The Outposter

  He shuffled the typescript, glanced over a page, and cleared his throat.

  "Briefly," he said, "and you can read the details later—we were able to get rid of the Meda V'Dan because they lacked a modern civilization, in our terms. To quote from the message: The work of Mr. Danielson and Miss Betaugh indicated that these aliens actually had been frozen in a very primitive cultural pattern, to which they attributed their sur­vival as a race, and to which, therefore, they would adhere undeviatingly as long as there was an alternative course of action that per­mitted continuing adherence."

  Mark ceased reading and looked up from the page to the audience.

  "What she means," he said, "is that the Meda V'Dan would do anything rather than change their ways because they believed that they'd go on surviving as a race only as long as they didn't change. In fact, they told us, when we visited their city earlier, that they'd been around before all other races were born, and they'd still be around when all other races were dead."

  He paused a second to let that sink in to the audience.

  "That bit of talk," he said, "was our first evidence that the work done by Mr. Danielson and Miss Betaugh was on the right track. By sheer chance on that same visit I was lucky enough to get down into the lower part of one of their city buildings and see that the bottom levels were taken up by large power units. In short, each one of their buildings was an over­sized spaceship with room inside to hold their smaller ships and everything else they wanted to carry about."

  He paused again, and Wilkes spoke up quickly.

  "Commander Ten Roos," Wilkes said, "is being unduly modest about this whole matter of interpreting the Meda V'Dan character—"

  Mark put a hand gently on the older man's shoulder to interrupt him.

  "That's all right," he said to Wilkes, the pickups overhead carrying his words to the far end of the auditorium, "these aren't Earth-City representatives. We can tell them the truth. In fact, they need to know the truth so they can get a clear picture of the situation. The fact is, I wasn't much more than a focal point for all this. I couldn't have done any of it without these specialists and experts you see here at the table. But, to get back to the Meda V'Dan and why they left—"

  He took his hand from Wilkes's shoulder, and the older man sat back, silent. Mark went on.

  "It has to be pretty much guesswork as to how they started into space," he said. "Chances are they were contacted by some interstellar-travelling race when they were still in the culture stage we saw them in now. Somehow, they got hold of ships themselves, and simply transplanted that culture into space. What they are, essentially, is a nomad culture which carries all its belongings with it as it travels and doesn't so much inhabit the worlds it stops on, as camp there."

  He broke off.

  "Take a look at page eight of the type­script," he said. "Our estimate of their cul­ture is set down in detail there—" There was a rustling of pages throughout the audience as his listeners went to the page he had mentioned. "Briefly, the Meda V'Dan live by trading if they have to, but prefer to steal if they can because it's easier. Whenever they run across another race they can steal from profitably, they camp in the vicinity and take as much as they can for as long as they can. When the other race starts getting after them for stealing, they simply pack up and go else­where—not because they don't have the equipment and the technology to stand and fight back, but because they're committed to their nomad existence and it's simply more profitable to go find another victim race than to stay and argue the point."

  Mark turned several pages of his own tran­script and laid it flat before him.

  "That's the sum of it, then," he said. "Indi­cations are the Meda V'Dan never were able to tell one of us from another—just as they all looked alike to us—and they no more under­stood our culture and ways than we did theirs. But there was something else in their case. They didn't care whether they under­stood or not, and consequently when this one colony hit their home base with a handful of ships, they assumed the human race as a whole was fed up with them—and left."

  He paused.

  "Now, look at the final section that begins on page twenty-three," he said. "This is the short agreement I sent back to Earth for the government there to accept or refuse. But I think they'll accept, since they've got nothing to lose but some military hardware they don't need anyway, and a dumping ground for their excess population, which they'd have to find some other way of curbing, in any case. What the agreement asks is that they give up Navy Base, with all its equipment, supplies, and ships that have been left behind, to the Colo­nies, that shipments of colonists cease imme­diately, newcomers from Earth being wel­come out here only as voluntary immigrants who have been accepted by some particular colony. We should be able to pick up just the sort of professional and trained people we want by sifting those who do want to emigrate out here voluntarily. Finally, they can also cease shipments of supplies to the Colonies— that's something they'd do anyway—and any trade with the Unknown Races must be chan­nelled through us."

  Mark pushed the typescript from him.

  "There you've got it," he told the audience. "We may be a little pinched for home-grown vegetables for a winter season or two on our various worlds. But there are good enough food stocks stored in Navy Base to see that none of our Colonies goes hungry for several years. Meanwhile, we can be training people to handle the Navy ships and we can start almost immediately sending exploratory vessels in toward Galactic Centre to contact the Unknown Races for trading purposes. We've got pretty good evidence the UR aren't likely to be either inimical or uncooperative, otherwise the Meda V'Dan would have been wiped out long ago."

  He paused and looked slowly from front to back over the whole audience.

  "All right," he said. "There it is. Now, what Abruzzi Fourteen would like from all of you assembled here would be a vote of confidence. How about it? Will you give us your vote?"

  There was a silence lasting several seconds, then a lean, middle-aged outposter in the third row got to his feet.

  "I'm Commander Murta Vey, Thanought Nine Station, Alameda Two," he said. "Gener­ally speaking, I've liked what I heard. But I've got a question—why didn't you let the rest of us know what you were doing here before this? It seems to me we had a stake in it as well as you ..."

  The talk began. It ran back and forth be­tween audience and stage for nearly two hours before Brot slammed his wide palm on the table in front of him and shouted everyone else down.

  "God damn it!" he roared. "Are we going to sit here all night? The Meda V'Dan are gone. The thing's done, isn't it?"

  He waited. After a second there was a rumble of agreement, drowned out by ap­plause.

  "All right!" shouted Brot. "And now that it's done, you like it better this way than it was before, with the Navy sitting there doing nothing and more half-collapsed colonists being dumped on each of us at least twice a year, and the aliens shooting us up every so often—don't you?"

  This time the applause was louder and more prolonged.

  "Then what're we waiting for?" demanded Brot. "Let's take a vote, damn it, and end this business!"

  The applause this time was overwhelming. Brot slumped back in his power chair, grunting with satisfaction and waving at Mark with his one hand.

  "Take over," he said.

  "All right," said Mark, and his voice carried via the pickups out over the last of the applause. "Let's vote by getting up and leav­ing, all who're in favor of what Abruzzi Four­teen's done, and the agreement we sent Earth. Those who don't agree can stay here and make their own plans accordingly."

  He got to his feet. The others on stage rose behind him, all but Brot, who turned his power chair away from the table. Down on the auditorium floor, the audience was already on its feet and pouring into the aisles.

  By the time Mark and the others from Abruzzi Fourteen reached the floor in front of the stage, those aisles were full. Slowly they followed the last to leave, and as they left the auditorium by
its far doors, Mark turned around and looked back.

  Less than a dozen figures still stood in a ragged group down by the front rows of the now-empty seats, their ranks stretching the length of the building.

  The audience spilled out onto the grass and pavement of the Section One village, dark figures in clumps and groups, still talking under the newly risen moon of Garnera VI. They moved generally toward the village's original community mess hall—now a gym and sports centre—where food and drink had been laid out. Mark went with the rest, and spent half an hour moving around and speak­ing to people at the mess hall; then he slipped out quietly by himself and returned by ground car to the Residence.

  In the Residence library, his desk was at last cleared of paper. He went around behind it and opened one of its drawers to take out a folder containing some thirty sheets of hand­written paper. In ink on the front of the folder was a brief note in the handwriting of Maura Vols.

  "Basic pattern for ten-shift navigation, Garnera VI to Earth—Property of M. Vols: DO NOT REMOVE FROM FILES!"

  He laid the folder on the desk and sat down to the dictagraph to do a short message, which he folded, put in an unsealed envelope, and left lying on his desk. Taking the folder, he went to his room, where he packed a small luggage case.

  With luggage case and folder, he went once more back out into the night and down to the landing area before the Residence. The colo­nist on duty there did not see him pass, and a few moments later Mark quietly activated the outside controls for the air-lock entrance to one of the heavy scout ships and went in, closing the air lock behind him.

  The scouts, like all the Abruzzi Fourteen ships, were currently on standby ready. He needed only to run the check list and heat the engine and operating equipment. Then the scout was ready to lift, except for a final ob­struction check of its takeoff area.

  Quietly, with the lights in the scout off be­hind him, Mark opened the lock and stepped out. He made one circuit of the ship, confirm­ing the fact that there was nothing in the way of her lift-off, and he was just about to re­enter the lock when a voice spoke behind him.

  "To Earth?"

  Mark turned. Brot floated in his power chair a few feet away, his face obscured in the shadow of the scout's hull.

  "Yes," said Mark.

  For a moment Brot said nothing.

  "It's a damn thing," he said then, "a damn thing, you throwing your life away like this."

  Mark took a step toward him.

  "Dad," he said, "you've got to understand. Earth's going to have to save face. We've got to throw them some kind of bone."

  "The hell we do," said Brot. "You said it yourself—they're better off without the Colo­nies and without supporting a Navy out here. What more do they have to have, icing on their cake?"

  "Yes," said Mark. "Common sense only takes care of part of it. There's another part —the fact that specific people in Earth-City government have been wrong about the Meda V'Dan all these years, putting up with the aliens raiding and stealing when now it turns out any kind of firm action would have put an end to that. They're going to get jumped on by the mass of voters back on Earth, and they'll want a scapegoat, someone to divert atten­tion. If I don't give them one on their front doorstep, they'll come out here to dig one up before they give in, and that could end up wrecking everything. In five years, even, we'll be able to handle the Navy ships, and we'll probably have made contact with the Unknown Races, to say nothing of having got­ten all our Colonies self-supporting. But right now none of that's done, yet. We need time to train spacemen, we need the stored food at Navy Base—and Earth government needs an excuse to give in gracefully. They can blame me for everything everyone back there doesn't like, and take credit themselves for the good points. They have to have that."

  "No," said Brot. He was hunched in the power chair like an old bear growling in a cave mouth.

  "I'm sorry," said Mark. He backed up against the air-lock door and reached for its outside control without taking his eyes off Brot.

  "I'll go with you," said Brot.

  "Now, that would be a waste," said Mark. He felt the outer air-lock door move in away from his fingers, opening.

  "They'd make a scapegoat out of anyone who was with me, too, and one's all they need." He shook his head. "No, I'll go alone."

  "Fake it," said Brot. "There are mountains back a few hundred miles from here where you could hide a scout like that for a hundred years. Remember that canyon with the water­fall where I took you hunting on your twelfth birthday? Ditch that ship there, and I'll come get you two nights from now."

  Mark shook his head.

  "No," he said. "Brot ... Dad, I'm sorry. But I've got to do this. I'm right about the way they'd act back on Earth if I didn't."

  "You're damn wrong," said Brot. "You think ordinary men've got guts like you? You've already knocked them down. They're not going to get up just to be knocked down again."

  "I'm sorry," said Mark. "I'm sorry, but there's only one way to do this so nobody but me gets hurt. Good-bye ..."

  He stepped quickly back into the air-lock, punching the button that opened the inner lock door and closed the outer one. He had been afraid for his strength of will if Brot had talked even a little more, but the door closed without the older man saying another word.

  He turned on the lights inside the scout and went quickly to the control area. He was eager now to get on his way. He sat down in the command chair and initiated the lift-off procedure. For a moment he had a fleeting worry about the closeness of Brot to the ship. But Brot was too old a hand not to have moved back a safe distance.

  To make sure, however, he flipped his view­ing screens on heat response and made a quick scan of the immediate area. There was no human body within fifty yards of him. He lifted ship.

  The scout went up with a smooth roar, which whispered out into silence as he left the atmosphere behind and the engines switched automatically to tail chambers. His viewing screens now showed the night side of Garnera VI, black below him. He drove out to a safe distance, switched drive units, and pro­grammed for the first shift toward Earth, work­ing from the figures in Maura Vols's folder.

  He shifted.

  Abruptly the screens were bright with a dif­ferent view of stars. He sat for a moment, watching them, then reached for the folder a little wearily and began to compare the figures in it for the second shift with the auto­matic position reckoning as the ship's com­puters were already building it in on the plot screen before him. It was a purely reflexive reaction, born of the old familiar habit he had cultivated to guard himself at all times against the mistakes of others. Maura Vols did not make mistakes—particularly where the course she dealt with was from Garnera to Earth...

  He checked. There was a figure in Maura's calculations that had been erased and changed. There should be nothing in that fact alone, but there was something about the figure as it stood now that bothered him, ama­teur navigator that he was. He went to the wide margin of the paper, filled with Maura's own figurings.

  The calculations for the figure he had just read were there. They, too, had been erased and changed. He sat down to check them by his own slow calculations.

  It took him less than ten minutes to find what he sought. The new figure Maura had set down was not only a fractional but a retro­grade figure. Not only was it incorrect for an Earth destination, but followed out it gave him anything but the first jump toward the solar system he had intended. Instead of being three light-years from his starting point, he was now two Garnera-system diameters farther away from Earth than he had been to begin with. Not only that, but he happened to be in exactly the position that would make possible an easy, invisible return to that same mountainous part of Garnera VI which Brot had suggested to him as a hiding place.

  He threw his stylus down in disgust. He could, of course, attempt the task of navi­gating himself to Earth. But, starting from this present, unfamiliar point in space, his chances of losing his way forever among the stars wer
e easily a thousand to one. He was simply too inexperienced a navigator.

  There was a faint sound behind him in the ship. He hesitated, feeling a presence, like a faint pressure oft the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Slowly, he turned and looked.

  In the entrance leading from the cabin level to the pilot room of the ship Ulla was standing gazing back at him. She continued to stand there, even after he had turned to face her.

  "Now you know," she said. "You belong to others beside yourself. Did you think we'd ever let you rob us of yourself, with so much yet to be done?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  "They require guarantees," said Jarl. "Guar­antees we'll profit from the trades, and penalty payments if the guarantees aren't met."

  It was nearly six months since the meeting that had gathered outposters from all the Colonies at Abruzzi Fourteen. It was there­fore almost six months since Mark and Ulla had lifted from Garnera VI in the scout ship. The recently elected Governing Board for Abruzzi Fourteen Colony was gathered to de­cide a matter of some conflict with the gov­ernment of Earth, concerning the use of some of the equipment formerly belonging to Navy Base as direct trade goods with one of the three Unknown Races so far contacted by the colonists. They had met in the library of the former Residence, now the colony headquar­ters building, and there were only two out-posters present—Paul and Brot. Otherwise, the Abruzzi Fourteen voters had elected colo­nists like themselves to govern them—Jarl, Lily, Maura Vols, and Age Hammerschold. Wilkes Danielson would have been elected also, but he was upstairs now, dying, in the last stages of bone cancer.

  Brot sat at the far end of the table by a window, his opinion little in demand at the gathering, and with no great interest in giving it. All his attention was on the landing area. It was spring at Garnera VI, and the first ship­load of trading-station personnel and recolonists were loading for a destination down-galaxy, to set up a post on an uninhabited world not five light-years from one of the Un­known Races. One of the cruisers was waiting, and already most of those to go with her to that destination were aboard. For weeks now Abruzzi Fourteen had swarmed with strange colonists and outposters from other stations as these were sifted for those best qualified to plant this new, farther col­ony. Brot, almost a supernumerary nowa­days, had volunteered for the task of certify­ing those finally chosen.