* * * * *
I am in an oblong room about eight by twelve, it looks as though it
had been hastily partitioned off from a larger space. The walls are
prefab plastic sheet, the rest is standard fittings slung in and
bolted down with the fastenings showing.
How many of my classmates are on this ship? _Remorse_ again as
tapping starts on either side of me.
Discarding such Hypotheses as that Ram and Peter are going to hold us
to ransom--which might work for me, since my Dad somehow got to be a
millionaire, but not for B because her parents think money is
vulgar--or that we are being carried off to found an ideal Colony
somewhere--any first-year student can tell you why that won't
work--only one idea seems plausible.
This is that Finals were not final and we are in for a Test of some
sort.
After ten minutes I get some evidence; a Reading Machine is trundled
in, the door immediately slamming shut so I do not see who trundles
it.
I prowl round it looking for tricks but it seems standard; I take a
seat in it, put on the headset and turn the switch.
Hypothesis confirmed, I suppose.
There is a reel in place and it contains background information on a
problem in Cultural Engineering all set out the way we are taught to
do it in Class. The Problem concerns developments on a planet got
settled by two groups during the Exodus and been isolated ever since.
Well while a Reading Machine is running there is no time to think, it
crams in data at full speed and evaluation has to wait. However my
subconscious goes into action and when the reel stops it produces a
Suspicion full grown.
The thing is too tidy.
When we were First Year we dreamed up situations like this and argued
like mad over them, but they were a lot too neat for real life and too
dramatic as well.
However one thing M'Clare said to us, and every other lecturer too,
just before the Finals, was Do not spend time trying to figure what
the examiner was after but answer the question as set; I am more than
halfway decided this is some mysterious Oriental idea of a joke but I
get busy thinking in case it is not.
* * * * *
The Problem goes like this:
The planet is called Incognita in the reel and it is right on the edge
of the known volume of space, it got settled by two groups somewhere
between three and three and a half centuries ago. The rest of the
human race never heard of it till maybe three years back.
(Well it happens that way, inhabited planets are still turning up
eight or ten a century, on account of during the Exodus some folk were
willing to travel a year or more so as to get away from the rest).
The ship that spotted the planet as inhabited did not land, but
reported to Central Government, Earth, who shipped observers out to
take a look.
(There was a rumor circulating at Russett that the Terry Government
might employ some of us on that kind of job, but it never got
official. I do not know whether to believe this bit or not.)
It is stated the observers landed secretly and mingled with the
natives unobserved.
(This is not physically impossible but sounds too like a Field Trip to
be true.)
The observers are not named but stated to be graduates of the Cultural
Engineering Class.
They put in a few months' work and sent home unanimous Crash Priority
reports the situation is _bad_, getting worse and the prognosis is
War.
Brother.
I know people had wars, I know one reason we do not have them now is
just that with so many planets and cheap transportation, pressure has
other outlets; these people scrapped their ships for factories and
never built more.
But.
There are only about ten million of them and surely to goodness a
whole planet gives room enough to keep out of each other's hair?
Well this is not Reasoning but a Reaction, I go back to the data for
another look.
The root trouble is stated to be that two groups landed on the planet
without knowing the others were there, when they met thirty years
later they got a disagreeable shock.
I cannot see there was any basic difference between them, they were
very similar, especially in that neither lot wanted anything to do
with people they had not picked themselves.
So they divided the planet along a Great Circle which left two of the
main land-masses in one hemisphere and two in another.
They agree each to keep to its own section and leave the other alone.
Twenty years later, trading like mad; each has certain minerals the
other lacks; each has certain agricultural products the other finds it
difficult to grow.
You think this leads to Co-operation Friendship and ultimate
Federation?
I will not go into the incidents that make each side feel it is being
gypped, it is enough that from time to time each has a scarcity or
hold-up on deliveries that upsets the other's economy; and they start
experimenting to become self-sufficient: and the exporter's economy is
upset in turn. And each thinks the other did it on purpose.
This sort of situation reacts internally leading to Politics.
There are troubles about a medium-sized island on the dividing line,
and the profits from interhemispherical transport, and the laws of
interhemispherical trade.
It takes maybe two hundred years, but finally each has expanded the
Police into an army with a whole spectrum of weapons not to be used on
any account except for Defense.
This situation lasts seventy years getting worse all the time, now
Rumors have started on each side that the other is developing an
Ultimate Weapon, and the political parties not in power are agitating
to move first before the thing is complete.
The observers report War not maybe this year or the next but within
ten, and if neither side was looking for an Ultimate Weapon to begin
with they certainly are now.
Taking all this at face value there seems an obvious solution.
I am thinking this over in an academic sort of way when an itchy
trickle of sweat starts down my vertebrae.
Who is going to apply this solution? Because if this is anything but
another Test, or the output of a diseased sense of humor, I would be
sorry for somebody.
I dial black coffee on the wall servitor and wish B were here so we
could prove to each other the thing is just an exercise; I do not do
so well at spotting proofs on my own.
Most of our class exercises have concerned something that happened,
once.
* * * * *
After about ninety minutes the speaker requests me to write not more
than one thousand words on any scheme to improve the situation and the
equipment required for it.
I spent ten minutes verbalizing the basic idea and an hour or so on
"equipment"; the longer I go on the more unlikely it all seems. In the
end I have maybe two hundred words which acting on instructions I post
through a slit in the door.
Five minutes later I realize I have forgotten the Time Factor.
[Illustration]
If the original ship took a year to reach Incognita, it will take at
least four months now; therefore it is more than four months since
that report was written and will be more than a year before anyone
arrives and War may have started already.
I sit back and by transition of ideas start to wonder where this ship
is heading? We are still at one gee and even on Mass-Time you cannot
juggle apparent acceleration and spatial transition outside certain
limits; we are not just orbiting but must be well outside the Solar
System by now.
The speaker announces Everyone will now get some rest; I smell
sleep-gas for one moment and have just time to lie down.