A Scatter of Stardust (6 page)

The voices died as if the Pilgrims had become aware of the mechanical ears listening to their excited words. The speakers rushed with a blur of meaningless sound. Kleenahn waited a moment then opened the circuit.

“Is it always like this?” Aarne had understood little. “Always.”

“Will it last?”

“It will last.” Kleenahn gestured toward the Pilgrims. “You may meet these people again and, when you do, they will not have altered. A little quieter, perhaps, but that will be all. They will stand as straight and stare as hard and, within themselves, they will carry something stronger than anything we know.”

“Pride?”

“More than that. Conviction, perhaps, I do not know.” Aarne looked at the Pilgrims through the port, wondering with the dull curiosity of his race, what it was they must have seen. He had up until now tended to feel a little sorry for the Earthmen, a little impatient and, sometimes, a little disgusted that they should be so devoid of racial pride. That had been on the journey out. The journey back, he knew, would be very different. The Pilgrims no longer regarded themselves as inferior.

“They are still a long way off,” he said. “Shall I send the flitter out to them, captain?”

“No,” said Kleenahn. “I like to see them march.”

Survival Demands!

There was a new girl at the desk, a pert young blonde with full lips and calculating eyes. They narrowed a little as I stated my name and errand.

“Captain Tolsen?” Her pause was as artificial as the routine checking of the cards. “I’m sorry, commander, but I’m afraid that he’s on the restricted list.”

“I know that.” Surely the girl would have been briefed? “If you will look again,” I said gently, “you will find that I am on the list of permitted visitors.” Then, as she hesitated, “Contact Professor Malkin and inform him that I am here!”

She didn’t like it, I could tell that. She considered herself too young, too beautiful for any man, let alone a grizzled old space commander, to have used that tone with her. But it had been a long journey to the Institute, my leg ached and I was short on patience. So I snapped at her as I would to a crewman and, like a crewman, she obeyed.

Malkin was pleased to see me. He crossed the reception hall, hand outstretched, his old, crinkled eyes beaming with pleasure. It was good to see that pleasure, good to feel the firm grasp of his hand.

“John! It’s good to see you.” He tilted his head toward the desk. “Trouble?”

“Bad liaison,” I said. “She didn’t know that I’m permitted to visit Tolsen.”

“I’ll fix that.” He walked toward the desk and didn’t trouble to lower his voice. “Commander Hamilton is permitted to visit Captain Tolsen whenever he wishes. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then mark it on your cards.” He re-joined me. “A new broom,” he explained. “Mary went off to get married and we’ve been saddled with this would-be tridi star. She thinks it smart to be awkward, but shell settle down.”

Knowing Malkin I could believe it. He ran the Institute as I ran one of my ships. We walked down white corridors, past green-tinted rooms, striding on the soft foam plastic of the floor, the air-conditioned atmosphere tinged with the scent of pine.

It was a quiet, restful place, a modem counterpart of a medieval monastery, though here men did not seek the salvation of their souls and the world by means of prayer. Instead they tried, by seeking understanding of the workings of the mind, to find a means of salvation of the human race.

Malkin talked as he always did, saying the same things that I had heard before but which both of us knew it was essential that I should never forget.

“A lot of people have the wrong impression of our work here,” he said. “Our title is probably the cause of that. The Institute for the Study of Mental Aberration means only one thing to the majority; we care for the insane.”

“The trick being to define insanity.”

“As soon as any man or woman stops thinking as the majority thinks they should think, then that person is regarded as insane.” Malkin sounded bitter. “So much for the tolerance of the human race.” He paused before a door, slid open a panel, gestured for me to look inside.

It was a small room, the floor, walls, ceiling, even the furniture all thickly covered with green-tinted plastic foam. A woman sat on the low bed. She wore a loose smock which hid the lines of her body. Her hands rested limply in her lap. Her head was tilted back a little and her eyes, wide and unblinking, stared at something no one but herself could see.

“A dreamer,” whispered Malkin. “A visionary, a woman divorced from reality — and one of the finest examples of prescience I have ever met. Insane? Or merely talented with unusual mental powers?”

He closed the panel, led the way down the corridor.

“There are others,” he continued. “So many others. All, in a greater or lesser degree, possessed of extrasensory powers. Precognition, levitation, telepathy, every parapsychological faculty you can mention; we’ve got them all.” His voice became even more bitter. “We have them and yet we haven’t. We know what they have and what could be done with it but always there is something which eludes us. A matter of communication, of understanding, a failure to detect the undetectable with the instruments we possess.”

“Could that be because most of them have a low intelligence?” It was a theory to which I had given much thought. “A man could be very bright in one field and absolutely dumb in another. Could it be that possession of these faculties hampers normal intellectual development?”

“Perhaps,” his assent was grudging. “But the evidence isn’t conclusive. And we have examples which deny that theory.”

“Tolsen?”

“He and others, but Tolsen is the prime example. If only — ”

Malkin was intelligent and one of the fairest men I had ever met, but he was human and could not wholly deny his heritage. I sensed the wash of anger, the radiated hatred of what had happened. I rested my hand on his arm.

“It couldn’t have been avoided.”

“I suppose not.”

“We had no choice,” I said. “No choice at all.”

“There is always a choice,” he said flatly. “Don’t take the coward’s way, John. You know better than that.”

I felt my anger rising. I quelled it; anger had no right in a place like this. And Malkin was correct. There had been a choice, but it was one which I had not dared to take.

*

Tolsen sat in his usual position, leaning back in his chair, a magazine in his lap, his eyes staring through the window toward the fluffy white clouds drifting against the blue of the sky.

He seemed normal enough, clean, neatly dressed, his mouth firm, his features placid, but it was the little things which betrayed what he was and why he was here.

Nothing of space had been permitted to enter this room. No picture of the planets, not even the wonderfully beautiful, heart-gripping pictograph of Earth as seen from the moon, a copy of which could be found in almost every household. Even the magazines had been vetted so as to eliminate all news of other worlds. The books were mostly historical romances or prespace novels. There were no souvenirs, no. statues, no newspapers, even, with outerworld news. There was nothing to remind him of his past, not even anything from his actual service with the fleet.

And on the table was the big bottle of tablets which had given his features that look of calm tranquillity.

He looked up as I entered the room, some of the calmness leaving his face and giving me a glimpse of the tormented mind beneath. But the drugs were strong and after that one betraying moment the defenses of his detachment returned to build a wall between us.

“John!” His smile was genuine. “I’m glad to see you. How’s everything?”

“Much as usual. Work, work and still more work.” I sat down, resting my leg, letting some of the peace of this place enter into me. “And yourself?”

He shrugged; it was answer enough.

I lit a cigarette, conscious of the trembling of my hands, hating myself for what I had to do and yet knowing that it had to be done. Memory is a tricky thing and the determination of yesterday becomes the compromise of today. Sometimes it is essential to return to that yesterday to bolster that determination. And Tolsen was my yesterday.

“We have contacted a new race,” I said quietly. “The Lhassa. Small, humanoid, something like a furry monkey but with a highly advanced civilization.”

He turned and stared out of the window. His features twitched. The wall of detachment between us showed the first crack.

“Preliminary investigations have been completed.” I did not meet his eyes. “Soon now a fleet will be dispatched — you know why.”

“Telepathic?” The crack widened.

“Yes.”

“Like the Frenzha?” A segment of the wall crumpled into dust.

“Mentally, yes.”

“My God!” It was a cry from the heart. “My God!”

“We want to be friends,” I said. “The fleet is — just in case.”

“Dear God,” he prayed. “Dear God, not again!” Now he met my eyes; the wall had totally vanished.

I looked at a man who lived in torment.

A man who had condemned an entire race to total annihilation.

*

It had begun when the first rocket reached for the moon, and after that there was no stopping. Never mind the reasons given at the time: the military expediency, the lust for prestige, the rivalry of opposed cultures. The bare fact was that man had broached a new frontier, and man, being what he is, had to go all the way.

The moon was the hardest; Jupiter and Saturn hard but not as hard as Mars and Venus. New drives had been invented by then, old problems solved and new ones recognized. It was only a matter of time before the AG drive gave us the stars. It was inevitable that man should discover that he was not alone in the universe.

The Frenzha were humanoid but stemmed from reptilian stock. They walked upright, had four limbs, smooth, rounded skulls and were totally devoid of hair. They spoke in a lisping series of sibilants — when they spoke at all. Normally they did not speak; there was no need. The Frenzha were a race of telepaths.

Earth and Frenzha met and faced each other like cat and dog. Diplomats were exchanged and some trade permitted. Commerce flowed for a time and then ceased, as both races came up against the same barrier.

The Frenzha were telepaths. Terrestrials were not. The Frenzha, used to honesty and understanding in their dealings with each other, were at a loss when it came to dealing with Earthmen. They could not go below the spoken word. They could not gauge the honesty and sincerity of a statement. That in itself would not have been an insurmountable problem. The thing they could neither understand or tolerate was the cruelty of the human race.

A man does not tolerate a boy pulling the wings off flies. The boy may think the insect had no feelings, the man knows better. A telepath is acutely sensitive to physical and emotional pain. The harshness, inconsideration, sheer disregard for others and the blind pursuit of self-gratification which is a part of the normal makeup of the human race sickened the Frenzha.

Five years after the first meeting, three years ago, I had commanded the fleet of ships which orbited the world of the Frenzha.

Tolsen, a newly created captain, was with me in control.

“They think of us as cripples,” he said bitterly. He was young and had a Terrestrial’s share of pride. “Insanely cruel and hopelessly vicious. They hate us, commander.”

“Hate isn’t enough,” I said. “We have to be certain.”

He nodded and slumped back, eyes closed in the effort of concentration. Looking down at him, feeling about me the humming life of the ship and, beyond the ship, the entire fleet, I felt aloof, distant, almost godlike. I could be excused that feeling. I had more power at my disposal than any other man in history. The power, literally, to destroy a world.

But Tolsen had the real power.

Tolsen was the one to pass judgment.

I had never met a telepathic human before. I had heard of them, read reports of what they could do. But they were rare and worked mostly at the Institute.

Telepathy, like the other parapsychological sciences, had been ignored and derided for so long that, even now, when concrete proof had been given as to their necessity, recognition was slow. True, Malkin had his Institute backed by government funds. He had chased down all the materials he could, but even so the results were poor. Tolsen was the best he could give me.

He opened his eyes and met mine.

“Well?”

He shrugged and held his head in his hands. I gripped his shoulder. “Listen,” I snapped. “I know it’s hard but it has to be done. You’ve been down there, met the Frenzha, caught their thoughts and probed their emotions. They can’t read our minds and we can’t read theirs. Only a few — ”

“Freaks, commander?”

“ — A few unusual types can do that.” I ignored the interruption. It was too close to the truth to be comfortable. “They hate us, commander. I told you that.”

“We can live with hatred.”

“They’re afraid of us”

“We can live with fear.”

“They despise us.” Tolsen bit his lip. “It wasn’t pleasant learning the truth of how they feel about us. It makes me feel almost ashamed.”

“How they feel about us isn’t too important.” Control was air-conditioned; I shouldn’t have been sweating. “What do they intend doing about it?”

“They want to isolate us.”

“And?”

“They want to have nothing to do with us, to expunge us from their memory. They want to pretend that we don’t exist, have never existed; and yet they are a logical race. They know that denying the existence of something doesn’t eliminate it.” He stared at me, his eyes wild. “They feel revolted at ever having met us.”

“So?”

“They intend to destroy us.”

It had come, the thing which had to be faced, the thing which I had hoped not to hear. The Frenzha were logical. To them we were a diseased race of mental cripples, cruel, thoughtless, hateful. So, like a surgeon deciding to cut out a malignant growth, they had decided to eliminate us.

“I see.”

“They mean it, commander.” Tolsen had misread my expression. “They can do it, too.”

“I know that.” I looked down at him, sitting slumped in his chair. A unique individual into whose hands fate had placed the destiny of a world. “Be certain,” I urged. “You know what we’re here for and what we can do. Check again. You may have made a mistake.”