The Long Result Read online

  ‘Take a memo for tomorrow. I can accept no appointments owing to pressure of work. Make that standard response to non-urgent calls until further notice. And get me a car for eleven-thirty hours.’

  Then I dipped into the reception box of the conveyor.

  There was something else besides the file. There was also a gaudy pamphlet whose arrival must have preceded mine this morning, for sure as hell it hadn’t been in the box when I left yesterday. I unfolded it and stiffened.

  In bold letters it was headed: THE STARS ARE FOR MAN!

  Wording ran in a narrow column down the left of the page. On the right was a picture of an idealized man and woman, both tall and graceful, wearing light spacekit with the helmets thrown back on their shoulders. They were gazing up at a night-black sky in which gleamed a single star of fluorescent ink.

  Half sick, half furious, I read the text. YOU are being robbed – by the fools who have let the harvest of the stars slip away from the rightful owners, HUMAN BEINGS!

  That was how it started. The rest of it was devoted to an attack on BuCult, heavily sown with emotionally loaded terms like coward and incompetent, concluding with a veiled accusation that we were traitors to our species.

  I turned it over. This side bore a cartoon. It showed members of the four most familiar alien races – Regulan, Fomal-hautian, Gamma Ophiuchian and Sigma Sagittarian subtly distorted to appear bestial, helping themselves from a richly stocked storeroom labelled in red letters TERRESTRIAL KNOWLEDGE, while a deformed human labelled BuCult cowered snivelling in the corner.

  Below, there was more text:

  Who discovered starflight? MEN DID!

  Has any other race a right to take advantage of our achievement? NO!

  Why should we go on pandering to animals? YOU TELL US!

  The time has come for men to claim their birthright of SUPREMACY!

  And finally, in small print at the foot of the page: Issued by the Stars Are For Man League.

  By this time I was almost shaking with fury. I punched the phone for Tinescu’s code; when I saw the chief’s face, I didn’t trust myself to speak, but could only hold up the pamphlet.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got one of those too, have you?’ he sighed. ‘Put it in the destructor, the way I did. You have work in hand.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to do anything about it?’ I forced out.

  ‘Such as what? The thing crackpot organisations of that sort most dearly desire is to have official status accorded them as a menace. I had the police check on them three years ago, and the report said they were a two-bit cult, better ignored.’

  ‘But blazes!’ I leaned almost into the screen. ‘This is turning up inside the Bureau! I found mine in the conveyor box. The conveyors don’t connect to the outside tubes.’

  ‘Oh, so was mine!’ he rapped. ‘I’m having it investigated – but there are a dozen ways someone could get in and plant them, using a trumped-up excuse. Roald, swallow your righteous indignation and get back to those damned Tau Cetians!’

  He broke the circuit. I stuffed the pamphlet, as directed, into the destructor slot, and at once regretted not having torn it to pieces first; I felt that strongly about it. Then my watch caught my eye, and I suddenly realized that I had to absorb everything we knew about an entire alien race and prime myself to courier standard in barely an hour and a half.

  Bastard Tinescu … But I slapped open the file.

  As I’d expected, it was a randomly compiled, confused mess of assorted facts. The Starhomers simply didn’t have our century-long experience to help them organize their data on alien cultures. The photographs, of course, were excellent, and there were plenty of them. Beneath the first, which showed a member of the new species, there had been affixed a slip of tactile-true plastic, a Starhomer invention. It was dull, and the date stamped on it showed it was overdue for re-energizing, but I received three distinct sensations when I touched it: firmness, dryness and a slight chill.

  The last could be due to the low energy level, or genuine. The environmental data said it was genuine. The Tau Cetians liked an almost sub-arctic climate …

  I raced ahead as fast as I could go.

  None the less, when eleven-thirty overtook me and my car was signalled to take me to the spaceport, I was still far from the end of my self-briefing. I tucked the file under my arm and rose; I’d just have to do the rest in the car.

  On the way out, I pressed the annunciator button of Jacky’s office, next to mine, and asked if I could see him a moment. He invited me in with a chuckle, having apparently recovered his habitual good-humour.

  ‘What did the chief want you for? Bawl you out for being late, hm?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I didn’t want to chat, just to ask one favour. ‘He’s given me a job that’ll tie me up most of the day and I was supposed to have lunch with Patricia at the Kingdom.’

  ‘You want me to keep the date for you? It’ll be a pleasure. Though the way you cling to that woman, I’m amazed you trust me enough to ask me.’

  I felt myself flushing, which was ridiculous. I tried to cover my embarrassment with a bantering answer.

  ‘Exposing you to temptation, Jacky – that’s what it is. You know I’ve always had my eye on Madeleine! Well, thanks a million. I must open jets and get to the spaceport.’

  ‘Hey!’ The call caught me within range of the door’s sensors. It dithered with a soft mechanical complaint over the dilemma of staying open or sliding shut again. ‘Roald, Madeleine and I are giving a little party tonight – about eight or nine people is all. We start at nineteen-thirty. Would you like to come?’

  ‘Well…’ I hesitated, wondering whether to invent a previous arrangement for myself and Patricia, in order to have her all to myself for the evening. Then I realized with wry amusement that Jacky was absolutely right – I was clinging to her with as much tenacity as a teenager to his first girl, at the age when one can’t conceive of the second time being as wonderful as this first one.

  Mistaking the reason for my not answering, Jacky added hastily, ‘I meant you and Patricia both, of course!’

  ‘Look, ask her over lunch, will you?’ I said at last. ‘If she hasn’t set her heart on anything special, she can accept for both of us. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he grinned, and waved a dark brown hand before bending back to his work.

  The door, finding its problem resolved, shut with the mechanical counterpart of a sigh of relief.

  3

  In the exact centre of the eight-mile circle of cleared ground which formed the spaceport, there was a smaller concrete circle a mere thousand yards across, founded direct onto bedrock to take the enormous deadweight of the starships. Its surface was blackened and scarred with the ferocious heat of the jets which had settled on it, but the grass around grew green and unmarked.

  None the less, there was always a chance of an error developing in the remote controls which took over the visiting ships at the edge of the stratosphere and guided them to a safe and precise Earthfall. For that reason the port buildings crouched back at the very rim of the field, were firmly anchored to rock and mostly hidden below ground, and had walls and roofs all of ten feet thick. Surrounding them was an impenetrable fence, with only three gates to the road.

  Word had apparently got around that something special was happening today. The routine traffic handled by the port always attracted a few sightseers, of course; it was a good place to bring the kids for an hour or two in the hope of seeing a Lunar freighter take off, or a ferry bring in a load from one of the mining colonies on Mars or Venus. But nowadays those were Earth’s back yard, a matter of mere days away even at sublight speeds. The landing of a starship, though: that was really something!

  Moreover, though spring for the northern hemisphere wasn’t officially due until tomorrow, the weather men had decided to give us a preview, and it was a warm clear day with three or four high white clouds gleaming in the sunshine.

  Consequently the last couple of miles of the journey
were a crawl through thousands of close-packed vehicles. The snub, sheathed antenna on the nose of my car wove its search pattern to the accompaniment of the Bureau’s official siren – so rarely used, that this was the first time I’d ever been in a vehicle uttering it. The noise drew the stares of the crowd, and fathers held their children up to look at me. I tried to adopt an official expression, but I was frankly worried. I knew that if anything else had gone wrong since Tinescu briefed me he could have called me in the car and warned me, which he hadn’t done; nonetheless, my guts were tight with nervous anticipation.

  I’d been gazing at the horde of sightseers for some moments before a curious fact penetrated my mind. Among them there was a strong sprinkling of the distinctive red uniform of spacecrew, and that was incongruous. Most of the spacemen I knew were only too glad to stay out of sight of a port all the time they were between trips.

  No time to puzzle over that, though. The car had picked up the halt pattern being broadcast by a police beacon at the nearest gate. Atop the beacon was an illuminated screen saying LANDING IN SIX MINUTES. Even as I looked it changed to FIVE.

  A guard in the gatehouse recognized my siren and I thought he was going to cut the beacon so I could pass. Instead, he came doubling out of the door and rapped on my window for it to be lowered.

  ‘Are you from BuCult?’ he demanded.

  ‘That’s right, and I’m in a hurry,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting some aliens. There should be a truck here from the Ark, and a team of technicians —’

  ‘There’s been some kind of trouble with them,’ the guard broke in. ‘The port director wants you at his office right away.’

  Blazes! It was all I could do to look anxious rather than scared as the guard cut the beacon and gave a verbal order to my car, directing it to the office where they were expecting me. The trip involved a full-speed dive down a ramp to the underground ring road of the port, a half-mile race along a brightly-lit tunnel, and a brake-squealing halt in a parking embrasure labelled RESERVE FOR DIRECTOR RATTRAY’S CAR.

  There was no one in sight. This close to landing-time, all the port personnel must be at their posts. I could only guess where to go. The first of the nearby doors which I tried gave on to an empty waiting-room. But the second —

  I froze in astonishment. This was a small office without windows. On the left stood Director Rattray, leaning against the wall. On the right were two tough young men in port controllers’ uniforms; each held a gun, with which they were covering three sullen young men in the middle of the room, wearing shabby casual clothes and defiant expressions.

  Rattray straightened the instant I appeared. ‘Vincent?’ he snapped, and on my nod continued, ‘I was afraid you might not make it here before the landing was due. Frankly, I didn’t expect anyone from your Bureau to be covering the landing – even if there are aliens aboard, which was news to me this morning, doesn’t the courier usually handle them all the way to the Ark?’

  ‘Usually. This is a special case – a first visit, after all.’ I didn’t say anything about the possibility of the Starhomer courier breaking down under the strain, which was uppermost in my own mind. ‘What did you want me for, anyhow?’

  ‘It looks as though you’re not the only welcoming committee,’ Rattray answered grimly. ‘These young idiots were in the crowd to watch the landing when your alien wagon drove up with the Bureau name on it. According to them, they didn’t do anything – but your truck is now in our workshops for some emergency repairs to restore the airtight seal on the afterpart; seven people are hospitalized with chlorine poisoning, and the police are on their way.’

  ‘You mean’ – I grasped the shred of the implication – ‘They deliberately crashed our alien wagon?’

  ‘It was an accident!’ The nearest of the captives, a gangling fellow of North European extraction, spoke up loudly.

  ‘Quiet, you,’ said one of the men with guns.

  ‘They claim the collision reflex on their car failed.’ Rattray amplified. ‘But one of my techs took a look at the car after the smash, and he says the controls were on manual. Accident or not, they have a charge of reckless driving coming. No one has a right to use manual in a crowd like that.’

  ‘I switched when I saw we were heading straight for the truck,’ said the gangling man. ‘And there’s no one who’ll say different.’

  ‘What made you think it wasn’t accidental?’ I demanded of Rattray. ‘Why are they under armed guard?’

  ‘Partly because they tried to lose themselves in the crowd. Partly because of these things.’

  From a table near by he picked up a folder. He shook it. A shower of brightly-coloured leaflets cascaded out. I took one and then another and another. All, without exception, were published by the Stars Are For Man League.

  ‘Seen hand-outs like that before?’ Rattray asked.

  ‘I sure as hell have,’ I muttered. ‘This very morning, as a matter of fact. You think they’re worth taking seriously, do you?’

  ‘Why not? Anyone who really believes men could set up an interstellar empire is ripe for psychotherapy, and somebody who commits a criminal act in support of that belief is not just ripe but rotten.’

  The phone on the office’s one small desk sounded. He tapped the switch. Careful not to get in the way of one of the guns, I moved to peer at the screen and saw it was the guard from the gatehouse calling.

  ‘Police got here, director. Want them to come right around?’

  ‘Of course! Why should they —? ’

  He got his answer from the even tones of the announcer on the P A, giving us the same message that was going out in every building of the port and from speakers at hundred-yard intervals around the perimeter.

  ‘Landing imminent. Personnel in exposed positions lower safety blinds. Crash and rescue crews on red standby red-red-red standby. Secure sound insulation. Spectators are warned that looking at the descending ship without dark glasses may result in partial blindness. Keep your mouths open to equalize pressure caused by the noise. Landing imminent.’

  ‘Well, sir?’ the guard at the gatehouse murmured.

  ‘They’ll have to wait,’ Rattray sighed. He glanced at me. ‘So help me, this business had almost driven the landing out of my head. And I particularly wanted to be in the control room during it.’

  He snapped his fingers at the men with guns. ‘Coles, Spanoghe! Keep an eye on these three beauties. Don’t let them even scratch themselves before I get back, okay? Want to come down to control with me, Vincent?’

  ‘I think I’d better go see about our wagon,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you can’t. Till the landing’s over, you won’t be allowed to move around on your own – you might open a wrong door and put somebody off his concentration. Have you been in our control room before?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t.’

  ‘Take your chance while you have it, then. It’s worth watching our remote supervisors at work. This way!’

  I picked up one of the glossy Stars Are For Man leaflets and followed him.

  At the end of a wide corridor a monitor glared at us from the centre of a panel labelled:

  REMOTE CONTROL CENTRE

  No admission unless by authority

  Rattray put his eye to the scanner; the monitor identified his retinal pattern and the door slid back. We squeezed into the tiny cubicle beyond, the other side of which was also a door.

  ‘Airlock?’ I whispered. ‘What for?’

  Rattray shook his head. ‘Soundproofing. Keep your voice down. I have one of my top men on this job, but even he can be distracted by outside noise.’

  The inner door had already slid aside. My first reaction was surprise at the smallness of this, the heart of the port. I’d had a vague impression that it must be like the main computer hall of the Bureau’s Integration department. Instead, we emerged into a room not more than twenty feet square. From the walls, broad shelves were built out, covered with switches; four operators sat at them, headphones clasped
to their skulls, eyes fixed on green-black cathode display screens. Against each screen was a label: the nearest read VERTICAL, the one on the right LATERAL I, the one on the far wall LATERAL II, and the remaining one was not yet turned on.

  The only light came from the screens, and from a tall, square column of plastic, two feet on a side, which rose to a height of five feet in the centre of the floor. Its top yard was translucent and shed a clear greenish radiance in the depths of which gleamed, not far from the top of the column, a single much brighter green pip. After a moment’s examination, I caught on. It was a three-dimensional master projection of which the wall screens showed single aspects.

  Rattray had gone around the column. I followed him, and found there was a fifth man in the room, seated in a chair facing the projector. His strongly Asiatic features were made ghastly by the green glow.

  ‘Supervisor Susumama,’ Rattray said in a low tone. ‘Sue, Roald Vincent of BuCult.’

  The Supervisor nodded without taking his eyes off the bright pip in the column. Rattray drew me aside.

  ‘That’s the incoming ship,’ he explained softly. ‘It’s just in range of the remotes now – about five hundred and fifty miles above us. The vertical scale is exaggerated compared with the lateral, of course. If you want the true relationship you have to understand the wall screens, and that takes months of intensive training.’

  I nodded and glanced at my watch. By my reckoning, the landing process was at least due or even overdue to begin. And at that very moment a booming voice with a strong Starhome accent filled the room.

  ‘Earthport One, Earthport One, this is Starship Algenib. Are you ready for us?’

  The words were faintly sneering as though with typical Starhomer arrogance the speaker fully expected to be told he had caught the landing supervisor unprepared.

  Starhomer?

  Abruptly the significance of that struck home, and I turned excitedly to Rattray with a question on the tip of my tongue. But he silenced me with a scowl, and I realized that the very air was ringing with the overstrained tension of this unique occasion. Exactly how I’d managed to avoid making the connexion before, I didn’t know – pure oversight, perhaps, due to my preoccupation with Viridis and dislike of Starhome. But it had been common knowledge for several months that the Starhomers, who had hitherto relied on vessels bought from us, were building their own first starship.