a man whom I may truly call ...
... my brother
_[1]_
Like some great silver-pink fish, the ship sang on through the eternal
night. There was no impression of swimming; the fish shape had neither
fins nor a tail. It was as though it were hovering in wait for a member
of some smaller species to swoop suddenly down from nowhere, so that it,
in turn, could pounce and kill.
But still it moved and sang.
Only a being who was thoroughly familiar with the type could have told
that this particular fish was dying.
In shape, the ship was rather like a narrow flounder--long, tapered, and
oval in cross-section--but it showed none of the exterior markings one
might expect of either a living thing or a spaceship. With one
exception, the smooth silver-pink exterior was featureless.
That one exception was a long, purplish-black, roughened discoloration
that ran along one side for almost half of the ship's seventeen meters
of length. It was the only external sign that the ship was dying.
Inside the ship, the Nipe neither knew nor cared about the
discoloration. Had he thought about it, he would have deduced the
presence of the burn, but it was by far the least of his worries.
The ship sang, and the song was a song of death.
The internal damage that had been done to the ship was far more serious
than the burn on the surface of the hull. It was that internal damage
which occupied the thoughts of the Nipe, for it could, quite possibly,
kill him.
He had, of course, no intention of dying. Not out here. Not so far, so
very far, from his own people. Not out here, where his death would be so
very improper.
He looked at the ball of the yellow-white sun ahead and wondered that
such a relatively stable, inactive star could have produced such a
tremendously energetic plasmoid, one that could still do such damage so
far out. It had been a freak, of course. Such suns as this did not
normally produce such energetic swirls of magnetohydrodynamic force.
But the thing had been there, nonetheless, and the ship had hit it at
high velocity. Fortunately the ship had only touched the edge of the
swirling cloud--otherwise the ship would have vanished in a puff of
incandescence. But it had done enough. The power plants that drove the
ship at ultralight velocities through the depths of interstellar space
had been so badly damaged that they could only be used in short bursts,
and each burst brought them closer to the fusion point. Even when they
were not being used they sang away their energies in ululations of
wavering vibration that would have been nerve-racking to a human being.
The Nipe had heard the singing of the engines, recognized it for what it
was, realized that he could do nothing about it, and dismissed it from
his mind.
Most of the instruments were powerless; the Nipe was not even sure he
could land the vessel. Any attempt to use the communicator to call home
would have blown his ship to atoms.
The Nipe did not want to die, but, if die he must, he did not want to
die foolishly.
It had taken a long time to drift in from the outer reaches of this
sun's planetary system, but using the power plants any more than was
absolutely necessary would have been foolhardy.
The Nipe missed the companionship his brother had given him for so long;
his help would be invaluable now. But there had been no choice. There
had not been enough supplies for two to survive the long inward fall
toward the distant sun. The Nipe, having discovered the fact first, had,
out of his mercy and compassion, killed his brother while the other was
not looking. Then, having disposed of his brother with all due ceremony,
he had settled down to the long, lonely wait.
Beings of another race might have cursed the accident that had disabled
the ship, or regretted the necessity that one of them should die, but
the Nipe did neither, for, to him, the first notion would have been
foolish and the second incomprehensible.
But now, as the ship fell ever closer toward the yellow-white sun, he
began to worry about his own fate. For a while, it had seemed almost
certain that he would survive long enough to build a communicator, for
the instruments had already told him and his brother that the system
ahead was inhabited by creatures of reasoning power, if not true
intelligence, and it would almost certainly be possible to get the
equipment he needed from them. Now, though, it looked as if the ship
would not survive a landing. He had had to steer it away from a great
gas giant, which had seriously endangered the power plants.
He did not want to die in space--wasted, forever undevoured. At least,
he must die on a planet, where there might be creatures with the
compassion and wisdom to give his body the proper death rites. The
thought of succumbing to inferior creatures was repugnant, but it was
better than rotting to feed monocells or ectogenes, and far superior to
wasting away in space.
Even thoughts such as these did not occupy his mind often or for very
long. Far, far better than any of those thoughts were thoughts connected
with the desire and planning for survival.
The outer orbits of the gas giants had been passed at last, and the Nipe
fell on through the Asteroid Belt without approaching any of the larger
pieces of rock-and-metal. That he and his brother had originally elected
to come into this system along its orbital plane had been a mixed
blessing. To have come in at a different angle would have avoided all
the debris--from planetary size on down--that is thickest in a star's
equatorial plane, but it would also have meant a greater chance of
missing a suitable planet unless too much reliance were placed on the
already weakened power generators. As it was, the Nipe had been
fortunate in being able to use the gravitational field of the gas giant
to swing his ship toward the precise spot where the third planet would
be when the ship arrived in the third orbit. Moreover, the planet would
be retreating from the Nipe's line of flight, which would make the
velocity difference that much the less.
For a while the Nipe had toyed with the idea of using the mining bases
that the local life-form had set up in the Asteroid Belt as bases for
his own operations, but he had decided against it. Movement would be
much freer and more productive on a planet than it would be in the Belt.
He would have preferred using the fourth planet for his base. Although
much smaller, it had the same reddish, arid look as his own home
planet, while the third planet was three quarters drowned in water. But
there were two factors that weighed so heavily against that choice that
they rendered it impossible. In the first place, by far the greater
proportion of the local inhabitants' commerce was between the asteroids
and the third planet. Second, and even more important, the fourth world
was at such a point in its orbit that the energy required to land would
destroy the ship beyond any doubt.
It would have to be the third world.
As the ship fell inward, the Nipe watched his pitifully inadequate
instruments, doing his best to keep tabs on every one of the ships that
the local life-form used to move through space. He did not want to be
spotted now, and even though the odds were against these beings having
any instrument highly developed enough to spot his own craft, there was
always the possibility that he might be observed optically.
So he squatted there in his ship, a centipede-like thing about five feet
in length and a little less than eighteen inches in diameter, with eight
articulated limbs spaced in pairs along his body, each limb ending in a
five-fingered manipulatory organ that could be used equally well as hand
or foot. His head, which was long and snouted, displayed two pairs of
violet eyes that kept a constant watch on the indicators and screens of
the few instruments that were still functioning aboard the ship.
And he waited as the ship fell toward its rendezvous with the third
planet.
_[2]_
Wang Kulichenko pulled the collar of his uniform coat up closer around
his ears and pulled the helmet and face-mask down a bit. It was only
early October, but here in the tundra country the wind had a tendency to
be chill and biting in the morning, even at this time of year. Within a
week or so, he'd have to start using the power pack on his horse to
electrically warm his protective clothing and the horse's wrappings, but
there was no necessity for that yet. He smiled a little, as he always
did when he thought of his grandfather's remarks about such "new-fangled
nonsense."
"Your ancestors, son of my son," he would say, "conquered the tundra and
lived upon it for thousands of years without the need of such womanish
things. Are there no men any more? Are there none who can face nature
alone and unafraid without the aid of artifices that bring softness?"
But Wang Kulichenko noticed--though out of politeness he never pointed
it out that the old man never failed to take advantage of the electric
warmth of the house when the short days came and the snow blew across
the country like fine white sand. And Grandfather never complained about
the lights or the television or the hot water, except to grumble
occasionally that they were old and out of date and that the mail-order
catalog showed that much better models were available in Vladivostok.
And Wang would remind the old man, very gently, that a paper-forest
ranger only made so much money, and that there would have to be more
saving before such things could be bought. He did not--_ever_--remind
the old man that he, Wang, was stretching a point to keep his
grandfather on the payroll as an assistant.
Wang Kulichenko patted his horse's rump and urged her softly to step up
her pace just a bit. He had a certain amount of territory to cover, and
although he wanted to be careful in his checking he also wanted to get
home early.
Around him, the neatly-planted forest of paper-trees spread knotty,
alien branches, trying to catch the rays of the winter-waning sun.
Whenever Wang thought of his grandfather's remarks about his ancestors,
he always wondered, as a corollary, what those same ancestors would have
thought about a forest growing up here, where no forest like this one
had ever grown before.
They were called paper-trees because the bulk of their pulp was used to
make paper--they were of no use whatever as lumber--but they weren't
really trees, and the organic chemicals that were leached from them
during the pulping process were of far more value than the paper pulp.
They were mutations of a smaller plant that had been found in the
temperate regions of Mars and purposely changed genetically to grow in
the Siberian tundra country, where the conditions were similar to, but
superior to, their natural habitat. They looked as though someone had
managed to crossbreed the Joshua tree with the cypress and then
persuaded the result to grow grass instead of leaves. And the
photosynthesis of those grasslike blades depended on an iron-bearing
compound that was more closely related to hemoglobin than to
chlorophyll, giving them a rusty red color instead of the normal green
of Earthly plants.
In the distance, Wang heard the whining of the wind increase, and he
automatically pulled his coat a little tighter, even though he noticed
no increase in the wind velocity around him.
Then, as the whine became louder, he realized that it was not the wind.
He turned his head toward the sound and looked up. For a long minute he
watched the sky as the sound increased in volume, but he could see
nothing at first. Then he caught a glimpse of motion, a dot that was
hard to distinguish against the cloud-mottled gray sky.
What was it? An air transport in trouble? There were two transpolar
routes that passed within a few hundred miles of here, but no air
transport he had ever seen made a noise like that. Normally they were so
high up as to be both invisible and inaudible. Must be trouble of some
sort.
He reached down to the saddle pack without taking his eyes from the
moving speck and took out the radiophone. He held it to his ear and
thumbed the call button insistently.
_Grandfather!_ he thought with growing irritation as the seconds passed.
_Wake up! Come on, old dozer, rouse yourself from your dreams!_
At the same time, he checked his wrist compass and estimated the
direction of flight of the dot and its direction from him. He'd at least
be able to give the airline authorities some information if the ship
fell. He wished there were some way to triangulate its height, velocity,
and so on, but he had no need for that kind of thing, so he hadn't the
equipment.
"Yes? Yes?" came a testy, dry voice through the earphone.
Quickly Wang gave his grandfather all the information he had on the
flying thing. By now the whine had become a shrill roar and the thing in
the air had become a silver-pink fish shape.
"I think it's coming down very close to here," Wang concluded. "You call
the authorities and let them know that one of the aircraft is in
trouble. I'll see if I can be of any help here. I'll call you back
later."
"As you say," the old man said hurriedly. He cut off.
Wang was beginning to realize that the thing was a spaceship, not an
airship. By this time, he could see the thing more clearly. He had never
actually seen a spacecraft, but he'd seen enough of them on television
to know what they looked like. This one didn't look like a standard type
at all, and it didn't behave like one, but it looked and behaved even
less like an airship, and Wang knew enough to be aware that he did not
necessarily know every type of spaceship ever built.
In shape, it resembled the old rocket-propelled jobs that had been used
for the first probings into space more than a century before, rather
than the fat ovoids he was used to. But there were no signs of rocket
exhausts, and yet the ship was very obviously slowing, so it must have
an inertia drive.
It was coming in much lower now, on a line north of him, headed almost
due east. He urged the mare forward in order to try to keep up with the
craft, although it was obviously traveling at several hundred miles an
hour--hardly a horse's pace.
Still, it was slowing rapidly very rapidly. Maybe ...
He kept the mare moving.
The strange ship skimmed along the treetops in the distance and
disappeared from sight. Then there was a thunderous crash, a tearing of
wood and foliage, and a grinding, plowing sound.
For a few seconds afterward, there was silence. Then there came a soft
rumble, as of water beginning to boil in some huge but distant samovar.
It seemed to go on and on and on.
And there was a bluish, fluctuating glow on the horizon.
_Radioactivity?_ Wang wondered. Surely not an atomic-powered ship
without safety cutoffs in this day and age. Still, there was always the
possibility that the cutoffs had failed.
He pulled out his radiophone and thumbed the call button again.