Federation World

Chapter 4

BY the time they had reached the final stages of their training on Fomalhaut Three they were eleven Earth-years older and, thanks to the advanced medical science available, they looked and felt at least that much younger. Several times Martin had asked by how much their life spans had been extended, but that was one of the questions which their supervisor refused to answer, saying that if they did not complete their training to its satisfaction they were likely to end their lives prematurely in some stupid and avoidable accident, so that giving them information regarding their probable life expectancies would serve no useful purpose.

They were now in possession of the knowledge and ability to control and direct mechanisms of a complexity and power undreamed of by the people they had been on Earth-although they had still, their superior insisted, to acquire the experience and wisdom to use this power effectively. So they had waited and trained to an even finer pitch, wondering when, if ever, their first assignment would come.

Due to training commitments, their original classmates and one-time friends had gradually drawn away from them to disappear, two by two, in the directions of their chosen specialties. But there were compensations. As the training programs of Martin and Beth, the woman he had seen during that final visit to the examination and induction center back on Earth, began increasingly to overlap, and their friends to move away, Beth and he had drawn-or had they been forced? — closer.

It was a disturbing thought, particularly when, as now, it returned to trouble both of them at the same time. Martin slipped his arm around Beth’s shoulders and drew her back into the relaxer which, as well as being sinfully soft, was set for one-quarter gee. But her arm and neck muscles were stiff with tension, and she was wearing her totally unnecessary spectacles, which was not a good sign.

“How much does that slimy, supercilious supervisor know about us?” she asked, so softly that she might have been speaking to herself. “Was a few hours with the interrogation robots at the induction center enough to tell it everything! And if it knows everything, how accurately can it predict our behavior? Have we any free will, any choices? More importantly, have you, had you, any choice at all?”

“We can always choose to fail the next test,” Martin said, in an attempt to change the subject. “But it might well be that, in our situation, teacher knows best.”

“It knows us well enough to know that we wouldn’t deliberately fail a test,” Beth said impatiently. “And you know what I mean. We had no choice, no competition, no chance to make comparisons. I know that you were, well, impressed by Kathy. She impressed hell out of all the men, she’s gorgeous, dammit. If things had been different you might have preferred…”

Looking miserable, she left the sentence hanging.

Martin gave her shoulders another sympathetic squeeze, trying to draw her closer. But the warm, yielding, and normally responsive body had become that of a cold, fleshy mannequin with tension-frozen joints. He sighed, remembering that during their first meeting in the induction center so long ago, before he had even learned her name, he had decided that she was a lovely and highly intelligent young woman who took things much too seriously.

He had found no reason to change his mind about her when they met in the spacious living module occupied by the school’s Earth-humans, or during recreation periods in the forests and lakes overlying that tremendous underground training complex. Fomalhaut Three provided an environment suited to the needs of many of the Galaxy’s warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing races, and much of its training and large-scale simulation equipment was hi common use. But none of the trainees, including Martin, were allowed to make contact with a member of another species until they had graduated from the school.

He and Beth had met more and more frequently as their chosen specialties required them to share training simulations of increasing complexity, duration, and degrees of risk. She, who once had been responsible for the computer control of traffic in a small Earth city, and who was now able to direct energies and engines capable of changing the topography of a continent; and he, a cynical, discontented, one-time lecturer in zoology who, it seemed, was destined to do little else but talk. He shook his head and brought his mind back to the present time and problem.

“You’re forgetting,” he said quietly, “that the only one of us to impress Kathy was George. George with the muscles, and mustache, and the teeth. Did you fancy…”

“No,” she said firmly. “Kathy is welcome to him.”

“Besides,” he went on, “they’re both specializing in multi-environmental plant and animal husbandry. Fine, demanding, vitally important work, no doubt, especially if they want to stay inside the World, but it is still only fanning. Teaming up with a ship handler, the class’s only trainee hypership captain, no less, is much more fun. For personal as well as professional reasons.”

Beth did not smile as she turned her head to look at him, and her eyes were hidden by light reflection in her spectacles.

He went on. “It is quite possible that the supervisor knows our minds much better than we do, and that would include being able to predict what we are likely to do in any given situation. But what of it? That creature is hyperintelligent, not omniscient, and I think that its thought processes are just too alien for it to be able to influence us against our wills where anything so subtle as Earth-human emotional relationships are concerned. The decisions we made, and will make, are still our own, regardless of the fact that it probably knows about them in advance. The point I’m trying to make is that, had the supervisor given you more female competition by confronting me with a dozen, or a hundred, tall, dark-eyed, lovely women who know what I’m thinking almost before I do, the process would have taken much longer, and wasted a lot of our supervisor’s precious training time, but ultimately I would have made the same choice.”

He felt her relax, but not completely, as she allowed herself to settle into the backrest beside him.

“If I had been confronted with a hundred men..” she began.

“I was lucky you weren’t,” he said.

Irritably, she said, “How can I argue with you when you always say the right thing? But I keep forgetting that you’re training as one of those devious-minded, smooth-talking specialists in First Contact who never stops practicing…”

“This,” he reminded her gently, “is not the first contact.”

There was a small movement of her shoulder, and he felt her hand creep gently into his and grip the fingers tightly, and he knew that she, too, was remembering that first contact and all the tension and terror of the protracted, technological nightmare that had preceded it.

It had happened during one of their early shared training exercises, when they were still trying to familiarize themselves with what the supervisor, a being renowned for the magnitude of its understatements, referred to as the basic tools of the trade.

The tools of their trade…

Tool One, the hypership: the largest general-purpose vessel operated by the Galactics; just under half a mile in length, one-third that at its widest point, bristling with such an angular, metallic outgrowth of hyper-drive generator assemblies, normal-space drivers, tractor and pressor beam projectors, weather control machinery, and long- and short-range sensors that it was incapable of making anything but the most catastrophic of crash landings on a planetary surface. Internally it was packed with enough power generation equipment to satisfy the demands of one of the Galactic’s most energy-hungry cities, as well as a small army of monitor and self-repair robots, fabrication modules capable of producing anything from a pair of boots to a medium-sized interplanetary space vessel, synthesizers for the crew’s organic consumables, and, in executive charge of ail these systems, a computer which, to describe it as superhuman would have been to damn it with faint praise indeed. In spite of its virtual omniscience, the main computer was subservient to the wishes of its organic crew, although not always without argument.

This was one of the Galactics’ standard-issue tools, varying from ship to ship only in the control interfaces, living quarters, medical support, and food and translation systems required by its organic occupants at the time.

Tool Two, the lander: a small, fast, low-level reconnaissance vessel and surface lander, with crew positions for two but capable of being controlled remotely by the mother ship. Designed as a secure base for the First Contact specialist, it carried the full spectrum of communications equipment and, in the event of the contact going sour, its meteorite screen was also capable of protecting the occupant from ground or air attack by anything short of nuclear weapons.

Tool Three, the protector: a small, surface observation vehicle capable of operating within the most hostile of environments while enabling its crew to communicate with any intelligent inhabitants who might be present. For defense it relied principally on high mobility, but in the event of it encountering a threat from which it could not run away and which threatened the life of an organic occupant, it had power sufficient for a short-range matter transmission link with either the lander or the hyper-ship.

The other tools were much smaller, more specialized, and tailored to the needs of the Earth-human life-form. These included mobile, self-powered protective envelopes, proof against any hostile environment they were likely to encounter; a variety of nonlethal or psychological weaponry; and a two-way translator terminal so small that it could be disguised as a piece of ear or neck jewelry, and possessing a silent voice-bypass facility which enabled the contacter to hold simultaneous conversation with the mother ship without the risk of giving offense to an alien contactee.

But in that first major test, given without prior warning during the start of an otherwise routine training exercise to power-up a cold lander, the majority of those increasingly familiar tools were deliberately withdrawn from use.

It was a simulated, near-catastrophic malfunction which had opened the hypership to space and taken out the on-board power generation and all of the systems controlled by the main computer. They protested, reminding the supervisor that they had been taught that the hypership’s design philosophy made such an event impossible. But they were told that it was a simulated and not a real event, that it was designed to test, under conditions of extreme stress, their suitability for their chosen specialties, and that if they put into practice everything they had been taught up until that time, they should be able to survive the test without serious damage or life termination.

Within seconds of the first malfunction alarm, the lander’s hull sensors reacted automatically to the loss of external pressure and simulated radiation build-up by sealing all entry and inspection ports, effectively trapping them in a ship within a ship.

Considering then- level of technological ignorance at the time, it was obvious that they could not do anything about the condition of the distressed hypership, so that the most that was expected of them was to act as they would have done had the situation been real, and call for help.

But the distress beacon was mounted outside the hypership’s hull, and they were trapped inside a lander whose power cells and consumables were all but depleted. A hurried inventory showed that they had enough energy to maintain an air supply for two people of thirty-six hours, provided they remained at rest and did not use the available power for light, heat, artificial gravity, or communication with anyone or anything outside the lander.

Plainly they had to breathe less, but communication was vital.

The main computer was down, and with it all of the mother ship’s remote control systems. Through the crackle of simulated radiation interference, Beth was able to make intermittent contact with the three, self-powered repair robots assigned to the lander dock area. The robots were capable of performing a variety of delicate, precise, and quite complex tasks, she told Martin, provided they were given equally precise and complex instructions. Being in-organic and capable of operating in an airless, radioactive environment, it was possible for them to be given directions for finding and operating the manual release for the distress beacon-if she could remember the complicated internal geography of the mother ship and none of the different paths she programmed them to follow were blocked by simulated wreckage. But the first two robots died on her long before reaching their objective.

Beth complained angrily that the stupid things had done what they were told, not what she wanted them to do, and began the even more precise and careful instruction of the third and last one.

While she was working, Martin opened the seal between the flight deck and lock chamber to allow maximum circulation of their remaining air. Then he detached the wide, one-piece padding from their control couches and tied the attachment straps together to form a makeshift sleeping bag which he anchored loosely beside the direct vision port. Since the heating had been turned off, it was becoming colder by the minute-doubtless the rate of heat dissipation into space was being accelerated for the purposes of the test. He checked the food storage locker again, finding only two water bulbs and the characteristic shape of a self-warming food container, but the glow coming from their only working communicator screen was too dim to let him read the label.

Martin had succeeded in detaching one of the cabinet’s short, metal shelves when the communicator began producing louder and more regular hissing sounds overlaying the background interference-the distress beacon was functioning. A few minutes later the communicator screen went dark as Beth directed what little power remained to air production.

Hastily they shared the hot food and fumbled their way into the makeshift sleeping bag. Then they put their arms around each other, the first time they had done so, and breathed slowly and economically and remained otherwise motionless. There was nothing they could do but try to conserve the remaining air, pool their body heat, and await rescue.

They had no way of knowing how long that would take, or if it would come in time. Their supervisor would not deliberately let them die, they thought, but it was a completely alien lifeform with a metabolism utterly unlike their own, and a misjudgment might occur.

It was also possible that then’ rescuers had arrived, and were trying vainly to raise them on the dead communicator before beginning a long, time-wasting search of the entire hypership. That was why Martin, at what he thought were reasonable intervals, reached outside their cocoon of relative warmth to hammer his piece of shelving against the nearest bulkhead, to signal their presence and position to rescuers who were probably not there yet.

A subjective eternity passed as they drifted weightless in the utter darkness, staring out of an unseen viewport at an equally dark lander dock. The temperature continued to fall, the air-maker’s status light had dimmed to extinction, the air was thick and stale and painfully cold in the lungs. The sweat on Martin’s face felt like a film of ice and there was a pounding ache in his head that seemed louder than the noise he was making with the shelf. Through their thin coveralls he was aware of every curve and contour and movement of Beth’s body, which had begun to shake with a motion that was slower but more violent than shivering. It was the uncontrollable tremor of fear.

“If you’re as cold as all that,” he whispered between deep, unsatisfying gulps of stale air, “I’ve just thought of a nice way of generating more body heat…”

“L-liar,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’ve felt you thinking it since we got into this bloody, two-person straight-jacket. No. A-apart from.. from other considerations, dammit, it would be too wasteful of energy and oxygen, and it would let in the cold.”

She was still shaking, and holding him more tightly than before.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered reassuringly. “It’s only a matter of time before we’re rescued. And I’d say you passed this test, no doubt about that. The way you directed that last repair robot to the beacon, with the ship hi darkness and relying on memory alone for internal navigation, that was really fine work.

“As for me,” he went on, taking another deep, gasping breath, “I’ve done nothing at all but talk and make noise. If you want to worry about something, worry about me flunking this test.”

She had stopped trembling, and now it was her turn to be reassuring. He felt her cold, damp forehead rest against his equally clammy cheek as she said, “Moral support is important at a time tike this. It’s the only kind that doesn’t waste energy. Besides, the sleeping bag idea was yours. I would have put us into the unpowered space suits, where we would have frozen to death by — Look!”

Bright, greenish-yellow light was streaming through the direct vision port and reflecting from the dead screens and control console. It was coming from a large vehicle with the unmistakable outlines of a manned rescue pod which was drifting through the unlit dock and toward their Under. But as it moved closer, and he heard it dock with their entry port, he saw that some of the structural details were unfamiliar. Frantically he began battering at the viewport surround with his length of shelving.

“Take it easy, they know we’re here,” Beth said, grabbing his arm. “What’s the matter with you?”

“That isn’t the rescue pod we trained on,” he said urgently. “The configuration is slightly different. And look at that, that yellow fog inside the canopy, and their interior lighting. Dammit, our simulated bloody rescuers aren’t even human! I’ve got to make them understand that we belong to a different species, and work out a way of telling them so before they open our lock and poison us with their air. Let go of my arm!”

“Hammering won’t tell them anything,” Beth said. ‘They’ll think we’re naturally excited at being rescued. But-but I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Neither of them mentioned the fact that he was supposed to be the specialist in other-species communication, that the problem was all his, and that it was now his turn to be tested. Beth’s face looked white even in that yellow light, and frightened, but the concern in her eyes seemed to be only for him.

He had to communicate urgently, send detailed physiological and metabolic data to an alien and intelligent lifeform, from a dead ship whose only channel of communication was a piece of metal shelving.

Or was that the only channel?…

“Close the bag after me and stay inside,” he told Beth, and wriggled out into the biting, breath-stopping cold.

He was already searching the control deck with his eyes, but his head was enveloped in clouds of condensation, and objects in the weightless condition had the habit of drifting into dark corners. He wasted several precious minutes before he found them, then he dived into the lock chamber and checked himself against the airlock’s outer seal, which was already beginning to open.

Fighting desperately not to inhale, he watched the crescent of yellow, foggy light widen as the seal opened. Some of the yellow fog eddied through, stinging his eyes so badly that he had to feel rather than see when the seal had opened wide enough for him to throw the objects into the alien rescue pod. Then he backed quickly out of the lock chamber and closed the inner seal behind him, dogging it shut so that it could only be opened from the inside.

Shivering uncontrollably and with his eyes streaming from the effect of the alien air, and coughing because some of it was still adhering to his hair and clothing, Martin groped his way back to the sleeping bag.

He felt Beth’s hands on his body, helping him in and then holding him tightly in an effort to stop his shivering. He felt her fingers moving gently against his eyelids, as if he were a small, hurt child and she his mother brushing away the tears. He blinked several times and found that he was able to see her, and the way she was looking at him. But all she said was, “The rescue pod is moving away. What the blazes did you do back there?”

“Good,” Martin said, smiling for the first time in many hours. “I think we’ve cracked it. I threw them a water bulb with a few drops still in it, and the empty food container, and made it clear that we did not want them to get any farther into the ship. If they put those samples into their analyzer, they should be able to learn enough about our metabolism to mount a proper rescue. It’s just a matter of waiting a little longer.”

But he was wrong.

As Martin finished speaking the control deck lights and heating came on; the cold, stale fog they had been breathing was being replaced by air that was warm and fresh. With the return of artificial gravity their makeshift sleeping bag settled gently to the deck, and the communicator screen lit with a message.

They did not return to quarters, or leave the lander or the sleeping bag, for a very long time. It was during this period that what they came to think of as their First Contact took place. It was a contact which deepened and broadened and made the remaining long years of their training seem short, and it would, they believed, be maintained and strengthened during the rest of their lives.