The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (85 page)

“Because when the King heard of the device, he believed that he was about to communicate with someone who symbolized to him all truth and knowledge and assurance. He asked for prophecy. Everyone does. And the prophecy the King’s mind gave him was inevitably that of the strongest fear or strongest hope he possessed.

“But the King could not hope anything. He was the King. He had nothing to hope for. The third level of his brain could contain only fear. And his fears were presented to him as certainty, in the voice and the appearance of the one person he would most implicitly believe.

“It told him of widespread treason and imminent revolt. He believed it. Why not? Perhaps his father told him so! And—”

The ground-car stopped before a small dwelling. Garr, getting out, saw the Palace silhouetted against the sky. Perhaps a fifth stood grand and menacing against the sky. The rest—was not.

A woman appeared in the doorway of the dwelling. She cried out and ran toward Garr, stumbling in her eagerness.

Garr held his wife very close. This was the moment he had longed for for more than two years. He would never leave his family again. To bring it about he had caused the death of the King and destroyed the government and killed two million people.

And, to Garr, it was worth it.

*

KEYHOLE

(Originally Published in 1951)

There’s a story about a psychologist who was studying the intelligence of a chimpanzee. He led the chimp into a room full of toys, went out, closed the door and put his eye to the keyhole to see what the chimp was doing. He found himself gazing into a glittering interested brown eye only inches from his own. The chimp was looking through the keyhole to see what the psychologist was doing.

* * * *

When they brought Butch into the station in Tycho crater he seemed to shrivel as the gravity-coils in the airlock went on. He was impossible to begin with. He was all big eyes and skinny arms and legs and he was very young and he didn’t need air to breathe. Worden saw him as a limp bundle of bristly fur and terrified eyes as his captors handed him over.

“Are you crazy?” demanded Worden angrily. “Bringing him in like this? Would you take a human baby into eight gravities? Get out of the way!”

He rushed for the nursery that had been made ready for somebody like Butch. There was a rebuilt dwelling-cave on one side. The other side was a human schoolroom. And under the nursery the gravity-coils had been turned off so that in that room things had only the weight that was proper to them on the Moon.

The rest of the station had coils to bring everything up to normal weight for earth. Otherwise the staff of the station would be seasick most of the time. Butch was in the earth-gravity part of the station when he was delivered and he couldn’t lift a furry spindly paw.

In the nursery though it was different. Worden put him on the floor. Worden was the uncomfortable one there—his weight only twenty pounds instead of a normal hundred and sixty. He swayed and reeled as a man does on the moon without gravity-coils to steady him.

But that was the normal thing to Butch. He uncurled himself and suddenly flashed across the nursery to the reconstructed dwelling-cave. It was a pretty good job, that cave. There were the five-foot chipped rocks shaped like dunce-caps, found in all residences of Butch’s race. There was the rocking-stone on its base of other flattened rocks. But the spear-stones were fastened down with wire in case Butch got ideas.

Butch streaked p to these familiar objects. He swarmed up one of the dunce-cap stones and locked his arms and legs about its top, clinging close. Then he was still. Worden regarded him. Butch was motionless for minutes, seeming to take in as much as possible of his surroundings without moving even his eyes.

Suddenly his head moved. He took in more of his environment. Then he stirred a third time and seemed to look at Worden with an extraordinary intensity—whether of fear or pleading Worden could not tell.

“Hmm,” said Worden, “so that’s what those stones are for! Perches or beds or roosts, eh? I’m your nurse, fella. We’re playing a dirty trick on you but we can’t help it.”

He knew Butch couldn’t understand, but he talked to him as a man does talk to a dog or a baby. It isn’t sensible, but it’s necessary.

“We’re going to raise you up to be a traitor to your kinfolk,” he said with some grimness. “I don’t like it but it has to be done. So I’m going to be very kind to you as part of the conspiracy. Real kindness would suggest that I kill you instead—but I can’t do that.”

Butch stared at him, unblinking and motionless. He looked something like an Earth monkey but not too much so. He was completely impossible but he looked pathetic.

Worden said bitterly, “You’re in your nursery, Butch. Make yourself at home!”

* * * *

HE WENT out and closed the door behind him. Outside he glanced at the video screens that showed the interior of the nursery from four different angles. Butch remained still for a long time. Then he slipped down to the floor. This time he ignored the dwelling-cave of the nursery.

He went interestedly to the human-culture part. He examined everything there with his oversized soft eyes. He touched everything with his incredibly handlike tiny paws. But his touches were tentative. Nothing was actually disturbed when he finished his examination.

He went swiftly back to the dunce-cap rock, swarmed up it, locked his arms and legs about it again, blinked rapidly and seemed to go to sleep. He remained motionless with closed eyes until Worden grew tired of watching him and moved away.

The whole affair was preposterous and infuriating. The first men to land on the Moon knew that it was a dead world.

The astronomers had been saying so for a hundred years and the first and second expeditions to reach Luna from Earth found nothing to contradict the theory.

But a man from the third expedition saw something moving among the up-flung rocks of the Moon’s landscape and he shot it and the existence of Butch’s kind was discovered. It was inconceivable of course that there should be living creatures where there was neither air nor water. But Butch’s folk did live under exactly those conditions.

The dead body of the first living creature killed on the Moon was carried back to Earth and biologists grew indignant. Even with a specimen to dissect and study they were inclined to insist that there simply wasn’t any such creature. So the fourth and fifth and sixth Lunar Expeditions hunted Butch’s relatives very earnestly for further specimens for the advancement of science.

The sixth expedition lost two men whose space-suits were punctured by what seemed to be weapons while they were hunting. The seventh expedition was wiped out to the last man. Butch’s relatives evidently didn’t like being shot as biological specimens.

It wasn’t until the tenth expedition of four ships established a base in Tycho crater that men had any assurance of being able to land on the Moon and get away again. Even then the staff of the station felt as if it were under permanent siege.

Worden made his report to Earth. A baby Lunar creature had been captured by a tractor-party and brought into Tycho station. A nursery was ready and the infant was there now, alive. He seemed to be uninjured. He seemed not to mind an environment of breathable air for which he had no use. He was active and apparently curious and his intelligence was marked.

There was so far no clue to what he ate—if he ate at all—though he had a mouth like the other collected specimens and the toothlike concretions which might serve as teeth. Worden would of course continue to report in detail. At the moment he was allowing Butch to accustom himself to his new surroundings.

He settled down in the recreation-room to scowl at his companion scientists and try to think, despite the program beamed on radar-frequency from Earth. He definitely didn’t like his job, but he knew that it had to be done. Butch had to be domesticated. He had to be persuaded that he was a human being, so human beings could find out how to exterminate his kind.

It had been observed before, on Earth, that a kitten raised with a litter of puppies came to consider itself a dog and that even pet ducks came to prefer human society to that of their own species. Some talking birds of high, intelligence appeared to be convinced that they were people and acted that way. If Butch reacted similarly he would become a traitor to his kind for the benefit of man. And it was necessary!

Men had to have The Moon and that was all there was to it. Gravity on the Moon was one-eighth of gravity on Earth. A rocket-ship could make the Moon-voyage and carry a cargo but no ship yet built could carry fuel for a trip to Mars or Venus if it started out from Earth.

With a fueling-stop on the Moon though the matter was simple. Eight drums of rocket-fuel on the Moon weighed no more than one on Earth. A ship itself weighed only one-eighth as much on Luna. So a rocket that took off from Earth with ten drums of fuel could stop at a fuel-base on the Moon and soar away again with two hundred, and sometimes more.

With the Moon as a fueling-base men could conquer the Solar System. Without the Moon Mankind was Earthbound. Men had to have the Moon!

But Butch’s relatives prevented it. By normal experience there could not be life on an airless desert with such monstrous extremes of heat and cold as the Moon’s surface experienced. But there was life there. Butch’s kinfolk did not breathe oxygen. Apparently they ate it in some mineral combination and it interacted with other mineral§ in their bodies to yield heat and energy.

Men thought squids peculiar because their blood stream used copper in the place of iron but Butch and his kindred seemed to have complex carbon compounds in place of both. They were intelligent in some fashion, it was clear. They used tools, thy chipped stone and they had long, needlelike stone crystals which they threw as weapons.

No metals, of course, for lack of fire to smelt them. There couldn’t be fire without air. But Worden reflected that in ancient days some experimenters had melted metals and set wood ablaze with mirrors concentrating the heat of the sun. With the naked sunlight of the Moon’s surface, not tempered by air and clouds, Butch’s folk could have metals if they only contrived mirrors and curved them properly like the mirrors of telescopes on Earth.

* * * *

Worden had an odd sensation just then. He looked around sharply as if Somebody had made a sudden movement. But the video screen merely displayed a comedian back on Earth, wearing a funny hat. Everybody watched the screen.

As Warden glanced the comedian was smothered in a mass of soapsuds and the studio audience two hundred thirty thousand miles away squealed and applauded the exquisite humor of the scene. In the Moon-station in Tycho crater somehow it was less than comical.

Worden got up and shook himself. He went to look again at the screens that showed the interior of the nursery. Butch was motionless on the absurd cone-shaped stone. His eyes were closed. He was simply a furry pathetic little bundle, stolen from the airless-wastes outside to be bred into a traitor to his race.

Worden went to his cabin and turned in. Before he slept though he reflected that there was still some hope for Butch. Nobody understood his metabolism. Nobody could guess at what he ate. Butch might starve to death. If he did he would be lucky. But it was Worden’s job to prevent it.

Butch’s relatives were at war with men. The tractors that crawled away from the station—they went amazingly fast on the Moon—were watched by big-eyed furry creatures from rock-crevices and from behind the boulders that dotted the Lunar landscape.

Needle-sharp throwing-stones flicked through emptiness. They splintered on the tractor-bodies and on the tractor-ports but sometimes they jammed or broke a tread and then the tractor had to stop. Somebody had to go out and clear things or make repairs. And then a storm of throwing-stones poured upon him.

A needle-pointed stone, traveling a hundred feet a second, hit just as hard on Luna as it did on Earth—and it traveled farther. Space-suits were punctured. Men died. Now tractor-treads were being armored and special repair-suits were under construction, made of hardened steel plates.

Men who reached the Moon in rocket-ships were having to wear armor like medieval knights and men-at-arms! There was a war on. A traitor was needed. And Butch was elected to be that traitor.

When Worden went into the nursery again—the day and nights on the Moon are two weeks long apiece, so men ignored such matters inside the station—Butch leaped for the dunce-cap stone and clung to its top. He had been fumbling around the rocking-stone. It still swayed back and forth on its plate. Now he seemed to try to squeeze himself to unity with the stone spire, his eyes staring enigmatically at Worden.

“I don’t know whether we’ll get anywhere or not,” said Worden conversationally. “Maybe you’ll put up a fight if I touch you. But we’ll see.”

He reached out his hand. The small furry body—neither hot nor cold but the temperature of the air in the station—resisted desperately. But Butch was very young. Worden peeled him loose and carried him across the room to the human schoolroom equipment. Butch curled up, staring fearfully.

“I’m playing dirty,” said Worden, “by being nice to you, Butch. Here’s a toy.”

Butch stirred in his grasp. His eyes blinked rapidly. Worden put him down and wound up a tiny mechanical toy. It moved. Butch watched intently. When it stopped he looked back at Worden. Worden wound it up again. Again Butch watched. When it ran down a second time the tiny handlike paw reached out.