the Dark Light Years (3 page)

The people would come to 12B. Soon enough it would have, like Earth, its over-population problems.

That was why it was explored: with a view to colonization. Sites for the first communities had been marked out on the other side of the world. In a couple of years, the poor wretches forced by economic necessity to leave all they held dear on Earth would be trans-shipped to 12B (but they would have a pretty and tempting colonial name for it by then: Clementine, or something equally obnoxiously innocuous).

Yes, they'd tackle this unkempt plain with all the pluck of their species, turning it into a heaven of dirt-farming and semi-detacheds. Fertility was the curse of the human race, Ainson thought Too much procreation went on; Earth's teeming loins had to ejaculate once again, ejaculate its unwanted progeny on to the virgin planets that lay awaiting - well, awaiting what else?

Christ, what else? There must be something else, or we should all have stayed in the nice green harmless Pleistocene.

Ainson's rancid thoughts were broken by Waltham-stone's saying, "There's the river. Just round the corner, and then we're there.”

They rounded low banks of gravel from which thorn trees grew. Overhead, a mauve sun gleamed damply through haze at them. It raised a shimmer of reflection from the leaves of a million million thistles, growing silently all the way to the river and on the other side of it as far as the eye wanted to see. Only one landmark: a big blunt odd-shaped thing straight ahead.

"It - " said Phipps and Ainson together. They stared at each other. " - looks like one of the creatures.”

"The mudhole where we caught them is just the other side," Walthamstone said. He bumped the overlander across the thistle bed, braking in the shadow of the looming object, forlorn and strange as a chunk of Liberian carving lying on an Aberdeen mantelshelf.

Toting their rifles, they jumped out and moved forward.

They stood on the edge of the mudhole and surveyed it One side of the circle was sucked by the grey lips of the river. The mud itself was brown and pasty green, streaked liberally with red where five big carcasses took their last wallow in the carefree postures of death. The sixth body gave a heave and turned a head in their direction.

A cloud of flies rose in anger at this disturbance. Quilter brought up his rifle, turning a grim face to Ainson when the latter caught his arm.

"Don't kill it," Ainson said. "It's wounded. It can't harm us.”

"We can't assume that. Let me finish it off.”

"I said not. Quilter. We'll get it into the back of the overlander and take it to the ship; we'd better collect the dead ones too. Then they can be cut up and their anatomy studied. They'd never forgive us on Earth if we lost such an opportunity. You and Walthamstone get the nets out of the lockers and haul the bodies up.”

Quilter looked challengingly at his watch and at Ainson.

"Get moving," Ainson ordered.

Reluctantly. Walthamstone slouched forward to do as he was told; unlike Quilter, he was not of the stuff from which rebels are made. Quilter curled his lip and followed. They hauled the nets out and went to stand on the edge of the mud pool, gazing across it at the half-submerged evidence of last night's activities before they got down to work. The sight of the carnage mollified Quilter.

"We sure stopped them!" he said. He was a muscular young man. with his fair hair neatly cropped and a dear old white-haired mother back home in Miami who pulled in an annual fortune in alimony. "Yeah. They'd have got us otherwise." Walthamstone said. "Two of them I shot myself. Must have been those two nearest to us.”

"I killed two of them, too." Quilter said. "They were all wallowing in the mud like rhinos. Boy, did they come at us!”

"Dirty things when you come to look at them. Ugly. Worse than anything we've got on Earth. Aren't half glad we plugged them, aren't you, Quil?”

"It was us or them. We didn't have any choice.”

"You're right there." Walthamstone cuddled his chin and looked admiringly at his friend. You had to admit Quilter was quite a lad. He repeated Quilter's phrase, "We didn't have any choice.”

"What the hell good are they, I'd like to know.”

"So'd I. We really stopped them, though, didn't we?”

"It was us or them." repeated Quilter. The flies rose again as he paddled into the mud towards the wounded rhinoman.

While this philosophical skirmish was in progress, Bruce Ainson stalked over to the object that marked the scene of the slaughter. It loomed above him. He was impressed. This shape, like the shape of the creatures it appeared to imitate, had more than its size to impress him; there was something about it that affected him aesthetically It might be a hundred light years high and it'd still be - don't say beauty doesn't exist! - beautiful.

He climbed into the beautiful object. It stank to high heaven; and that was where it had been intended for. Five minutes' inspection left him in no doubt: this was a ... well, it looked like an overgrown seedpod.

and it had the feel of an overgrown seedpod. but it was - Captain Bargerone had to see this: this was a space ship.

A space ship loaded high with shit.

CHAPTER THREE

Much happened during the year 1999 on Earth. Quins were born to a twenty-year-old mother in Kennedyville, Mars. A robot team was admitted for the first time into the World series. New Zealand launched its own system-ship. The first Spanish nuclear submarine was launched by a Spanish princess.

There were two one-day revolutions in Java, six in Sumatra, and seven in South America. Brazil declared war on Great Britain. Common Europe beat the U.S.S.R. at football. A Japanese screen star married the Shah of Persia. The gallant All-Texan expedition attempting to cross the bright side of Mercury in exotanks perished to a man. All-Africa set up its first radio-control-led whale farm. And a little grizzled Australian mathematician called Buzzard rushed into his mistress's room at three o'clock of a May morning shrieking. "Got it. got it! Transponential flight!”

Within two years, the first unmanned and experimental transponential drive had been built into a rocket, launched, and proved successful. They never got that one back.

This is not the place for an explanation of TP formulae; the printer, in any case, refuses to set three pages of math symbols. Suffice it to say that a favorite science fiction gimmick - to the dismay and subsequent bankruptcy of all science fiction writers - was suddenly translated into actuality. Thanks to Buzzard, the gulfs of space became not barriers between but doorways to the planets. By 2010. you could get from New York to Procyon more comfortably and quickly than it had taken, a century before, to get from New York to Paris.

That is what's so tedious about progress. Nobody seems able to jog it out of that dreary old exponential curve.

All of which goes to show that while the trip between B12 and Earth took less than a fortnight by the year 2035. that still left plenty of time for letter writing.

Or - in Captain Bargerone's case, as he composed a TP cable to their lordships in the Admiralty - for cable writing.

In the first week he cabled: TP POSITION: 355073x 6915 (Bl2). YOUR CABLE EX 97747304 REFERS. YOUR ORDER COMPLIED WITH. HENCEFORTH CREATURES CAPTIVE ABOARD KNOWN AS EXTRATERRESTIAL ALIENS (SHORTENED TO ETAS).

SITUATION REGARDING ETAS AS FOLLOWS: TWO ALIVE AND WELL IN NUMBER THREE HOLD. OTHER CARCASSES BEING DISSECTED TO STUDY THEIR ANATOMY. AT FIRST I DID NOT REALIZE THEY WERE MORE THAN ANIMALS. DIRECTLY MASTER EXPLORER AINSON EXPLAINED SITUATION TO ME, I ORDERED HIM TO PROCEED WITH PARTY TO SCENE OF CAPTURE OF ETAS.

THERE WE FOUND EVIDENCE THAT ETAS HAVE INTELLI-GENCE. SPACE SHIP OF STRANGE MANUFACTURE WAS TAKEN INTO CUSTODY. IT IS NOW IN MAIN CARGO HOLD AFTER RE-DISTRIBUTION OF CARGO. SMALL SHIP CAPABLE OF HOLDING ONLY FIGURE 8 ETAS. NO DOUBT SHIP BELONGS ETAS. SAME FILTH OVER EVERYTHING. SAME OFFENSIVE SMELL. EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT ETAS ALSO EXPLORING Bl2.

HAVE ORDERED AINSON AND HIS STAFF TO COMMUNICATE WITH ETAS SOONEST HOPE TO HAVE LANGUAGE PROBLEM CRACKED BEFORE LANDING.

EDGAR BARGERONE.

CAPT. MARIESOPES.

GMT 1750:6.7.2035.

Other prosodists were busy aboard the Mariestopes.

Walthamstone wrote laboriously to an aunt in a far-flung western suburb of London called Windsor: My dear old aunt Flo - We are now coming home to see you again, how is your
r
h
eumatism
, looking up I hope. I have not been space sick this voyage. When the ship goes into TP drive if you know what this is you feel a bit sick for a couple of hours. My pal Quilt says that's because all your molecules go negative.

But then you're all right.

When we stopped at one planet which hasn't got no name because we were the first, Quilt and me had a chance to go hunting. The place is swarming with big fierce dirty animals as big as the ship. It lives in mudholes. We shot dozens. We got two alive ones on board this old tub, we call them rhmomen, their names are Gertie and Mush. They are filthy. I have to clean out their cage but they don't bite. They make a lot of rude noises.

As usual the food is bad. Not only poison but small helpings. Give my love to cousin Madge, I wonder if her education is completed yet. Whose winning the war with Brazil, us I hope!!!!

Hoping this leaves you as it finds me at present, your loving nephew, Rodney.

Augustus Phipps was composing a love letter to a Sino-Portuguese girl; above his bunk was a phobe of her looking extremely sinuous. Phipps regarded it frequently as he wrote: Ah CM darling.

This brave old bus is now pointing towards Macao. My heart as you know is permanently oriented (no pun intended) towards that fair place when you are holidaying there, but how good to know we shall soon be together in more than spirit I'm hoping this trip will bring us fame and fortune. For we have found a sort of strange life out here in this neck of the galaxy, and are bringing two live samples of it home. When I think of you, so slender, sweet, and immaculate in your cheongsam, I wonder why we need such dirty ugly beasts on the same planet - but science must be served.

Wonder of wonders! - They're supposed to be intelligent according to my superior, and we are presently engaged in trying to talk to them. No, don't laugh, pretty though I remember your laughter to be. How I long for the moment I can talk to you, my sweet and passionate Ah Chi; and of course not only talk! You must let me [Ed. -two pages omitted].

Until we can do the same sort of thing again.

Your devoted adoring admiring pulsating Augustus.

Meanwhile, down on the messdeck of the Mariestopes, Quilter also was wrestling with the problem of communicating with a girl: Hi honey!

Right now as I write I am heading straight back to Dodge City as fast as the light waves will carry me. Got the captain and the boys along with me too, but I'll be shedding them before I drop in at 1477 Rainbow.

Beneath a brave exterior, your lover boy is feeling sour way up to here. These beasts, the rhinomen I was telling you about, they are the filthiest things you ever saw, and I can't tell you about it in the mails. Guess it's because you like me I know have always taken a pride in being modern and hygienic, but these things they're worse than animals.

This has finished me for the Exploration Corps. At trip's end, I quit and shall remuster in the Space Corps. You can go places in the Space Corps. As witness our Captain Bargerone, jumped up from nowhere. His father is caretaker or something at a block of flats Amsterdam way. Well, that's democracy - guess I'll try some myself, maybe wind up captain myself. Why not?

This seems to be written all around me, honey. When I get home you bet I'll be all around you.

Your lovingest chewingest Hank.

In his cabin on B deck. Master Explorer Bruce Ainson wrote soberly to his wife: My dearest Enid, How often I pray that your ordeal with Aylmer may now be over. You have done all you could for the boy, never reproach yourself on that score. He is a disgrace to our name. Heaven alone knows what will become of him. I fear he is as dirty-minded as he is dirty in his personal habits.

My regret is that I have to be away so long, particularly when a son of ours is causing so much trouble.
But a consolation is that at last this trip has become rewarding.
We have located a major life form. Under my supervision, two live individuals of this form have been brought aboard this ship. ETA's we call them.

You will be considerably more surprised when I tell you that these individuals, despite their strange appearance and habits, appear to manifest intelligence. More than that, they seem to be a space-faring race. We captured a space ship that undoubtedly is connected with them, though whether they actually control the craft is at present un-decided. I am attempting to communicate with them, but as yet without success.

Let me describe the ETA's to you - rhinomen, the crew call them, and until a better designation is arrived at, that will do. The rhinomen walk on six limbs. The six limbs each terminate in very capable hands, widespread, but each bearing six digits, of which the first and last are opposed and may be regarded as thumbs. The rhinomen are omnidextrous. When not in use, the limbs are retracted into the hide rather like a tortoise's legs, and are then barely noticeable.