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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cry from a Far Planet, by Tom Godwin

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Title: Cry from a Far Planet

Author: Tom Godwin

Illustrator: Martinez

Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23799]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRY FROM A FAR PLANET ***

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Was the cat native to the planet, or to his imagination?

CRY FROM A

FAR PLANET

By TOM GODWIN

ILLUSTRATOR MARTINEZ

The problem of separating thefriends from the enemies wasa major one in the conquest ofspace as many a dead spacercould have testified. A toughjob when you could see analien and judge appearances;far tougher when they wereonly whispers on the wind.

A smile of friendship is a baringof the teeth. So is a snarl ofmenace. It can be fatal to mistakethe latter for the former.

Harm an alien being only undercircumstances of self-defense.

TRUST NO ALIEN BEINGUNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

From Exploration Ship's Handbook.

He listened in the silenceof the Exploration ship'scontrol room. He heard nothingbut that was what botheredhim; an ominous quiet whenthere should have been a multitudeof sounds from the nearbyvillage for the viewscreen's audio-pickupsto transmit. And itwas more than six hours pastthe time when the native,Throon, should have come to sitwith him outside the ship asthey resumed the laborious attemptto learn each other's language.

The viewscreen was black inthe light of the control room,even though it was high noonoutside. The dull red sun wasalways invisible through theworld's thick atmosphere and tohuman eyes full day was nomore than a red-tinged darkness.

He switched on the ship'soutside floodlights and the viewscreencame to bright white life,showing the empty glades reachingaway between groves ofpurple alien trees. He noticed,absently, that the trees seemedto have changed a little in colorsince his arrival.

The village was hidden fromview by the outer trees butthere should have been some activityin the broad area visibleto him. There was none, noteven along the distant segmentof what should have been a busyroad. The natives were up tosomething and he knew, fromhard experience on other alienworlds, that it would be nothinggood. It would be another misunderstandingof some kind andhe didn't know enough of theirincomprehensible language toask them what it was

Suddenly, as it always came,he felt someone or somethingstanding close behind him andpeering over his shoulder. Hedropped his hand to the blasterhe had taken to wearing at alltimes and whirled.

Nothing was behind him.There never was. The controlroom was empty, with no hidingplace for anything, and the doorwas closed, locked by the remote-controlbutton beside him. Therewas nothing.

The sensation of being watchedfaded, as though the watcherhad withdrawn to a greater distance.It was perhaps the hundredthtime within six days thathe had felt the sensation. Andwhen he slept at night somethingcame to nuzzle at hismind; faceless, formless, utterlyalien. For the past three nightshe had not let the blaster getbeyond quick reach of his hand,even when in bed.

But whatever it was, it couldnot be on the ship. He hadsearched the ship twice, a methodicalcompartment-by-compartmentsearch that had foundnothing. It had to be the workof the natives from outside theship. Except....

Why, if the natives weretelepathic, did the one calledThroon go through the wearypretense of trying to learn a mutuallyunderstandable form ofcommunication?

There was one other explanation,which he could not accept:that he was following in thefootsteps of Will Garret of ShipNine who had deliberately goneinto a white sun two monthsafter the death of his twinbrother.

He looked at the chair besidehis own, Johnny's chair, whichwould forever be empty, and histhoughts went back down theold, bitter paths. The ExplorationBoard had been wrong whenthey thought the close bond betweenidentical twins wouldmake them the ideal two-mancrews for the lonely, lifetimejourneys of the ExplorationShips. Identical twins were tooclose; when one of them died,the other died in part with him.

They had crossed a thousandlight-years of space together, heand Johnny, when they came tothe bleak planet that he wouldname Johnny's World. He shouldnever have let Johnny go aloneup the slope of the honey-combedmountainbut Johnny hadwanted to take the routine recordphotographs of the black,tiger-like beasts which they hadcalled cave cats and the thingshad seemed harmless and shy,despite their ferocious appearance.

"I'm taking them a sack offood that I think they mightlike," Johnny had said. "I wantto try to get some good close-upshots of them."

Ten minutes later he heardthe distant snarl of Johnny'sblaster. He ran up the mountainside,knowing already that hewas too late. He found two ofthe cave cats lying where Johnnyhad killed them. Then hefound Johnny, at the foot of ahigh cliff. He was dead, his neckbroken by the fall. Scattered allaround him from the torn sackwas the food he had wanted togive to the cats.

He buried Johnny the nextday, while a cold wind moanedunder a lead-gray sky. He builta monument for him; a littlemound of frosty stones that onlythe wild animals would eversee

A chime rang, high and clear,and the memories were shattered.The orange light above thehyperspace communicator wasflashing; the signal that meantthe Exploration Board was callinghim from Earth.

He flipped the switch and said,"Paul Jameson, ExplorationShip One."

The familiar voice of Brenderspoke:

"It's been some time sinceyour preliminary report. Iseverything all right?"

"In a way," he answered. "Iwas going to give you the detailedreport tomorrow."

"Give me a brief sketch of itnow."

"Except for their short brownfur, the natives are humanoid inappearance. But there are basicdifferences. Their body temperatureis cool, like their climate.Their vision range is from justwithin the visible red on into theinfrared. They'll shade theireyes from the light of anythingas hot as boiling water butthey'll look square into theship's floodlights and never seethem."

"And their knowledge of science?"Brender asked.

"They have a good understandingof it, but along linesentirely different from what ourown were at their stage of development.For example: theypower their machines withchemicals but there is no steam,heat, or exhaust."

"That's what we want to findworldswhere branches of researchunknown to our scienceare being explored. How abouttheir language?"

"No progress with it yet." Hetold Brender of the silence inthe village and added, "Even ifThroon should show up I couldnot ask him what was wrong.I've learned a few words butthey have so many differentdefinitions that I can't usethem."

"I know," Brender said. "Variableand unrelated definitions,undetectable shades of inflectionandsometimes a language thathas no discernibly separatewords. The Singer brothers ofShip Eight ran into the latter.We've given them up as lost."

"The Singersdead?" he exclaimed."Good Godit's beenonly a month since the Ramonbrothers were killed."

"The circumstances weresimilar," Brender said. "Theyalways are. There is no way theExploration men can tell thenatives that they mean them noharm and the suspicion of thenatives grows into dangeroushostility. The Singers reportedthe natives on that world to beboth suspicious and possessingpowerful weapons. The Singerswere proceeding warily, theirown weapons always at hand.But, somehow, the nativescaught them off-guardtheirlast report was four monthsago."

There was a silence, thenBrender added, "Their ship wasthe ninthand we had only fifteen."

He did not reply to the implicationsof Brender's statement.It was obvious to them all whatthe end of the Plan would be.What it had to be.

It had been only three yearssince the fifteen heavily armedExploration ships set out tolead the way for Terran expansionacross the galaxy; to answera cry from far planets, andto find all the worlds that heldintelligent life. That was theultimate goal of the Plan: toaccumulate and correlate all thediverse knowledge of all the intelligentlife-forms in the galaxy.Among the achievementsresulting from that tremendousmass of data would be a ship'sdrive faster even than hyperspace;the Third Level Drivewhich would bring all the galaxiesof the universe withinreach.

And now nine ships were goneout of fifteen and nineteen menout of thirty....

"The communication barrier,"Brender said. "The damnedcommunication barrier has beenthe cause behind the loss ofevery ship. And there is nothingwe can do about it. We'restymied by it...."

The conversation was terminatedshortly afterward and hemoved about the room restlessly,wishing it was time to lift shipagain. With Johnny not therethe dark world was like asmothering tomb. He would liketo leave it behind and driveagain into the star clouds of thegalaxy; drive on and on intothem

A ghostly echo touched hismind; restless, poignantly yearning.He swung to face the lockeddoor, knowing there could benothing behind it. The first realfear came to him as he did so.The thing was lonelythe thingthat watched him was as lonelyas he was....

What else could any of it bebut the product of a mind in thefirst stage of insanity?

The natives came ten minuteslater.

The viewscreen showed theirchemically-powered vehicleemerge from the trees and rollswiftly across the glade. Fournatives were in it while a fifthone lay on the floor, apparentlybadly injured.

The vehicle stopped a shortdistance in front of the airlockand he recognized the native onthe floor. It was Throon, the onewith whom he had been exchanginglanguage lessons.

They were waiting for himwhen he emerged from the ship,pistol-like weapons in their beltsand grim accusation in theirmanner.

Throon was muttering unintelligibly,unconscious. His skin,where not covered by the brownfur, was abnormal in appearance.He was dying.

The leader of the four indicatedThroon and said in a quick,brittle voice: "Ko reegar feenno-dran!"

Only one word was familiar:Ko, which meant "you" and"yesterday" and a great manyother things. The question wasutterly meaningless to him.

He dropped his hand a littlenearer his blaster as the leaderspoke again; a quick successionof unknown words that endedwith a harshly demanding "kreson!"

Kreson meant "now," or "veryquickly." All the other wordswere unfamiliar to him. Theywaited, the grim menace aboutthem increasing when he did notanswer. He tried in vain to findsome way of explaining to themhe was not responsible forThroon's sickness and could notcure it.

Then he saw the spray ofleaves that had caught on thecorner of the vehicle when itcame through the farther trees.

They were of a deep purplecolor. All the trees around theship were almost gray by contrast.

Which meant that he was responsiblefor Throon's condition.

The cold white light of theship's floodlights, under whichhe and Throon had sat for dayafter day, contained radiationsthat went through the violet andfar into the ultraviolet. To theanimal and vegetable life of thedark world such radiations wereinvisibly short and deadly.

Throon was dying of hard-radiationsickness.

It was something he shouldhave foreseen and avoidedandthat would not have happenedhad he accepted old Throon'spantomimed invitation, in thebeginning, to go with him intothe village to work at the languagestudy. There he wouldhave used a harmless batterylamp for illumination ... butthere was no certainty that thenatives were not planning to laya trap for him in the village andhe had refused to go.

It did not matterthere wasa complex radiation-neutralizerand cell-reconstructor in the shipwhich would return Throon tofull, normal health a few hoursafter he was placed in its chamber.

He turned to the leader of thefour natives and motioned fromThroon to the airlock. "Gothere,"he said in the native language.

"Bron!" the leader answered.The word meant "No" and therewas a determination in the wayhe said it that showed he wouldnot move from it.

At the end of five minutes hisattempts to persuade them totake Throon into the ship hadincreased their suspicion of hismotives to the point of criticaldanger. If only he could tell themwhy he wanted Throon takeninto the ship ... But he couldnot and would have to takeThroon by first disposing of thefour without injuring them.This he could do by procuringone of the paralyzing needle-gunsfrom the ship.

He took a step toward the shipand spoke the words that to thebest of his knowledge meant: "Icome back."

"Feswin ilt k'la."

Their reply was to snatch attheir weapons in desperatehaste, even as the leader uttereda hoarse word of command. Hebrought up the blaster with thequick motion that long traininghad perfected and their weaponswere only half drawn whenhis warning came:

"Bron!"

They froze, but did not releasetheir weapons. He walkedbackward to the airlock, hisblaster covering them, the tenselywaiting manner in whichthey watched his progress tellinghim that the slightest relaxationof his vigilance would mean hisdeath. He did not let the muzzleof the blaster waver until he wasinside the airlock and the outerdoor had slid shut.

He was sure that the nativeswould be gone when he returned.And he was sure of anotherthing: That whatever he hadsaid to them, it was not what hehad thought he was saying.

He saw that the glade wasempty when he opened the airlockagain. At the same time abomb-like missile struck theship just above the airlock andexploded with a savage crash.He jabbed the Close button andthe door clicked shut barely inadvance of three more missileswhich hammered at its imperviousarmor.

So that, he thought wearily,is that.

He laid the useless needle-gunaside. The stage was past whenhe could hope to use it. He couldsave Throon only by killing someof the othersor he could liftship and leave Throon to die.Either action would make thenatives hate and fear Terrans;a hatred and fear that would bethere to greet all future Terranships.

That was not the way a racegave birth to peaceful galacticempire, was not the purpose behindthe Plan. But always,wherever the Exploration menwent, they encountered the deadlybarrier; the intangible, unassailablecommunication barrier.With the weapons an Explorationman carried in hisship he had the power to destroya worldbut not the power toask the simple questions thatwould prevent fatal misunderstandings.

And before another threeyears had passed the last Explorationman would die, the lastExploration ship would be lost.

He felt the full force of hopelessnessfor the first time. WhenJohnny had been alive it hadbeen different; Johnny, who hadlaughed whenever the outlookwas the darkest and said, "We'llfind a way, Paul"

The thought broke as suddenly,unexpectedly, he felt thatJohnny was very near. With thefeeling came the soft enclosureof a dream-like peace in whichJohnny's death was vague andfaraway; only something thathad happened in another dream.He knew, without wonderingwhy, that Johnny was in the controlroom.

A part of his mind tried toreject the thought as an illusion.He did not listenhe did notwant to listen. He ran to theship's elevator, stumbling likeone not fully awake. Johnny waswaiting for him in the controlroomalivealive

He spoke as he stepped intothe control room:

"Johnny"

Something moved at the controlboard, black and alien,standing tall as a man on shorthind legs. Yellow eyes blazed ina feline face.

It was a cave cat, like theones that had killed Johnny.

Realization was a wrenchingshock and a terrible disillusionment.Johnny was not waitingfor himnot alive

He brought up the blaster, thedream-like state gone. The pawof the cave cat flashed out andstruck the ship's master lightswitch with a movement fasterthan his own. The room was instantly,totally, dark.

He fired and pale blue firelanced across the room, to revealthat the cave cat was gone.He fired again, quickly and immediatelyin front of him. Thepale beam revealed only theripped metal floor.

"I am not where you think."

The words spoke clearly in hismind but there was no directionalsource. He held his breath, listeningfor the whisper of paddedfeet as the cave cat flashed infor the kill, and made a swiftanalysis of the situation.

The cave cat was telepathicand highly intelligent and hadbeen on the ship all the time. Itand the others had wanted theship and had killed Johnny toreduce opposition to the minimum.He, himself, had been permittedto live until the cave catlearned from his mind how tooperate the almost-automaticcontrols. Now, he had served hispurpose

"You are wrong."

Again there was no way hecould determine the directionfrom which the thought came.He listened again, and wonderedwhy it had not waylaid him atthe door.

Its thought came:

"I had to let you see me oryou would not have believed Iexisted. It was only here that Icould extinguish all lights andhave time to speak before youkilled me. I let you think yourbrother was here...." There wasa little pause. "I am sorry. Iam sorry. I should have usedsome other method of luring youhere."

He swung the blaster towardwhat seemed to be a faint soundnear the astrogator unit acrossthe room.

"We did not intend to killyour brother."

He did not believe it and didnot reply.

"When we made first telepathiccontact with him, hejerked up his blaster and fired.In his mind was the convictionthat we had pretended to beharmless animals so that wecould catch him off-guard andkill him. One of us leaped at himas he fired the second time, toknock the blaster from his hand.We needed only a few minutesin which to explainbut hewould not trust us that long.There was a misjudgment ofdistance and he was knocked offthe cliff."

Again he did not reply.

"We did not intend to kill yourbrother," the thought came,"but you do not believe me."

He spoke for the first time."No, I don't believe you. You arephysically like cats and catsdon't misjudge distances. Now,you want something from me beforeyou try to kill me, too. Whatis it?"

"I will have to tell you of myrace for you to understand. Wecall ourselves the Varn, in so faras it can be translated into aspoken word, and we are a veryold race. In the beginning we didnot live in caves but there camea long period of time, for thousandsof years, when the climateon our world was so violent thatwe were forced to live in thecaves. It was completely darkthere but our sense of smell becamevery acute, together withsufficient sensitivity to temperaturechanges that we could detectobjects in our immediate vicinity.There were subterraneanplants in the caves and food wasno problem."

"We had always been slightlytelepathic and it was during ourlong stay in the caves that ourintelligence and telepathic powersbecame fully developed. Wehad only our mindsphysicalscience is not created in darkcaves with clumsy paws.

"The time finally came whenwe could leave the caves but itwas of little help to us. Therewere no resources on our worldbut earth and stone and the thingrass of the plains. We wonderedabout the universe and weknew the stars were distantsuns because one of our own sunsbecame a star each winter. Westudied as best we could but wecould see the stars only as thelittle wild animals saw them.There was so much we wantedto learn and by then we werepast our zenith and already dyingout. But our environmentwas a prison from which wecould never escape.

"When your ship arrived wethought we might soon be free.We wanted to ask you to takesome of us with you and arrangefor others of your race to stopby on our world. But you dismissedus as animals, usefulonly for making warm furcoats, because we lived in cavesand had no science, no artifactsnothing.You had the power todestroy us and we did not knowwhat your reaction would bewhen you learned we were intelligentand telepathic. A telepathicrace must have a highcode of ethics and never intrudeunwantedbut would you havebelieved that?"

He did not answer.

"The death of your brotherchanged everything. You weregoing to leave so soon that therewould be no time to learn moreabout you. I hid on the ship soI could study you and wait untilI could prove to you that youneeded me. Now, I canThroonis dying and I can give you theproper words of explanation thatwill cause the others to bringhim into the ship."

"Your real purposewhat isit?" he asked.

"To show you that men needthe Varn. You want to explorethe galaxy, and learn. So do theVarn. You have the ships andwe have the telepathic abilitythat will end the communicationproblem. Your race and minecan succeed only if we go together."

He searched for the true, andhidden, purpose behind the Varnproposal and saw what it wouldhave to be.

"The long-range goalyoufailed to mention that ... yourultimate aim."

"I know what you are thinking.How can I prove you wrongnow?"

There was no way for theVarn to prove him wrong, norfor him to prove the treacherybehind the Varn proposal. Theproof would come only withtime, when the Terran-Varn co-operationhad transformed Terransinto a slave race.

The Varn spoke again. "Yourefuse to believe I am sincere?"

"I would be a naive fool tobelieve you."

"It will be too late to saveThroon unless we act very quickly.I have told you why I amhere. There is nothing more Ican do to convince you but bethe first to show trust. When Iswitch on the lights it will bewithin your power to kill me."

The Varn was gambling itslife in a game in which he wouldbe gambling the Plan and hisrace. It was a game he wouldend at the first sound of movementfrom the astrogator unitacross the room....

"I have been here beside youall the time."

A furry paw brushed his face,claws flicked gently but grimlyreminding along his throat.

He whirled and fired. He wastoo latethe Varn had alreadyleaped silently away and thebeam found only the bare floor.Then the lights came on, glaringlybright after the darkness,and he saw the Varn.

It was standing by the controlboard, its huge yellow eyeswatching him. He brought theblaster into line with it, his fingeron the firing stud. It waited,not moving or shrinking fromwhat was coming. The translucentgolden eyes looked at himand beyond him, as though theysaw something not in the room.He wondered if it was in contactwith its own kind onJohnny's World and was tellingthem it had made the gamble forhigh stakes, and had lost.

It was not afraidnot askingfor mercy....

The killing of it was suddenlyan act without savor. It wassomething he would do in theimmediate future but first hewould let it live long enough tosave Throon.

He motioned with the blasterand said, "Lead the way to theairlock."

"And afterwardyou will killme?"

"Lead the way," he repeatedharshly.

It said no more but wentobediently past him and trotteddown the corridor like a great,black dog.

He stood in the open airlock,the Varn against the fartherwall where he had ordered it tostand. Throon was in the radiationchamber and he had heldhis first intelligible conversationwith the natives that day.

The Varn was facing into thered-black gloom outside thelighted airlock, where the departingnatives could be heardcrossing the glade. "Theirthoughts no longer hold fearand suspicion," it said. "The misunderstandingis ended."

He raised the muzzle of theblaster in his hand. The blackhead lifted and the golden eyeslooked up at him.

"I made you no promise," hesaid.

"I could demand none."

"I can't stop to take you backto your own world and I can'tleave you alive on this onewithwhat you've learned frommy mind you would have the nativesbuild the Varn a disintegrator-equippedspace fleet equalto our own ships."

"We want only to go withyou."

He told it what he wanted itto know before he killed it, wonderingwhy he should care:

"I would like to believe youare sincereand you know whyI don't dare to. Trusting a telepathicrace would be too dangerous.The Varn would knoweverything we knew and only theVarn would be able to communicatewith each new alien race.We would have to believe whatthe Varn told uswe wouldhave to trust the Varn to see forus and speak for us and not deceiveus as we went across thegalaxy. And then, in the end,Terrans would no longer beneeded except as a subject race.They would be enslaved.

"We would have laid thegroundwork for an empiretheVarn Empire."

There was a silence, in whichhis words hung like somethingcold and invisible between them.

Then the Varn asked, veryquietly:

"Why is the Plan failing?"

"You already know," he said."Because of the barrierthecommunication barrier thatcauses aliens to misunderstandthe intentions of Explorationmen and fear them."

"There is no communicationbarrier between you and Iyetyou fear me and are going tokill me."

"I have to kill you. You representa danger to my race."

"Isn't that the same reasonwhy aliens kill Exploration men?"

He did not answer and itsthought came, quickly, "Howdoes an Exploration man appearto the natives of alien worlds?"

How did he appear?... Helanded on their world in a shipthat could smash it into oblivion;he stepped out of his shipcarrying weapons that couldlevel a city; he representedirresistible power for destructionand he trusted no one andnothing.

And in return he hoped to findwelcome and friendship and co-operation....

"There," the Varn said, "isyour true barrieryour own distrustand suspicion. You, yourselves,create it on each newworld. Now you are going toerect it between my race andyours by killing me and advisingthe Exploration Board toquarantine my world and neverlet another ship land there."

Again there was a silence ashe thought of what the Varnhad said and of what it had saidearlier: "We are a very old race...."There was wisdom in theVarn's analysis of the cause ofthe Plan's failure and with theVarn to vanquish the communicationstalemate, the new approachcould be tried. Theycould go a long way together,men and Varn, a long, longway....

Or they could create the VarnEmpire ... and how could heknow which it would be?

How could anyone knowexceptthe telepathic Varn?

The muzzle of the blaster haddropped and he brought it backup. He forced the dangerous indecisionaside, knowing he wouldhave to kill the Varn at once orhe might weaken again, and saidharshly to it:

"The risk is too great. I wantto believe youbut all your talkof trust and good intentions isonly talk and my race would bethe only one that had to trust."

He touched the firing stud asthe last thought of the Varncame:

"Let me speak once more."

He waited, the firing stud coldand metallic under his finger.

"You are wrong. We have alreadyset the example of faithin you by asking to go with you.I told you we did not intend tohurt your brother and I told youwe saw the stars only as thelittle wild animals saw them.The years in the dark cavesyoudo not understand"

The eyes of the Varn lookedinto his and beyond him; beautiful,expressionless, like polishedgold.

"The Varn are blind."

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Amazing Science Fiction StoriesSeptember 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling andtypographical errors have been corrected without note.

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