[Illustration: Frontispiece: spaceman studying a chess board.]
[Illustration: Spider and rat in outer space surrounded by planets.]
The ship was proof against any test, but the men inside her could be
strained and warped, individually and horribly. Unfortunately, while the
men knew that, they couldn't really believe it. The Aliens could--and
did.
_They sent the advance unit out to scout the new planet in the
_Ambassador_, homing down on the secret beeping of a featureless
box dropped by an earlier survey party. Then they sat back at
GHQ and began the same old pattern of worry that followed every
advance unit._
_Not about the ship. The _Ambassador_ was a perfect machine,
automatic, self-adjusting, self-regulating. It was built to last
and do its job without failure under any and all conditions, as
long as there was a universe around it. And it could not fail.
There was no question about that._
_But an advance unit is composed of men. The factors of safety
are indeterminable; the duplications of their internal
mechanisms are conjectural, variable. The strength of the unit
is the sum of the strengths of its members. The weakness of the
unit can be a single small failing in a single man._
_Beep ... boop ..._
"Gotcha!" said Ives. Ives was Communications. He had quick eyes, quick
hands. He was huge, almost gross, but graceful. "On the nose," he
grinned, and turned up the volume.
_Beep ... boop ..._
"What else do you expect?" said Johnny. Johnny was the pilot--young,
wide, flat. His movements were as controlled and decisive as those of
the ship itself, in which he had an unshakeable faith. He slid into the
bucket seat before the great master console.
_Beep ... boop ..._
"We expect the ship to do her job," said Hoskins, the Engineer. He was
mild and deft, middle-aged, with a domed head and wide, light-blue eyes
behind old fashioned spectacles. He shared Johnny's belief in the
machine, but through understanding rather than through admiration. "But
it's always good to see her do it."
_Beep ... boop ..._
"Beautiful," said Captain Anderson softly, and he may have been talking
about the way the ship was homing in on the tiny, featureless box that
Survey had dropped on the unexplored planet, or about the planet itself,
or even about the smooth integration of his crew.
_Beep ... boop ..._
Paresi said nothing. He had eyebrows and nostrils as sensitive as a
radarscope, and masked eyes of a luminous black. Faces and motives were
to him what gauges and log-entries were to the Engineer. Paresi was the
Doctor, and he had many a salve and many a splint for invisible ills. He
saw everything and understood much. He leaned against the bulkhead, his
gaze flicking from one to the other of the crew. Occasionally his small
mustache twitched like the antennae of a cat watching a bird.
Barely audible, faint as the blue outline of a distant hill, hungry and
lost as the half-heard cry of a banshee, came the thin sound of high
atmosphere against the ship's hull.
An hour passed.
_Bup-bup-bup-bup ..._
"Shut that damned thing off!"
Ives looked up at the pilot, startled. He turned the gain down to a
whisper. Paresi left the bulkhead and stood behind Johnny. "What's the
matter?" he asked. His voice was feline, too--a sort of purr.
Johnny looked up at him quickly, and grinned. "I can put her down," he
said. "That's what I'm here for. I--like to think maybe I'll get to do
it, that's all. I can't think that with the autopilot blasting out an
'on course'." He punched the veering-jet controls. It served men
perfectly. The ship ignored him, homed on the beam. The ship computed
velocity, altitude, gravity, magnetic polarization, windage; used and
balanced and adjusted for them all. It adjusted for interference from
the manual controls. It served men perfectly. It ignored them utterly.
Johnny turned to look out and downward. Paresi's gaze followed. It was a
beautiful planet, perhaps a shade greener than the blue-green of earth.
It seemed, indefinably, more park-like than wild. It had an air of
controlled lushness and peace.
The braking jets thundered as Johnny depressed a control. Paresi nodded
slightly as he saw the pilot's hand move, for he knew that the autopilot
had done it, and that Johnny's movement was one of trained reflex. The
youngster was intense and alert, hair-trigger schooled, taught to
pretend in such detail that the pretense was reality to him; a precise
pretense that would become reality for all of them if the machine
failed.
But of course the machine would not fail.
Fields fled beneath them, looking like a crazy-quilt in pastel. On them,
nothing moved. Hoskins moved to the viewport and watched them mildly.
"Very pastoral," he said. "Pretty."
"They haven't gotten very far," said Ives.
"Or they've gotten very far indeed," said Captain Anderson.