Big Book of Science Fiction (10 page)

Zinsser shouted, his voice
cracking, “Gun her! Gun her! Throttle up, you idiot!”

Mewhu cut the gun.

Dead stick, the plane winged over
and plunged to the ground. The impact was crushing.

Molly said, quite calmly, “All
Mewhu’s pictures have gone out now,” and slumped unconscious to the ground.

~ * ~

They
got him to the hospital. It was messy—all of it; picking him up, carrying him
to the ambulance—

Jack wished fervently that Molly
had not seen; but she had sat up and cried as they carried him past. He thought
worriedly as he and Zinsser crossed and recrossed in their pacing of the
waiting room, that he would have his hands full with the child when this thing
was all over.

The resident physician came in,
wiping his hands. He was a small man with a nose like a walnut meat. “Who
brought that plane-crash case in here—you?”

“Both of us,” said Zinsser.

“What... who is he?”

“A friend of mine. Is he…will he
live?”

“How should I know?” snapped the
doctor impatiently. “I have never in my experience—” He exhaled through his
nostrils. “The man has two circulatory systems. Two
closed
circulatory
systems, and a heart for each. All his arterial blood looks veinous—it’s
purple. How’d he happen to get hurt?”

“He ate half a box of aspirin out
of my car,” said Jack. “Aspirin makes him drunk. He swiped a plane and piled it
up.”

“Aspirin makes him—” The doctor
looked at each of them in turn. “I won’t ask if you’re kidding me. Just to see
that . .. that thing in there is enough to kid any doctor. How long has that
splint been on his arm?”

Zinsser looked at Jack and Jack
said “About eighteen hours.”

“Eighteen
hours?”
The
doctor shook his head. “It’s so well knitted that I’d say eighteen days.”
Before Jack could say anything he added, “He needs a transfusion.”

“But you can’t! I mean…his blood—”

“I know. Took a sample to type
it. I have two technicians trying to blend chemicals into plasma so we can
approximate it. Both of ‘em called me a liar. But he’s got to have the
transfusion. I’ll let you know.” He strode out of the room.

“There goes one bewildered medico.”

“He’s O.K.,” said Zinsser. “I
know him well. Can you blame him?” 

“For feeling that way? Gosh now.
Harry, I don t know what I’ll do if Mewhu checks out.”

“That fond of him?”

“Oh, if isn’t only that. But to
come so close to meeting a new culture, and then have it slip from our fingers
like this—it’s too much.”

“That jet . . . Jack, without
Mewhu to explain it, I don’t think any scientist will be able to build another.
It would be like . . . like giving a Damascus sword-smith some tungsten and asking
him to draw it into filaments. There the jet would be, hissing when you shove
it toward the ground, sneering at you.”

“And that telepathy—what J. B.
Rhine wouldn’t give to be able to study it!”

“Yeah, and what about his origin?”
Zinsser asked excitedly. “He isn’t from this system. It means that he used an
interstellar drive of some kind, or even that space-time warp the boys write
about.”

“He’s got to live,” said Jack. “He’s
got to, or there ain’t no justice. There are too many things we’ve got to know,
Harry! Look—he’s here. That must mean that some more of his people will come
some day.”

“Yeah. Why haven’t they come
before now?”

“Maybe they have. Charles Fort—”

“Aw, look,” said Zinsser, “don’t
let’s get this thing out of hand.”

The doctor came back. “I think he’ll
make it.”

“Really?”

“Not really. Nothing real about
that character. But from all indications, he’ll be O.K. Responded very
strongly. What does he eat?”

“Pretty much the same as we do, I
think.”

“You think. You don’t seem to
know much about him.”

“I don’t. He only just got here.
No—don’t ask me where from,” said Jack. “You’ll have to ask him.”

The doctor scratched his head. “He’s
out of this world. I can tell you that. Obviously adult, but every fracture but
one is a greenstick break; kind of thing you see on a three-year-old. Transparent
membranes over his . . . what are you laughing at?” he asked suddenly.

Jack had started easily, with a
chuckle, but it got out of control. He roared.

Zinsser said, “Jack! Cut it out.
This is a hosp—”

Jack shoved his hand away. “I ...
I got to,” he said helplessly and went off on another peal.

“You’ve got to what?”

“Laugh,” said Jack, gasping. He
sobered—he more than sobered. “It has to be funny, Harry. I won’t let it be
anything else.”

“What the devil do you—”

“Look, Harry. We assumed a lot
about Mewhu, his culture, his technology, his origin . . . we’ll never know
anything about it!”

“Why? You mean he won’t tell us—”

“He won’t tell us. I’m wrong. He’ll
tell us plenty. But it won’t do any good. Here’s what I mean. Because he’s our
size, because he obviously arrived in a spaceship, because he brought a gadget
or two that’s obviously the product of a highly advanced civilization, we
believe that
he
produced the civilization; that he’s a superior
individual in his own place.”

“Well, he must be.”

“He must be? Harry, did Molly
invent the automobile?”

“No, but—”

“But she drove one through the
back of the garage.”

Light began to dawn on Zinsser’s
moon face. “You mean—”

“It all fits! Remember when Mewhu
figured out how to carry that heavy trapdoor of mine on the jet stick, and then
left the problem half-finished? Remember his fascination with Molly’s yo-yo?
What about that peculiar rapport he has with Molly that he has with no one
else? Doesn’t that begin to look reasonable? Look at Iris’ reaction to
him—almost maternal, though she didn’t know why.”

“The poor little fellow,”
breathed Zinsser. “ I wonder if he thought he was home when he landed?”

“Poor little fellow—sure,” said
Jack, and began to laugh again. “Can Molly tell you how an internal combustion
engine works? Can she explain laminar flow on an airfoil?” He shook his head. “You
wait and see. Mewhu will be able to tell us the equivalent of Molly’s ‘I rode
in the car with Daddy and we went sixty miles an hour.’”

“But how did he get here?”

“How did Molly get through the
back of my garage?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders
helplessly, “About that I don’t know. But his biological reactions do look like
those of a child—and if he is a child, then his rate of tissue restoration will
be high, and I’ll guarantee he’ll live.”

Zinsser groaned. “Much good will
it do us—and him, poor kid. With a kid’s inherent faith in any intelligent
adult anywhere, he’s probably been feeling happily sure we’d get him home
somehow. Well—we haven’t got what it takes, and won’t have for a long, long
time. We don’t know enough to start duplicating that jet of his—and that was
just a little kid’s toy on his world.”

~ * ~

“Daddy—”

“Molly! I thought Mother was—”

“Daddy, I jus’ wannit you to take
this to Mewhu.” She held out her old, scuff-rimmed yo-yo. “Tellum I’m waiting.
Tellum I’ll play with him soon’s he’s better.”

Jack Garry took the toy. “I’ll
tell him, honey.”

<>

~ * ~

NOBODY SAW THE SHIP

by Murray Leinster

THE
landing of the Qul-En ship, a tiny craft no more than fifteen feet in diameter,
went completely unnoticed, as its operator intended. It was armed, of course,
but its purpose was not destruction. If this ship, whose entire crew consisted
of one individual, were successful in its mission then a great ship would come,
wiping out the entire population of cities before anyone suspected the danger.

But this lone Qul-En was seeking
a complex hormone substance which Qul-En medical science said theoretically
must exist, but the molecule of which even the Qul-En- could not synthesize
directly. Yet it had to be found, in great quantity; once discovered, the
problem of obtaining it would be taken up, with the resources of the whole race
behind it. But first it had to be found.

The tiny ship assigned to explore
the Solar System for the hormone wished to pass unnoticed. Its mission of
discovery should be accomplished in secrecy if possible. For one thing, the
desired hormone would be destroyed by contact with the typical Qul-En ray-gun
beam, so that normal methods of securing zoological specimens could not be
used.

The ship winked into being in
empty space, not far from Neptune. It drove for that chilly planet, hovered
about it, and decided not to land. It sped inward toward the sun and touched
briefly on Io, but found no life there. It dropped into the atmosphere of Mars,
and did not rise again for a full week, but the vegetation on Mars is thin and
the animals mere degenerate survivors of once specialized forms. The ship came
to Earth, hovered lightly at the atmosphere’s very edge for a long time, and
doubtless chose its point of descent for reasons that seemed good to its
occupant. Then it landed.

It actually touched Earth at
night. There was no rocket-drive to call attention and by dawn it was well
concealed. Only one living creature had seen it land—a mountain lion. Even so,
by midday the skeleton of the lion was picked clean by buzzards, with ants
tidying up after them. And the Qul-En in the ship was enormously pleased. The
carcass, before being abandoned to the buzzards, had been studied with an
incredible competence. The lion’s nervous system—particularly the mass of
tissue in the skull—unquestionably contained either the desired hormone itself,
or something so close to it that it could be modified and the hormone produced.
It remained only to discover how large a supply of the precious material could
be found on Earth. It was not feasible to destroy a group of animals—say, of
the local civilized race—and examine their bodies, because the hormone would be
broken down by the weapon which allowed of a search for it. So an estimate of
available sources would have to be made by sampling. The Qul-En in the ship
prepared to take samples.

The ship had landed in tumbled
country some forty miles south of Ensenada Springs, national forest territory,
on which grazing-rights were allotted to sheep-ranchers after illimitable red
tape. Within ten miles of the hidden ship there were rabbits, birds, deer,
coyotes, a lobo wolf or two, assorted chipmunks, field-mice, perhaps as many as
three or four mountain lions, one flock of two thousand sheep, one man, and one
dog.

The man was Antonio Menendez. He
was ancient, unwashed, and ignorant, and the official shepherd of the sheep.
The dog was Salazar, of dubious ancestry but sound worth, who actually took
care of the sheep and knew it; he was scarred from battles done in their
defense. He was unweariedly solicitous of the wooly half-wits in his charge.
There were whole hours when he could not find time to scratch himself, because
of his duties. He was reasonably fond of Antonio, but knew that the man did not
really understand sheep.