The Aliens - Murray Leinster, ebook, Temp
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Table of Contents
The Aliens
5
Fugitive From Space
38
Anthropological Note
90
Skit-Tree Planet
111
Thing From the Sky
126
COPYRIGHT © 1960, by MURRAY LEINSTER
Anthropological
Note: Copyright © 1957 by Mercury Press, Inc. Originally published in
The
Magazine of Fantasy and
Science
Fiction.
Fugitive From
Space: Copyright 1954 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Originally published in
Amazing Stories.
Skit-Tree Planet:
Copyright 1947 by Standard Magazines, Inc. Originally published in
Thrilling
Wonder Stories.
The Aliens:
Copyright © 1959 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Originally published in
Astounding Science.Fiction.
Thing from the Sky:
Copyright © 1960 by Murray Leinster.
Published by arrangement with the author.
BERKLEY MEDALLION EDITION, MARCH, 1960 New Edition, SEPTEMBER, 1965
BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by
Berkley Publishing Corporation
15 East 26th Street, New York,
N.
Y. 10010
Printed in the United States of America
The Aliens
AT 04 HOURS 10 minutes, ship time, the
Niccola
was well inside the Theta Gisol solar system. She
had previously secured excellent evidence that this was not the home of the Plumie civilization. There
was no tuned radiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel-rockets would be more than
obvious, and
a
magnetronic drive had a highly characteristic radiation-pattern-so the real purpose of
the
Niccola’s
voyage would not be accomplished here. She wouldn’t find out where Plumies came
from.
There might, though, be one or more of those singular, conical, hollow-topped cairns sheltering
silicon-bronze plates, which constituted the evidence that Plumies existed. The
Niccola
went sunward
toward the inner planets to see. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarks on oxygen-type
planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years. By the vegetation about them, some were a
century old. On the same evidence, others had been erected only months or weeks or even days before
a human Space Survey ship arrived to discover them. And the situation was unpromising. It wasn’t
likely that the galaxy was big enough to hold two races of rational beings capable of space travel.
Back on ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races with tools and fire. Historically,
that problem was settled when
Homo sapiens
exterminated
Homo neanderthalis.
It appeared that the
same situation had arisen in space. There were humans, and there were Plumies. Both had interstellar
ships. To humans, the fact was alarming. The need for knowledge, and the danger that Plumies might
know more first, and thereby be able to exterminate humanity, was appalling.
Therefore the
Niccola.
She drove on sunward. She had left one frozen outer planet far behind. She had
crossed the orbits of three others. The last of these was a gas giant with innumerable moonlets
revolving about it. It was now some thirty millions of miles back and twenty to one side. The sun,
ahead, flared and flamed in emptiness against that expanse of tinted stars.
Jon Baird worked steadily in the
Niccola’s
radar room. He was one of those who hoped that the
Plumies would not prove to be the natural enemies of mankind. Now, it looked like this ship wouldn’t
find out in this solar system. There were plenty of other ships on the hunt. From here on, it looked like
routine to the next unvisited family of planets. But meanwhile he worked. Opposite him, Diane Holt
worked as steadily, her dark head bent intently over a radar graph in formation. The immediate job
was the completion of a map of the meteor swarms following cometary orbits about this sun. They
interlaced emptiness with hazards to navigation, and nobody would try to drive through a solar system
without such a map.
Elsewhere in the ship, everything was normal. The engine room was a place of stillness and peace,
save for the almost inaudible hum of the drive, running at half a million Gauss flux-density. The
skipper did whatever skippers do when they are invisible to their subordinates. The weapons officer,
Taine, thought appropriate thoughts. In the navigation room the second officer conscientiously
glanced at each separate instrument at least once in each five minutes, and then carefully surveyed all
the screens showing space outside the ship. The stewards disposed of the debris of the last meal, and
began to get ready for the next. In the crew’s quarters, those off duty read or worked at scrimshaw, or
simply and contentedly loafed.
Diane handed over the transparent radar graph, to be fitted into the three-dimensional map in the
making.
“There’s a lump of stuff here,” she said interestedly. “It could be the comet that once followed this
orbit, now so old it’s lost all its gases and isn’t a comet any longer.”
At this instant, which was 04 hours
25
minutes ship time, the alarm-bell rang. It clanged stridently
over Baird’s head, repeater-gongs sounded all through the ship, and there was a scurrying and a
closing of doors. The alarm gong could mean only one thing. It made one’s breath come faster or
one’s hair stand on end, according to temperament.
The skipper’s face appeared on the direct-line screen from the navigation room.
“Plumies?”
he demanded harshly.
“Mr. Baird! Plumies?”
Baird’s hands were already flipping switches and plugging the radar room apparatus into a new setup.
“There’s a contact, sir,” he said curtly. “No. There was a contact. It’s broken now. Something detected
us. We picked up a radar pulse. One.”
The word “one” meant much. A radar system that could get adequate information from a single pulse
was not the work of amateurs. It was the product of a very highly developed technology. Setting all
equipment to full-globular scanning, Baird felt a certain crawling sensation at the back of his neck.
He’d been mapping within a narrow range above and below the line of this system’s ecliptic. A lot
could have happened outside the area he’d had under long-distance scanning.
But seconds passed. They seemed like years. The all-globe scanning covered every direction out from
the
Niccola.
Nothing appeared which had not been reported before. The gas-giant planet far behind,
and the only inner one on this side of the sun, would return their pulses only after minutes. Meanwhile
the radars reported very faithfully, but they only repeated previous reports.
“No new object within half a million miles,” said Baird, after a suitable interval. Presently he added:
“Nothing new within three-quarter million miles.” Then: “Nothing new within a million miles…”
The skipper said bitingly:
“Then you’d better check on objects that are not new!”
He turned aside, and his voice came more faintly as he spoke into another microphone.
“Mr. Taine!
Arm all rockets and have your tube crews stand by in combat readiness!
Engine room! Prepare drive for emergency maneuvers! Damage-control parties, put on pressure suits
and take combat posts with equipment!”
His voice rose again in volume.
“Mr. Baird! How about observed objects?”
Diane murmured. Baird said briefly:
“Only one suspicious object, sir-and that shouldn’t be suspicious. We are sending an information-
beam at something we’d classed as a burned-out comet. Pulse going out now, sir.”
Diane had the distant-information transmitter aimed at what she’d said might be a dead comet. Baird
pressed the button. An extraordinary complex of information-seeking frequencies and forms sprang
into being and leaped across emptiness. There were microwaves of strictly standard amplitude, for
measurement-standards. There were frequencies of other values, which would be selectively absorbed
by this material and that. There were laterally and circularly polarized beams. When they bounced,
back, they would bring a surprising amount of information.
They returned. They did bring back news. The thing that had registered as a larger lump in a meteor
swarm was not a meteor at all. It returned four different frequencies with a relative-intensity pattern
which said that they’d been reflected by bronze-probably silicon bronze. The polarized beams came
back depolarized, of course, but with phasechanges which said the reflector had a rounded, regular
form. There was a smooth hull of silicon bronze out yonder. There was other data.
“It will be a Plumie ship, sir,” said Baird very steadily. “At a guess, they picked up our mapping beam
and shot a single pulse at us to find out who and what we were. For another guess, by now they’ve
picked up and analyzed our information-beam and know what we’ve found out about them.”
The skipper scowled.
“How many of them?”
he demanded.
“Have we run into a fleet?”
“I’ll check, sir,” said Baird. “We picked up no tuned radiation from outer space, sir, but it could be
that they picked us up when we came out of overdrive and stopped all their transmissions until they
had us in a trap.”
“Find out how many there are!”
barked the skipper.
“Make it quick! Report additional data
instantly!”
His screen clicked off. Diane, more than a little pale, worked swiftly to plug the radar-room equipment
into a highly specialized pattern. The
Niccola
was very well equipped, radarwise. She’s been a type 08
Survey ship, and on her last stay in port she’d been rebuilt especially to hunt for and make contact
with Plumies. Since the discovery of their existence, that was the most urgent business of the Space
Survey. It might well be the most important business of the human race-on which its survival or
destruction would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone out before the
Niccola,
and others would
follow until the problem was solved. Meanwhile the
Niccola’s
twenty-four rocket tubes and stepped-
up drive and computer-type radar system equipped her for Plumie-hunting as well as any human ship
could be. Still, if she’d been lured deep into the home system of the Plumies, the prospects were not
good.
The new setup began its operation, instantly the last contact closed. The three-dimensional map served
as a matrix to control it. The information-beam projector swung and flung out its bundle of
oscillations. It swung and flashed, and swung and flashed. It had to examine every relatively nearby
object for a constitution of silicon bronze and a rounded shape. The nearest objects had to be
examined first.
Speed was essential. But three-dimensional scanning takes time, even at some hundreds of pulses per
minute.
Nevertheless, the information came in. No other silicon-bronze object within a quarter-million miles.
Within half a million. A million. A million and a half. Two million...
Baird called the navigation room.
“Looks like a single Plumie ship, sir,” he reported. “At least there’s one ship which is nearest by a
very long way.”
“Hah!’
grunted the skipper.
“Then we’ll pay him a visit. Keep an open line, Mr. Baird!”
His voice
changed.
“Mr. Taine! Report here at once to plan tactics!”
Baird shook his head, to himself. The
Niccola’s
orders were to make contact without discovery, if
such a thing were possible. The ideal would be a Plumie ship or the Plumie civilization itself, located
and subject to complete and overwhelming envelopment by human ships before the Plumies knew
they’d been discovered. And this would be the human ideal because humans have always had to con-
sider that a stranger might be hostile, until he’d proven otherwise.
Such a viewpoint would not be optimism, but caution. Yet caution was necessary. It was because the
Survey brass felt the need to prepare for every unfavorable eventuality that Taine had been chosen as
weapons officer of the
Niccola.
His choice had been deliberate, because he was a xenophobe. He had
been a problem personality all his life. He had a seemingly congenital fear and hatred of strangers-
which in mild cases is common enough, but Taine could not be cured without a complete breakdown
of personality. He could not serve on a ship with a multiracial crew, because he was invincibly
suspicious of and hostile to all but his own small breed. Yet he seemed ideal for weapons officer on
the
Niccola,
provided he never commanded the ship. Because if the Plumies were hostile, a well-
adjusted, normal man would never think as much like them as a Taine. He was capable of the kind of
thinking Plumies might practice, if they were xenophobes themselves.
But to Baird, so extreme a precaution as a known psychopathic condition in an officer was less than
wholly justified. It was by no means certain that the Plumies would instinctively be hostile.
Suspicious, yes. Cautious, certainly. But the only fact known about the Plumie civilization came from
the cairns and silicon-bronze inscribed tablets they’d left on oxygen-type worlds over a twelve-
hundred-light-year range in space, and the only thing to be deduced about the Plumies themselves
came from the decorative, formalized symbols like feathery plumes which were found on all their
bronze tablets. The name “Plumies” came from that symbol.
Now, though, Taine was called to the navigation room to confer on tactics. The
Niccola
swerved and
drove toward the object Baird identified as a Plumie ship. This was at 05 hours 10 minutes ship time.
The human ship had a definite velocity sunward, of course. The Plumie ship had been concealed by
the meteor swarm of a totally unknown comet. It was an excellent way to avoid observation. On the
other hand, the
Niccola
had been mapping, which was bound to attract attention. Now each ship knew
of the other’s existence. Since the
Niccola
had been detected, she had to carry out orders and attempt a
contact to gather information.
Baird verified that the
Niccola’s
course was exact for interception at her full-drive speed. He said in a
flat voice:
“I wonder how the Plumies will interpret this change of course? They know we’re aware they’re not a
meteorite. But charging at them without even trying to communicate could look ominous. We could
be stupid, or too arrogant to think of anything but a fight.” He pressed the skipper’s call and said
evenly: “Sir, I request permission to attempt to communicate with the Plumie ship. We’re ordered to
try to make friends if we know we’ve been spotted.”
Taine had evidently just reached the navigation room. His voice snapped from the speaker:
“I advise against that, sir! No use letting them guess our level of technology!”
Baird said coldly:
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