The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Robert Silverberg
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leaned over Alath’s shoulder, and the others, big-eyed, crowded around. The painting portrayed, in the smeared flat style of a primitives race, a monster; four-armed, scaly, equipped with an unfamiliar weapon. A bosomy girl scantily-clad, lolled against the monster’s sheltering bulk. Alath’s breath was a sibilant whistle. “Impossible!” he murmured.
“Evidently, they have non-human allies,” Luss murmured.
“We’d be insane to invade a planet like this!” the Captain said, and the sound of defeat was already in his voice, “Look at this!” He held out the second booklet. It portrayed a battle in deep space on the outermost sheet. Ships of a pattern the R’rin had never seen battled with ships of a design slightly more conventional. In fact, allowing for primitive lack of artistic skill, they might have been R’rin ships. Rudan nodded.
“Look at these, Ketil,” he said. “They’ve been invaded before. They have ships—better than ours; certainly they work on an entirely new principle. If they were conventionally fuelled by any known means, that design simply wouldn’t fly space. They’re—they’re—why, nothing like that would ever get out of atmosphere unless it was founded on some principle so far in advance of ours that we can’t even comprehend it! And look at the weapons they’re using…” He flipped to an inside page, of thinner, more crumbly pulp-fabric. “It’s some kind of disintegrator—that ship is breaking up in space. And the very principle of disintegration has baffled our scientists for more Galactic Aeons than I like to think about!”
* * * *
The R’rin crew stood stunned before the possibilities.
“We can’t invade,” Rudan sighed at last, “not possibly. Why, these people must be the center of a great Empire! We knew it must come some day—another great civilization in space—but I wish I weren’t the one to find it!”
Luss said wistfully, eying the painted woman, “Shouldn’t we try to make contact, Captain? Think of the advancement to science…”
“No,” snapped Rudan, “We don’t dare! You know the Law as well as I do—when we meet a civilization technologically better than ours, we run! We can’t risk meeting a non-man race on the terms of having attacked or invaded their protectorates! If these people have non-human allies, we leave them alone! Besides—could we stand up against disintegrators?”
Ketil was frowning over the picture. “Impossible,” he murmured again. Disintegrators! He found it incredible. Alath heard him, gave him a secret look, then spoke.
“Captain, in respect for your Truth, I have an idea.” He pointed to the booklet, then, crossing the lounge, picked up a fact-micro from the ship’s library and slipped it into the enlarger which projected it on the wall. It was one of the Experimental Institute’s publications, and contained the familiar warning, in huge, green, danger-sign letters:
WARNING! Material contained herein is not Factual. By special permission, theoretical material not yet proven is included as a mental recreation and exercise. Not to be sold to Minors!
“Well?” Rudan asked roughly.
“Captain, Ketil said that the civilization appeared low grade, with a very early technology. Isn’t it possible that these fact-accumulators might be non-factual?”
Rudan barely considered it. “If it was in semantic symbols, I’d say possible. But these are pictures. Pictures are as infallible as Humanity, Alath. You can’t draw a picture of something that doesn’t exist. Why, my boy, what would you copy from?”
“From a…” Alath flushed and said in a low voice, “from an aberrant dream?”
The Captain chuckled. “My word, but that’s ingenious,” he said, in a tone that deepened Alath’s flush and made Ketil, who had admired Alath’s theory, squirm. “You think Fordill picked up a bunch of psychologist’s casebooks? No—no, those aren’t fantasies. Look at the details on the nonhuman. Look at the mechanical details on the spaceships.”
Alath put down the micro, but persisted, “The Experimental Institute has a non-factual theory, that there might be a race of telepaths…”
“So?” Rudan was impatient now.
“So, sir, they might not consider it a—a perversion to speak an un-Truth, because they could read one another’s minds. So they would know when they were telling the truth and when they weren’t, and…” Alath became conscious of Rudan’s cold stare and finished with flustered desperation, “Un-Truth might be a sort of recreation; no one would take it seriously…”
The atmosphere in the common lounge was definitely stiffer, and even Luss edged a step or two away from Alath.
“Captain…” Alath said desperately.
Then, to everybody’s relief, Rudan chuckled. “Alath, you’re young,” he said, then added with definite reproof, “The Experimental Institute comes dangerously near to circulating perverted smut, at times. I suggest that in future, you confine your studies to more orthodox Truthful sources, until you are old enough to judge more carefully.”
Alath bit his lip, and insisted.
“Indulge me as a psychologist,” he said. “Luss remarked that due to the high oxygen content of the atmosphere, he would theorize a euphoric civilization, with a very low and decadent morality. Perhaps the planet is aberrant?”
“A whole planet of perverts? Impossible!” Rudan snorted, half-way between anger and laughter. “There’s never been such a thing in the Galaxy! If they didn’t respect Truth, they couldn’t be an intelligent race!—They’d be a race of beasts! And now, if you don’t mind—” and he sounded really angry now—“we’ll get off such disgusting topics!”
Crushed, but carefully not looking at the Captain, Alath put the micro away. But Ketil, mentally reviewing his trip in the little scouting pickup, could not accept this. He lingered. “Captain,” he said urgently, “Listen to me. I’m sure there weren’t any spaceports! There can’t be any nonhuman races! Ask Luss! It’s—it’s biologically impossible!”
But Luss would not meet Ketil’s imploring glance; and Rudan’s eyes were cold and small in his face. “Your words, Ketil, reflect on my infallibility!’ the Captain rasped, “In view of the short-handedness of the ship, and of the fleet in general, I will overlook them—until we return to R’rin! Then I shall hold you to account for them!” He turned on his heel, ordering as he went, “Plot a course to rejoin the fleet and make for R’rin!”
Ketil let his knees go limp and sank into a chair. Alath, about to leave the lounge for his quarters, bent for an instant and advised in a murmur, “You’d better do what he said…” and Ketil, trembling with reaction and near to hysteria, could not escape the look of mingled triumph and commiseration in Alath’s eyes. Then he felt Alath’s friendly arm around his shoulders, and heard the young psychologist’s smooth voice, raised to recall Rudan.
“Captain, I have authority to relieve a man from duty,” he said gently. “Send some one else to plot the course. I’ve been aboard ship with Ketil for several revolutions while you were out on scout, and I’m convinced that he is mildly neurotic and needs rest and treatment, or—” his nails bit sharply into Ketil’s flesh and the words were a cue and a rebuke—“or he’ll end up where the-former-Narth is!”
“Fordill, take over Ketil’s duty till further notice,” Rudan said, not paying much attention. “Ketil, confined to cabin at Alath’s discretion,” and he went out of the lounge.
Supported by Alath’s arm, Ketil reeled toward his bunk-cubby. Down in his beast-cell at the end of the corridor, Narth raised a shrill howl of despair.
Which one would finish the voyage in that cell with Narth? Himself or Rudan? They couldn’t both be right. Humanity was infallible…either Rudan or himself was infallible… Ketil, less flexible than the cynical young Alath, shuddered with the first premonitory tremors of incipient insanity, knowing that for the rest of