Control Group Roger Dee

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.And that means we'll have to rule out any resurgent colonial group down there, because Six never had a colony in the beginning.""The Bees have been gone for over a hundred years," Stryker said."Colonists might have migrated from another Terran-occupied planet."Gibson disagreed."We've touched at every inhabited world in this sector, Lee, and not one surviving colony has developed space travel on its own.The Hymenops had a hundred years to condition their human slaves to ignorance of everything beyond their immediate environment—the motives behind that conditioning usually escape us, but that's beside the point—and they did a thorough job of it.The colonists have had no more than a century of freedom since the Bees pulled out, and four generations simply isn't enough time for any subjugated culture to climb from slavery to interstellar flight."Stryker made a padding turn about the control room, tugging unhappily at the scanty fringe of hair the years had left him."If they're neither Hymenops nor resurgent colonists," he said, "then there's only one choice remaining—they're aliens from a system we haven't reached yet, beyond the old sphere of Terran exploration.We always assumed that we'd find other races out here someday, and that they'd be as different from us in form and motivation as the Hymenops.Why not now?" Gibson said seriously, "Not probable, Lee.The same objection that rules out the Bees applies to any trans-Alphardian culture—they'd have to be beyond the atomic fission stage, else they'd never have attempted interstellar flight.The Ringwave with its Zero Interval Transfer principle and instantaneous communications applications is the only answer to long-range travel, and if they'd had that they wouldn't have bothered with atomics."Stryker turned on him almost angrily."If they're not Hymenops or humans or aliens, then what in God's name are they?""Aye, there's the rub," Farrell said, quoting a passage whose aptness had somehow seen it through a dozen reorganizations of insular tongue and a final translation to universal Terran."If they're none of those three, we've only one conclusion left.There's no one down there at all—we're victims of the first joint hallucination in psychiatric history."Stryker threw up his hands in surrender."We can't identify them by theorizing, and that brings us down to the business of first-hand investigation.Who's going to bell the cat this time?""I'd like to go," Gibson said at once."The ZIT computer can wait." Stryker vetoed his offer as promptly."No, the ZIT comes first.We may have to run for it, and we can't set up a Transfer jump without the computer.It's got to be me or Arthur." Farrell felt the familiar chill of uneasiness that inevitably preceded this moment of decision.He was not lacking in courage, else the circumstances under which he had worked for the past ten years—the sometimes perilous, sometimes downright charnel conditions left by the fleeing Hymenop conquerors—would have broken him long ago.But that same hard experience had honed rather than blunted the edge of his imagination, and the prospect of a close-quarters stalking of an unknown and patently hostile force was anything but attractive."You two did the field work on the last location," he said."It's high time I took my turn—and God knows I'd go mad if I had to stay inship and listen to Lee memorizing his Handbook subsections or to Gib practicing dead languages with Xavier."Stryker laughed for the first time since the explosion that had so nearly wrecked the Marco Four."Good enough.Though it wouldn't be more diverting to listen for hours to you improvising enharmonic variations on the Lament for Old Terra with your accordion."Gibson, characteristically, had a refinement to offer."They'll be alerted down there for a reconnaissance sally," he said."Why not let Xavier take the scouter down for overt diversion, and drop Arthur off in the helihopper for a low-level check?" Stryker looked at Farrell."All right, Arthur?""Good enough," Farrell said.And to Xavier, who had not moved from his post at the magnoscanner:"How does it look, Xav? Have you pinned down their base yet?"The mechanical answered him in a voice as smooth and clear—and as inflectionless—as a 'cello note."The planet seems uninhabited except for a large island some three hundred miles in diameter.There are twenty-seven small agrarian hamlets surrounded by cultivated fields.There is one city of perhaps a thousand buildings with a central square.In the square rests a grounded spaceship of approximately ten times the bulk of the Marco Four."They crowded about the vision screen, jostling Xavier's jointed gray shape in their interest.The central city lay in minutest detail before them, the battered hulk of the grounded ship glinting rustily in the late afternoon sunlight.Streets radiated away from the square in orderly succession, the whole so clearly depicted that they could see the throngs of people surging up and down, tiny foreshortened faces turned toward the sky."At least they're human," Farrell said.Relief replaced in some measure his earlier uneasiness."Which means that they're Terran, and can be dealt with according to Reclamations routine.Is that hulk spaceworthy, Xav?"Xavier's mellow drone assumed the convention vibrato that indicated stark puzzlement."Its breached hull makes the ship incapable of flight.Apparently it is used only to supply power to the outlying hamlets." The mechanical put a flexible gray finger upon an indicator graph derived from a composite section of detector meters."The power transmitted seems to be gross electric current conveyed by metallic cables.It is generated through a crudely governed process of continuous atomic fission." Farrell, himself appalled by the information, still found himself able to chuckle at Stryker's bellow of consternation." Continuous fission? Good God, only madmen would deliberately run a risk like that!" Farrell prodded him with cheerful malice."Why say mad men? Maybe they're humanoid aliens who thrive on hard radiation and look on the danger of being blown to hell in the middle of the night as a satisfactory risk.""They're not alien," Gibson said positively."Their architecture is Terran, and so is their ship.The ship is incredibly primitive, though; those batteries of tubes at either end—""Are thrust reaction jets," Stryker finished in an awed voice [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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