Space Beagle- the Complete Adventures Read online

  Behind him, the gigantic globe shrank rapidly, became too small for individual portholes to be visible. Almost straight ahead, Coeurl saw a tiny, dim ball of light—his own sun, he realized. There, with other coeurls, he could build an interstellar-space ship and travel to stars with inhabited planets. Because it was so important, he felt suddenly frightened. He had turned away from the rear viewing plates. Now he glanced into them again. The globe was still there, a tiny dot of light in the immense blackness of space. Suddenly, it twinkled and was gone.

  For a moment, he had the startled impression that, just before it disappeared, it moved. But he could see nothing. He wondered uneasily if they had shut off all their lights and were following him in the darkness. It seemed clear that he would not be safe until he actually landed.

  Worried and uncertain, he gave his attention again to the forward viewing plates. Almost immediately, he had a sharp sense of dismay. The dim sun toward which he was heading was not growing larger. It was visibly smaller. It became a pin point in the dark distance. It vanished.

  Fear swept through Coeurl like a cold wind. For minutes he peered tensely into the space ahead, hoping frantically that his one landmark would become visible again. But only the remote stars glimmered there, unwinking points against a velvet background of unfathomable distance.

  But wait! One of the points was growing larger. With every muscle taut, Coeurl watched the point become a dot. It grew into a round ball of light and kept on expanding. Bigger, bigger, it became. Suddenly it shimmered, and there before him, lights glaring from every porthole, was the great globe of the space ship—the very ship which a few minutes before he had watched vanish behind him.

  Something happened to Coeurl in that moment. His mind was spinning like a flywheel, faster and faster. It flew apart into a million aching fragments. His eyes almost started from their sockets as, like a maddened animal, he raged in his small quarters. His tentacles clutched at precious instruments and flung them in a fury of frustration. His paws smashed at the very walls of his ship. Finally, in a brief flash of sanity, he knew that he couldn’t face the inevitable fire of disintegrators that would now be directed against him from a safe distance.

  It was a simple thing to create the violent cell disorganization that freed every droplet of id from his vital organs.

  One last snarl of defiance twisted his lips. His tentacles weaved blindly. And then, suddenly weary beyond all his strength to combat, he sank down. Death came quietly after so many, many hours of violence.

  Captain Leeth took no chances. When the firing ceased and it was possible to approach what was left of the lifeboat, the searchers found small masses of fused metal, and only here and there remnants of what had been Coeurl’s body.

  “Poor pussy!” said Morton. “I wonder what he thought when he saw us appear ahead of him, after his own sun disappeared. Understanding nothing of anti-accelerators, he didn’t know that we could stop short in space, whereas it would take him more than three hours. He would seem to be heading in the direction of his own planet, but actually he’d be drawing farther and farther away from it. He couldn’t possibly have guessed that, when we stopped, he flashed past us, and that then all we had to do was follow him and put on our little act of being his sun until we were close enough to destroy him. The whole cosmos must have seemed topsy-turvy to him.”

  Grosvenor listened to the account with mixed emotions. The entire incident was rapidly blurring, losing shape, dissolving into darkness. The moment-by-moment details would never again be recalled by an individual exactly as they had occurred. The danger they had been in already seemed remote.

  “Never mind the sympathy!” Grosvenor heard Kent say. “We’ve got a job—to kill every cat on that miserable world.”

  Korita murmured softly. “That should be simple. They are but primitives. We have merely to settle down, and they will come to us, cunningly expecting to delude us.” He half turned to Grosvenor. “I still believe that will be true,” he said in a friendly tone, “even if our young friend’s ‘beast’ theory turned out to be correct. What do you think, Mr. Grosvenor?”

  “I’d go even a little further,” Grosvenor said. “As a historian, you will undoubtedly agree that no known attempt at total extermination has ever proved successful. Don’t forget that pussy’s attack on us was based on a desperate need for food; the resources of this planet apparently can’t support this breed much longer. Pussy’s brethren know nothing about us, and therefore are not a menace. So why not just let them die of starvation?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LECTURE AND DISCUSSION

  Nexialism is the science of joining in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields. It provides techniques for speeding up the processes of absorbing knowledge and of using effectively what has been learned. You are cordially invited to attend.

  Lecturer, ELLIOTT GROSVENOR

  Place, Nexial Department

  Time, 1550, 9/7/1[*]

  Grosvenor hung the notice on the already well-covered bulletin board. Then he stepped back to survey his handiwork. The announcement competed with eight other lectures, three motion pictures, four educational films, nine discussion groups, and several sporting events. In addition, there would be individuals who remained in their quarters to read, the spontaneous gatherings of friends, the half-dozen bars and commissaries, each of which could expect its full quota of customers.

  Nevertheless, he was confident his would be read. Unlike the others, it was not just a sheet of paper. It was a gadget about a centimeter in thickness. The print was a silhouette focused on the surface from inside. A paper-thin chromatic wheel, made of light-battery material, turned magnetically and provided the varicolored light source. The letters changed color singly and in groups. Because the frequency of the emitted light was subtly, magnetically, altered from moment to moment, the pattern of color was never repeated.

  The notice stood out from its drab surroundings like a neon sign. It would be seen, all right.

  Grosvenor headed for the dining salon. As he entered, a man at the door thrust a card into his hand. Grosvenor glanced at it curiously.

  Kent for director

  Mr. Kent is the head of the largest department on our ship. He is noted for his co-operation with other departments. Gregory Kent is a scientist with a heart, who understands the problems of other scientists. Remember, your ship, in addition to its military complement of 180 officers and men, carries 804 scientists headed by an administration, hastily elected by a small minority before the take-off. This situation must be rectified. We are entitled to democratic representation.

  Election meeting, 9/7/1

  1500 hours

  Elect Kent director

  Grosvenor slipped the card into his pocket and went into the brilliantly lighted room. It seemed to him that tense individuals like Kent seldom considered the long-run effects of their efforts to divide a group of men into hostile camps. Fully fifty per cent of interstellar expeditions in the previous two hundred years had not returned. The reasons could only be deduced from what had happened aboard ships that did come back. The record was of dissension among the members of the expedition, bitter disputes, disagreements as to objectives, and the formation of splinter groups. These latter increased in number almost in direct proportion to the length of the journey.

  Elections were a recent innovation in such expeditions. Permission to hold them had been given because men were reluctant to be bound irrevocably to the will of appointed leaders. But a ship was not a nation in miniature. Once on the way, it could not replace casualties. Faced with catastrophe, its human resources were limited.

  Frowning over the potentialities, annoyed that the time of the political meeting coincided with his own lecture, Grosvenor headed for his table. The dining room was crowded. He found his companions for the week already eating. There were three of them, junior scientists from different departments.

  As he sat down, one of the men said chee
rfully, “Well, what defenseless woman’s character shall we assassinate today?”

  Grosvenor laughed good-naturedly, but he knew that the remark was only partly intended as humor. Conversation among the younger men tended towards a certain sameness. Talk leaned heavily on women and sex. In this all-masculine expedition, the problem of sex had been chemically solved by the inclusion of specific drugs in the general diet. That took away the physical need, but it was emotionally unsatisfying.

  No one answered the question. Carl Dennison, a junior chemist, scowled at the speaker, then turned to Grosvenor. “How’re you going to vote, Grove?”

  “On the secret ballot,” said Grosvenor. “Now let’s get back to the blonde Allison was telling us about this morning—”

  Dennison persisted: “You’ll vote for Kent, won’t you?”

  Grosvenor grinned. “Haven’t given it a thought. Election is still a couple of months away. What’s wrong with Morton?”

  “He’s practically a government-appointed man.”

  “So am I. So are you.”

  “He’s only a mathematician, not a scientist in the true sense of the word.”

  “That’s a new one on me,” Grosvenor said. “I’ve been laboring for years under the delusion that mathematicians were scientists.”

  “That’s just it. Because of the superficial resemblance, it is a delusion.” Dennison was clearly trying to put over some private conception of his own. He was an earnest, heavy-set individual, and he leaned forward now as if he had already made his point. “Scientists have to stick together. Just imagine, here’s an entire shipload of us, and what do they put over us?—a man who deals in abstractions. That’s no training for handling practical problems.”

  “Funny, I thought he was doing rather well in smoothing out the problems of us working men.”

  “We can smooth out our own problems.” Dennison sounded irritated.

  Grosvenor had been punching buttons. Now his food began to slide up from the vertical conveyor at the center of the table. He sniffed. “Ah, roast sawdust, straight from the chemistry department. It smells delicious. The question is, has the same amount of effort been lavished to make the sawdust from the brushwood of the cat planet as nourishing as the sawdust we brought?” He held up his hand. “Don’t answer. I don’t wish to be disillusioned about the integrity of Mr. Kent’s department, even though I don’t like his behavior. You see, I asked him for some of the co-operation they mention on the card, and he told me to call back in ten years. I guess he forgot about the election. Besides, he’s got a nerve scheduling a political meeting on the same night that I’m giving a lecture.” He began to eat.

  “No lecture is as important as this rally. We’re going to discuss matters of policy that will affect everybody on the ship, including you.” Dennison’s face was flushed, his voice harsh. “Look, Grove, you can’t possibly have anything against a man you don’t even know very well. Kent is the kind of person who won’t forget his friends.”

  “I’ll wager he also has special treatment for those he dislikes,” said Grosvenor. He shrugged impatiently. “Carl, to me Kent represents all that is destructive in our present civilization. According to Korita’s theory of cycle history, we’re in the ‘winter’ stage of our culture. I’m going to ask him to explain that more fully one of these days, but I’ll wager Kent’s caricature of a democratic campaign is an example of the worst aspects of such a period.”

  He would have liked to add that this was exactly what he was aboard to prevent, but that, of course, was out of the question. It was just such discord as this that had brought disaster to so many previous expeditions. As a result, unknown to the men, all vessels had become proving grounds for sociological experiments: Nexialists, elections, split command—these and innumerable small changes were being tried out in the hope that man’s expansion into space could somehow be made less costly.

  There was a sneer on Dennison’s face. He said, “Listen to the young philosopher!” He added flatly, “Vote for Kent if you know what’s good for you!”

  Grosvenor restrained his irritation. “What’ll he do—cut off my share of the sawdust? Maybe I’ll run for the directorship myself. Get the votes of all men thirty-five and under. After all, we outnumber the oldsters three or four to one. Democracy demands that we have representation on a proportional basis.”

  Dennison seemed to have recovered himself. He said, “You’re making a grave error, Grosvenor. You’ll find out.”

  The rest of the meal was eaten in silence.

  At five minutes before 1550 hours the following evening, Grosvenor began to feel that his lecture notice had drawn a blank. It baffled him. He could understand that Kent might conceivably forbid his followers to attend lectures given by men who had indicated that they would not support him. But even if the chief chemist controlled a majority of the voters, that still left several hundred individuals who had not been influenced. Grosvenor couldn’t help remembering what a Nexial-trained government executive had said to him on the eve of departure.

  “It won’t be easy, this job you’ve taken aboard the Beagle. Nexialism is a tremendous new approach to learning and association. The older men will fight it instinctively. The young men, if they have already been educated by ordinary methods, will automatically be hostile to anything which suggests that their newly acquired techniques are out of date. You yourself have still to use in practice what you learned in theory, although in your case that very transition is part of your training. Just remember that a man who is right often enough gets a hearing in a crisis.”

  At 1610, Grosvenor visited the bulletin boards in two of the lounges and in the central corridor, and changed the time of his lecture to 1700 hours. At 1700 o’clock he made it 1750 hours, and then still later altered it to 1800 hours. “They’ll be coming out,” he told himself. “The political meeting can’t last forever, and the other lectures are two-hour affairs at most.” At five minutes to 1800 hours, he heard the footsteps of two men come slowly along the corridor. There was silence as they paused opposite his open doorway, then a voice said. “This is the place, all right.”

  They laughed, for no apparent reason. A moment later, two young men entered. Grosvenor hesitated, then nodded friendly greeting. From the first day of the voyage, he had set himself the task of identifying the individuals aboard the ship, their voices, their faces, their names—as much about them as he could discover. With so many men to investigate, the job was not yet completed. But he remembered these two. They were both from the chemistry department.

  He watched them warily as they wandered around looking at the display of training devices. They seemed to be secretly amused. They settled finally in two of the chairs, and one of them said with subtly exaggerated politeness, “When does the lecture begin, Mr. Grosvenor?”

  Grosvenor looked at his watch. “In about five minutes,” he said.

  During that interval, eight men came in. It stimulated Grosvenor considerably after his bad start, particularly since one of the men was Donald McCann, head of the geology department. Even the fact that four of his listeners were from the chemistry department did not disturb him.

  Pleased, he launched into his lecture on the conditioned reflex, and its development since the days of Pavlov into a cornerstone of the science of Nexialism.

  Afterwards, McCann came up and talked to him. He said, “I noticed that part of the technique is the so-called sleep machine, which educates you while you sleep.” He chuckled. “I remember one of my old professors pointing out that you could learn all that is known about science in just under a thousand years. You didn’t admit that limitation.”

  Grosvenor was aware of the other’s grey eyes watching him with a kindly twinkle. He smiled.

  “That limitation,” he said, “was partly a product of the old method of using the machine without preliminary training. Today, the Nexial Foundation uses hypnosis and psychotherapy to break initial resistance. For instance, when I was tested, I was told that normally
for me the sleep machine could only be turned on for five minutes every two hours.”

  “A very low tolerance,” said McCann. “Mine was three minutes every half hour.”

  “But you accepted that,” said Grosvenor pointedly. “Right?”

  “What did you do?”

  Grosvenor smiled. “I didn’t do anything. I was conditioned by various methods until I could sleep soundly for eight hours while the machine ran steadily. Several other techniques supplemented the process.”

  The geologist ignored the final sentence. “Eight solid hours!” he said in astonishment.

  “Solid,” agreed Grosvenor.

  The older man seemed to consider that. “Still,” he said finally, “that only reduces the figure by a factor of about three. Even without conditioning, there are many people who can take five minutes out of every quarter hour of a sleep period without waking.”

  Grosvenor replied slowly, studying the other’s face for reaction. “But the information has to be repeated many times.” He realized from the staggered expression on McCann’s face that the point had been made. He went on quickly: “Surely, sir, you’ve had the experience of seeing or hearing something—once—and never forgetting it. And yet at other times what seems to be an equally profound impression fades away to a point where you cannot recall it accurately even when it is mentioned. There are reasons for that. The Nexial Foundation found out what they were.”

  McCann said nothing. His lips were pursed. Over his shoulder, Grosvenor noticed that the four men from the chemistry department were gathered in a group near the corridor door. They were talking together in low tones. He gave them only a glance, and then said to the geologist, “There were times in the beginning when I thought the pressure would be too much for me. You understand, I’m not talking about the sleep machine. In actual quantity of training, that was just about ten per cent of the total.”