like yours.”

“When?”

“The first was eleven years ago. The second was five years after that.”

“Local years?”

“Terran years.”

Andersen frowned, deeply troubled. Unreported visits by Survey men? What possible reason could a Survey man have for not reporting a planetfall? And why would it happen twice, years apart?

He took a deep breath. “At any rate, the Terran Confederation offers you—”

“We are not interested.”

“At least let me tell you—”

The implacable mental voice cut him off once again. “We will join no Confederations. We do not want Earthmen landing on our planet.”

Andersen took a deep breath. He had run up across this sort of insularity and intransigence before, and he had special persuasive techniques to overcome it. Earth was geared to an infinitely expanding economy; it needed an infinitely expanding market as well, and with such conditions prevailing it was imperative that all possible avenues of trade be opened.

He said, “Please don’t be hasty. At least let me explain the value of entering into friendly relationship with our Confederation. For instance, it would be possible to carry on trade without the necessity of a single spaceship landing on your soil. If—”

“We are not interested.”

“Give me a few minutes. In my ship I have solido slides that will be helpful in—”

“No.”

Andersen began to feel exasperated. “Why won’t you listen to me?” he demanded.

“We have maintained our independence for many thousands of years. Our economy and ecology are balanced with equal precision. We are self-sufficient. We have no need of Earth and its Confederation.”

“What would you do if we
forced
you to trade with us?” Andersen said rashly. He doubted that Earth would go along with him on the use of force, but he wanted to see the alien reaction.

It was a mild one. “You would not do such a thing.”

“Suppose we did?”

“You would not succeed.”

“Why not?”

“You
could
not succeed.”

Andersen scowled. The seven aliens had not changed expression once during the colloquy, indeed had hardly as much as moved. Yet the door was slamming firmly in his face. These people wanted to remain in isolation. That much was abundantly clear. But Andersen did not give up easily.

“You owe a debt to the universe,” he began, taking an abstract approach. “Your planet, your solar system, are all part of the great celestial machine. Do you think you can withdraw yourself totally from that machine? No planet is an island, friends. There has to be an intermeshing of gears. Otherwise you’ll pay the price of cultural decadence. You’ll go the way of all—”

“We have survived successfully for many thousands of years. Our society is stable. We are not interested in the meddling ways of Earthmen. We made this clear to the other Earthmen who visited us.”

“I don’t know anything about them.”

“They were like you. Stubborn, self-willed, convinced they were in possession of eternal truth. Spouting generalizations about the universe, fuzzy analogies, crude and pathetic syllogisms. Leave us, Earthman.”

“Hold on a second,” Andersen burst out. “I’m a duly accredited ambassador from the Terran Confederation. I don’t intend to be brushed off this way. I demand to be taken to someone in authority on this planet!”

“We are all equals here,” said the alien voice. It sounded tired; impatient, perhaps. “Return to your ship. Depart. Do not return.”

“I won’t leave until I’ve spoken to someone who—”

“You will leave immediately.”

“What if I don’t?”

Andersen felt the equivalent of a mental shrug. “We are peaceful and passive people. We would not take direct steps to harm you. But if you fail to leave you will cause harm to come to yourself.”

“Please,” Andersen wheedled. “Don’t fly off the handle. Let me try to tell you—”

“You have been warned,” came the weary reply.

“But—”

Andersen heard two gentle plopping sounds above him. For an instant he did not understand; then he swiveled his head upward and he understood.

A chill quivered through him. He realized in that single panicky instant that he was about to die.

“You will not be harmed if you return to your ship at once!” came the alien voice.

Andersen stared. One of the birds he had seen in the strange trees had plummeted down and landed atop his breathing-helmet. Its sucker-equipped feet were firmly attached to the plastic dome. The bird was the size of a small hen, blue, with a bright red crest and glittering beady eyes. A conspicuous feature of the bird was its sharp and imposing beak.

At the moment that beak was clamped around Andersen’s left-hand breathing-tube. One twitch of the creature’s jaws and the rubber tube would be severed; his air would rush out, and the deadly alien atmosphere come filtering in.

Andersen tentatively reached his left arm up to pluck the bird away.

The alien voice said quietly, “The bird will sever your breathing-tube before you are able to remove him. You will die almost immediately.”

The bird had made no attempt to bite into the tube yet; it simply sat there on his helmet, grasping the tube in its beak and remaining motionless.

Andersen froze. Any motion, he felt, might disturb the bird.

“Get him off me,” he whispered harshly.

“The tube of your helmet closely resembles the large green worm of the flatlands which is this bird’s chief food,” the alien remarked. “The bird is anxious to feed. Only our control is preventing him from doing so.”

Sweat trickled down Andersen’s forehead faster than his air-conditioners could pump his helmet dry. “What do you want me to do?”

“Walk slowly toward your ship.”

“And if I don’t?”

“We will order the bird to sever the tube. You see, the choice is entirely in your hands. Refusal to enter your ship would be tantamount to suicide.”

“You’ll—
order
—the bird?”

“All life on this planet is in harmony, Earthman. This is why we have no need of your Confederation. The bird understands our orders. But the bird is hungry, Earthman.”

Andersen did not need further hints. He began to edge across the flat terrain, slowly, cautiously, as if the creature perched on his helmet were highly explosive. He was twenty feet from his ship. Crossing those twenty feet seemed to take forever.

At length he reached the open hatch of the ship. His alien tormentors were eyeing him gravely from where they stood.

“All right,” Andersen growled. “I’m back at my ship. Call off your bird!”

“Enter the ship.”

“With the bird?”

“The bird will leave you.”

Bitterly, Andersen grabbed the handhold and pulled himself up into the hatchway. Just before he drew himself back into the ship, he heard two loud popping sounds, and saw the blue bird fluttering up into the air.