The Quedak lay on a small hilltop and watched a slender jet of light
descend through the sky. The feather-tailed jet was golden, and
brighter than the sun. Poised above it was a glistening metallic
object, fabricated rather than natural, hauntingly familiar. The Quedak
tried to think what it was.
He couldn't remember. His memories had atrophied with his functions,
leaving only scattered fragments of images. He searched among them now,
leafing through his brief scraps of ruined cities, dying populations, a
blue-water-filled canal, two moons, a spaceship....
That was it. The descending object was a _spaceship_. There had been
many of them during the great days of the Quedak.
Those great days were over, buried forever beneath the powdery sands.
Only the Quedak remained. He had life and he had a mission to perform.
The driving urgency of his mission remained, even after memory and
function had failed.
As the Quedak watched, the spaceship dipped lower. It wobbled and
sidejets kicked out to straighten it. With a gentle explosion of dust,
the spaceship settled tail first on the arid plain.
And the Quedak, driven by the imperative Quedak mission, dragged itself
painfully down from the little hilltop. Every movement was an agony. If
he were a selfish creature, the Quedak would have died. But he was not
selfish. Quedaks owed a duty to the universe; and that spaceship, after
all the blank years, was a link to other worlds, to planets where the
Quedak could live again and give his services to the native fauna.
He crawled, a centimeter at a time, and wondered whether he had the
strength to reach the alien spaceship before it left this dusty, dead
planet.
* * * * *
Captain Jensen of the spaceship _Southern Cross_ was bored sick with
Mars. He and his men had been here for ten days. They had found no
important archeological specimens, no tantalizing hints of ancient
cities such as the _Polaris_ expedition had discovered at the South
Pole. Here there was nothing but sand, a few weary shrubs, and a
rolling hill or two. Their biggest find so far had been three pottery
shards.
Jensen readjusted his oxygen booster. Over the rise of a hill he saw
his two men returning.
"Anything interesting?" he asked.
"Just this," said engineer Vayne, holding up an inch of corroded blade
without a handle.
"Better than nothing," Jensen said. "How about you, Wilks?"
The navigator shrugged his shoulders. "Just photographs of the
landscape."
"OK," Jensen said. "Dump everything into the sterilizer and let's get
going."
Wilks looked mournful. "Captain, one quick sweep to the north might
turn up something really--"
"Not a chance," Jensen said. "Fuel, food, water, everything was
calculated for a ten-day stay. That's three days longer than _Polaris_
had. We're taking off this evening."
The men nodded. They had no reason to complain. As the second to land
on Mars, they were sure of a small but respectable footnote in the
history books. They put their equipment through the sterilizer vent,
sealed it, and climbed the ladder to the lock. Once they were inside,
Vayne closed and dogged the hatch, and started to open the inside
pressure door.
"Hold it!" Jensen called out.
"What's the matter?"
"I thought I saw something on your boot," Jensen said. "Something like
a big bug."
Vayne quickly ran his hands down the sides of his boots. The two men
circled him, examining his clothing.
"Shut that inner door," the captain said. "Wilks, did you see anything?"
"Not a thing," the navigator said. "Are you sure, Cap? We haven't found
anything that looks like animal or insect life here. Only a few plants."
"I could have sworn I saw something," Jensen said. "Maybe I was
wrong.... Anyhow, we'll fumigate our clothes before we enter the ship
proper. No sense taking any chance of bringing back some kind of
Martian bug."
The men removed their clothing and boots and stuffed them into the
chute. They searched the bare steel room carefully.
"Nothing here," Jensen said at last. "OK, let's go inside."
Once inside the ship, they sealed off the lock and fumigated it. The
Quedak, who had crept inside earlier through the partially opened
pressure door, listened to the distant hiss of gas. After a while he
heard the jets begin to fire.
The Quedak retreated to the dark rear of the ship. He found a metal
shelf and attached himself to the underside of it near the wall. After
a while he felt the ship tremble.
* * * * *
The Quedak clung to the shelf during the long, slow flight through
space. He had forgotten what spaceships were like, but now memory
revived briefly. He felt blazing heat and freezing cold. Adjusting to
the temperature changes drained his small store of vitality, and the
Quedak began to wonder if he was going to die.
He _refused_ to die. Not while there was still a possibility of
accomplishing the Quedak mission.
In time he felt the harsh pull of gravity, and felt the main jets
firing again. The ship was coming down to its planet.
* * * * *
After a routine landing, Captain Jensen and his men were taken to Medic
Checkpoint, where they were thumped, probed and tested for any sign of
disease.
Their spaceship was lowered to a flatcar and taken past rows of
moonships and ICBMs to Decontamination Stage One. Here the sealed outer
hull was washed down with powerful cleansing sprays. By evening, the
ship was taken to Decontamination Stage Two.
A team of two inspectors equipped with bulky tanks and hoses undogged
the hatch and entered, shutting the hatch behind them.
They began at the bow, methodically spraying as they moved toward the
rear. Everything seemed in order; no animals or plants, no trace of
mold such as the first Luna expedition had brought back.
"Do you really think this is necessary?" the assistant inspector asked.
He had already requested a transfer to Flight Control.
"Sure it is," the senior inspector said. "Can't tell what these ships
might bring in."
"I suppose so," the assistant said. "Still, a Martian whoosis wouldn't
even be able to live on Earth. Would it?"
"How should I know?" the senior inspector said. "I'm no botanist. Maybe
they don't know, either."
"Seems like a waste of--hey!"
"What is it?" the senior inspector asked.
"I thought I saw something," the assistant said. "Looked a little like
a palmetto bug. Over by that shelf."
The senior inspector adjusted his respirator more snugly over his face
and motioned to his assistant to do the same. He advanced slowly toward
the shelf, unfastening a second nozzle from the pressure tank on his
back. He turned it on, and a cloud of greenish gas sprayed out.
"There," the senior inspector said. "That should take care of your
bug." He knelt down and looked under the shelf. "Nothing here."
"It was probably a shadow," the assistant said.
Together they sprayed the entire interior of the ship, paying
particular attention to the small box of Martian artifacts. They left
the gas-filled ship and dogged the hatch again.
"Now what?" the assistant asked.
"Now we leave the ship sealed for three days," the senior inspector
said. "Then we inspect again. You find me the animal that'll live
through that."
* * * * *
The Quedak, who had been clinging to the underside of the assistant's
shoe between the heel and the sole, released his hold. He watched the
shadowy biped figures move away, talking in their deep, rumbling,
indecipherable voices. He felt tired and unutterably lonely.
But buoying him up was the thought of the Quedak mission. Only that
was important. The first part of the mission was accomplished. He had
landed safely on an inhabited planet. Now he needed food and drink.
Then he had to have rest, a great deal of rest to restore his dormant
faculties. After that he would be ready to give this world what it so
obviously needed--the cooperation possible only through the Quedak mind.
He crept slowly down the shadowy yard, past the deserted hulls of
spaceships. He came to a wire fence and sensed the high-voltage
electricity running through it. Gauging his distance carefully, the
Quedak jumped safely through one of the openings in the mesh.
This was a very different section. From here the Quedak could smell
water and food. He moved hastily forward, then stopped.
He sensed the presence of a man. And something else. Something much
more menacing.
* * * * *
"Who's there?" the watchman called out. He waited, his revolver in one
hand, his flashlight in the other. Thieves had broken into the yards
last week; they had stolen three cases of computer parts bound for Rio.
Tonight he was ready for them.
He walked forward, an old, keen-eyed man holding his revolver in a
rock-steady fist. The beam of his flashlight probed among the cargoes.
The yellow light flickered along a great pile of precision machine
tools for South Africa, past a water-extraction plant for Jordan and a
pile of mixed goods for Rabaul.
"You better come out," the watchman shouted. His flashlight probed at
sacks of rice for Shanghai and power saws for Burma. Then the beam of
light stopped abruptly.
"I'll be damned," the watchman said. Then he laughed. A huge and
red-eyed rat was glaring into the beam of his flashlight. It had
something in its jaws, something that looked like an unusually large
cockroach.
"Good eating," the watchman said. He holstered his revolver and
continued his patrol.
* * * * *
A large black animal had seized the Quedak, and he felt heavy jaws
close over his back. He tried to fight; but, blinded by a sudden beam
of yellow light, he was betrayed by total and enervating confusion.
The yellow light went off. The black beast bit down hard on the
Quedak's armored back. The Quedak mustered his remaining strength, and,
uncoiling his long, scorpion-jointed tail, lashed out.
He missed, but the black beast released him hastily. They circled
each other, the Quedak hoisting his tail for a second blow, the beast
unwilling to turn loose this prey.
The Quedak waited for his chance. Elation filled him. This pugnacious
animal could be the first, the first on this planet to experience the
Quedak mission. From this humble creature a start could be made....
The beast sprang and its white teeth clicked together viciously.
The Quedak moved out of the way and its barb-headed tail flashed
out, fastening itself in the beast's back. The Quedak held on grimly
while the beast leaped and squirmed. Setting his feet, the Quedak
concentrated on the all-important task of pumping a tiny white crystal
down the length of his tail and under the beast's skin.
But this most important of the Quedak faculties was still dormant.
Unable to accomplish anything, the Quedak released his barbs, and,
taking careful aim, accurately drove his sting home between the black
beast's eyes. The blow, as the Quedak had known, was lethal.
The Quedak took nourishment from the body of its dead foe; regretfully,
for by inclination the Quedak was herbivorous. When he had finished,
the Quedak knew that he was in desperate need of a long period of rest.
Only after that could the full Quedak powers be regained.
He crawled up and down the piles of goods in the yard, looking for a
place to hide. Carefully he examined several bales. At last he reached
a stack of heavy boxes. One of the boxes had a crack just large enough
to admit him.
The Quedak crawled inside, down the shiny, oil-slick surface of a
machine, to the far end of the box. There he went into the dreamless,
defenseless sleep of the Quedak, serenely trusting in what the future
would bring.