Jerry's nod was thoughtful. "The only word for it, Ensign." His inner
eye kept repeating for him that impossible green pattern he'd seen. The
strong, flat muscles of his shoulders and neck knotted into what could
easily become a villainous tension-headache. Jerry realized suddenly
that he was badly scared....
* * * * *
"Sir," the tech said suddenly, "I was under the impression that
the roborocket scanners couldn't miss a life-pulse on a planet. I
mean, making a complete circuit of the planet every ninety minutes,
for a period of six months.... It's impossible for them to miss an
uncatalogued life-form."
"I know it is," said Jerry Norcriss, pushing blunt fingers through his
shock of prematurely white hair. "Save for two precedents, I cannot
conceive of any way in which this pulse could have been overlooked."
"Two precedents, sir?" said the tech, intrigued both by the unsuspected
fallibility of the scanner and by this unusual loquacity from the
zoologist.
Jerry removed his gaze from the screen and regarded the young man
standing beside it. He made as if to reply, then thought better of it.
Any out-going on his part was an effort. A big effort. And a danger.
Only another Space Zoologist would understand the danger of speech, of
letting loose, of relaxing for a moment that terrible vigil over one's
personal psychic barricades.
"Skip it," he said abruptly. The young ensign's smile tightened to
obedience at the words.
"Yes, sir," said the tech, with strained cordiality. "Will that be all,
sir?"
"Yes," said Jerry. Then, as the tech started out of the compartment,
"No, wait. Tell Ollie Gibbs in the Ward Room to bring up a pot of
coffee. Black."
The man nodded, and went out the door, dogging it after him.
Jerry listened to the booted feet clanking on their magnetic soles up
the passageway of the spaceship, and sighed.
The situation, in Jerry's experience, was fantastic. Only twice, in
the history of Space Zoology, had there been oversights on the part
of the scanners. One, almost comically, had been on Earth, when the
scanners were first being tested. The chunky roborocket--its angles
and bulges and tapering pickup-heads unsuitable for flight in any
medium but airless space--had swept giddily about the planet, the
sensitive pickup-heads recording and filing on microtape the patterns
of the life-pulses of all sentient life below. And when the tape had
been translated onto the IBM cards, and the cards run through the
translation chambers, to get their incomprehensible sine-patterns
changed into readable English, it was found that there was an animal
missing.
Six months of circling the planet had still left the index blank on
that animal's expected check-pattern. The animal was the brown bear, of
north central America. And only after agonizing hours of theorizing and
worrying did someone come up with the answer to the dilemma:
It had been a long, hard winter. The bears were in extended
hibernation. Somehow, the fleeting flicker of their subdued life-pulses
had never managed to correspond with the inquisitive sweep of the
scanner-beams from the blackness of space overhead. And so, they'd been
left off, as though they did not even exist.
A lot of sweat was dabbed from relieved foreheads in the Corps when a
secondary roborocket, sent into a short one-week orbit, had picked up
the animals' pulses with ease as soon as springtime was upon the land.
The odds against their being thus missed were fantastic, astronomically
unlikely. But it _had_ happened, despite the odds against it, and the
Corps was forcibly reminded that in a universe of planets, there is
infinite room for even the unlikely to occur.
The only other oversight had been years later, when a just-settling
colony had been half-destroyed by a herd of immense beasts similar to
the buffalo of Earth, but viciously carnivorous. There had been no
indication, in the six-month scanning period, that such a species even
existed on the planet, the third planet of Syrinx Gamma, the sun of a
newly discovered system beyond the Coalsack.
The reason was maddeningly simple. The herds were migratory. Their
migrations had corresponded in scope around the oceanless planet with
the sweep of the scanner-beam in such a way that the roborocket was
scanning either where the herd had just been or where it had not yet
arrived. Again, the odds were fantastic against the occurrence. Yet,
again, it _had_ happened. Other than these two events, though, there
had been no further error on the part of scanners for nearly a decade.
Precautions had been taken against recurrence.
Roborockets were now sent to scan a planet only at a time when there
would be an overlap of seasonal climes, so that the beam would inspect
the surface throughout both the mild and the rigorous weathers, thus
obviating a repeat of the brown bear incident. And the sweep of the
beam had been extended, so that no animal with migratory movement at
speeds less than that of a supersonic plane could have avoided being
duly detected and catalogued. That, they thought, should prevent any
more such incidents.
All that Jerry knew.
* * * * *
And yet, here he was, descending through the black vacuum of space
toward an already-colonized planet, the second planet of Sirius, a
planet supposedly already scanned, catalogued, and long-since ready for
inhabitation. And now, after the colonials had been there for nearly
five years, something was starting to wipe them out. Some unsuspected
alien thing was present on the planet, a thing that a hastily lofted
roborocket had located in a matter of hours, and yet had missed in its
original six-month orbital check, before the settlers came.
It was impossible. Incredible. And yet, again, it _had_ happened--_was_
happening--and had to be stopped.
A frantic appeal had been beamed to Earth through sub-space, an appeal
for a Space Zoologist to find the alien, learn its weaknesses, and
recommend its mode of destruction.
"Some day," Jerry mused, waiting impatiently for Ollie Gibbs with the
coffee, "I'll come upon an invincible alien. What recommendation then!"
He could just imagine himself telling a second-generation village of
hardshell settlers that they'd best just pack up and get out....
Jerry's ruminations were interrupted by the soft tap on the door that
meant Ollie had arrived. He grunted an answer, and the ship's mess boy
came in, his face rigid in an expression of polite decorum as he set
the steaming pot and drab plastic cup down on the swing-out table at
Jerry's elbow.
Jerry sensed the man's eyes flickering onto him each time the mess boy
felt the zoologist wasn't looking his way. He finally turned and caught
the youth in mid-stare.
"What is it, Ollie?" said Jerry, not unkindly. "You'll burst if you
don't talk. Go ahead, spit it out."
Ollie flashed a brief grin, a dazzle of white teeth that was all the
brighter in his bronze face. "If I'm bursting with anything, sir, it's
just plain nosiness."
* * * * *
Jerry glanced from Ollie to the wall clock--spaceship clocks were
always set at Eastern Standard Earth Time--and sighed. He was cutting
it terribly close this time. Suddenly, he wanted very much to have
someone to talk to. It didn't matter, all at once, that he'd be
exposing himself to danger by relaxing his mental grip on himself. If
the ship were not landed and his job begun within two hours he'd be no
worse off speaking than if he'd kept still.
"Sit down, Ollie," he said abruptly.
The mess boy's eyebrows rose at this unheard-of request, but he
perched obediently in a chair, almost poised for flight on the edge of
the seat. To have a chat with a Space Zoologist was without precedent
in Ollie's experience.
Jerry carefully poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip and settled
back comfortably in his chair. "What's on your mind, Ollie?"
"Like I said, sir, just plain nosiness. I--I can't get over you
Learners, sir, that's all. I always wonder what gets you into the
business. Why you stay in it so long, why you die so quick if you quit
the Corps, or--Well, like that, sir."
"Just general curiosity about my _raison d'ĂȘtre_, huh?" said Jerry. He
wasn't trying to floor the mess boy with a four-dollar word; even the
lowliest crewman on a spaceship had been chosen for brainpower, long
before brawn came into consideration at all.
"That's about it, sir." Ollie nodded. "I mean, I watch you, sir, when
you come out on these trips. You get all keyed up and worried and
sick-looking, and I keep wondering, 'Why does he do it? Why doesn't he
get out of it if it affects him like that?'"
Jerry stared ruefully at the wall before him, and didn't meet the mess
boy's eyes as he replied.
"Every man gets keyed up and scared when he has an important
undertaking at hand. It's just worry, plain and simple. The thought of
failure keeps me all tightened up."
Jerry paused, awaiting a response. When none was forthcoming, he turned
his gaze slowly to meet that of the mess boy, hoping he was doing it
casually enough to allay anything like suspicion in the other man. But
the smile he met was, affectionately, the smile of a man who hasn't
been fooled.
"That's not it, sir," said Ollie. "I know it's not. Because you're
keyed up the wrong way. You're keyed up with worry that you _won't_
have a job to do. Your big upset's a lot like a--Well, like a junky
waiting for his next fix.... If you'll pardon the expression, sir."
* * * * *
"I will _not_ pardon it!" Jerry bawled, then gripped the arms of his
chair and shook his head in instant apology as the other man's face
went slack with surprise. "No, Ollie, no. I take that back. I _asked_
you to sit there, _told_ you to let me know what was on your mind. I
can't very well blow up just because you followed my lead."
"Everyone blows up, now and then, sir," Ollie said.
Jerry nodded glumly.
Ollie got up. "I'll be in the ward room, sir, if you need anything
else," he said. "Unless you'd like me to stick around awhile?"
Jerry considered the offer, then shook his head. "No.... I'd better
not, Ollie." The barest ghost of humor glowed a moment on the
zoologist's face. "You're too damned easy to talk to."
"Yes, sir," Ollie grinned, then went out and closed the door after him.
Jerry sat in the chair a second longer, then jumped up and pulled the
door open again. Ollie, a few steps down the passageway, turned about
in curious surprise.
"Sir?"
"Tell Captain--" Jerry began, then realized his voice was nearly a
ragged shout, and lowered it. "Would you please tell the captain to
speed things up if he can, Ollie?"
Ollie hesitated. "The vector--" he started, then stiffened militarily
and replied, "Yes, sir. At once, sir."
"No," Jerry groaned, closing his eyes and hanging onto the metal edge
of the doorframe. "Forget it. He's got a course to follow in. He can't
get there any faster."
Ollie, knowing this already, just stood there.
"Just go have a cup of coffee," Jerry added, lamely. "And about what I
said--"
"_You_ know I wouldn't say anything about it, sir," Ollie said.
"I know," Jerry admitted. "Sorry. Space nerves or something of the
sort, I guess."
"Sure, sir."
The mess boy turned and continued down the passageway. Jerry shut the
door slowly, then sat down in his chair once more, and stared at the
clock, and sipped the hot coffee, and fought the cold needle-pricks of
fear in every muscle and joint of his body....