"First," said the Ambassador, "you are to insist that no decision
has been reached. You are to play for time. If I do not agree, you
are to offer to compromise. If I do not agree, you are to accept the
settlement we suggested. But you are to ask urgently for time in which
to remove the citizens we might feel ought to be shot. This is not an
absolute condition, but you are to use every possible means to persuade
me to grant it."
The Coordinator ground his teeth. But the Council wouldn't go to war
for a few thousand citizens of an Asiatic country--who would probably
be killed in the war anyhow. There would be millions killed in Western
countries if the war did come.
"I have much respect for you," said the Ambassador politely, "so I
agree to three days of delay during which you may evacuate disloyal
citizens by helicopter. On the fourth day our troops will move up to
the new border. It would be unfortunate if there were clashes on the
way."
"We can't get them out in three days!" protested the Coordinator. "It's
impossible! We haven't enough copters!"
"With warning to flee," said the Ambassador, "many can reach the new
border on foot."
The Coordinator ground his teeth again. That would be a public
disgrace--and not the first one--for the WDA for not protecting its
friends. But the public in the Western nations did not want war. It
would not allow its governments to fight over trivial matters. Its
alliance could not make threats. On the other hand, the public in the
Com nations had no opinions its governments had not decreed. The Com
nations could threaten. They could even carry out threats, though made
for trivialities. So the WDA found itself yielding upon one point after
another. Eventually it would fight, and fight bravely, but too late.
The Coordinator said heavily, "You will excuse me, Mr. Ambassador. I
have to see about getting as many copters as possible to southeast
Asia."
* * * * *
Some hundreds of light-years away, the Survey ship _Lotus_ floated in
space, a discreet number of millions of miles from the local sun. It
was on a strictly scientific mission, so it would not be subject to
Com suspicion of having undesirable political intentions. At least
they hadn't demanded to have an observer on board. Com intelligence
reports were notoriously sound, however, and possibly spies had assured
their employers that the _Lotus's_ mission was bona fide. Her errand
was the mapping and first-examination of a series of sol-type solar
systems. This was the ninth such system on the list. The third planet
out from the sun, here, lay off to starboard. It was near enough to
have a visible disk to the naked eye, and moderate magnification
showed ice-caps and permanent surface markings that could be seas
and continents. As was to be expected, it was very much like a more
familiar third planet out--Earth.
The skipper gave Nolan the job of remote inspection while the gross
examination of the system went on. Nolan had a knack for such work,
and much of it naturally fell to him.
"Okay!" he said resignedly, "Another day, another world!"
"My private nightmare," said the skipper, with humor, "is bug-eyed
monsters. Try not to find 'em here, Nolan. Eh?"
He'd said that eight times before on this voyage. Nolan said, "My
private nightmare is getting home and finding out that while we've been
finding new worlds for men to live on, they've started a war and made
Earth a place to die on. Try to arrange that it doesn't happen before
we get home. Eh?"
He'd said that eight times before on this voyage, too.
"I wish us both luck. Nolan," said the skipper. "But that ball out
yonder looks plausible as a nest for bug-eyed monsters!"
He shook his head and went out. He was still being humorous. Nolan
set up his instruments and went to work. As he worked, he tried to
thrust away the thoughts that came to everybody on Earth every day.
They were as haunting, some light-centuries from Earth, as back at
home. There was the base the Coms were building on the moon. The WDA
had an observatory there, but the Coms were believed to be mounting
many more rockets than telescopes. And there was that unsatisfying
agreement made between the Coms and WDA just before the _Lotus_ took
off. Each promised solemnly to notify the other of all space take-offs
before they happened. The idea was to prevent a mistake by which a
Pearl-Harbor-style attack might be inferred when it wasn't really
happening. The fact that it could be prepared against was evidence of
the kind of tension back on Earth.
But the _Lotus_ was far from home. She lay some seventy-odd millions of
miles out from the sol-type star Fanuel Alpha, whose third planet Nolan
was to look over.
He sent off a distance-pulse and took angular measurements of the
planet's disk. The ratio of polar to equatorial diameters was
informative. The polar flattening said that the day lasted about thirty
hours. Almost like Earth's. The equatorial diameter of 8200 miles was
much like Earth's. The inclination of the axis of rotation indicated
seasons--not exaggerated, but much like the seasons on the third planet
of Sol. The size of the ice-caps indicated the overall planetary
temperature. There were clouds. In fact, there was a cloudmass in the
southern hemisphere that looked just like an Earthly tropic storm
undergoing the usual changes as it went away from the equator. This was
very much like Earth! And the dark masses which were seas....
* * * * *
Nolan frowned. Those mud-colored patches were water. Undoubtedly. A
narrow-band light filter proved it. But the areas which were neither
sea nor cloud mass? There were three levels of brightness to be seen on
the disk outside the polar areas. One was sea-bottom. One was cloud.
The other....
Nolan fretted a little. There was something wrong. The solid ground
surface of the planet was too light in color. It was such items that a
person with a knack for it would notice sooner than a man without the
knack. Vegetation should be more nearly midway between sea-bottom and
cloud mass in color.
Nolan fitted in the chlorophyll filter. On the planet of a sol-type
sun, vegetation had to use chlorophyll or else. Through this filter the
clouds would show, of course. They were white and reflected all colors
of light. But no color that chlorophyll didn't reflect could pass
through the filter.
The cloud masses showed clearly. Nothing else appeared. The filters
would have shown vegetation. It didn't. It said there wasn't any.
Nolan stepped up the magnification. He saw other things. He didn't like
them. He got some maximum-magnification pictures and interpreted them
with increasing grimness.
He went to make his report just as the system constants began to reach
the skipper. The local sun's mass was 1.3 sols. The solar rotation
period was thirty-four days. There were sunspots of perfectly familiar
kinds. The Lauriac Laws about the size and distribution of planets
in a sol-type system were borne out. One was small, and its sunward
side was probably at a low red heat. This was like Mercury. Planet
Two, like its analogue Venus in the home system, would be resolutely
unoccupiable by man. Planet Four--analogous to Mars--was smaller than
Three and had a very thin atmosphere. There were gas-giants in orbits
six and seven. Then a novelty Lauriac's laws predicted things about
fifth planets, too, but they'd never been verified because fifth
planets were unstable. They blew up. Only fragments--asteroids--had so
far been noted where fifth planets of sol-type suns ought to be. But
there was a fifth planet here, rolling magnificently through emptiness.
It matched the Lauriac predictions. It had an atmosphere, which should
contain oxygen. It was the first sol-system fifth planet ever observed.
There was a babble in the skipper's office as the discoverers of the
fifth planet told him about it.
Nolan said curtly, "I've something more urgent to report. Planet Three
ought to be like Earth. It was. It isn't, any longer. It's dead!"
Nobody paid attention. There was a fifth planet! It was unparalleled!
All the theories about the absence of fifth planets could now be
checked!
"I'm telling you," said Nolan sharply, "that the third planet's dead!
It was alive, and something happened to it! It has seas and clouds and
ice-caps, and they're water! But its land surface is pure desert! Where
life can exist, it does. Always! Life did exist here. Now it doesn't."
He turned to the skipper, "Maybe bug-eyed monsters killed it, skipper.
It looks to me like murder!"
Then they stared at him. He spread out his pictures. He pointed out
this item and that. They were conclusive. Nobody else might have
realized the facts behind them quite so soon, but when put together
they fitted.
"Familiar, eh?" asked Nolan sardonically. "You recognize the pictures
like them before. They weren't made with cameras, like these, but
artists drew them from descriptions of what would happen. Here it's
happened! I think," he added, looking at the skipper, "that this is
more important than fifth planets. I think we'd better go over and get
what information we can and take it home. Death like this implies life
a lot like men. If non-human creatures can do something as human as
this, we'd better get the word back home so something can be done to
get ready before we find them--or they find us."
The skipper went carefully over the pictures. On one he put his finger
on a feature Nolan hadn't mentioned. He seemed to wince.
"I think you win, Nolan," he said painfully. "We'll send a drone down.
I doubt we can land, but this ought to be checked. Immediately. Maybe I
should add--inconspicuously."
* * * * *
"Confidentially," said the Com Ambassador to the Coordinator of the
WDA, "confidentially I agree that it is a trivial matter. But we are a
new nation. Our people lack perspective. They rejoice in the strength
and vigor of the nation of which they are citizens. They will not allow
that nation to display what they consider weakness in any matter. One
has to allow for a certain exuberance in the people of a nation newly
freed from the tyranny of capitalists and warmongers such as still
enslave the people of your countries. We cannot yield in this matter."
The Coordinator said:
"To be confidential in my turn, we both know that what you just said
simply isn't true. Your government decides what its public shall think.
It makes sure they don't think anything it doesn't want them to."
The Com Ambassador shrugged his shoulders. He was very polite. He did
not even pretend to resent being called a liar.
"Now, my country intends to move forward in this matter in ten days,"
he observed. "And it would be deplorable if our soldiers were fired on."