One Hundred. Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov
of life.
Not yet. Not yet. . . .
He clamped down hard upon his feelings. Once before, these life fragments had come, and the rest at home had tried to help them—too quickly. It had not worked. This time they must wait.
If only these fragments did not discover him.
They had not, so far. They had not noticed him lying in the corner of the pilot room. No one had bent down to pick up and discard him. Earlier, it had meant he could not move. Someone might have turned and stared at the stiff wormlike thing, not quite six inches long. First stare, then shout, and then it would all be over.
But now, perhaps, he had waited long enough. The takeoff was long past. The controls were locked; the pilot room was empty.
It did not take him long to find the chink in the armor leading to the recess where some of the wiring was. They were dead wires.
The front end of his body was a rasp that cut in two a wire of just the right diameter. Then, six inches away, he cut it in two again. He pushed the snipped-off section of the wire ahead of him packing it away neatly and invisibly into a corner of recess. Its outer covering was a brown elastic material and its core was gleaming, ruddy metal. He himself could not reproduce the core, of course, but that was not necessary. It was enough that the pellicle that covered him had been carefully bred to resemble a wire’s surface.
He returned and grasped the cut sections of the wire before and behind. He tightened against them as his little suction disks came into play. Not even a seam showed.
They could not find him now. They could look right at him and see only a continuous stretch of wire.
Unless they looked very closely indeed and noted that, in a certain spot on this wire, there were two tiny patches of soft and shining green fur.
"It is remarkable," said Dr. Weiss, "that little green hairs can do so much."
Captain Loring poured the brandy carefully. In a sense, this was a celebration. They would be ready for the jump through hyperspace in two hours, and after that, two days would see them back on Earth.
"You are convinced, then, the green fur is the sense organ?" he asked.
"It is," said Weiss. Brandy made him come out in splotches, but he was aware of the need of celebration—quite aware. "The experiments were conducted under difficulties, but they were quite significant."
The captain smiled stiffly. " ‘Under difficulties’ is one way of phrasing it. I would never have taken the chances you did to run them."
"Nonsense. We’re all heroes aboard this ship, all volunteers, all great men with trumpet, fife, and fanfare. You took the chance of coming here."
"You were the first to go outside the barrier."
"No particular risk involved," Weiss said. "I burned the ground before me as I went, to say nothing of the portable barrier that surrounded me. Nonsense, Captain. Let’s all take our medals when we come back; let’s take them without attempt at gradation. Besides, I’m a male."
"But you’re filled with bacteria to here." The captain’s hand made a quick, cutting gesture three inches above his head. "Which makes you as vulnerable as a female would be."
They paused for drinking purposes. "Refill?" asked the captain.
"No, thanks. I’ve exceeded my quota already."
"Then one last for the spaceroad." He lifted his glass in the general direction of Saybrook’s Planet, no longer visible, its sun only a bright star in the visiplate. "To the little green hairs that gave Saybrook his first lead."
Weiss nodded. "A lucky thing. We’ll quarantine the planet, of course."
The captain said, "That doesn’t seem drastic enough. Someone might always land by accident someday and not have Saybrook’s insight, or his guts. Suppose he did not blow up his ship, as Saybrook did. Suppose he got back to some inhabited place."
The captain was somber. "Do you suppose they might ever develop interstellar travel on their own?"
"I doubt it. No proof, of course. It’s just that they have such a completely different orientation. Their entire organization of life has made tools unnecessary. As far as we know, even a stone ax doesn’t exist on the planet."
"I hope you’re right. Oh, and, Weiss, would you spend some time with Drake?"
"The Galactic Press fellow?"
"Yes. Once we get back, the story of Saybrook’s Planet will be released for the public and I don’t think it would be wise to oversensationalize it. I’ve asked Drake to let you consult with him on the story. You’re a biologist and enough of an authority to carry weight with him. Would you oblige?"
"A pleasure."
The captain closed his eyes wearily and shook his head.
"Headache, Captain?"
"No. Just thinking of poor Saybrook."
He was weary of the ship. Awhile back there had been a queer, momentary sensation, as though he had been turned inside out. It was alarming and he had searched the minds of the keen-thinkers for an explanation. Apparently the ship had leaped across vast stretches of empty space by cutting across something they knew as "hyperspace." The keen-thinkers were ingenious.
But—he was weary of the ship. It was such a futile phenomenon. These life fragments were skillful in their constructions, yet it was only a measure of their unhappiness, after all. They strove to find in the control of inanimate matter what they could not find in themselves. In their unconscious yearning for completeness, they built machines and scoured space, seeking, seeking . . .
These creatures, he knew, could never, in the very nature of things, find that for which they were seeking. At least not until such time as he gave it to them. He quivered a little at the thought.
Completeness!
These fragments had no concept of it, even. "Completeness" was a poor word.
In their ignorance they would even fight it. There had been the ship that had come before. The first ship had contained many of the keen-thinking fragments. There had been two varieties, life producers and the sterile ones. (How different this second ship was. The keen-thinkers were all sterile, while the other fragments, the fuzzy-thinkers and the no-thinkers, were all producers of life. It was strange.)
How gladly that first ship had been welcomed by all the planet! He could remember the first intense shock at the realization that the visitors were fragments and not complete. The shock had give way to pity, and the pity to action. It was not certain how they would fit into the community, but there had been no hesitation. All life was sacred and somehow room would have been made for them—for all of them, from the large keen-thinkers to the little multipliers in the darkness.
But there had been a miscalculation. They had not correctly analyzed the course of the fragments’ ways of thinking. The keen-thinkers became aware of what had been done and resented it. They were frightened, of course; they did not understand.
They had developed the barrier first, and then, later, had destroyed themselves, exploding their ships to atoms.
Poor, foolish fragments.
This time, at least, it would be different. They would be saved, despite themselves.
*
John Drake would not have admitted it in so many words, but he was very proud of his skill on the photo-typer. He had a travel-kit model, which was a six-by-eight, featureless dark plastic slab, with cylindrical bulges on either end to hold the roll of thin paper. It fitted into a brown leather case, equipped with a beltlike contraption that held it closely about the waist and at one hip. The whole thing weighed less than a pound.
Drake could operate it with either hand. His fingers would flick quickly and easily, placing their light pressure at exact spots on the blank surface, and, soundlessly, words would be written.
He