The Eternal Enemy (2 page)

“Well?” Van Pelt demanded.

“I'm not sure,” he said.

A gleam lit Van Pelt's eyes as he stopped pacing and stared at Markos. “Then they won't fight?”

“There's no way to be sure.”

“Not sure?”

Markos shrugged. “They're Habers, Captain—not people.”

“Not sure? You're the one who's spent the most time with them, dragging them in and out of the lab, running tests, wasting our resources on these things, these creatures. Don't you realize what you've done? You've shown them the layout of our ship. We're in constant danger now. There's no telling when the attack will come.”

Only because it somehow fits your fears, Markos thought. Only because it makes it easier for you. You won't have to deal with these creatures.

“Well? What about the rest of you?” Van Pelt asked. “With Markos leading the campaign—he should be able to whip up something horrible and appropriate—we can handle them easily.”

A vote followed, a mockery, a sham ruled by their fear of Van Pelt's insanity. Everyone knew why the vote was requested: Van Pelt could see which crew members bore watching. Markos proved to be the only one foolish enough to vote against Van Pelt. If the others had stood up to him, had united against his plan, he could have been handled. NASA 2's training had proven out—the psychologists had programmed the xenobiologist to feel for the creatures, while the crew was programmed to care about getting back, getting on with it, following the Captain's orders. Sure, Markos thought, only what happened to the Captain's programming?

No one mentioned Markos's having taken a stand. No one went out of his way to avoid him, but no one talked to Markos unless he'd been addressed. No one was willing to take the chance.

Markos's duties increased in quantity and decreased in quality; he had to stand additional long, boring watches. What little free time his duties allowed was spent in the bunk massager as he attempted to sleep. He never had time for the geltanks.

Van Pelt got stranger as the first months on Gandji passed. He seemed plagued by doubts and uncertainty about the Habers but for one point: He was certain they posed a real threat to Mankind. The crew walked on tiptoes, staying as far out of Van Pelt's way as possible, while Cathy Straka, the only other person with xenobiology training, made extremely slow progress carrying out Van Pelt's plan.

Markos was kept away, but he knew what was going on. A biological solution was much preferred by Van Pelt. Not even he was insane enough to try to burn the entire race out of existence. Engineering a little virus, one that would multiply quickly and easily, was a much easier and cleaner way of handling “the problem,” as Van Pelt called it.

Straka knew enough about the Habers' biology to attempt a mass genocide. She had been there for most of the examinations and had witnessed them reproducing. Three Habers were required for mating—there were no real sexes until mating had begun. One Haber in the group performed as a flow-bridge. The flow-bridge was the most delicate and important of the three during mating. The two Habers would stand on either side of the neuter Haber and establish physical contact with it. Chemical components and genetic materials flowed from the two Habers by an osmoticlike pressure and met in the flow-bridge, mingling, mixing together. From what Markos could surmise by viewing the process through every instrument available and studying the holograms he made, the central Haber, the flow-bridge, could then consciously alter the genetic material, make any genetic-engineering changes it felt were necessary, then push the altered, fertile materials back into the other two Habers. Gestation was fairly quick—three months—and the two impregnated Habers gave birth to between one and three offspring each.

Markos knew that damaging the chain at its middle point, the Haber acting as flow-bridge, could wipe out the entire race. But he also realized they were mutating rapidly and he hoped their system of reproduction might be changed by the time Van Pelt got his plan into motion.

The following day, while Markos was standing watch, he spotted a group of first-cycle Habers, an odd combination of youthful bodies and graceful movements. Van Pelt appeared by his side, weapon in hand.

“Saw them approaching on the screens.”

Markos nodded. “Just a young group, curious about us.”

“You're mistaken. Ask Straka. She'll tell you this is a scouting party, no doubt carrying concealed weapons.”

Markos was about to laugh at the Captain's attempt at humor when he saw Van Pelt raise his weapon to the firing position.

“They're not armed!” Markos said.

“Sure they are. See the one on the end there?” he asked, flicking the weapon toward it.

Markos looked but saw nothing irregular.

“Not only are they armed, but they're closing in on us.”

Van Pelt's weapon emitted a bright, tight beam of emerald light, and the Habers toppled to the ground, sliced in half one by one, in a few horrifying instants. The grass in the area smoldered. Van Pelt returned to the ship as the breeze carried the scent of charred meat to Markos's nostrils.

He was sick to his stomach.

There had been talk, rumors, probably started by Van Pelt, of taking over and exploiting the planet once the Habers were gone. He'd made noises about cutting in all the crew members for shares. Markos no longer cared if the rumors were true. He'd seen enough to know Van Pelt meant business. He threw down his weapon and ran for one of the screamers, then headed for the mountains at top speed.

And then Markos remembered the rest and sat up on the bed in the cavern. Memories rushed back in one tremendous, painful surge—the boulder! The impact and explosion, then blackness. But he couldn't have survived that crash.

He started to tremble.

“What's—” he started to ask but stopped when he heard his own voice. It was a rough, gravelly rasp—bubbling and liquid, totally different from what his voice should have been. He was shocked, and a hot flash, like a river of molten metal, ran diagonally through his chest.

He looked at his hands. They were different too. Deformed. Ugly. Wrinkled and cracked and the wrong kind of skin and mottled and spotted with reds, greens, and oranges and blues and he could see right through the skin and into his arms and legs and chest.

He screamed a frothing, gargled, piteous wail.

2

Markos waited. It was what he did best. He figured that if there were ever prizes awarded for having the most patience, he would probably win one. Waiting. That was all NASA 2 was about.

They'd told him he would get a chance to meet alien creatures. They told him he would get the chance to fly in the first and only faster-than-light ship ever developed. They told him he could go to Tau Ceti and find out what happened to that missing guy, the one who disappeared in that pod.

But all they had done so far was stick Markos in a geltank and have their computers throw all different kinds of imaginary aliens at him to see if he were xenophobic.

He sat on the edge of his bunk, looking across the small room at Jackson, one of the others “handpicked” to make the trip on the
Paladin
. How do you select people to man a ship that might blow up the instant the f-t-l drive is engaged? Do you pick expendable people? Or qualified ones? And what if they don't come back?

Markos picked up the magazine he'd placed on the bedstand, the one he'd bought in the spaceport on Earth. The voice chips printed on the magazine's cover had said something that caught his attention, something about an exposé and NASA 2. It was some fifty years after the pod had left, but the arrival of the telemetered information from the pod made this guy, Jacob Galley, news again. It also implied that the NASA 2 selection criteria were not exactly what might be expected.

Markos read it.…

Jacob Galley started life like most city children, but somewhere in the process of personality development, something special happened. His parents had always considered themselves lucky to be able to afford a private apartment in a good neighborhood, even though they earned the right by each working two jobs. The other four families who lived in the apartment considered themselves equally fortunate. Fifteen people shared meals, entertainment, and living space in a happy communal spirit until Jacob was four
.

It started innocently enough. Jacob took to hiding under the furniture instead of playing in the common areas, locked in his own little world. And there were times he would sit in dark closets, huddled in a corner, eyes closed. Everyone thought it a little strange but since his odd behavior violated no laws, no formal complaints were registered. If his parents had had the extra money, they could have sent him to a clinic to be cured, but the extra money was simply never there
.

As he grew, he went to school like all other children. He had a good time there, sitting in his private cubicle, headset plugged into the teacher, absorbing knowledge and developing understanding. He stayed later than most children, in no rush to get home to spend time with his extended family. By the time he reached his teens, Jacob's personality was set
.

He had developed into a loner, and yet people liked him well enough. He was an attractive young man with a genuine, disarming smile, soft-spoken and intelligent. He just didn't socialize well. He graduated a chemical engineer, near the top of his class, and his parents were proud. The fourteen other people he lived with were proud, too, and they all attended his graduation. His real problems started after he left school, though
.

Work didn't afford him the time or opportunity for privacy, and his living quarters were even more crowded and difficult for him than his family's apartment had been. His desire for solitude was interpreted as unhappiness by the people he lived with and the people he worked with. Each group did its best to pull him out of his quiet retreats into their own realities. Jacob appreciated their well-meaning intentions and realized he was fighting a losing battle
.

When the company for which he worked landed a contract with the government, the opportunity for a transfer to the space colony arose. He was well qualified for the job, and the people he worked with recommended his transfer with great enthusiasm thinking it was a solution to the problem of how to deal with him. His eagerness to go into space was due solely to the living arrangements aboard the colony
—
he would have to share his living quarters with only three other people
.

While Jacob lived his quiet life, NASA 2 was created. NASA had grown too large to be properly managed; their responsibilities included the space colony, attempts to mine asteroids, and other projects limited to the Solar System. NASA 2 was formed to explore deep space, to venture out beyond the gravitational field of Sol and determine if there really was any life out there
.

NASA 2 searched for two years and three months until they found just the right people to man their deep-space probes. The psychologists had designed a model of the perfect personality, a personality capable of handling the elastic years of solitude, the enforced sense of mission, and the tremendous responsibility that went along with the mission's potential
.

When they met Jacob Galley, they knew they had a potential match
.

He had been working on board the space colony. He was found hiding in the lower levels, cramped into a tiny locker, when his roommates reported him missing. The doctors who examined him saw that his disorder was easily treated and filed a standard fitness report. NASA saw the report and brought it to the attention of NASA 2
.

NASA 2 ordered a few intensive treatments in the geltanks. Their doctors regressed him, unwound his experiences, then regressed him some more, but when they brought him forward, they eliminated the negative associations of being a loner, eliminated the social stigma. The doctors took care to keep the things that made Jacob different
.

While he was in the geltank, completely submerged in the fluid vat, the psychologists modified him to bring his personality closer to the ideal. They provided him with a reinforced sense of self-importance and memories of people, places, and things that had never existed for him, experiences that would have been impossible for him but necessary to survive the empty years that lay ahead
.

There were lies, false memories of training sessions in NASA 2's nonexistent underground complex on the Moon. There was a memory of a man created within Jacob, a Brian Taggert, a man who was Jacob's roommate in this fiction the psychologists wove. There were interactions with people of all nationalities, sexes, and physical abnormalities added to his memory. There was a theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of all human language, a knowledge burned into his synoptical connections. In the years of solitude Jacob was submerged in the ship's geltank, the ship could use these memories to stimulate him, to ward off the inevitable return of solitude
.

By the time they were finished with Jacob, his new memories fit him comfortably. When he stepped out of the training geltank, he felt as if he were the same person he'd always been
.

Jacob Galley was perfect for the mission NASA 2 needed done, for the years of solitude and enforced self-discipline
.

Six sectors of space demanded exploration and explorers. There were planetary bodies circling nearby stars, and these needed to be visited by a human being. The stars were all neighbors: Tau Ceti, Alpha Centauri A and B, Epsilon Eridani, 61 Cygni A, 61 Cygni B, and Epsilon Indi. The drive units NASA 2 had developed were capable of reaching the farthest of these, capable of speeds slightly in excess of 0.25 c, 46,500 miles per second. The pods would accelerate until this speed was achieved and then “coast” until arrival. The trip to Tau Ceti could be made in under fifty years. Everything was falling into place for NASA 2
—
exploring the neighboring stars with a human being along for the ride, just in case
.