"Tell me about it," Mishkin said.
"I was just about to," the old man said and made himself as comfortable as he could, considering the brittleness of his bones.
23. Earth versus the Black Hell Creatures from Far Arcturus
Captain John McRoy's Superdreadnaught-class XK-12X spaceship, on picket duty out beyond the Southern Ridge Belt Stars, was the first to pick up the signal that all Terra was soon to know and to dread. But this was at the beginning, and the first hint of anything wrong came when Radioman 2nd Class Rip Halliday came to the captain's cabin with a worried look on his homely, freckled face.
"Take a pew, Rip," the captain boomed. "Drink? Lee Pan Hao, our friendly Cantonese cook, has brewed up some high-energy cocoa that really does the trick. Or how about some tollhouse cookies made with real Martian chocolate?"
"No, thanks, Captain, nothing right now."
"Then slouch back in that easy chair and let's hear what's on your mind."
Rip Halliday slouched back but with a hint of respectful attentiveness. In that age, when a perfect classlessness was observed by all superiors, the utmost informality prevailed. The system worked because inferiors never presumed above their station and always maintained a perfect measure of respect.
"Well, sir, I was…"
"Please, Rip, no «sirs» in this cabin. Just call me John."
"Well, sir, John, I was doing a routine sweep of the 6B2 radio bands, but this time I was using a zero-beat random selector just to see how it worked. If you remember the Thalberg-Martin equations, sir, they postulate…"
The captain grinned and held up a broad, muscular pink hand. "Radio's your field, Rip. I'm just an intergalactic truck driver. I've never gotten beyond the sigma series transformations. So put it into plain English — what did you pick up?"
"A signal," Rip answered promptly. "It came across loud enough to dent my ear before the AFC cut in."
The captain nodded. "No cause for alarm, is there? I suppose it was a radio star effect?"
Halliday shook his head. "None in the vicinity."
"Deflection reading?"
"Not possible, given our present speed and coordinates."
"No chance it was a mechanically produced static effect — maybe caused by a concentration of cosmic debris grinding together?"
"No chance, sir. The configuration pattern is completely different. And what's more, the signal I got was frequency-modulated."
The captain whistled softly. "No natural discharge could account for that!"
"No, sir, John. Intelligent life produced those patterns."
"Um," said the captain.
"Any chance it might be a ship of ours broadcasting?" Rip asked hopefully.
The captain shook his head. "The nearest Terran patrol ship is clear on the other side of Fiona II."
Rip whistled softly. "I was afraid of that!"
The captain nodded. "It means that we've just contacted alien intelligent life of a type completely unknown to us, and we're closing with them fast.
"This is Earth's first contact with alien intelligent life," the captain said softly to Rip. "I think you'd better tell Marv Painter that we need a translation of those alien impulses, pronto."
Rip Halliday's freckles stood out darker against the sudden pallor of his face. "I'm on my way, John. Sir, I mean."
The door dilated to allow the red-haired radioman to pass. Alone, the captain sat and stared at the stereographs of his wife and three sons. He drank a glass of Gatorade in complete silence. Then he pushed the intercom button.
He told the crew that, unless proven otherwise, they would proceed upon the assumption that they had contacted alien life of unknown intentions. But he did not tell them about the Rand-Orey equations that predicted an unfriendly first contact at 98.7 per cent probable. His orders were not to disclose this until intention had been indicated clearly. Anticipation of disaster would have impaired the efficiency of the smoothly functioning machine that was the crew.
Engineer Duff McDermott paced stumpily along the lower catwalk, then stopped to inspect the drive gauges for the twentieth time in an hour. The needles hung placidly in the green, as McDermott knew they would. But he couldn't stop himself from looking at them since he knew that contact moment was only 2.0045 hours away.
"Waddya think they'll look like?" asked Andy Tompkins, second assistant engineer's mate, his prominent adam's apple bouncing below his good-humoured, absentminded face.
"Like something out of hell," McDermott replied. He was to remember that answer later and to wonder if there wasn't something to the discredited notion of stress-induced prescience.
"Marv," the captain asked, "how is it going?"
"Pretty good," said Marv Painter, the shy, skinny, red-haired cybernetic genius. "We should have an intelligible readout as soon as I splice in this zero-null regenerative impulse rejector into the image repro circuit and cross-tie the translator bank into the computer's second-stage input bank."
"You mean we'll be able to understand them?" Captain McRoy asked.
"Shucks, yes. It won't be an exact translation because we don't have a vocab match up. But if we set the computer to sound-match in terms of probabilities of meaning and maintain a constant feedback loop to further refine hierarchic distinctions then we ought to get an accurate analogic reading. But that's just my own haywire idea on it, sir. If you would care to try another approach…"
"Marv," said McRoy, "the primary law of interplanetary cooperation is, let those who can, do, and let those who can't sit in the parlour with their fingers up their noses and their mouths shut and drink their coffee. I'm just a spaceship driver and you're the cyberneticist around here, and what you say goes as long as you're speaking in terms of your admittedly limited speciality."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cap," said Marv, flashing a smile. "If they worked governments on Earth like you run a ship it'd be clear sailing for the human race."
"None of that, now," the captain said with gruff, old-fashioned modesty. "I just follow the rules, use plain common sense, temper justice with mercy, and treat every person as an entire world-system and end unto himself despite social differences imposed by a functional ranking system. Is that rig of yours working yet?"
Marv Painter turned on the set. The video repeater came to life, revealing the interior of an alien spaceship. Within, a creature sat at the controls. He was bipedal; but any resemblance to humanity began and ended there. The creature was jet green, about eight feet tall, and massively constructed. He appeared to have a chitinous exoskeleton.
Antennae grew from his forehead, and his eyes extended on stalks. He had a large loose mouth behind which could be seen double rows of pointed white teeth, as on a shark.
The alien spoke: "Much greetings, inferior, wormlike, barely sentient life forms. I am Thanatos Superbum, Captain-General of the Malachite Brood, Lord of the Vulture Redoubt, Duke Extraordinary to the O'Neills, and various other titles both hereditary and conferred. Down upon your knees, baseborn scum, and make nice to your mental, moral, and physical superior. Give your name, rank, and serial number and explain in twenty words or less why I should not grind your puny bones into pulp. Over."
"He talks funny," said Engineer McDermott.
"Funny and mean," said the captain, frowning purposively. "And also weird."
"A lot of that," said Marv, "is because the computer has to analogize the alien's speech into the nearest Terran idioms, selecting from expressions it has at its disposal in its memory banks. So, of course, it comes out sounding kinda weird."