Explorers of Space Read online

  Already, as Huyghens reached the edge of the scorched open space, the night-creatures had rushed to the light like moths on Earth. The air was misty with crazily gyrating, tiny flying things. They were innumerable arid of every possible form and size, from the white midges of the night and multi-winged flying worms to those revoltingly naked-looking larger creatures which might have passed for plucked flying monkeys if they had not been carnivorous and worse. The flying things soared and whirred and danced and spun insanely in the glare. They made peculiarly plaintive humming noises. They almost formed a lamp-lit ceiling over the cleared space. They did hide the stars. Staring upwards, Huyghens could just barely make out the blue-white flame of the space boat’s rocket through the fog of wings and bodies.

  The rocket-flame grew steadily in size. Once, apparently it tilted to adjust the boat’s descending course. It went back to normal. A speck of incandescence at first, it grew until it was like a great star, and then a more-than-brilliant moon, and then it was a pitiless glaring eye. Huyghens averted his gaze from it. Sitka Pete sat lumpily—more than a ton of him—and blinked wisely at the dark jungle away from the light. Sourdough ignored the deepening, increasing rocket roar. He sniffed the air delicately. Faro Nell held Nugget firmly under one huge paw and licked his head as if tidying him up to be seen by company. Nugget wriggled.

  The roar became that of ten thousand thunders. A warm breeze blew outwards from the landing field. The rocket boat hurled downwards, and its flame touched the mist of flying things, and they shriveled and burned and were hot. Then there were churning clouds of dust everywhere, and the center of the field blazed terribly—and something slid down a shaft of fire, and squeezed it flat, and sat on it—and the flame went out. The rocket boat sat there, resting on its tail fins, pointing toward the stars from which it came.

  There was a terrible silence after the tumult. Then, very faintly, the noises of the night came again. There were sounds like those of organ pipes, and very faint and apologetic noises like hiccups. All these sounds increased, and suddenly Huyghens could hear quite normally. Then a side-port opened with a quaint sort of clattering, and something unfolded from where it had been inset into the hull of the space boat, and there was a metal passageway across the flame-heated space on which the boat stood.

  A man came out of the port. He reached back in and shook hands very formally. He climbed down the ladder rungs to the walkway. He marched above the steaming baked area, carrying a traveling bag. He reached the end of the walk and stepped gingerly to the ground. He moved hastily to the edge of the clearing. He waved to the space boat. There were ports. Perhaps someone returned the gesture. The walkway folded briskly back up to the hull and vanished in it. A flame exploded into being under the tail fins. There were fresh clouds of monstrous, choking dust and a brightness like that of a sun. There was noise past the possibility of endurance. Then the light rose swiftly through the dust cloud, and sprang higher and climbed more swiftly still. When Huyghens’ ears again permitted him to hear anything, there was only a diminishing mutter in the heavens and a small bright speck of light ascending to the sky and swinging eastward as it rose to intercept the ship which had let it descend.

  The night noises of the jungle went on. Life on Loren Two did not need to heed the doings of men. But there was a spot of incandescence in the day-bright clearing, and a short brisk man, with a traveling bag in his hand, looked puzzledly about him.

  Huyghens advanced towards him as the incandescence dimmed. Sourdough and Sitka preceded him. Faro Nell trailed faithfully, keeping a maternal eye on her offspring. The man in the clearing stared at the parade they made. It would be upsetting, even after preparation, to land at night on a strange planet, and to have the ship’s boat and all links with the rest of the cosmos depart, and then to find one’s self approached—it might seem stalked—by two colossal male Kodiak bears, with a third bear and a cub behind them. A single human figure in such company might seem irrelevant.

  The new arrival gazed blankly. He moved, startedly. Then Huyghens called:

  “Hello, there! Don’t worry about the bears! They’re friends!”

  Sitka reached the newcomer. He went warily downwind from him and sniffed. The smell was satisfactory. Man smell. Sitka sat down with the solid impact of more than a ton of bear-meat landing on packed dirt. He regarded the man amiably. Sourdough said “Whoosh!” and went on to sample the air beyond the clearing. Huyghens approached. The newcomer wore the uniform of the Colonial Survey. That was bad. It bore the insignia of a senior officer. Worse.

  “Hah!” said the just-landed man. “Where are the robots? What in all the nineteen hells are these creatures? Why did you shift your station? I’m Roane, here to make a progress report on your colony.”

  Huyghens said:

  “What colony?”

  “Loren Two Robot Installation—” Then Roane said indignantly, “Don’t tell me that that idiot skipper dropped me at the wrong place! This is Loren Two, isn’t it? And this is the landing field. But where are your robots? You should have the beginning of a grid up! What the devil’s happened here and what are these beasts?”

  Huyghens grimaced.

  “This,” he said politely, “is an illegal, unlicensed settlement. I’m a criminal. These beasts are my confederates. If you don’t want to associate with criminals, you needn’t, of course, but I doubt if you’ll live till morning unless you accept my hospitality while I think over what to do about your landing. In reason, I ought to shoot you.”

  Faro Nell came to a halt behind Huyghens, which was her proper post in all outdoor movement. Nugget, however, saw a new human. Nugget was a cub, and, therefore, friendly. He ambled forward ingratiatingly. He was four feet high at the shoulders, on all fours. He wriggled bashfully as he approached Roane. He sneezed, because he was embarrassed.

  His mother overtook him swiftly and cuffed him to one side. He wailed. The wail of a six-hundred-pound Kodiak bear cub is a remarkable sound. Roane gave ground a pace.

  “I think,” he said carefully, “that we’d better talk things over. But if this is an illegal colony, of course you’re under arrest and anything you say will be used against you.”

  Huyghens grimaced again.

  “Right,” he said. “But now if you’ll walk close to me, we’ll head back to the station. I’d have Sourdough carry your bag—he likes to carry things—but he may need his teeth. We’ve half a mile to travel.” He turned to the animals. “Let’s go!” he said commandingly. “Back to the station! Hup!”

  Grunting, Sitka Pete arose and took up his duties as advanced point of a combat team. Sourdough trailed, swinging widely to one side and another. Huyghens and Roane moved together. Faro Nell and Nugget brought up the rear. Which, of course, was the only relatively safe way for anybody to travel on Loren Two, in the jungle, a good half mile from one’s fortress-like residence.

  But there was only one incident on the way back. It was a night-walker, made hysterical by the lane of light. It poured through the underbrush, uttering cries like maniacal laughter.

  Sourdough brought it down, a good ten yards from Huyghens. When it was all over, Nugget bristled up to the dead creature, uttering cub-growls. He feigned to attack it.

  His mother whacked him soundly.

  2

  There were comfortable, settling-down noises below. The bears grunted and rumbled, but ultimately were still. The glare from the landing field was gone. The lighted lane through the jungle was dark again. Huyghens ushered the man from the space boat up into his living quarters. There was a rustling stir, and Semper took his head from under his wing. He stared coldly at the two humans. He spread monstrous, seven-foot wings and fluttered them. He opened his beak and closed it with a snap.

  “That’s Semper,” said Huyghens. “Semper Tyrannis. He’s the rest of the terrestrial population here. Not being a flyby-night sort of creature, he didn’t come out to welcome you.”

  Roane blinked at the huge bird, perched on a three-inch-thick pe
rch set in the wall.

  “An eagle?” he demanded. “Kodiak bears—mutated ones, you say, but still bears—and now an eagle? You’ve a very nice fighting unit in the bears.”

  “They’re pack animals too,” said Huyghens. “They can carry some hundreds of pounds without losing too much combat efficiency. And there’s no problem of supply. They live off the jungle. Not sphexes, though. Nothing will eat a sphex, even if it can kill one.”

  He brought out glasses and a bottle. He indicated a chair. Roane put down his traveling bag. He took a glass.

  “I’m curious,” he observed. “Why Semper Tyrannis? I can understand Sitka Pete and Sourdough Charley as names. The home of their ancestors makes them fitting. But why Semper?”

  “He was bred for hawking,” said Huyghens. “You sic a dog on something. You sic Semper Tyrannis. He’s too big to ride on a hawking glove, so the shoulders of my coats are padded to let him ride there. He’s a flying scout. I’ve trained him to notify us of sphexes, and in flight he carries a tiny television camera. He’s useful, but he hasn’t the brains of the bears.”

  Roane sat down and sipped at his glass.

  “Interesting . . . very interesting! But this is an illegal settlement. I’m a Colonial Survey officer. My job is reporting on progress according to plan, but nevertheless I have to arrest you. Didn’t you say something about shooting me?” Huyghens said doggedly:

  “I’m trying to think of a way out. Add up all the penalties for illegal colonization and I’d be in a very bad fix if you got away and reported this set-up. Shooting you would be logical.”

  “I see that,” said Roane reasonably. “But since the point has come up—I have a blaster trained on you from my pocket.”

  Huyghens shrugged.

  “It’s rather likely that my human confederates will be back here before your friends. You’d be in a very tight fix if my friends came back and found you more or less sitting on my corpse.”

  Roane nodded.

  “That’s true, too. Also it’s probable that your fellow terrestrials wouldn’t co-operate with me as they have with you. You seem to have the whip hand, even with my blaster trained on you. On the other hand, you could have killed me quite easily after the boat left, when I’d first landed. I’d have been quite unsuspicious. So you may not really intend to murder me.”

  Huyghens shrugged again.

  “So,” said Roane, “since the secret of getting along with people is that of postponing quarrels—suppose we postpone the question of who kills whom? Frankly, I’m going to send you to prison if I can. Unlawful colonization is very bad business. But I suppose you feel that you have to do something permanent about me. In your place I probably should, too. Shall we declare a truce?”

  Huyghens indicated indifference. Roane said vexedly: “Then I do! I have to! So—”

  He pulled his hand out of his pocket and put a pocket blaster on the table. He leaned back, defiantly.

  “Keep it,” said Huyghens. “Loren Two isn’t a place where you live long unarmed.” He turned to a cupboard. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat,” admitted Roane.

  Huyghens pulled out two meal-packs from the cupboard and inserted them in the readier below. He set out plates.

  “Now—what happened to the official, licensed, authorized colony here?” asked Roane briskly. “License issued eighteen months ago. There was a landing of colonists with a drone fleet of equipment and supplies. There’ve been four ship-contacts since. There should be several thousand robots being industrious under adequate human supervision. There should be a hundred-mile-square clearing, planted with food plants for later human arrivals. There should be a landing grid at least half-finished. Obviously there should be a space beacon to guide ships to a landing. There isn’t. There’s no clearing visible from space. That Crete Line ship has been in orbit for three days, trying to find a place to drop me. Her skipper was fuming. Your beacon is the only one on the planet, and we found it by accident. What happened?” Huyghens served the food. He said drily:

  “There could be a hundred colonies on this planet without any one knowing of any other. I can only guess about your robots, but I suspect they ran into sphexes.”

  Roane paused, with his fork in his hand.

  “I read up on this planet, since I was to report on its colony. A sphex is part of the inimical animal life here. Cold-blooded belligerent carnivore, not a lizard but a genus all its own. Hunts in packs. Seven to eight hundred pounds, when adult. Lethally dangerous and simply too numerous to fight. They’re why no license was ever granted to human colonists. Only robots could work here, because they’re machines. What animal attacks machines?”

  Huyghens said:

  “What machine attacks animals? The sphexes wouldn’t bother robots, of course, but would robots bother the sphexes?”

  Roane chewed and swallowed.

  “Hold it! I’ll agree that you can’t make a hunting-robot. electric fence which no sphex could touch without frying.” A machine can discriminate, but it can’t decide. That’s why there’s no danger of a robot revolt. They can’t decide to do something for which they have no instructions. But this colony was planned with full knowledge of what robots can and can’t do. As ground was cleared, it was enclosed in an Huyghens thoughtfully cut his food. After a moment:

  “The landing was in the winter-time,” he observed. “It must have been, because the colony survived a while. And at a guess, the last ship-landing was before thaw. The years are eighteen months long here, you know.”

  Roane admitted:

  “It was in winter that the landing was made. And the last ship-landing was before spring. The idea was to get mines in operation for material, and to have ground cleared and enclosed in sphex-proof fence before the sphexes came back from the tropics. They winter there, I understand.”

  “Did you ever see a sphex?” Huyghens asked. Then added, “No, of course not. But if you took a spitting cobra and crossed with it a wildcat, painted it tan-and-blue and then gave it hydrophobia and homicidal mania at once—why, you might have one sphex. But not the race of sphexes. They can climb trees, by the way. A fence wouldn’t stop them.”

  “An electrified fence,” said Roane. “Nothing could climb that!”

  “No one animal,” Huyghens told him. “But sphexes are a race. The smell of one dead sphex brings others running with blood in their eyes. Leave a dead sphex alone for six hours and you’ve got them around by the dozen. Two days and there are hundreds. Longer, and you’ve got thousands of them! They gather to caterwaul over their dead pal and hunt for whoever or whatever killed him.”

  He returned to his meal. A moment later he said:

  “No need to wonder what happened to your colony. During the winter the robots burned out a clearing and put up an electrified fence according to the book. Come spring, the sphexes came back. They’re curious, among their other madnesses. A sphex would try to climb the fence just to see what was behind it. He’d be electrocuted. His carcass would bring others, raging because a sphex was dead. Some of them would try to climb the fence—and die. And their corpses would bring others. Presently the fence would break down from the bodies hanging on it, or a bridge of dead beasts’ carcasses would be built across it—and from as far downwind as the scent carried there’d be loping, raging, scent-crazed sphexes racing to the spot. They’d pour into the clearing through or over the fence, squalling and screeching for something to kill. I think they’d find it.” Roane ceased to eat. He looked sick.

  “There were . . . pictures of sphexes in the data I read. I suppose that would account for . . . everything.”

  He tried to lift his fork. He put it down again.

  “I can’t eat,” he said abruptly.

  Huyghens made no comment. He finished his own meal, scowling. He rose and put the plates into the top of the cleaner. There was a whirring. He took them out of the bottom and put them away.

  “Let me see those reports, eh?” he asked dourly. “I’d like to s
ee what sort of a set-up they had—those robots.”

  Roane hesitated and then opened his traveling bag. There was a microviewer and reels of films. One entire reel was labeled “Specifications for Construction, Colonial Survey,” which would contain detailed plans and all requirements of material and workmanship for everything from desks, office, administrative personnel, for use of, to landing grids, heavy-gravity planets, lift-capacity one hundred thousand Earth-tons. But Huyghens found another. He inserted it and spun the control swiftly here and there, pausing only briefly at index frames until he came to the section he wanted. He began to study the information with growing impatience.

  “Robots, robots, robots!” he snapped. “Why don’t they leave them where they belong—in cities to do the dirty work, and on airless planets where nothing unexpected ever happens! Robots don’t belong in new colonies! Your colonists depended on them for defense! Dammit, let a man work with robots long enough and he thinks all nature is as limited as they are! This is a plan to set up a controlled environment! On Loren Two! Controlled environment—” He swore, luridly. “Complacent, idiotic, desk-bound half-wits!”

  “Robots are all right,” said Roane. “We couldn’t run civilization without them.”

  “But you can’t tame a wilderness with ’em!” snapped Huyghens. “You had a dozen men landed, with fifty assembled robots to start with. There were parts for fifteen hundred more—and I’ll bet anything I’ve got that the ship-contacts landed more still.”

  “They did,” admitted Roane.

  “I despise ’em,” growled Huyghens, “I feel about ’em the way the old Greeks and Romans felt about slaves. They’re for menial work—the sort of work a man will perform for himself, but that he won’t do for another man for pay. Degrading work!”