Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (20 page)

Halfway through, he heard the now-muffled noise of rockets. He knew the
ship was descending through atmosphere by the steady sound, though he
had not the faintest idea what was outside. He ground his teeth as—for
timing—he received the commercial inserted in the film. The U. S.
commercials served the purpose, of course. He could not watch the other
pictures shown to residents of other than North America in the
commercial portions of the show.

He was counting seconds to resume transmission when he felt the slight
but distant impact which meant that the ship had touched ground. A very
short time after, even the lessened, precautionary rocket-roar cut off.

Cochrane ground his teeth. The ship had landed on a planet he had not
seen and in whose choice he had had no hand. He was humiliated. The
other members of the ship's company looked out at scenes no other human
eyes had ever beheld.

He regarded the final commercial, inserted into the broadcast for its
American sponsor. It showed, purportedly, the true story of two girl
friends, one blonde and one brunette, who were wall-flowers at all
parties. They tried frantically to remedy the situation by the use of
this toothpaste and that, and this deodorant and the other. In vain! But
then they became the centers of all the festivities they attended, as
soon as they began to wash their hair with Rayglo Shampoo.

Holden and Johnny Simms came clattering down from the control-room
together. They looked excited. They plunged together toward the
stair-well that would take them to the deck on which the airlock opened.

Holden panted,

"Jed! Creatures outside! They look like men!"

The communicator-screen faithfully monitored the end of the commercial.
Two charming girls, radiant and lovely, raised their voices in grateful
song, hymning the virtues of Rayglo Shampoo. There followed brisk
reminders of the superlative, magical results obtained by those who used
Rayglo Foundation Cream, Rayglo Kisspruf Lipstick, and Rayglo home
permanent—in four strengths; for normal, hard-to-wave, easy-to-wave,
and children's hair.

Cochrane heard the clanking of the airlock door.

He made for the control-room, where the ports offered the highest and
widest and best views of everything outside. When he arrived, Babs and
Alicia stood together, staring out and down. Bell frantically worked a
camera. Jamison gaped at the outer world. Al the pilot made frustrated
gestures, not quite daring to leave his controls while there was even an
outside chance the ship's landing-fins might find flaws in their
support. Jones adjusted something on the new set of controls he had
established for the extra Dabney field. Jones was not wholly normal in
some ways. He was absorbed in technical matters even more fully than
Cochrane in his own commercial enterprises.

Cochrane pushed to a port to see.

The ship had landed in a small glade. There were trees nearby. The trees
had extremely long, lanceolate leaves, roughly the shape of grass-blades
stretched out even longer. In the gentle breeze that blew outside, they
waved extravagantly. There were hills in the distance, and nearby
out-croppings of gray rocks. This sky was blue like the sky of Earth. It
was, of course, inevitable that any colorless atmosphere with
dust-particles suspended in it would establish a blue sky.

Holden was visible below, moving toward a patch of reed-like vegetation
rising some seven or eight feet from the rolling soil. He had hopped
quickly over the scorched area immediately outside the ship. It was much
smaller than that made by the first landing on the other planet, but
even so he had probably damaged his footwear to excess. But he now stood
a hundred yards from the ship. He made gestures. He seemed to be
talking, as if trying to persuade some living creature to show itself.

"We saw them peeping," said Babs breathlessly, coming beside Cochrane.
"Once one of them ran from one patch of reeds to another. It looked
like a man. There are at least three of them in there—whatever they
are!"

"They can't be men," said Cochrane grimly. "They can't!" Johnny Simms
was not in sight. "Where's Simms?"

"He has a gun," said Babs. "He was going to get one, anyhow, so he could
protect Doctor Holden."

Cochrane glanced straight down. The airlock door was open, and the end
of a weapon peered out. Johnny Simms might be in a better position there
to protect Holden by gun-fire, but he was assuredly safer, himself.
There was no movement anywhere. Holden did not move closer to the reeds.
He still seemed to be speaking soothingly to the unseen creatures.

"Why can't there be men here?" asked Babs. "I don't mean actually men,
but—manlike creatures? Why couldn't there be rational creatures like
us? I know you said so but—"

Cochrane shook his head. He believed implicitly that there could not be
men on this planet. On the glacier planet every animal had been
separately devised from the creatures of Earth. There were resemblances,
explicable as the result of parallel evolution. By analogy, there could
not be exactly identical mankind on another world because evolution
there would be parallel but not the same. But if there were even a
mental equal to men, no matter how unhuman such a creature might appear,
if there were a really rational animal anywhere in the cosmos off of
Earth, the result would be catastrophic.

"We humans," Cochrane told her, "live by our conceit. We demand more
than animality of ourselves because we believe we are more than
animals—and we believe we are the only creatures that are! If we came
to believe we were not unique, but were simply a cleverer animal, we'd
be finished. Every nation has always started to destroy itself every
time such an idea spread."

"But we aren't only clever animals!" protested Babs. "We
are
unique!"

Cochrane glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

"Quite true."

Holden still stood patiently before the patch of reeds, still seemed to
talk, still with his hands outstretched in what men consider the
universal sign of peace.

There was a sudden movement at the back of the reed-patch, quite fifty
yards from Holden. A thing which did look like a man fled madly for the
nearest edge of woodland. It was the size of a man. It had the
pinkish-tan color of naked human flesh. It ran with its head down, and
it could not be seen too clearly, but it was startlingly manlike in
outline. Up in the control-room Bell fairly yipped with excitement and
swung his camera. Holden remained oblivious. He still tried to lure
something out of concealment. A second creature raced for the woods.

Tiny gray threads appeared in the air between the airlock and the racing
thing. Smoke. Johnny Simms was shooting zestfully at the unidentified
animal. He was using that tracer ammunition which poor shots and worse
sportsmen adopt to make up for bad marksmanship.

The threads of smoke seemed to form a net about the running things. They
dodged and zig-zagged frantically. Both of them reached safety.

A third tried it. And now Johnny Simms turned on automatic fire. Bullets
spurted from his weapon, trailing threads of smoke so that the trails
looked like a stream from a hose. The stream swept through the space
occupied by the fugitive. It leaped convulsively and crashed to earth.
It kicked blindly.

Cochrane swore. Between the instant of the beginning of the creature's
flight and this instant, less than two seconds had passed.

The threads which were smoke-trails drifted away. Then a new thread
streaked out. Johnny Simms fired once more at his still-writhing victim.
It kicked violently and was still.

Holden turned angrily. There seemed to be shoutings between him and
Johnny Simms. Then Holden trudged around the reed-patch. There was no
longer any sign of life in the still shape on the ground. But it was
normal precaution not to walk into a jungle-like thicket in which
unknown, large living things had recently been sighted. Johnny Simms
fired again and again from his post in the airlock. The smoke which
traced his bullets ranged to the woodland. He shot at imagined targets
there. He fired at his previous victim simply because it was something
to shoot at. He shot recklessly, foolishly.

Alicia, his wife, touched Jamison on the arm and spoke to him urgently.
Jamison followed her reluctantly down the stairs. She would be going to
the airlock. Johnny Simms, shooting at the landscape, might shoot
Holden. A thread of bullet-smoke passed within feet of Holden's body. He
turned and shouted back at the ship.

The inner airlock door clanked open. There was the sound of a shot, and
the dead thing was hit again. The bullet had been fired dangerously
close to Holden. There were voices below. Johnny Simms bellowed
enragedly.

Alicia cried out.

There was silence below, but Cochrane was already plunging toward the
stairs. Babs followed closely.

When they rushed down onto the dining-room deck they found Alicia
deathly white, but with a flaming red mark on her cheek. They found
Johnny Simms roaring with rage, waving the weapon he'd been shooting.
Jamison was uneasily in the act of trying to placate him.

"—!" bellowed Johnny Simms. "I came on this ship to hunt! I'm going
to hunt! Try and stop me!"

He waved his weapon.

"I paid my money!" he shouted. "I won't take orders from anybody! Nobody
can boss me!"

Cochrane said icily:

"I can! Stop being a fool! Put down that gun! You nearly shot Holden!
You might still kill somebody. Put it down!"

He walked grimly toward Johnny Simms. Johnny was near the open airlock
door. The outer door was open, too. He could not retreat. He edged
sidewise. Cochrane changed the direction of his advance. There are
people like Johnny Simms everywhere. As a rule they are not classed as
unable to tell right from wrong unless they are rich enough to hire a
psychiatrist. Yet a variable but always-present percentage of the human
race ignores rules of conduct at all times. They are the handicap, the
burden, the main hindrance to the maintenance or the progress of
civilization. They are not consciously evil. They simply do not bother
to act otherwise than as rational animals. The rest of humanity has to
defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with revolts, though
those like Johnny Simms have no motive beyond the indulgence of
immediate inclinations. But for that indulgence Johnny would risk any
injury to anybody else.

He edged further aside. Cochrane was white with disgusted fury. Johnny
Simms went into panic. He raised his weapon, aiming at Cochrane.

"Keep back!" he cried ferociously. "I don't care if I kill you!"

And he did not. It was the stark senselessness which makes juvenile
delinquents and Hitlers, and causes thugs and hoodlums and snide lawyers
and tricky business men. It was the pure perversity which makes sane
men frustrate. It was an example of that infinite stupidity which is
crime, but is also only stupidity.

Cochrane saw Babs pulling competently at one of the chairs at one of the
tables nearby. He stopped, and Johnny Simms took courage. Cochrane said
icily:

"Just what the hell do you think we're here for, anyhow?"

Johnny Simms' eyes were wide and blank, like the eyes of a small boy in
a frenzy of destruction, when he has forgotten what he started out to do
and has become obsessed with what damage he is doing.

"I'm not going to be pushed around!" cried Johnny Simms, more
ferociously still. "From now on I'm going to tell you what to do—"

Babs swung the chair she had slid from its fastenings. It came down with
a satisfying "
thunk
" on Johnny Simms' head. His gun went off. The
bullet missed Cochrane by fractions of an inch. He plunged ahead.

Some indefinite time later, Babs was pulling desperately at him. He had
Johnny Simms on the floor and was throttling him. Johnny Simms strangled
and tore at his fingers.

Sanity came back to Cochrane with the effect of something snapping. He
got up. He nodded to Babs and she picked up the gun Johnny Simms had
used.

"I think," said Cochrane, breathing hard, "that you're a good sample of
everything I dislike. The worst thing you do is make me act like you! If
you touch a gun again on this ship, I'll probably kill you. If you get
arrogant again, I will beat the living daylights out of you! Get up!"

Johnny Simms got up. He looked thoroughly scared. Then, amazingly, he
beamed at Cochrane. He said amiably:

"I forgot. I'm that way. Alicia'll tell you. I don't blame you for
getting mad. I'm sorry. But I'm that way!"

He brushed himself off, beaming at Alicia and Jamison and Babs and
Cochrane. Cochrane ground his teeth. He went to the airlock and looked
down outside.

Holden was bent over the creature Johnny Simms had killed. He
straightened up and came back toward the ship. He went faster when the
ground grew hot under his feet. He fairly leaped into the landing-sling
and started it up.

"Not human," he reported to Cochrane when he slipped from the sling in
the airlock. "There's no question about it when you are close. It's more
nearly a bird than anything else. It was warm-blooded. It has a beak.
There are penguins on Earth that have been mistaken for men.

"I did a show once," said Cochrane coldly, "that had clips of old films
of cockfighting in it. There was a kind of gamecock called Cornish Game
that was fairly manshaped. If it had been big enough—Pull in the sling
and close the lock. We're moving."

He turned away. Babs stood by Alicia, offering a handkerchief for Alicia
to put to her cheek. Jamison listened unhappily as Johnny Simms
explained brightly that he had always been that way. When he got excited
he didn't realize what he was doing. He said almost with pride that he
hadn't ever been any other way than that. He didn't really mean to kill
anybody, but when he got excited—.