[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Advanced races generally are eager to share their knowledge
with primitive ones. In this case ... with Earthmen!
When Scout Group Forty flickered back across half the Galaxy with a
complete culture study of a Class Seven civilization on three planets
of Argus Ten, the Bureau of Stellar Defense had, of course, a priority
claim on all data. Class Sevens were rare and of high potential danger,
so all personnel of Group Forty were placed in tight quarantine during
the thirty days required for a detailed analysis of the thousands of
film spools.
News of the contact leaked out and professional alarmists predicted
dire things on the news screens of the three home planets of Sol. A
retired admiral of the Space Navy published an article in which he
stated bitterly that the fleet had been weakened by twenty years of
softness in high places.
On the thirty-first day, B.S.D. reported to System President Mize that
the inhabitants of the three planets of Argus 10 constituted no threat,
that there was no military necessity for alarm, that approval of a
commerce treaty was recommended, that all data was being turned over to
the Bureau of Stellar Trade and Economy for analysis, that personnel of
Scout Group Forty was being given sixty days' leave before reassignment.
B.S.T.E. released film to all commercial networks at once, and
visions of slavering oily monsters disappeared from the imagination
of mankind. The Argonauts, as they came to be called, were pleasantly
similar to mankind. It was additional proof that only in the rarest
instance was the life-apex on any planet in the home Galaxy an abrupt
divergence from the "human" form. The homogeneousness of planet
elements throughout the Galaxy made homogeneousness of life-apex almost
a truism. The bipedal, oxygen-breathing vertebrate with opposing thumb
seems best suited for survival.
If was evident that, with training, the average Argonaut could pass
almost unnoticed in the Solar System. The flesh tones were brightly
pink, like that of a sunburned human. Cranial hair was uniformly
taffy-yellow. They were heavier and more fleshy than humans. Their
women had a pronounced Rubens look, a warm, moist, rosy, comfortable
look.
* * * * *
Everyone remarked on the placidity and contentment of facial
expressions, by human standards. The inevitable comparison was made.
The Argonauts looked like a race of inn and beer-garden proprietors in
the Bavarian Alps. With leather pants to slap, stein lids to click,
feathers in Tyrolean hats and peasant skirts on their women, they would
represent a culture and a way of life that had been missing from Earth
for far too many generations.
Eight months after matters had been turned over to B.S.T.E., the First
Trade Group returned to Earth with a bewildering variety of artifacts
and devices, plus a round dozen Argonauts. The Argonauts had learned
to speak Solian with an amusing guttural accent. They beamed on
everything and everybody. They were great pets until the novelty wore
off. Profitable trade was inaugurated, because the Argonaut devices
all seemed designed to make life more pleasant. The scent-thesizer
became very popular once it was adjusted to meet human tastes. Worn as
a lapel button, it could create the odor of pine, broiled steak, spring
flowers, Scotch whisky, musk--even skunk for the practical jokers who
exist in all ages and eras.
Any home equipped with an Argonaut static-clean never became dusty. It
used no power and had to be emptied only once a year.
Technicians altered the Argonaut mechanical game animal so that it
looked like an Earth rabbit. The weapons which shot a harmless beam
were altered to look like rifles. After one experience with the new
game, hunters were almost breathless with excitement. The incredible
agility of the mechanical animal, its ability to take cover, the
fact that, once the beam felled it, you could use it over and over
again--all this made for the promulgation of new non-lethal hunting.
* * * * *
Lambert, chief of the Bureau of Racial Maturity, waited patiently for
his chance at the Argonaut data. The cramped offices in the temporary
wing of the old System Security Building, the meager appropriation,
the obsolete office equipment, the inadequate staff all testified not
only to the Bureau's lack of priority, but also to a lack of knowledge
of its existence on the part of many System officials. Lambert,
crag-faced, sandy, slow-moving, was a historian, anthropologist and
sociologist. He was realist enough to understand that if the Bureau of
Racial Maturity happened to be more important in System Government,
it would probably be headed by a man with fewer academic and more
political qualifications.
And Lambert knew, beyond any doubt at all, that the B.R.M. was more
important to the race and the future of the race than any other branch
of System Government.
Set up by President Tolles, an adult and enlightened administrator,
the Bureau was now slowly being strangled by a constantly decreasing
appropriation.
Lambert knew that mankind had come too far, too fast. Mankind had
dropped out of a tree with all the primordial instincts to rend and
tear and claw. Twenty thousand years later, and with only a few
thousand years of dubiously recorded history, he had reached the stars.
It was too quick.
Lambert knew that mankind must become mature in order to survive. The
domination of instinct had to be watered down, and rapidly. Selective
breeding might do it, but it was an answer impossible to enforce. He
hoped that one day the records of an alien civilization would give
him the answer. After a year of bureaucratic wriggling, feints and
counter-feints, he had acquired the right of access to Scout Group Data.
As his patience dwindled he wrote increasingly firm letters to Central
Files and Routing. In the end, when he finally located the data
improperly stored in the closed files of the B.S.T.E., he took no
more chances. He went in person with an assistant named Cooper and a
commandeered electric hand-truck, and bullied a B.S.T.E. storage clerk
into accepting a receipt for the Argonaut data. The clerk's cooperation
was lessened by never having heard of the Bureau of Racial Maturity.
* * * * *
The file contained the dictionary and grammar compiled by the Scout
Group, plus all the films taken on the three planets of Argus 10, plus
micro-films of twelve thousand books written in the language of the
Argonauts. Their written language was ideographic, and thus presented
more than usual difficulties. Lambert knew that translations had been
made, but somewhere along the line they had disappeared.
Lambert set his whole staff to work on the language. He hired
additional linguists out of his own thin enough pocket. He gave up
all outside activities in order to hasten the progress of his own
knowledge. His wife, respecting Lambert's high order of devotion to his
work, kept their two half-grown children from interfering during those
long evenings when he studied and translated at home.
Two evenings a week Lambert called on Vonk Poogla, the Argonaut
assigned to Trade Coordination, and improved his conversational
Argonian to the point where he could obtain additional historical
information from the pink wide "man."
Of the twelve thousand books, the number of special interest to
Lambert were only one hundred and ten. On those he based his master
chart. An animated film of the chart was prepared at Lambert's own
expense, and, when it was done, he requested an appointment with
Simpkin, Secretary for Stellar Affairs, going through all the normal
channels to obtain the interview. He asked an hour of Simpkin's time.
It took two weeks.
Simpkin was a big florid man with iron-gray hair, skeptical eyes and
that indefinable look of political opportunism.
He came around his big desk to shake Lambert's hand. "Ah ... Lambert!
Glad to see you, fella. I ought to get around to my Bureau Chiefs more
often, but you know how hectic things are up here."
"I know, Mr. Secretary. I have something here of the utmost importance
and--"
"Bureau of Racial Maturity, isn't it? I never did know exactly what you
people do. Sort of progress records or something?"
"Of the utmost importance," Lambert repeated doggedly.