He obliged. In the overhead viewscreen, an apparently empty sector of space ahead of them broadened suddenly, the dark spaces from star to star widening, more stars becoming visible between. To each side, vast clouds of gas blanked out the stars, leaving only impenetrable blackness.
A tiny point of light appeared, swelled into a pair of closely-associated points. Little more was visible; trailers of gas limited visibility. “Captain, Ma’am, any more and we’ll be looking at microbes clinging to the roof, instead of objects, er ... fifteen light-minutes away.”
Abruptly, the floor dilated around the odd, rising figure of a creature that was neither simian nor human. It stood—on all fours—approximately half a meter high at the shoulder. It was perhaps a meter in length. It sported a pair of sharply-pointed ears, a matching nose, a thickly-bushed tail. It answered to the name “G. Howell Nahuatl”.
Rather articulately.
“I say, fellow beings, why have my ablutions been interrupted? Aren’t you as distressed as I am that I actually found a flea upon my person after our last planetside outing?” The animal sat down on its haunches, began scratching at one of its prominent ears with a hind foot.
“It wasn’t a flea, Howell” answered Koko, “but some other form of bugoid—more like an isopod, I thought, and when it got a taste of your iron-based blood, it died a horrible death. Look what we’ve got here.”
Howell’s eyes were not particularly good, yet he had a quick, analytical intelligence his companions valued. “Could it be, at long last?”
Rogers nodded vigorously. “One for the books—a genuine alien spaceship.”
“Or just as likely, a pair of rogue asteroids, fused together,” replied Koko. Her simian heart was beating rapidly, hoping, hoping. But, after all, she was the captain—if only of a tiny scouting vessel.
“Whatever it is, it’s dead in the water,” Rogers observed. “No signs of powerplant emissions, life-support operations. With our luck, it’s been here for half a billion years, and everyone aboard is a mummy.”
“No jokes about motherhood, you two!” Koko warned, “A starship built by another sapient species. Mummies or not, it would still be fascinating.”
“For everybody but the mummies,” Howell replied blandly.
“Well, enough consultation. We’re never going to find out this way.” Koko took a determined hitch in her pistol belt. “We’re going in, gentlebeings. You two want to settle into the floor, just in case?”
“I’m going to meet my first alien civilization stuck up to my armpits in broadloom? You must be kidding.” Rogers readjusted his smartsuit to what he considered its cheeriest configuration. “That’s better!”
Even the colorblind coyote shuddered.
Nevertheless they approached the object with a degree of caution. Soon it became unmistakable. It was an artifact, two spheres fused together, their hull plates, their riveted seams plainly visible. There seemed to be no drive-tubes, no masts or shackles for photonic or tachyonic sails, no broad surfaces for the generation of propulsive particles of either kind, such as their own little ship employed. In short, the mysterious vessel must be powered in some manner completely unfamiliar to the Confederacy or the crew of the
Tom Smothers Maru.
Portholes followed a peculiarly skewed line about the equator of each globe.
There was light showing in them.
Koko halted her command a thousand kilometers away. A thin mist from the surrounding nebula concealed nothing, but it lent an eerie quality to the scene. At her order,
Tom Smothers Maru
began sending every customary form of energy ever used for communications in known space.
“Here it comes!” cried Rogers. He pointed to the bright image of the alien ship on the screen. Overlaying the picture—it was hard, sometimes, remembering that one was seeing what the computers were seeing—was a brilliant reddish aura, pulsing, dancing, pulsing, dancing.
“What I should like to know,” said the coyote, “is how we’re expected to make sense of this without any referents. And don’t give me any of that nonsense about counting up to ten—how do you ask for flashlight batteries, first aid kits, or frostberry sodas with mere numbers?”
Half an hour later, Howell’s question had been answered. The alien vessel repeatedly communicated: “529, 529, 279,841 ... 529, 529, 279,841 ... 529, 529, 279,841 ... ” Noticing that the third number was the square of the first two, it occurred to Koko this might mean they intended sending a picture, five hundred twenty-nine pixels high, by the same number wide. “A good thing,” she muttered to herself, “they don’t have triangular telecom screens—I’d never have figured it out!”
The Gunjj turned out to be harmless—as harmless as intelligent life ever gets. They, too had been worried—more so than the crew of
Tom Smothers Maru,
since it developed that they were marooned in what they considered the middle of nowhere. None of this became clear very quickly. Having pictures helped. So did actually traveling over to the alien ship for more direct communications. Slowly, a context was built up in which understanding, cybernetically assisted, became possible.
Becalmed might have been a better word than marooned. The best translation of their ship’s name would have been the
Disgruntled.
She was nominally a warship, long since decommissioned, presently being used as a training vessel for several hundred young Gunjj on the equivalent of a midshipman cruise, in the middle of their educational period.
The Gunjj breathed an oxygen-nitrogen about the same ratio as Terrans. It was fairly easy to tell the relative ages of Gunjj: when they were “born”, they were a single stalk or strand, fully as tall as their elders. In time, the stalk split—although not altogether away from the individual’s body—resplitting again until the adult, in its prime, resembled the collection of vegetables Rogers had referred to.
It was at this point that reproduction began occurring. The single stalks would complete their development, then separate from the parent to begin the life cycle all over again. The diameter of the original being began to shrink. In their old age, Gunjj adults resembled Gunjj babies, except for differences in color or texture, minor, cosmetic, which were not immediately apparent to Earthians. Then again, the Gunjj probably could not tell a human teenager from an octogenerian, either.
The practical joke?
Midshipmen will be midshipmen. The Gunjj used a peculiar system to “drive” starships faster than light: the mathematical/metaphysical principle of non-simultaneity. Over interstellar distances (in theory, over any distances at all) it is considered nonsense to speak of two events happening at the same time, without a way to synchronize their time-scales.
No such method exists—or supposedly can exist. All right, then, reasoned the Gunjj, why not work it backward? If a ship departed the Gunjj home world, headed for Colony A (the Gunjj did not actually establish colonies—no one knew why), despite the fact its velocity can be measured, plus the distance between the two points is known, there is no guarantee it will arrive at any specifically given time. Such would imply a synchronicity that physics holds to be impossible, nonsensical.
Suppose the voyage is supposed to take a hundred years. It makes as much sense, from this abstruse standpoint, for the traveler to arrive a hundred thousand years after takeoff, or a hundred million. Likewise, a mere hundred seconds, or nanoseconds is equally logical, accomplishing, in effect, travel vastly faster than the speed of light.
Except that Gunjj ships have no actual velocity. Their transition between two points, for all practical purposes, is instantaneous. Thus obvious, widespread traces of their planetary explorations everywhere one looked, while at the same time (not speaking scientifically, of course) no Confederate had ever encountered any of their ships in flight.
Until
Tom Smothers Maru.
All intelligent life, no matter how different in appearance, will be psychologically similar. Young Gunjj, no different from humans or chimpanzees, liked to have their fun, particularly at the expense of nominal superiors. Everyone is nominally superior to a midshipman cadet.
Thus another principle of physics was brought into play. The Gunjj nonsimultaneity drive could not be used immediately upon leaving a planet. Something about the gravity fields. Neither was it actually instantaneous. (Although how anyone could actually testify to that is a question.) As a joke, half of the midshipman class aboard the
Disgruntled
arranged to calculate, to twenty-three decimals, their velocity during transition. They performed all of the calculations but one, ready for the last read-out at the tentacle-squish of a computer-button.
Meanwhile, the remaining half of the Gunjj midshipman class was equally prepared to state, with similar precision, the
Disgruntled
’s location.
Unfortunately, Werner Heisenberg—along with his equivalent in the culture of the Gunjj—says you cannot do this. You can either know, with great precision, the velocity of a particle (or a ship) or its location. Not both at the same time. The ship took off, exceeded the necessary number of planetary diameters for her transition across the galaxy, prepared to go hyper—then two buttons were pushed. The ship froze dead in space where she was found, full of frightened midshipgunjj.
They had been there for almost a decade when
Tom Swift Maru
had discovered them, a handful of grownup officers with a hundred overaged cadets. Naturally, they were highly grateful to have been discovered. Koko puzzled over the problem, then consulted with Rogers, who had a chat with Howell. Learning the Gunjj language, with some computer assistance, they found that, as cultures go, these odd aliens were very shy. They would never have contacted the Confederacy, left to themselves.
But they made a wonderful, highly salable brandy. Their discovery of chocolate, thanks to the crew of
Tom Swift Maru,
was practically a religious experience for them. There would be future contact, with trade.
It was Howell who, knowing little of physics, but plenty about logic, hit upon the solution. The Gunjj vessel was latched onto—a bit of a strain for a little ship like
Tom Swift Maru
—then towed away toward a random destination at a carefully uncalculated velocity. Of course they vanished in a wink, resuming what was supposed to have been their instantaneous voyage to wherever it was they had been going.
-3-
“Do you actually expect us to believe this blatant nincompoopery?” the Lieutenant asked irritably, when Rogers appeared to finish his story.
“Oh, Lieutenant Sermander. Glad to see you’re with us again.” Rogers laughed. “No, I don’t expect you to believe it, Nobody else does.”
“Excuse me, Rog” I said, beginning to notice that the shooting was over. There were no more supervirus visible on the screen. Ships had begun returning to the mother vessel, including
Little Tom.
“I do not understand how this Howell creature’s idea was a solution to anything. Did it not simply render the Gunjj more lost than to begin with?”
Rogers laughed again. I noticed that the others, relaxing now from their battle posture, were standing by to watch us take the punchline. “But Whitey, they were never lost. They were the least-lost travelers in history, which, of course, was their problem. Howell’s solution worked because it restored the Heisenbergian uncertainty they needed to travel. They were no longer caught on the horns of a metaphysical contradiction. They were able to move, after ten years of being frozen there.”
I blinked stupidly. Then it occurred to me to ask, “Did anybody ever find out what their symbol—the ‘Gunjj’ marking— really meant?”
This, apparently, was what the praxeologist had been waiting for. He looked about the room, making sure that everybody appreciated it properly. “Sure they did, Whitey. It turned out to be not much of a mystery at all. It meant nothing, more or less, than ‘Kilroy was here’!”
At least the Confederates all enjoyed a good laugh. Kilroy again. Who in Hamilton’s Holy Name was this Kilroy? The Lieutenant, rising from the floor with a weary look, scratched his head, but said nothing.
I said nothing, but scratched my head.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Couper grinned, then gave Rogers a dirty look. “I never could decide, myself, about that story, although Howell backs it up. I’ve never known him to be a liar—hold on, elevator going up!” The floor began rising, taking us nearer the phony stars. It required courage not to hunch claustrophobically as the ceiling approached. Then we were through, presumably the hull of
Little Tom
as well, standing in the mother ship above the docking bay.
“Welcome aboard
TPM3C
—informally known as
Tom Lehrer Maru!”
I stared, mouth agape. The source of this welcoming female voice seemed to be half animal, half machine, a sort of man-sized legless lizard wearing a smartsuit, its own exposed rubbery gray-black skin surrounding a pair of wise brown eyes above a roguish, protruberant muzzle. The creature rested in the gleaming frame of a four-wheeled conveyance, mechanical hands responding to her wishes as she greeted us.
“Armorer-Corporal Whitey O’Thraight, Lieutenant Enson Sermander: I am LeeLaLee Aukorkauk S’reen. Kindly consider yourself at home, good landlings, we dock with our own mother-vessel in six and one-half hours.”