Quarantine: The Complete Stories, page 34
“No.” A frown of troubled purpose ridged Scarlet’s narrow forehead. “We have no indication that Sol will be exploded. Anyhow, the blinkers are Penwright’s business. Our task here is still the salvation of the people of Earth—even if it takes another thousand years.”
“Yes, sir.”
That quick assent was merely the trained response of a uniformed subordinate, briskly impersonal, not even aware of his ugliness. Yet, with its instant calm acceptance of that tremendous purpose understood and shared, the dispatcher’s answer caught hold of Scarlet. Something took his breath and dimmed his eyes and hurt his throat.
“We—we have a closer problem than Penwright’s contact crisis.” A sober smile smoothed the furrows from his sloping brow. “We have Major Tom Scoggins and his men. We must induct them into the service and teach them our techniques and get them back to Earth. The dangerous radiations from the nova will give them a good pretext to discourage any more adventures into space for at least a generation. By that time, perhaps Earth will be ready for us.”
A PLANET FOR PLUNDERING
It seemed that half the Galaxy was interested in Earth. The criminals sought to loot it; the better class merely wanted it destroyed by fire!
YOUNG man wanted, to travel sixty light-years and judge the life or death of a dozen worlds. Must have one hundred years experience in the quarantine service, and psionic classification five or better. Pay—well, an enterprising deputy warden with planets to sell could set his own price.
The memo from the district office was not quite so bald, but those were the terms in which Wain Scarlet summed up the situation for his own benefit. He had spent a tedious century at the regional headquarters on Denebola IV, waiting for just such an opening. He jumped at it.
The jump wasn’t easy.
His own face was the first great barrier. He was a scrawny, red-freckled runt, in a world where such needless ugliness was shocking. His half-conditioned parents had refused to meddle with nature. Then, before he himself was old enough to arrange his own aesthetic surgery, he had come to enjoy a cruel satisfaction in the pain he could inflict upon the beautiful beings around him, with the bulge of his low forehead and the jut of his rodent teeth and the defiant stare of his yellow eyes.
The other barriers he had built upon that one, within his own mind. A habit of suspicion.
A pattern of unprovoked aggression and unnecessary flight. Although he had used the time-contracting neutrionic ships of the service to put a dozen different worlds behind him forever, he had not escaped his gnawing need to strike and run again.
This time he was going to strike harder, and run farther.
His goal was the galactic frontier, the fast-expanding bubble of new planetary systems claimed and conquered. Out there, a thousand or ten thousand light-years beyond the utmost outposts of the service, all men were human. Perhaps, with the price of planets to spend, he could buy one last escape from everything he feared.
If his plans seemed somewhat large for a common clerk in regional personnel, they had been growing for a hundred years, while he patiently endured all the incessant psionic indoctrination in the glorious traditions and the lofty obligations of the service, and carefully concealed his rankling resentment of all the handsome men around him.
When chance struck, he was ready.
THE instrument of luck was Warden Thornwall, an innocent dark youth whom he secretly despised for his dark beauty and his frank friendship and his well-conditioned intelligence.
“Wain, here’s a case that ought to interest you.” The warden tossed a little packet of documents into the action basket on his desk. “A savage planet out the far side of nowhere, about to reach a contact crisis. The natives are playing with rockets and atomic theory. Our watchers report that they will soon discover us. That means the end of our rights and duties under the Covenants of Non-Contact. If the natives really qualify, we’ll have to usher them into civilization.”
“I won’t hold my breath till they do.” Scarlet made a painful effort to reflect Thornwall’s open smile. “I’ve seen contact crises before. The new races usually need several generations of supervised psionic training before we can certify human status.”
“Sol III will be no exception.” The lovely youngster nodded, unaware of Scarlet’s veiled aversion. “You’ll find all the old arguments for extending the quarantine and for lifting it today—advanced by fussy old zoo-keepers and by pirates who want an open planet to loot and by social workers who need a new world to save. But this case gives us a novel complication.”
Scarlet looked hastily down at the documents, trying to hide the flicker of illicit hope in his tawny eyes. Cunning enough to know his own mental handicaps, he did his best to hide them from the rest of the world.
“You’ll see a notice from the signal service,” the warden explained. “They want to use Sol for the first unit of their new intergalactic blinker. They’re asking us to evacuate all human beings from its vicinity, before they begin transmission.”
“Must they use Sol?” Scarlet peered up at Thornwall, privately wondering how the demolition of a solar system might be turned into personal profit. “Aren’t there desert suns enough?”
“Sol is a desert sun.” The beautiful man smiled serenely. “Even after five thousand years under our supervision, the native anthropoids have failed to qualify for galactic citizenship. Their progress reports arouse doubts that they ever will.”
“Yet they’re alive.”
“Any star you point at has half a dozen planets with life of some sort. The signal people have made a scientific survey of the stars available for their initial project. They need eight thousand stars of the right spectral type, located here at the Center. Sol is first on their list.”
“There will be protests.” Scarlet squinted shrewdly. “Even from old hands in the service.”
“I knew the case would interest you.” Thornwall glowed with executive assurance. “Why don’t you look over the memo? I’ll have to check with the record section, but I believe you’re in line for the assignment if you want it.”
SCARLET murmured a few polite words of praise for his rivals in the office, but he knew what the records section would say. Once, sixty years before, another beautiful and innocent young warden had gone sun-diving, trusting Scarlet with the records. Since then the records said what Scarlet wanted them to.
He fumbled quickly through the documents, trying to cover the sudden flare of triumph in his yellow eyes.
“You’ll have three possible decisions,” Thornwall went on. “You may decide that the inhabited planet needs a few more centuries to mature its native culture, under our care. If so, you may act within the limits of the Covenants to delay the contact and extend the quarantine.”
Scarlet nodded, without much interest. Such a decision might please the cautious old heads in the service, but it offered no profit to him.
“On the other hand, you may find that the natives are ready for admission into civilization,” the warden said. “In that case, you may open the planet to traffic with the stars under any supervision you see fit to impose.”
Scarlet brightened, scenting money. Every contact crisis brought outsiders swarming from all the worlds around, drawn by a hundred motives to welcome the new race into the dangerous freedoms of galactic civilization. Surely somebody would pay what he wanted!
“Or, finally, you may decide that the anthropoids will never qualify,” Thornwall finished. “If so, you may overrule the protests against the blinker project and order the evacuation of every galactic citizen within a light-year of Sol.”
Scarlet frowned, considering that. The signal service was unlikely to offer bribes. But there were many ways that a clever man might take toward the free-living frontiers. The first flash of the intergalactic beacon might be the signal of his fortune. His tawny eyes flared again.
“I thought you would be interested,” the warden said. “Let me speak to the director.”
Even after that assurance, the actual orders seemed a long time coming. Scarlet sat for three days grimly pretending to work, fighting a cold fear that his tampering with the records had been discovered. When at last Thornwall came up and clapped him on the back, he gasped with terror in spite of himself.
“Uh—” He caught a quick breath and captured control of himself. “Yes, sir?”
“The director wants to see you.” A luminous smile reassured him. “You’re going to get the break I spoke of. About time, too!”
YET his knees were trembling when he walked in to face the director, whose muscular perfection gleamed through a film of steely dust. He wanted to sit down, but the sleek metallic god kept him standing half a minute, probing him with keen gray eyes which glinted with the passionless authority of perfect psionic conditioning. He couldn’t help cringing.
“Nervous, Scarlet?”
He nodded, grinning stiffly through his secret misery.
“Not that I blame you.” With a cool steel smile, the giant allowed him to sit. “After all your years in this easy berth, you must dread being uprooted.”
His greater fear was that he might appear too eager.
“I have been very happy here, sir,” he agreed, in a voice which he tried to make regretful. “I hate to leave my marriage group, and I’ve a number of hobbies that I don’t like to interrupt.”
The metal god nodded sympathetically.
“Sun-diving, for one.” Actually, he detested the sport because his imperfect integration had left him dangerously inept with the psionic diving gear. But a nervous compulsion drove him on. “Just bought an outfit from a friend who got transferred. He’s been diving into sunspots, looking for the famous living lights. He had a theory they’re intelligent—”
“Perhaps they are.” The director’s nod froze his apologetic grin. “I don’t know how any complex of ions and electromagnetic energy can support intelligence, but I’ve brought back some queer psio-graphs from my own dives.”
“Anyhow, I’ll be selling my gear.” Alarmed, Scarlet retreated as hastily as if the director had suddenly become a hissing solar fireball. “I wasn’t quite prepared for such a mission. But the service comes first.”
“We’re living for the worlds we watch.” The steel man intoned that old slogan so solemnly that Scarlet felt an uncomfortable prickling at the back of his neck. “We left our own worlds behind once and for all when we took the service oath.”
“I’m not looking back, sir.” His palms were clammy from a sudden fear that he had overdone his appearance of reluctance, but his eyes were on the new worlds ahead. “Though I suppose I’ve been here a little too long. I had almost forgotten how it feels to board a neutrionic flyer to skip down across a dozen or a hundred years, knowing that you can’t come back.”
“That’s our destiny.” The magnificent man paused to study the records Scarlet had altered, so closely that he shuddered. “A bad situation, out there on Sol III. Frankly, Scarlet, I was hesitant to send a man of your incomplete conditioning. Especially one without field experience. But we’ve too many planets to watch, and too few dedicated men.”
SCARLET gulped and decided not to trust his voice. He sat sweating, trying not to think of the rivals who should have ranked above him.
“I’m a little surprised that we’ve kept you here so long.” The director gave him a quicksilver smile. “But this situation is apt to call for all you’ve learned in these hundred years.”
Scarlet scanned the little stack of psionic dispatches that he pushed across the desk, trying to absorb them as swiftly as if he really rated five. Thornwall’s briefing helped him decide upon a troubled frown.
“This last report from Sol III is already fifty years old.” His concern grew swiftly genuine. “I’ll be at least that long getting there by the regular routes. What can I expect to find?”
“Your problem, Warden.” The director was already turning, reaching for another stack of dispatches. “The finite speed of our communications is all that makes your mission necessary. In a contact crisis, we must have a responsible man on the spot.”
“Trust me, sir.” Scarlet spoke with a pious gratitude for that finite limit upon the velocity of every sort of signal, even upon the flash of the intergalactic blinker. By the time any report of his decision could come back here, he would be so far beyond Sol that no possible pursuit could ever overtake him. “I’ll be on guard.”
“You’ll need to be,” the steel man admonished him. “A contact crisis draws all sorts of people. Some pure as light. Some more savage than the savages we guard.”
He boarded the supply ship next morning, carrying most of his material possessions in one small bag. The true rewards of the service were the joys of service itself. So they said. Certainly he had received very little besides.
He was glad enough to abandon what he had to leave behind, the too-risky sun-diving and the dabbling in psionic art and the aimless multiculture with which he had tried to kill the idle years. He couldn’t help feeling a secret relief even at the separation from his marriage group, although he tried to make a convincing display of regret.
He even asked Glade to come with him. She was the sultry if somewhat shallow blonde who had always insisted that she was simply fascinated with his phenomenal ugliness, but now he was not surprised when she chose to remain with her more handsome husbands and the civilized amenities of the station.
THE flyer caught the neutrionic streams, the vast winds of invisible neutrinos that burst from the novas and blow through the galaxies at almost the speed of light. Velocity foreshortened time. A long quarter-century on the planets ahead and behind was only a few weeks for Scarlet.
He was still elated with the wine of one more triumphant escape from all the perfection he hated, when the flyer touched at Procyon Station.
In the spaceport bar, he bought a drink for a service courier from the Regulus region and asked for news of Earth.
“Light’s so damned slow,” he grumbled, disguising the casual boast about his mission. “A contact crisis comes up on a world like Earth, and it’s out of hand before you can get there to do anything about it. What about Earth?”
The courier looked blank.
“Sol III,” Scarlet said.
“Oh, we touched there.” The courier grinned maliciously. “Better take along a durable woman and a good library, if you’re waiting for those quarrelsome apes to civilize themselves.”
“Huh?” Scarlet downed his drink uncomfortably. “Aren’t they near contact?”
“Not that I heard about.”
“They were firing military rockets a hundred years ago.” he protested hopefully. “They’ll be getting into space.”
“But not for any peaceful purpose. They were groping toward fusion bombs, when we picked up those dispatches. They’ll soon be blowing the crust off their grubby little planet. Even if they do blunder into our outpost, it doesn’t mean that they’re fit for civilized society.
“Time for another?”
Scarlet blinked at his time ring. “Thanks, but my ship will be lifting.”
He hurried back aboard, frowning gloomily.
After a few worried weeks of ship time, he watched Sirius flare out ahead like a natural nova. The news of Sol III was twenty years fresher, but still distressing.
“Larger tribes are fighting bigger wars with better weapons.” The post communications officer grinned sardonically. “If they do make contact, they’ll probably attack us with fusion bombs. We’re the ones who need protection!”
“They may be troublesome.” Slowly tightening muscles accented the ugliness of Scarlet’s pinched and chinless face, until the better-integrated man looked uncomfortably away. “But I’ll civilize them,” he muttered defiantly. “If they are human at all!” Perhaps they were not, he reflected silently. Perhaps he would have to approve the blinker project, after all. But, before he decided to let the supernova flash, he intended to be well paid for his decision. His first concern was the source of his payment.
II
HE was alert for the scent of money when the flyer touched at Proxima Station. He got off to sniff for it, and caught only the odor of trouble. The restless anthropoids had fired rockets into space, but the radiation zones had slowed their efforts to reach the satellite of Earth.
Wandering unhappily back to the flyer, he found a girl at the lock ahead of him. A deck officer had blocked her way. She was protesting in some liquid-toned tongue he had never heard before, so vehemently that he snapped on his psionic translator.
“—unconditioned blunder!”
The sense of her ringing words came suddenly through. “You can see that my passage was cleared through your own transportation office.”
“You may come.” The officer nodded grudgingly. “But not your rubbish.”
Scarlet heard the indignant catch of her breath, as the officer gestured stubbornly at a mountain of packing cases stacked beside the ramp. In response to his glance, their blank labels flashed with words that he could read as if in his native tongue:
CONTENTS: PSIONIC CONDITIONING EQUIPMENT
CONSIGNOR: BRIARSTONE MISSION
CUSTODIAN: CORAL FELL DESTINATION: SOL III
The labels faded as his eyes went back to Coral Fell.
“It isn’t rubbish and it isn’t mine,” she was warmly informing the officer. “It belongs to the people of Sol III. They’re near a contact crisis. The moment the quarantine is raised, they’ll need help. I’m going out there to open a psionic training center, to help them make the difficult jump to civilization. All this is just the barest essential equipment for our first clinic—”
“No matter if it’s a captive living light, this is not a common carrier,” the officer snapped. “Our limited cargo space is already filled with supplies for Sol Station. Wait for a freighter.”
