The Planet Explorer Read online

  When Huyghens and Bordman reached them, they wept. They hated robots and all things robotic only a little less than they hated sphexes. But Huyghens explained, and, armed with weapons from the packs of the bears, they marched to the dead colony with the male Kodiaks as point and advance-guard, and with Faro Nell bringing up the rear. They killed sixteen sphexes on the way. In the now overgrown clearing there were four more. In the shelters of the colony they found only foulness and the fragments of what had been men. But there was some food—not much, because the sphexes clawed at anything that smelled of men, and had ruined the plastic packets of radiation-sterilized food. But there were some supplies in metal containers which were not destroyed.

  And there was fuel, which men could use when they got to the control-panels for the equipment. There were robots everywhere, bright and shining and ready for operation, but immobile, with plants growing up around and over them.

  They ignored those robots, and instead fueled tracked flame-casters—after adapting them to human rather than robot operation—and the giant soil-sterilizers which had been built to destroy vegetation that robots could not be made to weed out or cultivate. Then they headed back for the Sere Plateau.

  As time passed Nugget became a badly spoiled bear-cub, because the freed men approved passionately of anything that would evern grow up to kill sphexes. They petted him to excess when they camped.

  Finally they reached the plateau by the sphex-trail to the top and sphexes came squalling and spitting to destroy them. While Bordman and Huyghens fired steadily, the great machines swept up with their special weapons. The earth-sterilizer, it developed, was deadly against animal life as well as seeds, when its diathermic beam was raised and aimed.

  Presently the bears were not needed, because the scorched corpses of sphexes drew live ones from all parts of the plateau even in the absence of noticeable breezes. The official business of the sphexes was presumably finished, but they came to caterwaul and seek vengeance—which they did not find. After a while the survivors of the robot colony drove the machines in great circles around the huge heap of slaughtered fiends, destroying new arrivals as they came. It was such a killing as men had never before made on any planet, and there would be very few left of the sphex-horde which had bred in this particular patch of desert.

  * * * *

  Nor would more grow up, because the soil-sterilizer would go over the dug-up sand where the sphex-spawn lay hidden for the sun to hatch. And the sun would never hatch them.

  Huyghens and Bordman, by that time, were camped on the edge of the plateau with the Kodiaks. Somehow it seemed more befitting for the men of the robot colony to conduct the slaughter. After all, it was those men whose companions had been killed.

  There came an evening when Huyghens cuffed Nugget away from where he sniffed too urgently at a stag-steak cooking on the campfire. Nugget ambled dolefully behind the protecting form of Bordman and sniveled.

  “Huyghens,” said Bordman, “we've got to come to a settlement of our affairs. You're an illegal colonist, and it's my duty to arrest you."

  Huyghens regarded him with interest.

  “Will you offer me lenience if I tell on my confederates?” he asked. “Or may I plead that I can't be forced to testify against myself?"

  Bordman said:

  “It's irritating! I've been an honest man all my life, but—I don't believe in robots as I did, except in their place. And their place isn't here! Not as the robot colony was planned, anyhow. The sphexes are nearly wiped out, but they won't be extinct and robots can't handle them. Bears and men will have to live here or else the people who do will have to spend their lives behind sphex-proof fences, accepting only what robots can give them. And there's much too much on this planet for people to miss it! To live in a robot-managed environment on a planet like Loren Two wouldn't—it wouldn't be self-respecting!"

  “You wouldn't be getting religious, would you?” asked Huyghens dryly. “That was your term for self-respect before."

  “You don't let me finish!” protested Bordman. “It's my job to pass on the work that's done on a planet before any but the first-landed colonist may come there to live. And of course to see that specifications are followed. Now, the robot colony I was sent to survey was practically destroyed. As designed, it wouldn't work. It couldn't survive."

  Huyghens grunted. Night was falling. He turned the meat over the fire.

  “In emergencies,” said Bordman, “colonists have the right to call on any passing ship for aid. Naturally! So my report will be that the colony as designed was impractical, and that it was overwhelmed and destroyed except for three survivors who holed up and signaled for help. They did, you know!"

  “Go on,” grunted Huyghens.

  “So,” said Bordman, “it just happened—just happened, mind you—that a ship with you and the bears and the eagle on board picked up the distress-call. So you landed to help the colonists. That's the story. Therefore it isn't illegal for you to be here. It was only illegal for you to be here when you were needed. But we'll pretend you weren't."

  Huyghens glanced over his shoulder in the deepening night. He said:

  “I wouldn't believe that if I told it myself. Do you think the Survey will?"

  “They're not fools,” said Bordman tartly. “Of course they won't! But when my report says that because of this unlikely series of events it is practical to colonize the planet, whereas before it wasn't, and when my report proves that a robot colony alone is stark nonsense, but that with bears and men from your world added, so many thousand colonists can be received per year.... And when that much is true, anyhow...."

  Huyghens seemed to shake a little as a dark silhouette against the flames.

  “My reports carry weight,” insisted Bordman. “The deal will be offered, anyhow! The robot colony organizers will have to agree or they'll have to fold up. And your people can hold them up for nearly what terms they choose."

  Huyghens’ shaking became understandable. It was laughter.

  “You're a lousy liar, Bordman,” he said. “Isn't it unintelligent and unreasonable to throw away a lifetime of honesty just to get me out of a jam? You're not acting like a rational animal, Bordman. But I thought you wouldn't when it came to the point."

  Bordman squirmed.

  “That's the only solution I can think of,” he said. “But it'll work."

  “I accept it,” said Huyghens, grinning. “With thanks. If only because it means another few generations of men can live like men on a planet that is going to take a lot of taming. And—if you want to know—because it keeps Sourdough and Sitka and Nell and Nugget from being killed because I brought them here illegally."

  Something pressed hard against Bordman. Nugget, the cub, pushed urgently against him in his desire to get closer to the fragrantly cooking meat. He edged forward. Bordman toppled from where he squatted on the ground. He sprawled. Nugget sniffed luxuriously.

  “Slap him,” said Huyghens. “He'll move back."

  “I won't!” said Bordman indignantly from where he lay. “I won't do it. He's my friend!"

  * * * *

  It was ironic that, after all, Bordman found that he couldn't afford to retire. His pay, of course, had been used to educate his children and maintain his home. And Lani III was an expensive world to live on. It was now occupied by a thriving, bustling populations with keen business instincts, and the vapor-curtains about it were commonplace, now, and few people remembered a time when they hadn't existed—when it was a world below habitability for anybody. So Bordman wasn't a hero. As a matter of history he was simply a citizen who could be interviewed for visicasts on holidays, but hadn't much that was new to say.

  But he lived on Lani III for three years, and he was restless. His children were grown and married, now,—and they hadn't known him too well, anyhow. He'd been away so much! He didn't fit into the world whose green fields and oceans and rivers he was responsible for. But it was infinitely good to be with Riki again. There was so much that
each remembered, to be shared with the other, that they had plenty to talk about.

  Three years after his official retirement, he was asked to take on another Survey job on which there was no other qualified man free to work on. He talked to his wife. On retirement pay, life was not easy, now. Her children were safely on their own. Bordman would always need her. She advised him for both their sakes. And he went back to Survey duty with the stipulation that he should have quarters and facilities for his wife as well as himself on all assignments.

  They had five wonderful years. Bordman was near the top of the ladder, then. His children wrote faithfully. He was busy on Kelmin IV, and his wife had a garden there, when he was summoned to Sector Headquarters with first priority urgency.

  * * *

  IV

  THE SWAMP WAS UPSIDE DOWN

  Bordman knew the Survey ship had turned end for end, because though there was artificial gravity, it does not affect the semicircular canals of the human ear. He knew he was turning head-over-heels, even though his feet stayed firmly on the floor. It was not a normal sensation, and he felt a little queasy, instinctive tightening of the muscles with which one reacts to the abnormal, whether in things seen or felt.

  But the reason for turning the ship end-for-end was obvious. It had arrived very near its destination, and was killing the Lawlor drive momentum. Just as Bordman was assured that the turning motion was finished, young Barnes—the ship's lowest-ranking commissioned officer—came into the wardroom and beamed at him.

  “The ship's not landing, sir,” he said, like one explaining something to somebody under ten years old. “Our orders are changed. You're to go to ground by boat. This way, sir."

  Bordman shrugged. He was a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey, grown old in the Service, and this was a Survey ship that had been sent especially to get him from his last and still unfinished job. It was a top-urgency matter. The ship had had no other business for some months except to go after him and bring him to Sector Headquarters, down on Canna III, which must be somewhere near. But this young officer was patronizing him!

  Bordman rather ruefully recognized that he didn't know how to be impressive. He was not a good salesman of his own importance. He didn't even get the respect due his rank.

  Now the young officer waited, brisk and alert. Bordman reflected wryly that he could pin young Barnes’ ears back easily enough. But he remembered when he'd been a junior Survey ship's officer. Then he'd felt a bland condescension toward all people of whatever rank who did not spend their lives in the cramped, skimped quarters of a Survey patrol-ship. If this young Lieutenant Barnes was fortunate, he'd always feel that way. Bordman could not begrudge him the cockiness which made the tedium and hardships of the Service seem to him a privilege.

  So he obediently followed Barnes through the wardroom door. He ducked his head under a ventilation-slot and sidled past a standpipe with bristling air-valve handles. It almost closed the way. There was the smell of oil and paint and ozone which all proper Survey ships maintain in their working sections.

  “Here, sir,” said Barnes. “This way."

  He offered his arm for Bordman to steady himself. Bordman ignored it. He stepped over a complex of white-painted pipes, and arrived at an almost clear way to a boat-blister.

  “And your luggage, sir,” added the young man reassuringly, “will follow you down immediately, sir. With the mail."

  Bordman nodded. He moved toward the blister door. He sidled past constrictions due to new equipment. The Survey ship had been designed a long time ago, and there were no funds for rebuilding when improved devices came along. So any Survey ship was apt to be cluttered up with afterthoughts in metal.

  A speaker from the wall said sharply:

  “Hear this! Hold fast! Gravity going off!"

  Bordman caught a nearby pipe, and snatched his hand away again—it was hot—and caught on to another and then put his other hand below. He applied a trifle of pressure. The young officer said kindly:

  “Hold fast, sir. If I may suggest—"

  The gravity did go off. Bordman grimaced. There'd been a time when he was used to such matters, but this time the sudden outward surge of his breath caught him unprepared. His diaphragm contracted as the weight of organs above it ceased to be. He choked for an instant. He said evenly:

  “I am not likely to go head-over-heels, Lieutenant. I served four years as a junior swot on a ship exactly like this!"

  He did not float about. He held onto a pipe in two places, and he applied expert pressure in a strictly professional manner, and his feet remained firmly on the floor. He startled young Barnes by this achievement, which only junior swots think only junior swots know about.

  Barnes said, abashed. “Yes, sir.” He held himself in the same fashion.

  “I even know,” said Bordman, “that the gravity had to be cut off because we're approaching another ship on Lawlor drive. Our gravity-coils would blow if we got into her field with our drive off, or if her field pressed ours inboard."

  Young Barnes looked extremely uncomfortable. Bordman felt sorry for him. To be chewed, however delicately, for patronizing a senior officer could not be pleasant. So Bordman added:

  “And I also remember that, when I was a junior swot, I once tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top off his suit-tanks. So don't let it bother you!"

  The young officer was embarrassed. A Sector Chief was so high in the table of Survey organization that one of his idle thoughts was popularly supposed to be able to crack a junior officer's skull. If Bordman, as a young officer, had really tried to tell a Sector Chief how to top his suit-tanks.... Why....

  “Thank you, sir,” said Barnes awkwardly. “I'll try not to be an ass again, sir."

  “I suspect,” said Bordman, “that you'll slip occasionally. I did! What the devil's another ship doing out here and why aren't we landing?"

  “I wouldn't know, sir,” said the young officer. His manner toward Bordman was quite changed. “I do know the Skipper came in expecting to land by landing-grid, sir. He was told to stand off. He's as much surprised as you are, sir."

  The wall-speaker said crisply:

  “Hear this! Gravity returning! Gravity returning!"

  And weight came back. Bordman was ready for it this time and took it casually. He looked at the speaker and it said nothing more. He nodded to the young man.

  “I suppose I'd better get in the boat. No change in that arrangement, anyhow!"

  He crawled through the blister door and wormed his way into the landing boat, one designed for a more modern ship, and excessively inconvenient in such an outmoded launching-device. Barnes crawled in after him.

  He dogged the blister door from the inside, closed the boat-port and dogged it, and flipped a switch.

  “Excuse me, sir. I'm to take you down."

  “Ready for departure,” he said into a microphone.

  A dial on the instrument-board flicked halfway to zero. It stopped there. Seconds passed. A green light glowed. The young officer said:

  “All tight!"

  The needle darted a quarter-way further over, and then began to descend slowly. The blister was being pumped empty of air. Presently another light glowed.

  “Ready for launching,” said the young officer briskly.

  The blister-seal broke with a clank, and the two halves of the boat-cover drew back. There were stars. To Bordman they were unfamiliarly arranged, but he could have picked out Seton and the Donis cluster in any case, and half a hundred more markers by taking thought of the position of the planet Canna III, on which Colonial Survey Sector Headquarters for this part of the galaxy were established.

  The boat moved out of its place, and the ship's gravity-field ended as abruptly as such fields do.

  The Survey ship floated away, as seen from the vision-ports of the boat. It apparently increased its drive, because the boat swirled and swayed as changing eddy-currents moved it. The ship grew small and vanished. The boat hung in emptiness, turning slowly. T
he sun Canna came into view. It was very large for a Sol-type sun, and its rim was almost devoid of the prominences and jet-streams of flaming gas that older suns of the type display. But even out at the third orbit it provided O-1 climate—optimum: equivalent to Earth—for the planet below.

  That planet now came swinging into view as the ship's boat continued to turn. It was blue. More than ninety percent of its surface was water, and much of the solid land was under its northern ice-cap. It had been chosen as Sector Headquarters because of its unsuitability for a large population, which might resent the considerable land-area needed for Survey storage and reserve facilities.

  Bordman regarded it thoughtfully. The boat was, of course, roughly five planetary diameters out, the conventional distance to which a ship approached any planet on its own drive. Bordman could see the ice-cap clearly, and blue sea beyond it, and the twilight line. There was one cyclonic storm just dissipating toward the night-side, and the edge of a similar cloud-system down toward the equator. Bordman searched for Headquarters. It was on an island at about forty-five degrees latitude, which ought to be near the center of the planet's surface as seen from where the ship's boat floated. But he could not make it out. There was only the one island of any importance and it was not large.

  Nothing happened. The boat's rockets remained silent. The young officer sat quietly, looking at the instruments before him. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen.

  A needle kicked and stayed just off the pin. It was an external-field indicator. Some field, somewhere, now included the space in which the ship's boat floated.

  “Hm,” said Bordman. “You're waiting for orders?"

  “Yes, sir,” said the young man. “I'm ordered not to land except under ground instructions, sir. I don't know why."

  Bordman observed:

  “One of the worst wiggings I ever got was in a boat like this. I was waiting for orders and they didn't come. I acted very Service about it: stiff upper lip and all that. But I was getting in serious trouble when it occurred to me that it might be my fault I wasn't getting the orders."