The Waitabits - Eric Frank Russell, ebook, Temp
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THE WAITABITS
Eric Frank Russell
Science-fiction authors, however various their output, are not
chameleons. To be sure, in a good cause they can alter certain parts of
their basic colouration with marvellous flexibility and skill; but the
essentials are unchanging - and recurrently we find in their work a
whole-hearted reversion to whatever their true blue may happen to be.
With Eric Frank Russell this hue is a hatred of bullying, of brass-hats, of
bureaucrats and of do-gooders who somehow always seem to end up
doing more good to themselves than to anyone else; and he has added
enormously to the gaiety of nations by envisaging sundry forms of
natural immunity to such plagues. At first sight, Russell's antibodies to
the eternal take-over bid may seem irrelevant for the reason that they
are fanciful, and therefore not, for us-here-now, by any stretch of the
imagination practical politics; we, after all, are not the fortunate
inhabitants of Eterna. Jet we can, and do, delight with Russell in their
oblivious bloodless victory; and in doing so we adopt, or confirm, a
moral attitude which would like to believe in the indefeasibility of all
harmless underdogs, always and everywhere.
H
e strode toward the Assignment Office with quiet confidence born of
long service, much experience and high rank. Once upon a time a
peremptory call to this department had made him slightly edgy exactly as
it unnerved the fresh-faced juniors today. But that had been long, long
ago. He was grey-haired now, with wrinkles around the corners of his eyes,
silver oak-leaves on his epaulettes. He had heard enough, seen enough and
learned enough to have lost the capacity for surprise.
Markham was going to hand him a tough one. That was Markham's
job: to rake through a mess of laconic, garbled, distorted or eccentric
reports, pick out the obvious problems and dump them squarely in the
laps of whoever happened to be hanging around and was considered
suitable to solve them. One thing could be said in favour of this technique:
its victims often were bothered, bedevilled or busted but at least they were
never bored. The problems were not commonplace, the solutions
sometimes fantastic.
The door detected his body-heat as he approached, swung open with
 silent efficiency. He went through, took a chair, gazed phlegmatically at
the heavy man behind the desk.
"Ah, Commodore Leigh," said Markham pleasantly. He shuffled some
papers, got them in order, surveyed the top one. "I am informed that the
Thunderer's
overhaul is complete, the crew has been recalled and
everything is ready for flight."
"That is correct."
"Well now, I have a task for you." Markham put on the sinister smile
that invariably accompanied such an announcement. After years of
reading what had followed in due course, he had conceived the notion that
all tasks were funny except when they involved a massacre. "You are ready
and eager for another trip, I trust?"
"I am always ready," said Commodore Leigh. He had outgrown the
eagerness two decades back.
"I have here the latest consignment of scout reports," Mark-ham went
on. He made a disparaging gesture. "You know what they're like.
Condensed to the minimum and in some instances slightly mad. Happy
the day when we receive a report detailed with scientific thoroughness."
"You'll get that only from a trained mind," Leigh commented. "Scouts
are not scientists. They are oddities who like roaming the loneliest reaches
of space with no company but their own. Pilot-trained hoboes willing to
wander at large, take brief looks and tell what they've seen. Such men are
useful and necessary. Their shortcomings can be made up by those who
follow them."
"Precisely," agreed Markham with suspicious promptness. "So this is
where we want you to do some following."
"What is it this time?"
"We have Boydell's latest report beamed through several relay stations.
He is way out in the wilds." Markham tapped the paper irritably. "This
particular scout is known as Gabby Boydell because he is anything but
that. He uses words as if they cost him fifty dollars apiece."
"Meaning he hasn't said enough?" asked Leigh smiling.
"Enough? He's told us next to nothing!" He let go an emphatic snort.
"Eighteen planets scattered all over the shop and not a dozen words about
each. He discovers a grand total of eighteen planets in seven previously
unexplored systems and the result doesn't occupy half a page."
"Going at that speed, he'd not have time for much more," Leigh
 ventured. "You can't write a book about a world without taking up
residence for a while."
"That may be. But these crackpot scouts could do better and it's time
they were told as much." He pointed an accusative finger. "Look at this
item. The eleventh planet he visited. He has named it Pulok for some
reason that is probably crazy. His report employs exactly four words: 'Take
it and welcome.' What do you make of that?"
Leigh thought it over carefully. "It is inhabitable by humankind. There
is no native opposition, nothing to prevent us grabbing it. But in his
opinion it isn't worth possessing."
"Why, man, why?"
"I don't know, not having been there."
"Boydell knows the reason." Markham fumed a bit and went on, "And
he ought to state it in precise, understandable terms. He shouldn't leave a
mystery hanging in mid-air like a bad smell from nowhere."
"He will explain it when he returns to his sector headquarters, surely?"
"That may be months hence, perhaps years, especially if he manages to
pick up fuel and replacement tubes from distant outposts. Those scouts
keep to no schedule. They get there when they arrive, return when they
come back. Galactic gypsies, that's how they like to think of themselves."
"They've chosen freedom," Leigh offered.
Ignoring that remark, Markham continued, "Anyway, the problem of
Pulok is a relatively minor one to be handled by somebody else. Ill give it
to one of the juniors; it will do something for his education. The more
complicated and possibly dangerous tangles are for older ones such as
yourself."
"Tell me the worst."
"Planet fourteen on Boydell's list. He has given it the name of Eterna
and don't ask me why. The code formula he's registered against it reads
O/
1
.
1
/D.7. That means we can live on it without special equipment, it's an
Earth-type planet of one-tenth greater mass and is inhabited by an
intelligent life form of different but theoretically equal mental power. He
calls this life form the Waitabits. Apparently he tags every thing and
everybody with the first name that pops into his mind."
"What information does he offer concerning them?"
"Hah!" said Markham, pulling a face. "One word. Just one word." He
paused, then voiced it. "Unconquerable."
 "Eh?"
"Unconquerable," repeated Markham. "A word that should not exist in
scout-language." At that point he became riled, jerked open a drawer,
extracted a notebook and consulted it. "Up to last survey, four hundred
and twenty-one planets had been discovered, charted, recorded. One
hundred and thirty-seven found suitable for human life and large or small
groups of settlers placed thereon. Sixty-two alien life forms mastered
during the process." He shoved the book back. "And out there in the dark
a wandering tramp picks a word like unconquerable."
"I can think of only one reason that makes sense," suggested Leigh.
"What is that?"
"Perhaps they really are unconquerable."
Markham refused to credit his ears. "If that is a joke, commodore, it's
in bad taste. Some might think it seditious."
"Well, can you think up another and better reason?"
"I don't have to. I'm sending you there to find out. The Grand Council
asked specifically that you be given this task. They feel that if any yet
unknown aliens have enough to put the wind up one of our own scouts
then we must learn more about them. And the sooner the better."
"There's nothing to show that they actually frightened Boy-dell. If they
had done so he'd have said more, much more. A genuine first-class
menace is the one thing that would make him talk his head off."
"That's purely hypothetical," said Markham. "We don't want guesses.
We want facts."
"All right."
"Consider a few other facts," Markham added. "So far no other life form
has been able to resist us. I don't see how any can. Any creatures with an
atom of sense soon see which side their bread is buttered, if they eat bread
and like butter. If we step in and provide the brains while they furnish the
labour, with mutual benefit to both parties, the aliens are soon doing too
well for themselves to complain. If a bunch of Sirian Wimpots slave all day
in our mines, then fly in their own helicopters back to homes such as their
forefathers never owned, what have they got to cry about?"
"I fail to see the purpose of the lecture," said Leigh, dryly.
"I'm emphasizing that by force, ruthlessness, argument, persuasion,
precept and example, appeal to common sense or any other tactic
appropriate to the circumstances we can master and exploit any life-form
 in the cosmos. That's the theory we've been using for a thousand years-and
it works. We've proved that it works. We have
made
it work. The first time
we let go of it and admit defeat we're finished. We go down and disappear
along with all the other vanished hordes." He swept his papers to one side.
"A scout has admitted defeat. He must be a lunatic. But lunatics can
create alarm. The Grand Council is alarmed."
"So I am required to seek soothing syrup?"
"Yes. See Parrish in the charting department. He'll give you the
co-ordinates of this Eterna dump." Standing up, he offered a plump hand.
"A smooth trip and a safe landing, commodore."
"Thanks."
The
Thunderer
hung in a balanced orbit while its officers examined the
new world floating below. This was Eterna, second planet of a sun very
much like Sol. Altogether there were four planets in this particular family
but only the second harboured life in any detectable form.
Eterna was a pretty sight, a great blue-green ball shining in the blaze of
full day. Its land masses were larger than Earth's, its oceans smaller. No
vast mountain ranges were visible, no snow-caps either, yet lakes and
rivers were numerous. Watersheds lay in heavily forested hills that
crinkled much of the surface and left few flat areas. Cloud-banks lay over
the land like scatterings of cotton-wool, small in area, widely dispersed,
but thick, heavy and great in number.
Through powerful glasses towns and villages could be seen, most of
them placed in clearings around which armies of trees marched down to
the rivers. There were also narrow, winding roads and thin, spidery
bridges. Between the larger towns ran vague lines that might be railroad
tracks but lacked sufficient detail at such a distance to reveal their true
purpose.
Pascoe, the sociologist, put down his binoculars and said, "Assuming
that the night side is very similar, I estimate their total strength at no
more than one hundred millions. I base that on other planetary surveys.
When you've counted the number of peas per bottle in a large and varied
collection of them you develop the ability to make reasonably accurate
guesses. One hundred millions at most."
"That's low for a planet of this size and fertility, isn't it?" asked
Commodore Leigh.
"Not necessarily. There were no more of us in the far past. Look at us
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