Arcturus Landing Read online

  Mal nodded, puzzled.

  Twenty minutes later, he stepped out into the impenetrable gloom of the Venusian night and felt Sorrel’s hand on his arm.

  “This way,” said the Underground man.

  His hand drew Mal to the little flyer that was ordinarily kept around the funnel spot and pushed him in. Sorrel climbed in behind and took the controls.

  “Where are we going?” demanded Mal.

  “A special meeting spot,” answered Sorrel. “Sit tight.”

  His fingers shifted on the controls and the flyer rocketed upward. For perhaps fifteen minutes they shot through the pitch blackness, flying blind. Then Mal felt the flyer settle and they dropped down suddenly into a globe of light that had not been there a moment before.

  “We’re under shielding,” said Sorrel, answering Mal’s surprised look. “Nobody can see the light from above.”

  He pushed open the door of the flyer and stepped out. A wave of damp, reeking air at blastfurnace temperature washed into the flyer and Mal gagged, feeling the perspiration spring from him in rivulets. Within seconds he was dripping wet.

  “Welcome to the lowlands of Venus,” said Sorrel sardonically from outside the flyer’s door. “Come on, the boys are waiting.”

  Mal stumbled out, to find himself facing a table and chairs of bubble plastic, blown up upon the lush green of the moss. Around the table and seated in the chairs were six men—miners all, by the look of them. And standing at the far end was a little, thin man, whose dress showed him as probably being a city Earthman. It was to this man that Sorrel led Mal.

  “Alden,” said Sorrel to the little man, taking his hand for a quick shake and releasing it as abruptly.

  “Sit down,” Sorrel told Mal, waving him to a chair. “We haven’t got much time.” Still standing himself, he put a hand on the little man’s shoulder and turned to address the rest of the group.

  “None of you know Alden,” he said. “But he’s one of our Earth group; and for the last ten years he’s been attached to the Presidential entourage in the government. Go ahead, Alden, tell them.”

  He sat down himself; and the little man turned to face them all. His face jumped nervously in the brilliant, artificial light.

  “Men,” he said, speaking in a rapid, high-pitched voice, “you’ve been hearing for some time that the President is missing, probably kidnaped. He’s not missing; and he’s not kidnaped. He’s on Arcturus.”

  “I learned this three days ago, by going through some notes that President Waring thought he’d destroyed. They were notes for a speech pleading the case of the human race before a meeting of representatives of the Federation—the Alien Federation. Apparently, there’s a meeting going on on one of the planets of the Arcturan solar system right now—whether it’s just so Waring can talk to them or not, nobody seems to know.”

  “How—” began one of the other men. “Hold it,” said Sorrel. “Wait for Alden to tell us the whole thing.”

  “The point is, Waring’s there because the Federation’s about to consider this Quarantine that keeps us penned up under our own sun. It turns out the Federation’s been in touch with the chief human authority from the beginning of our contact with it. I’ve got a copy of Waring’s notes here, anyway, and you can look at them for yourselves if you want to. However, to save time, let me run through the highlights now.”

  He pulled an electronic notebook out of his pocket and began to read.

  “The human race wasn’t informed on contact, but it posed a special problem for the Federation. That problem lay in what had attracted the attention of people long before the first orbital flight beyond Earth’s atmosphere—the question of the adjustment of the race to the fact that it was merely one of many. It seems that the record—our own past history—was against us in regard to such integration being successfully accomplished. To balance this fact, however, we had one point in our favor. It seems that the human race, in comparison with the norm of galactic races of the same type as our own, showed an extremely high index of adaptability. The question was whether this adaptability could produce enough of a revolution in human thought and emotion—without at the same time destroying the basic human character—to render the race psychologically and sociologically acceptable to the Federation.

  “The Federation was not thinking of itself in its consideration of this problem. Its territory is incomprehensibly vast, the numbers of its associated intelligent races incredibly great and much more able than we will be for thousands of years to come. The Federation was concerned with us—whether it would damage us irreparably to have full contact. In essence, the problem it faced is the same as the problem of any great and civilized people who come into contact with a small and primitive people—will the sudden superimposition of civilized ways of life destroy ancient and effective habits of living; and so destroy the basic and valuable independence of character of the primitive race?

  “Because of humanity’s precocity in the field of adaptability, an unusual compromise was adopted. Within the limits of our own solar system, we were to be allowed a limited acquaintance with the products of other technologies—for a limited time. At the end of that time, a decision would be made whether to accept humanity, or seal it off in its little corner of space until the necessary thousands of years passed to bring it—by itself— to equality with the galactic norm.”

  The little man paused and put the notebook back in his pocket. An odd, bright gleam of triumph lit up his tired face.

  “Gentlemen—” he said—and the archaic word rang with a peculiar impressiveness—“it is the belief of President Waring that we’ve passed that part of the test. Our native culture’s been violently upset with bubble plastics, force fields, power packs, greatly simplified methods of manufacture and Alien imports; but there have been no wars, no hysterias, and no panics. Nor are there any signs of true moral disintegration in this new world of ours where leisure and luxury have become commonplace. We are still struggling to adjust, but the crisis point has passed.”

  A low rumble of glad reaction ran around the table. The little man held up his hand.

  “But” he said and paused, “what every President has known under strict seal of Federation secrecy was that not only this part of the test, but the other, was essential as well. It is not enough for the human race to show that it can adapt and imitate. It must also show its ability to progress. I refer to what everyone in the solar system knows about. The faster-than-light drive.”

  The eyes of those seated around the table moved to Mal.

  “Everyone knows we’ve been trying for that,” he said. “What no one knew except the current Chief Executive—and, somehow, in these last few years, the higher-ups of the Company—was that there was a definite time limit set in which we had to come up with this drive. That time has now expired. Waring has left in an Alien ship for Arcturus to exercise his right of pleading for an extension on the basis that Company interference has delayed this discovery or development from taking place. But his opinion, expressed in his own notes, is that the Federation will not accept this excuse on the grounds that a race is judged on its achievements as a race, and not as a mélange of conflicting groups. If the Federation insists on this attitude, and its judgment goes against the human race, the imports of all Alien products will be stopped, all contact will be cut off and we will be sealed inside the solar system until we develop to a point where there is no longer any doubt of our acceptability. I need not point out the results of such an action. Our economy will collapse, the Company will take over by right of might, and we will be dealt a psychological blow from which it will take centuries to recover. It means, in short, a new Dark Ages.”

  The little man sat down suddenly.

  Sorrel rose slowly to his feet; but they were looking at Mal and without waiting for any preamble, he rose and spoke to them all.

  “I’ve been doing all I thought I could,” he said. “But in the next few days I’ll do more. I think I’m close. I don’t know.
But if work can bring in the results I’m looking for in time to reach Arcturus before the Federation decides against us—I promise you I’ll put the work out.” He paused, looking at them, and sat down abruptly.

  They looked back at him without words.

  When they returned to the funnel spot, Mal went directly to the lab, and to work. In the station, Sorrel passed the news on to the other three, who reacted each in their individual fashion. Peep folded his hands and nodded wisely. Margie looked stricken; and Dirk sat rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. After a while, the tall young ex-archaist got up and went over to the lab.

  He found Mal bent over his calculations.

  “Anything I can do?” he asked.

  “Afraid not—” answered Mal, looking up at him.

  Dirk whistled a little tune through his teeth.

  “Well, if you want me for anything,” he said, turning on his heel, “just call.”

  He left the room.

  Some time later, Peep showed up.

  “Young friend—” he said.

  Mal looked up once more from what he was doing.

  “Young friend,” he began again, “in the anomalous position that such a one as I finds himself at such a time as this, a certain hampering of expression due to interior and early training and in duty imposed by harsh fact unfortunately inhibits what would otherwise be given with a good grace and a whole heart.”

  Mal puzzled over this tangle of words for a minute before he managed to sort them out.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Peep,” he answered. “I wouldn’t expect you to help me with this.”

  “This,” said Peep, “however, should not be allowed to appear as a matter of will alone in opposition to what otherwise might perhaps be construed as the disagreement of the unqualified with those who stand by necessity in a position of which a requirement is the rendering often of painful and difficult decisions affecting the lives and happiness of many.”

  “You think the Federation is doing the right thing, then?” asked Mal.

  “In the determination of the infinite and multifarious factors capable of determining and in fact determining, over long periods of time the mental, the physical, the group development of peoples— in itself the result of long test and trial and not without a history of occasional error hinging on sad experience over a great, though not inconceivable span of time—a mean, or in sort a compromise action, has appeared through a process of natural evolution. By the very ordinary and inherent standards obvious, and at once apparent, to a point of view in normal consequence nurtured, and I may without prejudice say cultured in an awareness of the magnitude, relatively speaking, of the overall problem, the question of unfairness, either through intent or oversight, becomes an impossible one, since it could proceed only from the assumption that the case in point was in some relevant essentials unique, or entirely without precedent, which assumption, because of the inconceivably vast time and the unimaginably vast number of previous cases occurring in this time, becomes one of incredibly small probability, since a due and proper search of records will produce cases of such similarity that it often requires a trained mind to determine the actual points of individual difference which set off the past example from the present. Nevertheless, in consequence of the unalterable belief that each living being and by definition, therefore, any race of living being, is and are unique, it is regarded as a duty to seize upon and develop any hope of variation, no matter how slight, from the past pattern. Unfortunately so slight is the variation in all cases during the last great period of time that the probability of development has in all cases been more a theoretical than a practical hope and the result has been failure.”

  Mal nodded.

  “So that was it,” he said. “The Federation played an impossibly long shot on us.” He looked at Peep. “Don’t you think it would’ve been kinder just to leave us alone to putter along at our normal rate?”

  “Would you have preferred it?” replied Peep, with a bluntness that was amazing coming from him.

  “I guess not.” Mal grinned up at Peep and extended his hand. “Thanks for coming and telling me about it.”

  Peep took the proffered hand carefully in his own, as a human might grasp a very delicate piece of chinaware. To Mal it was like holding heavy steel covered with hard leather. They shook, and Peep brightened.

  “And now,” he said, folding his hands together, “I will return to the station to await news of your success.” And he turned and left the room.

  Sighing, but warmed a little by the glow of Peep’s acknowledged friendship and concern, Mal buckled down to his work again. But he was to have one more visitor that evening—and that was Margie.

  She came in very quietly and stood watching him—so quietly, indeed, that it must have been some minutes before he recognized the fact that she was there. It was only in lifting his head, as he reached across the table before him for a fresh sheet of paper, that he saw her.

  “Margie!” he said, checking his hand halfway, “where did you come from?”

  “I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said. “I just dropped by to look at you. I’ll go now. ” She turned toward the door.

  “No—wait,” said Mal on sudden impulse. “As long as you’re here—sit down for a while.”

  She turned at the door and came back.

  “I’m interrupting you, aren’t I?” she said.

  “It might help,” answered Mal. “I don’t have time now to keep on going through the possibilities here one by one. So I’m hopping around at random, as hunch dictates.”

  “How about some coffee?”

  “Coffee? That sounds kind of good,” said Mal. She jumped to her feet and went across the room to the food unit still in the Betsy’s wall. Sitting at his desk, Mal watched her, small and deft of movement in the gray tunic and skirt, a half-cape rippling from her shoulders.

  “Not too strong,” he said.

  “It won’t be.” With a comfortable, bubbling sound, the coffee cascaded into the two cups she held, and she brought them back to his table and sat down with him.

  “Do you know what Dirk’s doing?” she said. “What?” he asked.

  “He’s writing down an account of everything that’s happened to us—ever since we first met at the Ten Drocke estate. He’s been working on it for some time without mentioning it to any of us. He’s got his own account of Archaism and I guess he’s been getting the details on Neo-Taylorism from Peep. Tonight he asked Sorrel for information on the Underground. Sorrel flared up right away— you know how he is—and then all of a sudden he stopped and sort of shrugged. ‘Why not?’ he said. And now they are over there working together and getting it all down.”

  “Yes—” said Mal. “Well, that’s fine.”

  “You don’t sound very pleased,” she said. “Oh, I am—I am,” said Mal. “So Dirk’s going to be a writer.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “He’s going back to the Company as soon as all this is over.”

  “The Company?”

  “Of course. Dirk says that there’ll be a use for the Company—a new kind of Company, when the Quarantine is lifted. He says that nothing man constructs is ever by itself good or bad, it’s the handling of it that makes it that way. And Dirk is going to put the Company to good use.”

  Mal smiled wistfully. “And he will, too; he’s got what it takes, now.” He paused.

  “So you and Dirk will be going back to the Company.” Intended as a statement, it came out as a question, one that his voice grated over. “Dirk will, yes. I haven’t decided.”

  “Ah…” Mal paused again, his mind struggling vainly to sort out a jumble of sudden thoughts. “Well, what are your plans?”

  Margie did not answer immediately, but Mal lost this fact in the sudden awareness that he had more to say.

  “Listen, Margie—you don’t have to worry about that—I mean, you can stay here with me—” He stumbled to a halt. Margie still said nothing. She was not looking at him. He made himsel
f go on.

  “Well, listen,” he said, “you know, we—you and I—we’ve been in this thing together for some time now—I mean, we’ve gotten to know each other.” He wound down.

  She looked at him then.

  “Yes, I’ll stay,” she said.

  In the following silence they moved together; and thereafter when they did begin to speak again, their whisperings could not have been heard by anyone more than a few feet away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MAL LOST TRACK of the time. Dark turned to daylight and back again and the hours slid by without meaning. Vaguely, he began to become aware of Sorrel or Dirk or Margie telling him that he must stop and rest.

  “But I’ve almost got it,” he answered and forgot them. The fever of his work held him. The room around him became the whole world— became the limits of the universe. Nothing not in it was real. Outside, time and space ceased to have meaning; the planets halted and the constellations stopped their movement, waiting for Malcolm Fletcher to catch the will-o’-the-wisp that danced before him.

  “I think I’ve got it,” he said finally to the Sorrel-Dirk-Margie face that kept coming back to him.

  “You ought to rest now, then—” it said.

  “No,” said Mal. “There’s more to do. There’s just a little bit more to do. I’ve got to finish it.”

  And that was the last he remembered.

  He opened his eyes finally to find himself lying in a bedroom in the station. He had come slowly out of sleep and now he lay wide awake, but with a strange, washed-out feeling, as if all the strength had been sucked out of him. He thought to himself that he would lie there a little while longer, and then he would take another little nap.

  But his mind would not let him slide back so easily into oblivion. For a time his body protested drowsily against his reawakening memory and curiosity and then gave in. He sat up finally, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. For a second he sat there, feeling somewhat dizzy. Then the dizziness passed and he got to his feet and set about dressing.