The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (87 page)

“We humans class you as an animal, Butch. We tell ourselves that all the animal world should be subject to us. Animals should work for us. If you act too smart we’ll hunt down, all your relatives and set them to work digging minerals for us. You’ll be with them. But I don’t want you to work your heart out in a mine, Butch! It’s wrong!”

Butch remained quite still. Worden thought sickishly of small furry creatures like Butch driven to labor in airless mines in the Moon’s frigid depths. With guards in space-suits watching lest any try to escape to the freedom they’d known before the coming of men. With guns mounted against revolt. With punishments for rebellion or weariness.

It wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Indians in Cuba when the Spanish came—Negro slavery, in both Americas—concentration-camps—

Butch moved. He put a small furry paw on Worden’s knee. Worden scowled at him.

“Bad business,” he said harshly. “I’d rather not get fond of you. You’re a likeable little cuss but your race is doomed. The trouble is that you didn’t bother to develop a civilization. And if you had, I suspect we’d have smashed it. We humans aren’t what you’d call admirable.”

Butch went over to the blackboard. He took a piece of pastel-chalk—ordinary chalk was too hard for his Moon-gravity muscles to use—and soberly began to make marks on the slate. The marks formed letters. The letters made words. The words made sense.

YOU, wrote Butch quite incredibly, in neat pica lettering, GOOD FRIEND.

We turned his head to stare at Worden. Worden went white.

“I haven’t taught you those words, Butch!” he said very quietly. “What’s up?”

He’d forgotten that his words, to Butch, were merely vibrations in the air or in the floor. He’d forgotten they had no meaning.

But Butch seemed to have forgotten it too. He marked soberly:

MY FRIEND GET SPACE SUIT. He looked at Worden and marked once more. TAKE ME OUT. I COME BACK WITH YOU.

Be looked at Worden with large incongruously soft and appealing eyes. And Worden’s brain seemed to spin inside his skull. After a long time Butch printed again—YES.

Then Warden sat very still indeed. There was only Moon-gravity in the nursery and he weighed only one-eighth as much as on Earth. But he felt very weak. Then he felt grim.

“Not much else to do, I suppose,” he said slowly. “But I’ll have to carry you through Earth-gravity to the airlock.”

He got to his feet. Butch made a little leap up into his arms. He curled up there, staring at Worden’s face. Just before Worden stepped through the door, Butch reached up a skinny paw and caressed Worden’s cheek tentatively.

“Here we go!” said Warden. “The idea was for you to be a traitor. I wonder—”

But with Butch a furry ball, suffering in the multiplied weight Earth gravity imposed upon him, Worden made his way to the airlock. He donned a space-suit. He went out.

It was near sunrise then. A long time had passed and Earth was now in its last quarter and the very highest peak of all that made up the crater-wall glowed incandescent in the sunshine. But the stars were still quite visible and very bright. Worden walked away from the station, guided by the Earth-shine on the ground underfoot.

Three hours later he came back. Butch skipped and hopped beside his space-suited figure. Behind them came two other figures. They were smaller than Warden but much larger than Butch. They were skinny and furry and they carried a burden. A mile from the station he switched on his suit-radio. He called. A startled voice answered in his earphones. “It’s Worden,” he said drily. “I’ve been out for a walk with Butch. We visited his family and I’ve a couple of his cousins with me. They want to pay a visit and present some gifts. Will you let us in without shooting?”

* * * *

There were exclamations. There was confusion. But Worden went on steadily toward the station while another high peak glowed, in sunrise light and a third seemed to burst into incandescence and dawn was definitely on the way.

The airlock door opened. The party from the airless Moon went in. When the airlock filled, though, and the gravity-coils went on, Butch and his relatives became helpless. They had to be carried to the nursery. There they uncurled themselves and blinked enigmatically at the men who crowded into the room where gravity was normal for the Moon and at the other men who stared in the door.

“I’ve got a sort of message,” said Worden. “Butch and his relatives want to make a deal with us. You’ll notice that they’ve put themselves at our mercy. We can kill all three of them. But they want to make a deal.”

The Head of the station said uncomfortably, “You’ve managed two-way communication, Worden?”

“I haven’t,” Worden told him. “They have. They’ve proved to me that they’ve brains equal to ours. They’ve been treated as animals and shot as specimens. They’ve fought back—naturally! But they want to make friends. They say that we can never use the Moon except in space-suits and in stations like this and they could never take Earth’s gravity. So there’s no need for us to be enemies. We can help each other.”

The Head of the station said drily, “Plausible enough but we have to act under orders, Worden. Did you, explain that?”

“They know,” said Worden. “So they’ve got set to defend themselves if necessary. They’ve set up smelters to handle metals. They get the heat by sun-mirrors, concentrating sunlight. They’ve even begun to work with gases held in containers. They’re not far along with electronics yet but they’ve got the theoretic knowledge and they don’t need vacuum tubes. They live in a vacuum. They can defend themselves from now on.”

The Head said mildly, “I’ve watched Butch, you know, Worden. And you don’t look crazy. But if this sort of thing is sprung on the armed forces on Earth there’ll be trouble. They’ve been arguing for armed rocket-ships. If your friends start a real war for defense—if they can—maybe rocket warships will be the answer.”

Worden nodded.

“Right. But our rockets aren’t so good that they can fight this far from a fuel-store and there couldn’t be one on the Moon with all of Butch’s kinfolk civilized—as they nearly are now—and as they certainly will be within the next few weeks. Smart people, these cousins and such of Butch!”

“I’m afraid they’ll have to prove it,” said the Head. “Where’d they get this sudden surge in culture?”

“From us,” said Worden. “Smelting from me, I think. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering from the tractor-mechanics. Geology—call it Lunology here—mostly from you.”

“How’s that?” demanded the Head.

“Think of something you’d like Butch to do,” said Worden grimly, “and then watch him.”

The Head stared and then looked at Butch. Butch—small and furry and swaggering—stood up and bowed profoundly from the waist. One paw was placed where his heart could be. The other made a grandiose sweeping gesture. He straightened up and strutted, then climbed swiftly into Worden’s lap and put a skinny furry arm about his neck.

“That bow,” said the Head, very pale, “is what I had in mind. You mean—”

“Just so,” said Worden. “Butch’s ancestors had no air to make noises in for speech. So they developed telepathy. In time, be sure, they worked out something like music—sounds carried through rock. But like our music it doesn’t carry meaning. They communicate directly from mind to mind. Only we can’t pick up communications from them and they can from us.”

“They read our minds!” said the Head. He licked his lips. “And when we first shot them for specimens they were trying to communicate. Now they fight.”

“Naturally,” said Worden. “Wouldn’t we? They’ve been picking our brains. They can put up a terrific battle now. They could wipe out this station without trouble. They let us stay so they-could learn from us. Now they want to trade.”

“We have to report to Earth.” said the Head slowly, “but—”

“They brought along some samples,” said Worden. “They’ll swap diamonds, weight for weight, for records. They like our music. They’ll trade emeralds for textbooks—they can read, now! And they’ll set up an atomic pile and swap plutonium for other things they’ll think of later. Trading on that basis should be cheaper than a war!”

“Yes,” said the Head. “It should. That’s the sort of argument men will listen to. But how—”

“Butch,” said Worden ironically. “Just Butch! We didn’t capture him—they planted him on us! He stayed in the station and picked our brains and relayed the stuff to his relatives. We wanted to learn about them, remember? It’s like the story of the psychologist…”

* * * *

There’s a story about a psychologist who was studying the intelligence of a chimpanzee. He led the chimp into a room full of toys, went out, closed the door and put his eye to the keyhole to see what the chimp was doing. He found himself gazing into a glittering interested brown eye only inches from his own. The chimp was looking through the keyhole to see what the psychologist was doing.

*

THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK AFTER NEXT

(Originally Published in 1952)

It can be reported that Mr. Thaddeus Binder is again puttering happily around the workshop he calls his laboratory, engaged again upon something that he—alone—calls philosophic-scientific research. He is a very nice, little, pink-cheeked person, Mr. Binder—but maybe somebody ought to stop him.

Mr. Steems could be asked for an opinion. If the matter of Mr. Binder’s last triumph is mentioned in Mr. Steems’ hearing, he will begin to speak, rapidly and with emotion. His speech will grow impassioned; his tone will grow shrill and hoarse at the same time; and presently he will foam at the mouth. This occurs though he is not aware that he ever met Mr. Binder in person, and though the word “compenetrability” has never fallen upon his ears. It occurs because Mr. Steems is sensitive. He still resents it that the newspapers described him as the Taxi Monster—a mass murderer exceeding even M. Landru in the number of his victims. There is also the matter of Miss Susie Blepp, to whom Mr. Steems was affianced at the time, and there is the matter of Patrolman Cassidy, whose love-life was rearranged. Mr. Steems’ reaction is violent. But the background of the episode was completely innocent. It was even chastely intellectual.

The background was Mr. Thaddeus Binder. He is a plump little man of sixty-four, retired on pension from the Maintenance Department of the local electric light and power company. He makes a hobby of a line of research that seems to have been neglected. Since his retirement, Mr. Binder has read widely and deeply, quaffing the wisdom of men like Kant, Leibnitz, Maritain, Einstein, and Judge Rutherford. He absorbs philosophical notions from those great minds and then tries to apply them practically at his workbench. He does not realize his success. Definitely!

Mr. Steems drove a taxicab in which Mr. Binder rode just after one such experiment. The whole affair sprang from that fact. Mr. Binder had come upon the philosophical concept of compenetrability. It is the abstract thought that—all experience to the contrary notwithstanding—two things might manage to be in the same place at the same time. Mr. Binder decided that it might be true. He experimented. In Maintenance, before his retirement, he had answered many calls in the emergency truck, and he knew some things that electricity on the loose can do. He knows some other things that he doesn’t believe yet. In any case, he used this background of factual data in grappling with a philosophical concept. He made a device. He tried it. He was delighted with the results. He then set out to show it to his friend Mr. McFadden.

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon of May 3rd. Mr. Binder reached the corner of Bliss and Kelvin Streets near his home. He had a paper-wrapped parcel under his arm. He saw Mr. Steems’ cab parked by the curb. He approached and gave the address of his friend, Mr. McFadden, on Monroe Avenue. Mr. Steems looked at him sourly. Mr. Binder got into the cab and repeated the address. Mr. Steems snapped, “I got it the first time!” He pulled out into the traffic, scowling. Everything was normal.

Mr. Binder settled back blissfully. The inside of the cab was dingy and worn, but he did not notice. The seat-cushion was so badly frayed that there was one place where a spring might stab through at any instant. But Mr. Binder beamed to himself. He had won an argument with his friend, Mr. McFadden. He had proof of his correctness. It was the paper parcel on his lap.

The cab passed Vernon Street. It went by Dupuy Street. Mr. Binder chuckled to himself. In his reading, the idea of compenetrability had turned up with a logical argument for its possibility that Mr. Binder considered hot stuff. He had repeated that argument to Mr. McFadden, who tended to skepticism. Mr. McFadden had said it was nonsense. Mr. Binder insisted that it was a triumph of inductive reasoning. Mr McFadden snorted. Mr. Binder said, “All right, I’ll prove it!” Now he was on the way to do so.

His reading of abstruse philosophy had brought him happiness. He gloated as he rode behind Mr. Steems. He even untied his parcel to admire the evidence all over again. It was a large, thin, irregularly-shaped piece of soft leather, supposedly a deerskin. It has been a throw-over on the parlor settee, and had had a picture of Hiawatha and Minnehaha on it. The picture was long gone, now, and the whole thing was about right to wash a car with; but Mr. Binder regarded it very happily. It was his proof that compenetrability was possible.

Another cab eeled in before Mr. Steems, forcing him to stop or collide. Mr. Steems jammed on his brakes, howling with wrath. The brakes screamed, the wheels locked, and Mr Binder slid forward off his seat. Mr. Steems hurled invective at the other driver. In turn, he received invective. They achieved heights of eloquence, which soothed their separate ires. Mr. Steems turned proudly to Mr. Binder.