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Alien From The Stars -- Jean and Jeff Sutton -- (1970)
(Version 2002.09.13 -- Done)
ONE
A VIOLENT WARNING light flashed furiously.
The strident voice of a horn blared through the audiocoms. Echoing
throughout the lower decks and passageways and cavernous quarters of the big
ship, the horn held the lonely muffled sound of a drum-beat rolling upward
from a deep well -- a sound heavy with doom.
Barlo, the planetary archeologist, reacted swiftly. Empty-handed, he
sprang toward the door of his small cabin. The long corridor, dimly lit during
the sleep cycle, was deserted as he burst from his room.
A secondary buzzer signaled the beginning of transition from Q space --
a warning that the huge Zemm liner faced imminent disaster. The knowledge
speeded his steps. Racing into an intersecting passageway, he hurriedly
entered a launch well, slipped through a hatch into a small scout pod, pressed
a button, and called the ops bridge.
"Pods away, pods away." The crisp response held a controlled tautness.
Barlo didn't ask questions. Swiftly yet calmly he punched a button that sealed
the pod's well from the ship, another that opened a disc door and left the
well exposed to the awful emptiness of space. A lever caused a thick elastic
mesh to enfold his slight body; a switch sent the pod shooting out into the
black firmament. Although he knew the Zemm liner had completed its transition
from Q space, the harsh glitter of stars, seen through the ports, was
reassuring.
He moved another switch. Sledgehammer forces generated by the maximum
acceleration crushed his short, thin body against the elastic meshing. His
long, prehensile fingers grasped another control and turned it; a beam of
electromagnetic energy leaped from the pod, tying it to the huge starliner.
"Pods away, pods away..." A voice tolled sepulchrally from a speaker above
him.
Barlo punched a button, and a screen glowed to life. Its light,
amplified a thousand times, displayed the huge ship as a graceful needle
poised against the fiercely burning stars. The sight filled him with sorrow.
Rapidly diminishing in size, the liner suddenly erupted into a colossal ball
of flame that for a brief moment held the awesome brilliance of a nova. The
illumination of the screen was blinding. The harsh flare almost as quickly
subsided, dwindling into a small, dull ember before winking into nothingness
in the great black sea of space.
With the calm efficiency characteristic of his kind -- a cerebral
activity unhampered by emotions -- Barlo activated the pod detectors and
called into a transmitter, "Scout pod four three seven calling survivors.
Scout pod four three seven..."
He repeated the call several times. Although the detector readouts
covering the sector of the disaster were going wild, he realized they
registered only debris; the silence on the call circuit told him he was alone.
Alone! Of more than thirteen thousand passengers and crew members, he
alone had survived. But of course the crew couldn't have acted to effect an
escape -- not while a single passenger remained aboard. That law was older
than space travel itself. Only the late hours he had chosen to review tapes of
the ancient Okra civilization had saved him.
Briefly, he wondered at the nature of the disaster. There had been scant
warning, only moments. He surmised it had to do with the energy converters,
perhaps the failure of a switch to prevent the accumulation of power. Not that
such disasters were unknown, but they were exceedingly rare. In his own life
he had known of only a few.
Although not a crewman, Barlo was well acquainted with the small scout
pods used both for the exploration of planetary surfaces and as lifeboats,
should the latter need arise. Checking the supplies, he was momentarily
disconcerted to discover that the oxygen units were nearly depleted. He had
scant time to find a suitable planet.
He didn't bother to transmit a distress signal; such an attempt would be
futile. The occasional ship that might pass through this lonely realm out near
the edge of the galaxy would be in Q space, quite beyond the pod's limited
communication facilities. But when the Zemm liner failed to reach its
destination, the Unity's far-flung search and rescue units would comb the
moons and planets of every sun in the vicinity of the liner's flight path.
Rescue was certain -- if he lived. He had but to find an appropriate planet.
Although Barlo had never traveled this particular sector of the galaxy,
he could roughly calculate his position from the ship's flight corridor and
the time of the disaster. A lonely area out toward the rim, it was sparse of
stars with habitable planets. Consequently, when he activated the visual
telescanner, he was startled to see a brilliant yellow sun leap into view.
Appearing to hang in splendid isolation, it dwarfed the sprinkle of stars
around it. Instinctively he knew that the sun was within range of the small
scout pod. He felt a stir of hope.
A grav detector locked on the yellow sun caused a transparent sphere on
the instrument console to glow to life. The yellow sun appeared as a small dot
at its center. Amplifying the power source by a factor of five thousand
brought nine planets into view, each represented in the sphere as a small dot
located according to its orbital position. His hopes rose. Of the seven outer
dots, all but the farthest from the sun were accompanied by one or more minute
white grains which represented moons.
Although Barlo's life rested on his findings, he studied the miniature
replica of the planetary system with the detachment that came with long
scientific training. The positions of the dots in the sphere indicated he was
viewing the system from an angle of nearly 90 degrees from the plane of the
ecliptic; that is, he was moving toward the sun's pole.
He returned his attention to the yellow sun. A medium-sized star of
middle life, the spectrum of its photosphere revealed the presence of hydrogen
and helium together with traces of calcium. That was favorable, for such suns
quite often provided planetary environments rich in life. He would have
preferred a red sun, of course, simply because its radiance was more pleasant
to the eye. When viewed from afar his own sun, Zaree, gleamed like an ember
amid the harsh light of its neighboring stars. How much lovelier it was! But
now he had no alternative; his scout pod had not the range to reach another
star.
Briefly he wondered if this particular system had ever been explored. He
thought not, for he recalled nothing of it in the records. That was not
surprising. In the billion-star island that was the galaxy, it was far more
likely to have escaped observation entirely.
His perusal of the sun finished, he turned the instrument on the
planets, starting with the outermost. Another thousand-fold amplification in
power brought it into the telescanner as a moonless, oblate spheroid.
Instrument analysis disclosed it to consist of a dense lithic core wrapped in
a mantle of frozen ammonia, methane, and other gaseous compounds. But that had
been expected; a planet that distant from a radiation source with the energy
characteristics of the yellow sun couldn't possibly support his kind of life.
The next four planets proved equally inhospitable, nor had he expected
more. He did, though, let his gaze linger on the sixth planet. Encircled by
rings of meteoritic dust that caught and reflected the rays from the distant
yellow sun, it exemplified the wonders of a nature he long had sought to
understand.
He pondered again the profligacy of nature, for the universe was rife
with planets and moons incapable of sustaining more than the most elementary
life-forms. Or was the ultimate design long-range? Perhaps one day such
planets might bloom while present life-rich worlds sank into the obscurity of
death. Could life as he knew it be but a test-bed for the future? The prospect
intrigued him.
He eyed the fourth planet. It alone in this system gleamed redly in the
sky. By his calculations it lay close to the outer border of the temperature
biosphere required by his kind. Hopefully, he studied it through the
telescanner. For a moment he reveled in the glory of its color, before gazing
at the instrument readouts. To his disappointment, the planet's small mass
indicated that any atmosphere it might possess would be far too tenuous to
support any major life-form. He had to erase the red planet from his hopes.
He lingered a moment over its moons. Scarcely more than jagged chunks of
rock, he reflected, they had been captured by the planet from a wide belt of
similar flotsam that lay between it and the giant fifth planet.
As he turned the telescanner on the third planet, he felt a quickening
excitement. He darted a glance at the instruments. Oxygen! The planet was rich
with it! Exhaling slowly, he continued his investigation through a myriad of
instruments. Finally satisfied, he lay back to sleep.
It was not until the end of the tenth sleep cycle that the third planet
was large in the telescanner. Splashed with blues and greens and tans, and
circled by a disproportionately large moon, it rode in majestic beauty through
the solitude of its orbit. The instruments, and the large polar icecaps,
indicated an abundance of water, a rarity on all but the most favored of
worlds. He felt his excitement mount. A lovely planet, were it not for its
brassy sun.
Another sleep cycle passed, and then another and another. He had long
since adopted a minimum-breathing posture, but now his oxygen was low. By
self-hypnosis he put himself into a timed sleep in which his oxygen intake
would be more than halved.
When he awoke again, the planet was gigantic in the telescanner. Seas,
mountains, unbelievably immense patches of verdure -- it fairly screamed of
life. Sampling the planet's electromagnetic spectrum, he received a jumble of
unintelligible but patterned sounds which were self-identifying as the outputs
of electronic communication systems. He wasn't startled; such communication
devices were fairly common in many emerging cultures.
He commenced a slow deceleration, at the same time activating a number
of sensors to obtain the specific data he needed. One recorded the outputs of
a vast number of heat sources; he translated the instrument analysis in terms
of a neo-industrial culture -- cities, transportation complexes, centralized
governments. Another instrument pinged, and a small blip crawling across the
face of a grid identified the existence of a man-made satellite. In a short
time he determined that a large number of such satellites circled the planet.
This gave him pause for thought. A culture that possessed a satellite
capability almost certainly also possessed the means for detecting and
tracking such satellites; ergo, his arrival very likely would not go
unobserved.
As the data flowed in, he began to etch a more complete picture of the
planet's culture. Tentatively he placed it in the early stages of nuclear
development. That could be either good or bad, for he was well aware that
technical development and true civilization could be two quite different
things.
Civilization, in his own culture, was defined as the rapport of life in
a common cause dedicated to peace, equality, happiness, and intellectual
achievement, regardless of technical status. He had seen numerous highly
civilized planets which had not yet achieved interstellar or even
interplanetary travel but which had achieved a harmony of life. Conversely,
galactic history overflowed with the records of uncivilized but technically
oriented societies which had attained the nuclear stage of development, only
to perish in their own nuclear ashes.
He continued to decelerate, coming down over the planet's pole almost
directly above the dawn line. To his right the globe was caught in the web of
night; to his left he saw the awesome gleam of ice mountains sparkling under a
bright morning sun. As the ice cap fled to his rear, the land below became a
splotched giant in shifting patterns of whites and deep greens. Here and there
his vision was obscured by delicate filigrees of pale cloud. An irregular blue
shape etched against the mosaic was recognized as a gigantic lake.
He knew he had to decide quickly where he would land. The polar and
tropical regions were out. Although he could make but a rough estimate, he
knew it would serve well enough. Programming a small capsule, he injected it
into space. The capsule, remaining in orbit, would continually broadcast a
distress message.
A change in velocity brought a rapid deceleration -- the familiar feel
of a spacecraft tentatively dipping its nose into an air ocean. To his right,
caught in the web of night, a huge city swept past, its existence recorded in
terms of its energy sources. The land below, while nothing like that of Raamz,
his own planet, held a wild beauty that captivated his senses.
Another vast megalopolis wheeled toward him. Extending from mountains to
sea, it extended southward as far as he could see. Inasmuch as the coastline
angled inward, he shifted course to keep from shooting out over what appeared
to be unending sea. Beyond the smoke-blue ridges and peaks to his left, a tan
desert rolled eastward into the rising sun. The desert was out, for Barlo's
kind avoided direct sunlight whenever possible. Nocturnal, they preferred
coolness and shade, but with night temperatures above the frost line.
Cognizant that he was moving toward ever more equatorial zones, he
increased the rate of deceleration, felt some buffeting before the pod
stabilized, and began to descend more evenly. Uncertain of the mountainous
terrain, he guided the pod toward hill country that lay midway between another
large coastal city to the west and the rugged range he'd followed.
Well down in the depths of the air ocean, he made a more critical
analysis of its contents. It proved to be a nitrogen sea containing a rich 20
percent of oxygen, with argon, carbon dioxide, neon, hydrogen, and other trace
gases constituting the remainder. All in all, its chemical composition was
much like that of Raamz, his own planet. The reflection brought a twinge of
nostalgia.
The pod came down over a hilly terrain that was twisted and bent in
tortuous ways. It consisted mainly of rolling hills cut through with ravines,
both alive with stunted trees and bushes. But it lacked the water of the
northern land. Here and there small structures told of habitation, but they
were few and far between. The brushlined ravines struck him as ideal for
concealment of the pod while he explored the surrounding area.
Abruptly he glimpsed movement ahead and realized it was a ground vehicle
on a flat roadway. Almost immediately a number of similar vehicles came into
view down a grade from the west. He brought the pod around, then saw he had
made the turn too late; he was circling almost directly over the wide road.
Completing the maneuver, he gazed into a screen that revealed the scene
behind him. Five or six of the vehicles had stopped. He held scant doubt that
this was the direct result of the sudden appearance of the pod. He debated
returning to orbital altitude to try for another landing but decided against
this on the basis that the damage already had been done. Besides, if the pod
hadn't been tracked before, it certainly would be now. The realization brought
the imperative need to hide until he could assess the nature of this world and
the kind of reception he might expect.
He reduced the pod's speed and let it drop just above the crests of the
brush-covered hills. With the sun still low in the east, the rolling land
appeared cool and inviting. He wasn't fooled; the parched nature of the ground
and the physical appearance of the dwarfed trees and shrubs told him he was in
a semi-desert. The sun, when it edged above the rim of the smoke-blue
mountains, would be uncomfortably warm.
His attention was caught by a curving treelined ravine. Following its
course, he discovered an opening through the growth that appeared sufficiently
large to accommodate the pod. He anxiously scanned the area around him. No
sign of habitation was visible. Also, the roadway was separated by a number of
intervening hills and gullies. The pod should be safe for a few days at least.
Hovering directly above the opening, he looked into the downward viewscreen.
Aside from a few scattered boulders and bits of vegetation, the floor of the
ravine appeared smooth and sandy.
Before letting the craft drop, he flipped a switch that amplified the
acoustics from beyond the pod's shell. Rustling, whirring noises and
occasional harsh chirpings filled the cabin. The former, he judged, were
insect sounds, the latter probably those of the small feathered creatures he'd
seen flitting among the bushes. Such life was common to almost all planets
having a dense, oxygen-rich atmosphere. His own world was no exception. He
considered the sounds reassuring, for there was no indication of larger, more
formidable life-forms.
He let the pod descend slowly, watched the growth close around it.
Finally it came to rest on the sandy floor. Conscious that the instruments
emitted electromagnetic waves that could lead to the pod's detection, he shut
them off. Next he armed the destruct package -- a standard procedure when
landing on a strange planet -- and memorized its firing code. Gathering a few
items he thought he might need, he dropped them into the pockets of the
reddish, metallic material that covered his slight torso.
Silently, then, he opened the hatch and stepped out into the new world.
Barlo heard the soft rustling of the small feathered creatures in the
brush, felt the coolness of the breeze against his face. He was thankful that
the yellow sun had not yet topped the mountains, for his large, violet, light-
sensitive eyes, better adapted to nocturnal vision, suffered when exposed to
glare.
Filled with the wonder that he never failed to feel when landing on a
new world, he let his senses drink in the new sights and sounds and odors that
bombarded him from every side. The alien stimuli gave him intense pleasure.
A feathered creature hopped into view on a limb. Its head cocked, its
small bright eyes watched the planetary archeologist warily. Chirping, it
hopped closer. Barlo probed its mind with his own; there was no response.
Neither had he expected there would be. Yet the telepathic ability to bridge
two radically different life forms, while extremely rare, did occur. He had,
on a ghostly planet beneath a dying red sun, exchanged thoughts with a small,
furry creature that had adapted to deep underground burrows as protection
against the encroaching cold. He remembered the creature wistfully; it had
preferred to die with its world rather than move out into the universe.
He followed the ravine until he found a place where he could scale its
steep walls. Picking his way upward through the thick brush with agile ease,
he peered cautiously over the edge. The land swept downward, dotted with a
profusion of trees, shrubs, and small knolls that greatly limited his vision.
His mental probes returned nothing. The scene was quiet and peaceful, yet he
knew that soon it would burn beneath the brassy sun.
A small animal with tan-colored fur, enormous ears, and
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