The Voyage of the Space Beagle

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was twenty minutes later. Grosvenor sat in one of the auditorium seats in the control room and watched Morton and Captain Leeth consulting together in low tones on one of the tiers leading up to the main section of the instrument board.

The room was packed with men. With the exception of guards left in key centres, everybody had been ordered to attend. The military crew and its officers, the heads of science departments and their staffs, the administrative branches, and the various technical men who had no departments — all were either in the room or congregated in the adjoining corridors.

A bell clanged. The babble of conversation began to fade. The bell clanged again. All conversation ceased. Captain Leeth came forward.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “These problems keep arising, do they not? I am beginning to feel that we military men have not properly appreciated scientists in the past, I thought they lived out their lives in laboratories, far from danger. But it’s beginning to dawn on me that scientists can find trouble where it never existed before.”

He hesitated briefly, then went on in the same dryly humorous tone. “Director Morton and I have agreed that this is not a problem for military forces alone. So long as the creature is at large, every man must be his own policeman. Go armed, go, in pairs or groups — the more the better.”

Once more he surveyed his audience, and his manner was grimmer when he continued. “It would be foolish for you to believe that this situation will not involve danger or death for some among us. It may be me. It may be you. Nerve yourself for it. Accept the possibility. But if it is your destiny to make contact with this immensely dangerous creature, defend yourself to the death. Try to take him with you. Do not suffer, or die, in vain.

“And now” — he turned to Morton — “the Director will guide a discussion regarding the utilization against our enemy of the very considerable scientific knowledge which is aboard this ship. Mr. Morton.”

Morton walked slowly forward. His large and powerful body was dwarfed by the gigantic instrument board behind him, but nevertheless he looked imposing. The Director’s grey eyes flicked questioningly along the line of faces, pausing at none, apparently simply assessing the collective mood of the men. He began by praising Captain Leeth’s attitude, and then he said, “I have examined my own recollections of what happened, and I think I can say honestly that no one — not even myself — is to blame for the creature’s being aboard. It had been decided, you may remember, to bring him aboard in the confines of a force field. That precaution satisfied our most precise critics, and it was unfortunate that it was not taken in time. The being actually came into the ship under his own power by a method which could not be foreseen.” He stopped. His keen gaze once more swept the room. “Or did anybody have something stronger than a premonition? Please hold up your hand if you did.”

Grosvenor craned his neck, but no hands were raised. He settled back in his seat, and was a little startled to see that Morton’s grey eyes were fixed on him. “Mr. Grosvenor,” said Morton, “did the science of Nexialism enable you to predict that this creature could dissolve his body through a wall?”

In a clear voice, Grosvenor said, “It did not.”

“Thank you,” said Morton.

He seemed satisfied, for he did not ask anyone else. Grosvenor had already guessed that the Director was trying to justify his own position. It was a sad commentary on the ship’s politics that he should have felt it necessary. But what particularly interested Grosvenor was that he had appealed to Nexialism as a sort of final authority.

Morton was speaking again. “Siedel,” he said, “give us a psychologically sound picture of what has happened.”

The chief psychologist said, “In setting about to capture this creature, we must first of all straighten our minds about him. He has arms and legs, yet floats in space and remains alive. He allows himself to be caught in a cage, but knows all the time that the cage cannot hold him. Then he slips through the bottom of the cage, which is very silly of him if he does not want us to know that he can do it. There is a reason why intelligent beings make mistakes, a fundamental reason that should make it easy for us to do some shrewd guessing as to where he came from, and, of course, to analyse why he is here. Smith, dissect his biological make-up!”

Smith stood up, lank and grim. “We’ve already discussed the obvious planetary origin of his hands and feet. The ability to live in space, if evolutionary at all, is certainly a remarkable attribute. I suggest that here is a member of a race that has solved the final secrets of biology; and if I knew how we should even begin to start looking for a creature that can escape from us through the nearest wall, my advice would be: Hunt him down, and kill him on sight.”

“Ah…” Kellie, the sociologist, said. He was a bald-headed man, fortyish, with large, intelligent eyes. “Ah — any being who could fit himself to live in a vacuum would be lord of the universe. His kind would dwell on every planet, clutter up every galaxy. Swarms of him would be floating in space. Yet we know for a fact that his race does not infest our galactic area. A paradox that is worthy of investigation.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean, Kellie,” said Morton.

“Simply — ah — that a race which has solved the ultimate secrets of biology must be ages in advance of man. It would be highly sympodial, that is, capable of adaptation to any environment. According to the law of vital dynamics, it would expand to the farthest frontier of the universe just as man is trying to do.”

“It is a contradiction,” acknowledged Morton, “and would seem to prove that the creature is not a superior being. Korita, what is this thing’s history?”

The Japanese scientist shrugged, but he stood up and said, “I’m afraid I can be of only slight assistance on present evidence. You know the prevailing theory: that life proceeds upward — whatever we mean by upward — by a series of cycles. Each cycle begins with the peasant, who is rooted to his bit of soil. The peasant comes to market; and slowly the market place transforms into a town, with ever less ‘inward’ connection to the earth. Then we have cities and nations, finally the soulless world cities and a devastating struggle for power, a series of frightful wars which sweep men to fellahdom, and so to primitiveness, and on to a new peasanthood. The question is: Is this creature in the peasant part of his particular cycle, or in the big-city, megalopolitan era? Or where?”

He stopped: It seemed to Grosvenor that some very sharp pictures had been presented. Civilizations did appear to operate in cycles. Each period of the cycle must in a very rough fashion have its own psychological background. There were many possible explanations for the phenomenon, of which the old Spenglerian notion of cycles was only one. It was even possible that Korita could foresee the alien’s actions on the basis of the cyclic theory. He had proved in the past that the system was workable and had considerable predictability. At the moment, it had the advantages that it was the only historical approach with techniques that could be applied to a given situation.

Morton’s voice broke the silence. “Korita, in view of our limited knowledge of this creature, what basic traits should we look for, supposing him to be in the big-city stage of his culture?”

“He would be a virtually invincible intellect, formidable to the ultimate possible degree. At his own game, he would make no errors of any kind, and he would be defeatable only through circumstances beyond his control The best example” — Korita was suave — “is the highly trained human being of our own era.”

“But he has already made an error!” von Grossen said in a silken tone. “He very foolishly fell through the bottom of the cage. Is that the kind of thing a peasant would do?”

Morton asked, “Suppose he was in the peasant stage?”

“Then,” Korita replied, “his basic impulses would be much simpler. There would first of all be the desire to reproduce, to have a son, to know that his blood was being carried on. Assuming great fundamental intelligence, this impulse might, in a superior being, take the form of a fanatic drive toward race survival.”

He finished quietly, “And that’s all I will say, on available evidence.” He sat down.

Morton stood stiffly on the tier of the instrument board and looked over his audience of experts. His gaze paused at Grosvenor. He said, “Recently, I have personally come to feel that the science of Nexialism may have a new approach to offer to the solution of problems. Since it is the whole-istic approach of life, carried to the nth degree, it may help us to a quick decision at a time when a quick decision is important. Grosvenor, please give us your views on this alien being.”

Grosvenor stood up briskly. He said, “I can give you a conclusion based on my observations. I could go into a little theory of my own as to how we made contact with this creature — the way the pile was drained of energy, with the result that we had to repair the outer wall of the engine room — and there were a number of significant time intervals — but rather than develop on such backgrounds I’d like to tell you in the next few minutes how we should kill—”

There was an interruption. Half a dozen men were pushing their way through the group that crowded the doorway. Grosvenor paused, and glanced questioningly at Morton. The Director had turned and was watching Captain Leeth. The captain moved towards the new arrivals, and Grosvenor saw that Pennons, chief engineer of the ship, was one of them.

Captain Leeth said, “Finished, Mr. Pennons?”

The chief engineer nodded. “Yes, sir.” He added in a warning tone, “It is essential that every man be dressed in a rubberite suit and wear rubberite gloves and shoes.”

Captain Leeth explained. “We’ve energized the walls around the bedrooms. There may be some delay in catching this creature, and we are taking no chances of being murdered in our beds. We—” He broke off, asking sharply, “What is it, Mr. Pennons?”

Pennons was staring at a small instrument in his hand. He said slowly, “Are we all here, Captain?”

“Yes, except for the guards in the engine and machine rooms.”

“Then… then something’s caught in the walls of force. Quick, we must surround it!”