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“And,” added Roi, “no contact whatever with the surface creatures.”
Gan said, “Why that? Primitive though they are, they could be of help to us once we establish our base. A race that can build aircraft must have some abilities.”
“It isn't that. They're a belligerent lot, sir. They would attack with animal ferocity at all occasions and-”
Gan interrupted. “I am disturbed at the psychopenumbra that surrounds your references to the aliens. There's something you are concealing.”
Roi said, “I thought at first we could make use of them. If they wouldn't allow us to be friends, at least, we could control them. I made one of them close contact inside the cube and that was difficult. Very difficult. Their minds are basically different.”
“In what way?”
“If I could describe it, the difference wouldn't be basic. But I can give you an example. I was in the mind of an infant. They don't have maturation chambers. The infants are in the charge of individuals. The creature who was in charge of my host-”
“Yes.”
“She (it was a female) felt a special tie to the young one. There was a sense of ownership, of a relationship that excluded the remainder of their society. I seemed to detect, dimly something of the emotion that binds a man to an associate or friend, but it was far more intense and unrestrained.”
“Well,” said Gan, “without mental contact, they probably have no real conception of society and subrelationships may build up. Or was this one pathological?”
“No, no. It's universal. The female in charge was the infant's mother.”
“Impossible. Its own mother?”
“Of necessity. The infant had passed the first part of its existence inside its mother. Physically inside. The creature's eggs remain within the body. They are inseminated within the body. They grow within the body and emerge alive.”
“Great caverns,” Gan said weakly. Distaste was strong within him. “Each creature would know the identity of its own child. Each child would have a particular father-”
“And he would be known, too. My host was being taken five thousand miles, as nearly as I could judge the distance, to be seen by its father.”
“Unbelievable!”
“Do you need more to see that there can never be any meeting of minds? The difference is so fundamental, so i
The yellowness of regret tinged and roughened Gan's thought train. He said, ”It would be too bad. I had thought-“
“What, sir?”
“I had thought that for the first time there would be two intelligences helping one another. I had thought that together we might progress more quickly than either could alone. Even if they were primitive technologically, as they are, technology isn't everything. I had thought we might still be able to learn of them.”
“Learn what?” asked Roi brutally. “To know our parents and make friends of our children?”
Gan said, “No. No, you're quite right The barrier between us must remain forever complete. They will have the surface and we the Deep, and so it will be.”
Outside the laboratories Roi met Wenda.
Her thoughts were concentrated pleasure. ”I'm glad you're back.”
Roi’s thoughts were pleasurable too. It was very restful to make clean mental contact with a friend.
Sucker Bait
One
The ship Triple G. flashed silently out of the nothingness of hyperspace and into the allness of space-time. It emerged into the glitter of the great star cluster of Hercules.
It poised gingerly in space, surrounded by suns and suns and suns, each centering a gravitational field that wrenched at the little bubble of metal. But the ship's computers had done well and it had pin-pricked squarely into position. It was within a day's journey-ordinary space-drive journey-of the Lagrange System.
This fact had varying significance, to the different men aboard ship. To the crew, it was another day's work and another day's flight pay and then shore rest. The planet for which they were aiming was uninhabited, but shore rest could be a pleasant interlude even on an asteroid. They did not trouble themselves concerning a possible difference of opinion among the passengers.
The crew, in fact, were rather contemptuous of the passengers, and avoided them.
Eggheads!
And so they were, every one of them but one. Scientists, in politer terms-and a heterogeneous lot. Their nearest approach to a common emotion at that moment was a final anxiety for their instruments, a vague desire for a last check.
And perhaps just a small increase of tension and anxiety. It was an uninhabited planet. Each had expressed himself as firmly of that belief a number of times. Still, each man's thoughts are his own.
As for the one unusual man on board ship-not a crewman and not really a scientist-his strongest feeling was one of bone-weariness. He stirred to his feet weakly and fought off the last dregs of space-sickness. He was Mark A
But now he felt less certain of imminent death and he had to answer the summons of the Captain. In his inarticulate way, Mark resented that summons. He was used to having his own way, seeing what he felt like seeing. Who was the Captain to-
The impulse kept returning to tell Dr. Sheffield about this and let it rest there.
But Mark was curious, so he knew he would have to go.
It was his one great vice. Curiosity!
It also happened to be his profession and his mission in life.
Two
Captain Follenbee of the Triple G. was a hardheaded man. It was how he habitually thought of himself. He had made government-sponsored runs before. For one thing, they were profitable. The Confederacy didn't haggle. It meant a complete overhaul of his ship each time, replacement of defective parts, liberal terms for the crew. It was good business. Damned good business.
This run, of course, was a little different
It wasn't so much the particular gang of passengers he had taken aboard. (He had expected temperament, tantrums, and unbearable foolishness but it turned out that eggheads were much like normal people.) It wasn't that half his ship had been torn down and rebuilt into what the contract called a “universal central-access laboratory.”
Actually, and he hated the thought, it was ”Junior” -the planet that lay ahead of them.
The crew didn't know, of course, but he, himself, hard head and all, was begi
But only begi
At the moment, he told himself, it was this Mark A
Insolence!
A boy of not more than twenty, with no position that he knew of among the passengers, to make a request like that.
What was behind it? That at least ought to be straightened out.
In his present mood, he would like to straighten it out by means of a jacket collar twisted in a fist and a rattle of teeth, but better not-better not-
After all, this was a curious kind of flight for the Confederacy of Worlds to sponsor, and a twenty-year-old, overcurious rubberneck might be an integral part of the strangeness. What was he on board for? There was this Dr. Sheffield, for instance, who seemed to have no job but to play nursemaid for the boy. Now why was that? Who was this A
He had been space-sick for the entire trip, or was that just a device to keep to his cabin-