Silence came then, the velvet silence of nature trying to undo what had been done, but no peace came with the silence, and he knew that for him peace would never come again.
The cave was as he had left it and he crawled between water soaked brick and oozing concrete to what he called home. Tiredly he threw down the knife and club, the money and cartridges, and throwing himself on the bed stared dully into darkness that to him was not darkness at all.
He felt empty, too dulled for thought, for regret, for idle dreams of what might have been. Tonight it had been her, tomorrow it could be him, and if not then some other night when hunger drove him to mingle with men.
Dully he stared at the thin trickles of seeping rain, washing over the mildewed stone and rusted iron.
He stared at the club and the knife, tools of his trade, and he stared at the scattered coins won with a woman’s help.
All thirty of them.
THE GREATER IDEAL, by E. C. Tubb
On Earth the statue is of bronze, gigantic, imposing, a true work of art. On Mars it is of sandstone polished to an incredible smoothness while the one on Venus was carved from a solid block of crystolite. The materials, like the size, do not matter.
Whether it is of bronze, sandstone or crystolite, the planetary monument — or one of the countless smaller ones made from every imaginable material and set in towns and villages, hung against walls or set in medallions — the image is the same. That of a man, arms extended in welcome, head tilted as if to stare at the stars, a smile on his face and his thin, aesthetic features set in resolute determination. There is an inscription, a simple thing but of six words:
HE MADE US WHAT WE ARE
There are those who insist that it is not a true likeness, that the eyes should have been covered by the old-fashioned spectacles he wore. But it is hard to portray spectacles in sculpture, invariably they hide the eyes behind blank windows and the eyes are very important.
For it was the eyes of Michael Denninson which first saw the Houmi.
The ship was a leaking old freighter beating around the fifth decant in search of the rich minerals of the Asteroids. It was common of its type, a metal can mostly cargo space, the rest loaded with stores and supplies, some mining tools and explosives, the whole powered by an erratic atomic engine.
Michael Denninson was the astrogator and one half of the crew. He was a tall man with weak eyes and girlishly slim. Physically he was not strong but, in space, animal strength is not important. He was strong where it counted most and his brain and skill governed the ship. Holden was the captain, a dour, grizzled veteran who drank often and slept much. He was asleep when Michael first caught the flash of reflected sunlight. He awoke as the rockets kicked to life.
“What is it?”
“Something bright at two o’clock.” Denninson pointed at the telescreen. “See it?”
Holden grunted, rubbing his chin. He stepped up the magnification of the screen as the flash was repeated and swore at what he saw.
“Metal. That thing’s a ship.”
“That’s what I thought.” Michael adjusted the controls and, in the screen, the flashing object moved to a point directly ahead. “Salvage?”
“Could be.” Holden was eager now. Salvage was always profitable even though it was nothing but twisted metal. Such metal would be refined and be worth more than any of the common ores. And there might be other pickings. “Better try them on the radio,” he suggested. “They might still be alive in there.”
The radio brought no reply and neither of them had really expected any. A ship, twisting out of control among the Asteroids, could only be a ship that had been abandoned. The risk of collision with a hunk of cosmic debris was too great for any crew to have willingly run. They would have abandoned ship long ago.
As they came closer Michael caught the first hint of something unusual.
“Odd shape,” he mused. “Do you recognize it?”
Holden didn’t. The vessel was a polyhedron and outside of his experience. Most ships were dumb-bell or torpedo shaped or, as in their own case, a series of spheres united by external struts.
“An experimental job, perhaps?” His eagerness increased as he thought about it. “And no signs of external damage. We’re in luck.”
“Maybe.” Michael was working at the controls. “I’ll try them with visual. Their radio could be wrecked but, if there’s anyone alive in there, they’ll see our signals.”
From a point on their hull a low-powered rocket streamed a trail of fire, exploded in a flaming gush of brilliance, hung glowing in the void for a long moment and then faded in an expanding cloud of luminescence. Again Michael repeated the signal, a third time, then Holden released his breath in a sigh of regret.
From a point on the polyhedral hull a winking glow replied to their signal.
The ship still held life.
What followed was routine and a perfect example of Michael’s skill He played the jets until they had matched both velocity, and revolution, coupled the contact tube to a dark spot that had yawned on the strange hull and flooded it with air. Together, without suits, without weapons, with no thought than that of offering aid to their own kind, the two men entered the other ship.
And met the Houmi.
The meeting was momentous, though at first it didn’t appear so. The mind cannot grasp more than a little at a time. First there was the strangeness the thrill of meeting, for the first time in recorded history another intelligent race
Then there were the questions, the million unanswerable questions, which had to be left for sheer lack of communication. And, finally, there was the problem of what had to be done.
“Aliens.” Holden shook his head at the wonder of it. Both he and Michael had returned to their own vessel. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Humanoid,” said Michael. “Man-like in almost every respect.” He moved restlessly about the control room. “Do you realize what this means, Holden? Can you grasp it?”
“I think so.” Holden was a realist, a practical man undisturbed by self-doubts and self-questioning. “We’ve bumped into something really big. I wonder where they came from?”
“I’ll find out,” promised Michael. “I’ll find out many things.” His eyes behind their spectacles, gleamed with vision.
“Think of it, Holden. They have come from outside the system, from another star. Their technology must be far higher than our own.”
“How can you know that?”
“They are too much like us to have come from within the system. They breathe the same air, have the same eye-structure, and their ears are pointed but much like our own.” He nodded as though it was already settled as a fact. “Different, of course, but no more different than a black man is from a white man, I’d be willing to bet that they could live comfortably on Earth.”
“I see what you mean.” Holden was thoughtful. “They must have some form of an interstellar drive.” He stared at the astrogator. “We must get that drive.”
“We must help them to repair their ship.”
“The drive comes first.” Holden sucked in his lips. “Think of it, Michael! With an invention like that we could be rich.”
“Money!” The way Michael said it made it sound like an insult. “Is that all you can think of?”
“No.” Holden didn’t take offence. He had argued with Michael before and neither of them had ever reached an agreement. Denninson was a peculiar man, which was why he and Holden could operate successfully as a two-man crew. He was much given to reading; old books written by people long dead and spent long hours staring at the majesty of the universe. He was an idealist, a fact Holden knew. That he was also a fanatic was something the captain had yet to find out.