Tales Of Known Space Part 21

"I guess I was afraid from the start that alien s.h.i.+p was dangerous. I'm more psychist than emdee, and I qualified for history cla.s.s, so maybe I know more than is good for me about human nature. Too much to think that beings with s.p.a.ce travel will automatically be peaceful. I tried to think so, but they aren't. They've got things any self-respecting human being would be ashamed to have nightmares about. Bomb missiles, fusion bombs, lasers, that induction projector they used on us. And antimissiles. You know what that means? They've got enemies like themselves, Steve. Maybe nearby."

"So I killed them." The room seemed to swoop around him, but his voice came out miraculously steady.

"You saved the s.h.i.+p."

"It was an accident. I was trying to get us away."

"No, you weren't." Davis' accusation was as casual as if he were describing the chemical makeup of urea. "That s.h.i.+p was four hundred miles away. You would have had to sight on it with a telescope to hit it. You knew what you were doing, too, because you turned off the drive as soon as you'd burned through the s.h.i.+p."

Steve's back muscles would no longer support him. He flopped back to horizontal.

"All right, you know," he told the ceiling.

"Do the others?"

"I doubt it. Thinking in self-defense is too far outside their experience.. I think Sue's guessed."

"Oooo."

"If she has, she's taking it well," Davis said briskly. "Better than most of them will, when they find out the universe is full of warriors. This is the end of the world, Steve."

"What?"

"I'm being theatrical. But it is. Three hundred years of the peaceful life for everyone.

They'll call it the Golden Age. No starvation, no war, no physical sickness other than senescence, no permanent mental sickness at all, even by our rigid standards. When someone over fourteen tries to use his fist on someone else we say he's sick, and we cure him. And now it's over. Peace isn't a stable condition, not for us. Maybe not for anything that lives."

"Can I see the s.h.i.+p from here?"

"Yes. It's just behind us."

Steve rolled out of bed, went to the window.

Someone had steered the s.h.i.+ps much closer together. The Kzinti s.h.i.+p was a huge red sphere with ugly projections scattered at seeming random over the hull. The beam had sliced it into two unequal halves, sliced it like an ax through an egg. Steve watched, unable to turn aside, as the big half rotated to show its honeycombed interior.

"In a little while," said Jim, "the men will be coming back. They'll be frightened.

Someone will probably insist that we arm ourselves against the next attacks, using weapons from the other s.h.i.+p. I'll have to agree with him.

"Maybe they'll think I'm sick myself. Maybe I am. But it's the kind of sickness we'll need." Jim looked desperately unhappy.

"We're going to become an armed society. And of course we'll have to warn the Earth.

The Borderland oF Sol ------------------------------------------------------------.

The organ bank problem remained an important social factor for most of the colony worlds. On Jinx it was unimportant; there was too much empty land for felons to flee to. On Plateau it created a hideous social stratification, vestiges of which re mained long after ramrobot packages ended the organ bank problem itself.

Sol had its own problems. The Kzinti had dis covered and conquered Wunderland and were on their way to Earth.

For a time the situation was touchy. Sol held off the Kzinti by virtue of two accidents: the timely development of manned Bussard ramjets ("The Ethics of Madness") and the existence of giant laser cannon in the outer asteroids. These had been used to launch light-sail craft to Bussard ramjet speeds; now they were turned on the Kzinti. The Kzinti were amazed and hurt. Their telepaths had reported a species given over en tirely to peace.

While Sol battled the Kzinti, an Outsider s.h.i.+p had arrived at We Made It. The Outsiders were interstellar traders, fragile, cold beings. They sold the secret of the faster-than-light drive to the human colony on We Made It. Two years later, a s.h.i.+p powered by the Outsider hyperdrive arrived in Sol system. The crew had not known of the war. They were amazed at their heroes' welcome.

It was the Outsiders' faster-than-light drive that ended the first Man-Kzin War. The second, third, and fourth are hardly worth discussing. The Kzinti always had a tendency to attack before they were quite ready.

The hyperdrive also opened up known s.p.a.ce. There were other intelligent species around: Grogs, Banders.n.a.t.c.hi, Pierson's Puppeteers, Kdatlyno. An interstellar, interspecies civilization developed... and tales of that time are told in Neutron Star, the other known s.p.a.ce collection.

Beowulf Shaeffer was a child of that time. A wandering crashlander, he was generally too lazy to stay out of trouble, but bright enough to think his way out once he was in. It was he who discovered that the galactic core was exploding... that within twenty thousand years, humanity would have to move elsewhere.

The following is the fifth of the tales of Beowulf Shaeffer.

LN ---------------------------------------------------------------.

THREE MONTHS ON Jinx, marooned.

I played tourist for the first couple of months. I never saw the high-pressure regions around the ocean because the only way down would have been with a safari of hunting tanks. But I travelled the habitable lands on either side of the sea, the East Band civilized, the West Band a developing frontier. I wandered the East End in a vacuum suit, toured the distilleries and other vacuum industries, and stared up into the orange vastness of Primary, Jinx's big twin brother.

I spent most of the second month between the Inst.i.tute of Knowledge and the Camelot Hotel. Tourism had palled.

For me, that's unusual. I'm a born tourist. But-- Jinx's one point seven eight gravities put an unreasonable restriction on elegance and ingenuity in architectural design. The buildings in the habitable bands all look alike: squat and ma.s.sive.

The East and West Ends, the vacuum regions, aren't that different from any industrialized moon. I never developed much of an interest in touring factories.

As for the ocean sh.o.r.elines, the only vehicles that go there go to hunt Banders.n.a.t.c.hi.

The Banders.n.a.t.c.hi are freaks: enormous, intelligent white slugs the size of mountains.

They hunt the tanks. There are rigid restrictions to the equipment the tanks can carry, covenants established between men and Banders.n.a.t.c.hi, so that the Banders.n.a.t.c.hi win about forty percent of the duels. I wanted no part of that.

And all my touring had to be done in three times the gravity of my home world.

I spent the third month in Sirius Mater, and most of that in the Camelot Hotel, which has gravity generators in most of the rooms. When I went out I rode a floating contour couch. I pa.s.sed like an invalid among the Jinxians, who were amused. Or was that my imagination?

I was in a hall of the Inst.i.tute of Knowledge when I came on Carlos Wu running his fingertips over a Kdatlyno touch-sculpture.

A dark, slender man with narrow shoulders and straight black hair, Carlos was lithe as a monkey in any normal gravity; but on Jinx he used a travel couch exactly like mine. He studied the busts with his head tilted to one side. And I studied the familiar back, sure it couldn't be him.

"Carlos, aren't you supposed to be on Earth?"

He jumped. But when the couch spun around he was smiling. "Bey! I might say the same for you."

I admitted it.

"I was headed for Earth, but when all those s.h.i.+ps started disappearing around Sol system the captain changed his mind and steered for Sirius. Nothing any of the pa.s.sengers could do about it. What about you? How are Sharrol and the kids?"

"Sharrol's fine, the kids are fine, and they're all waiting for you to come home." His fingers were still trailing, over the Lloobee touch-sculpture called Heroes, feeling the warm, fleshy textures. Heroes was a most unusual touch-sculpture; there were visual as well as textural effects. Carlos studied the two human busts, then said, "That's your face, isn't it?"

"Yah."

"Not that you ever looked that good in your life. How did a Kdatlyno come to pick Beowulf Shaeffer as a cla.s.sic hero? Was it your name? And who's the other guy?"

"I'll tell you about it sometime. Carlos, what are you doing here?"

"I... left Earth a couple of weeks after Louis was born." He was embarra.s.sed. Why?

"I haven't been off Earth in ten years. I needed the break."

But he'd left just before I was supposed to get home. And... hadn't someone once said that Carlos Wu had a touch of the flatland phobia? I began to understand what was wrong.

"Carlos, you did Sharrol and me a valuable favor."

He laughed without looking at me.

"Men have killed other men for such favors. I thought it was ...tactful to be gone when you came home."

Now I knew. Carlos was here because the Fertility Board on Earth would not favor me with a parenthood license.

You can't really blame the Board for using any excuse at all to reduce the number of producing parents. I am an albino. Sharrol and I wanted each other; but we both wanted children, and Sharrol can't leave Earth. She has the flatland phobia, the fear of strange air and altered days and changed gravity and black sky beneath her feet.

The only solution we'd found had been to ask a good friend to help.

Carlos Wu is a registered genius with an incredible resistance to disease and injury. He carries an unlimited parenthood license, one of sixty-odd among Earth's eighteen billion people. He gets similar offers every week... but he is a good friend, and he'd agreed. In the last two years Sharrol and Carlos had had two children, who were now waiting on earth for me to become their father.

I felt only grat.i.tude for what he'd done for us.

"I forgive you your odd ideas on tact," I said magnanimously. "Now. As long as we're stuck on Jinx, may I show you around? I've met some interesting people."

"You always do." He hesitated, then, "I'm not actually stuck on Jinx. I've been offered a ride home. I may be able to get you in on it."

"Oh, really? I didn't think there were any s.h.i.+ps going to Sol system these days. Or leaving."

"This s.h.i.+p belongs to a government man. Ever heard of a Sigmund AusfaRer?"

"That sounds vaguely... Wait! Stop! The last time I saw Sigmund Ausfaller, he had just put a bomb aboard my s.h.i.+p!"

Carlos blinked at me.

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Sigmund Ausfaller is in the Bureau of Alien Affairs. Bombing s.p.a.cecraft isn't one of his functions."

"Maybe he was off duty." I said viciously.

"Well, it doesn't really sound like you'd want to share a s.p.a.cecraft cabin with him.

Maybee--"

But I'd thought of something else, and now there just wasn't any way out of it.

"No, let's meet him. Where do we find him?"

"The bar of the Camelot," said Carlos.

Reclining luxuriously on our travel couches, we slid on air cus.h.i.+ons through Sirius Mater. The orange trees that lined the walks were foreshortened by gravity; their trunks were thick cones, and the oranges on the branches were not much bigger than ping pong b.a.l.l.s.

Their world had altered them, even as our worlds have altered you and me. And underground civilization and point six gravities have made of me a pale stick-figure of a man, tall and attenuated. The Jinxians we pa.s.sed were short and wide, designed like bricks, men and women both. Among them the occasional offworlder seemed as shockingly different as a Kdatlyno or a Pierson's Puppeteer.

And so we came to the Camelot.

The Camelot is a low, two-story structure that sprawls like a cubistic octopus across several acres of downtown Sirius Mater. Most offworlders stay here, for the gravity control in the rooms and corridors and for access to the Inst.i.tute of Knowledge, the finest museum and research complex in human s.p.a.ce.

The Camelot Bar carries one Earth gravity throughout. We left our travel couches in the vestibule and walked in like men. Jinxians were walking in like bouncing rubber bricks, with big happy grins on their wide faces. Jinxians love low gravity. A good many migrate to other worlds.

We spotted Ausfaller easily: a rounded, moon-faced flatlander with thick, dark, wavy hair and a thin black mustache. He stood as we approached.

"Beowulf Shaeffer!" he beamed. "How good to see you again! I believe it has been eight years or thereabouts. How have you been?"

"I lived," I told him.

Carlos rubbed his hands together briskly.

"Sigmund! Why did you bomb Bey's s.h.i.+p?"

Ausfaller blinked in surprise.

"Did he tell you it was his s.h.i.+p? It wasn't. He was thinking of stealing it. I reasoned that he would not steal a s.h.i.+p with a hidden time bomb aboard."

"But how did you come into it?" Carlos slid into the booth beside him.

"You're not police. You're in the Extremely Foreign Relations Bureau."

"The s.h.i.+p belonged to General Products Corporation, which is owned by Pierson's Puppeteers, not human beings."

Carlos turned on me.

"Bey! Shame on you."

"Dammit! They were trying to blackmail me into a suicide mission! And Ausfaller let them get away with it! And that's the least convincing exhibition of tact I've ever seen!"

"Good thing they soundproof these booths," said Carlos.

"Let's order."

Soundproofing field or not, people were staring. I sat down. When our drinks came I drank deep. Why had I mentioned the bomb at all?

Ausfaller was saying, "Well, Carlos, have you changed your mind about coming with me?"