The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories Read online

  That got him in, all right.

  He stood at rigid attention before the admiral’s desk. He said, “Sir, the aliens have been trying to contact us. They have been unable because we destroy them on contact before a complete telepathic thought has been put across. If we permit them to communicate, there is a chance that they will give away, accidentally or otherwise, the location of their home planet.”

  Admiral Sutherland said drily, “And whether they did or not, they might find out ours by following the ship back.”

  “Sir, my plan covers that. I suggest that I be sent out into the same sector where initial contact was made—this time in a one-man ship, unarmed. That the fact that I am doing so be publicized as widely as possible, so that every man in space knows it, and knows that I am in an unarmed ship for the purpose of making contact with the aliens. It is my opinion that they will learn of this. They must manage to get thoughts at long distances, but to send thoughts—to Earth minds anyway—only at very short distances.”

  “How do you deduce that, Lieutenant? Never mind; it coincides with what our logicians have figured out. They say that the fact that they have stolen our science—as in their copying our ships on a smaller scale—before we were aware of their existence proves their ability to read our thoughts at—well, a moderate distance.”

  “Yes, sir. I am hoping that if news of my mission is known to the entire fleet it will reach the aliens. And knowing that my ship is unarmed, they will make contact. I will see what they have to say to me, to us, and possibly that message will include a clue to the location of their home planet.”

  Admiral Sutherland said, “And in that case that planet would last all of twenty-four hours. But what about the converse, Lieutenant? What about the possibility of their following you back?”

  “That, sir, is where we have nothing to lose. I shall return to Earth only if I find out that they already know its location.”

  “With their telepathic abilities I believe they already do—and that they have not attacked us only because they are not hostile or are too weak. But whatever the case, if they know the location of Earth they will not deny it in talking to me. Why should they? It will seem to them a bargaining point in their favor, and they’ll think we’re bargaining. They might claim to know, even if they do not—but I shall refuse to take their word for it unless they give me proof.”

  Admiral Sutherland stared at him. He said, “Son, you have got something. It’ll probably cost you your life, but—if it doesn’t, and if you come back with news of where the aliens come from, you’re going to be the hero of the race. You’ll probably end up with my job. In fact, I’m tempted to steal your idea and make that trip myself.”

  “Sir, you’re too valuable. I’m expendable. Besides, sir, I’ve got to. It isn’t that I want any honors. I’ve got something on my conscience that I want to make up for. I should have tried to stop Captain May from disobeying orders. I shouldn’t be here now, alive. We should have blasted out into space, since we weren’t sure we’d destroyed the alien.”

  The admiral cleared his throat. “You’re not responsible for that, son. Only the captain of a ship is responsible, in a case like that. But I see what you mean. You feel you disobeyed orders, in spirit, because you agreed at the time with what Captain May did. All right, that’s past, and your suggestion makes up for it, even if you yourself did not man the contact ship.”

  “But may I, sir?”

  “You may, Lieutenant. Rather, you may, Captain.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “A ship will be ready for you in three days. We could have it ready sooner, but it will take that long for word of our ‘negotiations’ to spread throughout the fleet. But you understand—you are not, under any circumstances, to deviate on your own initiative from the limitations you have outlined.”

  “Yes, sir. Unless the aliens already know the location of Earth and prove it completely, I shall not return. I shall blast off into space. I give you my word, sir.”

  “Very good, Captain Ross.”

  * * * *

  The one-man spacer hovered near the center of Sector 1534, out past the Dog Star. No other ship patrolled that sector.

  Captain Don Ross sat quietly and waited. He watched the visiplate and listened for a voice to speak inside his head.

  It came when he had waited less than three hours. “Greetings, Donross,” the voice said, and simultaneously there were five tiny spaceships outside his visiplate. His Monoid showed that they weighed less than an ounce apiece.

  He said, “Shall I talk aloud or merely think?”

  “It does not matter. You may speak if you wish to concentrate on a particular thought, but first be silent a moment.”

  After half a minute, Ross thought he heard the echo of a sigh in his mind. Then: “I am sorry. I fear this talk will do neither of us any good. You see, Donross, we do not know the location of your home planet. We could have learned, perhaps, but we were not interested. We were not hostile and from the minds of Earthmen we knew we dared not be friendly. So you will never be able, if you obey orders, to return to report.”

  Don Ross closed his eyes a moment. This, then, was the end; there wasn’t any use talking further. He had given his word to Admiral Sutherland that he would obey orders to the letter.

  “That is right,” said the voice. “We are both doomed, Donross, and it does not matter what we tell you. We cannot get through the cordon of your ships; we have lost half our race trying.”

  “Half! Do you mean—?”

  “Yes. There were only a thousand of us. We built ten ships, each to carry a hundred. Five ships have been destroyed by Earthmen; there are only five ships left, the ones you see, the entire race of us. Would it interest you, even though you are going to die, to know about us?”

  He nodded, forgetting that they could not see him, but the assent in his mind must have been read.

  “We are an old race, much older than you. Our home is—or was—a tiny planet of the dark companion of Sirius; it is only a hundred miles in diameter. Your ships have not found it yet, but it is only a matter of time. We have been intelligent for many, many millennia, but we never developed space travel. There was no need and we had no desire.”

  “Twenty of your years ago an Earth ship passed near our planet and we caught the thoughts of the men upon it. And we knew that our only safety, our only chance of survival, lay in immediate flight to the farthest limits of the galaxy. We knew from those thoughts that we would be found sooner or later, even if we stayed on our own planet, and that we would be ruthlessly exterminated upon discovery.”

  “You did not think of fighting back?”

  “No. We could not have, had we wished—and we did not wish. It is impossible for us to kill. If the death of one single Earthman, even of a lesser creature, would ensure our survival, we could not bring about that death.”

  “That you cannot understand. Wait—I see that you can. You are not like other Earthmen, Donross. But back to our story. We took details of space travel from the minds of members of that ship and adapted them to the tiny scale of the ships we built.”

  “We built ten ships, enough to carry our entire race. But we find we cannot escape through your patrols. Five of our ships have tried, and all have been destroyed.”

  Don Ross said grimly, “And I did a fifth of that: I destroyed one of your ships.”

  “You merely obeyed orders. Do not blame yourself. Obedience is almost as deeply rooted in you as hatred of killing is in us. That first contact, with the ship you were on, was deliberate; we had to be sure that you would destroy us on sight.”

  “But since then, one at a time, four of our other ships have tried to get through and have all been destroyed. We brought all the remaining ones here when we learned that you were to contact us with an unarmed ship.”

  “But even if you disobeyed orders and returned to Earth, wherever it is, to report what we have just told you, no orders would be issued to let us through. There are too
few Earthmen like you, as yet. Possibly in future ages, by the time Earthmen reach the far edge of the galaxy, there will be more like you. But now, the chances of our getting even one of our five ships through is remote.”

  “Goodby, Donross. What is this strange emotion in your mind and the convulsion of your muscles? I do not understand it. But wait—it is your recognition of perceiving something incongruous. But the thought is too complex, too mixed. What is it?”

  Don Ross managed finally to stop laughing. “Listen, my alien friend who cannot kill,” he said, “I’m getting you out of this. I’m going to see that you get through our cordon to the safety you want. But what’s funny is the way I’m going to do it. By obedience to orders and by going to my own death. I’m going to outer space, to die there. You, all of you, can come along and live there. Hitchhike. Your tiny ships won’t show on the patrol’s detectors if they are touching this ship. Not only that, but the gravity of this ship will pull you along and you won’t have to waste fuel until you are well through the cordon and beyond the reach of its detectors. A hundred thousand parsecs, at least, before my fuel runs out.”

  There was a long pause before the voice in Don Ross’s mind said, “Thank you.” Faintly. Softly.

  He waited until the five ships had vanished from his visiplate and he had heard five tiny sounds of their touching the hull of his own ship. Then he laughed once more. And obeyed orders, blasting off for space and death.

  * * * *

  On a tiny planet of a far, faint star, invisible from Earth, and at the farther edge of the galaxy, five times as far as man has yet penetrated into space, there is the statue of an Earthman. It is a tremendous thing, ten inches high, exquisite in workmanship.

  Bugs crawl on it, but they have a right to; they made it, and they honor it. The statue is of very hard metal. On an airless world it will last forever—or until Earthmen find it and blast it out of existence. Unless, of course, by that time Earthmen have changed an awful lot.

  ALL GOOD BEMS

  The spaceship from Andromeda II spun like a top in the grip of mighty forces. The five-limbed Andromedan strapped into the pilot’s seat turned the three protuberant eyes of one of his heads toward the four other Andromedans strapped into bunks around the ship.

  “Going to be a rough landing,” he said.

  It was.

  * * * *

  Elmo Scott hit the tab key of his typewriter and listened to the carriage zing across and ring the bell. It sounded nice and he did it again. But there still weren’t any words on the sheet of paper in the machine.

  He lit another cigarette and stared at it. At the paper, that is, not the cigarette. There still weren’t any words on the paper.

  He tilted his chair back and turned to look at the sleek black-and-tan Doberman pinscher lying in the mathematical middle of the rag rug. He said, “You lucky dog.” The Doberman wagged what little stump of tail he had. He didn’t answer otherwise.

  Elmo Scott looked back at the paper. There still weren’t any words there. He put his fingers over the keyboard and wrote: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” He stared at the words, such as they were, and felt the faintest breath of an idea brush his cheek.

  He called out “Toots!” and a cute little brunette in a blue gingham house dress came out of the kitchen and stood by him. His arm went around her. He said, “I got an idea.”

  She read the words in the typewriter. “It’s the best thing you’ve written in three days,” she said, “except for that letter renewing your subscription to the Digest. I think that was better.”

  “Button your lip,” Elmo told her. “I’m talking about what I’m going to do with that sentence. I’m going to change it to a science-fiction plot idea, one word at a time. It can’t miss. Watch.”

  He took his arm from around her and wrote under the first sentence: “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of the party.” He said, “Get the idea, Toots? Already it’s beginning to look like a science-fiction send-off. Good old bug-eyed monsters. Bems to you. Watch the next step.”

  Under the first sentence and the second he wrote. “Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of—” He stared at it. “What shall I make it, Toots? ‘The galaxy’ or ‘the universe’?”

  “Better make it yourself. If you don’t get a story finished and the check for it in two weeks, we lose this cabin and walk back to the city and—and you’ll have to quit writing full time and go back to the newspaper and—”

  “Cut it out, Toots. I know all that. Too well.”

  “Just the same, Elmo, you’d better make it: ‘Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo Scott.’”

  The big Doberman stirred on the rag rug. He said, “You needn’t.”

  Both human heads turned toward him.

  The little brunette stamped a dainty foot. “Elmo!” she said. “Trying a trick like that. That’s how you’ve been spending the time you should have spent writing. Learning ventriloquism!”

  “No, Toots,” said the dog. “It isn’t that.”

  “Elmo! How do you get him to move his mouth like—” Her eyes went from the dog’s face to Elmo’s and she stopped in mid-sentence. If Elmo Scott wasn’t scared stiff, then he was a better actor than Maurice Evans. She said, “Elmo!” again, but this time her voice was a scared little wail, and she didn’t stamp her foot. Instead she practically fell into Elmo’s lap and, if he hadn’t grabbed her, would probably have fallen from there to the floor.

  “Don’t be frightened, Toots,” said the dog.

  Some degree of sanity returned to Elmo Scott. He said, “Whatever you are, don’t call my wife Toots. Her name is Dorothy.”

  “You call her Toots.”

  “That’s—that’s different.”

  “I see it is,” said the dog. His mouth lolled open as though he were laughing. “The concept that entered your mind when you used that word ‘wife’ is an interesting one. This is a bisexual planet, then.”

  Elmo said, “This is a—uh—What are you talking about?”

  “On Andromeda II,” said the dog, “we have five sexes. But we are a highly developed race, of course. Yours is highly primitive. Perhaps I should say lowly primitive. Your language has, I find, confusing connotations; it is not mathematical. But, as I started to observe, you are still in the bisexual stage. How long since you were monosexual? And don’t deny that you once were; I can read the word ‘amoeba’ in your mind.”

  “If you can read my mind,” said Elmo, “why should I talk?”

  “Consider Toots—I mean Dorothy,” said the dog. “We cannot hold a three-way conversation since you two are not telepathic. At any rate, there shall shortly be more of us in the conversation. I have summoned my companions.” He laughed again. “Do not let them frighten you, no matter in what form they may appear. They are merely Bems.”

  “B-bems?” asked Dorothy. “You mean you are b-bug-eyed monsters? That’s what Elmo means by Bems, but you aren’t—”

  “That is just what I am,” said the dog. “You are not, of course, seeing the real me. Nor will you see my companions as they really are. They, like me, are temporarily animating bodies of creatures of lesser intelligence. In our real bodies, I assure you, you would classify us as Bems. We have five limbs each and two heads, each head with three eyes on stalks.”

  “Where are your real bodies?” Elmo asked.

  “They are dead—Wait, I see that word means more to you than I thought at first. They are dormant, temporarily uninhabitable and in need of repairs, inside the fused hull of a spaceship which was warped into this space too near a planet. This planet. That’s what wrecked us.”

  “Where? You mean there’s really a spaceship near here? Where?” Elmo’s eyes were almost popping from his head as he questioned the dog.

  “That is none of your business, Earthman. If it were found and examined by you creatures, you would possibly discover space travel before you are ready for it.
The cosmic scheme would be upset.” He growled. “There are enough cosmic wars now. We were fleeing a Betelgeuse fleet when we warped into your space.”

  “Elmo,” said Dorothy, “What’s beetle juice got to do with it? Wasn’t this crazy enough before he started talking about a beetle juice fleet?”

  “No,” said Elmo resignedly. “It wasn’t.” For a squirrel had just pushed its way through a hole in the bottom of the screen door.

  It said, “Hyah dar, yo-all. We-uns got yo message, One.”

  “See what I mean?” said Elmo.

  “Everything is all right, Four,” said the Doberman. “These people will serve our purpose admirably. Meet Elmo Scott and Dorothy Scott; don’t call her Toots.”

  “Yessir. Yessum. Ah’s sho gladda meetcha.”

  The Doberman’s mouth lolled open again in another laugh; it was unmistakable this time.

  “Perhaps I’d better explain Four’s accent,” he said. “We scattered, each entering a creature of low mentality and from that vantage point contacting the mind of some member of the ruling species, learning from that mind the language and the level of intelligence and degree of imagination. I take it from your reaction that Four has learned the language from a mind which speaks a language differing slightly from yours.”

  “Ah sho did,” said the squirrel.

  Elmo shuddered slightly. “Not that I’m suggesting it, but I’m curious to know why you didn’t take over the higher species directly,” he said.

  The dog looked shocked. It was the first time Elmo had ever seen a dog look shocked, but the Doberman managed it.

  “It would be unthinkable,” he declared. “The cosmic ethic forbids the taking over of any creature of an intelligence over the four level. We Andromedans are of the twenty-three level, and I find you Earthlings—”

  “Wait!” said Elmo. “Don’t tell me. It might give me an inferiority complex. Or would it?”

  “Ah fears it might,” said the squirrel.