The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories, Page 2

  But he knew that he would send and that they would come.

  "I WAS COMPARING the two reports, my friend," said Mazechazz, "but I am not so familiar with your planetary ecology as I should be. When Mureess applied for admission to the Combine, I requested a copy of their secret directive from Biology, but I had never seen the older report until you gave it to me just now. Can you explain the names to me, if I read them off?"

  "Go ahead," said Powers, sipping his sherbet noisily. He seldom wondered what alcohol would feel like any longer. Most Old Believers had tried it when young and disliked it.

  "I've already looked up the names I didn't know," he said, "so start the Mureessan list first."

  "Great White Shark, or Man-eater," read Mazechazz. "He sounds obvious and nasty."

  "He is," said Powers. He put down his glass. "Remember, as usual, the birth rate has been at least tripled. An increased metabolism means increased food consumption, and no shark on Terra was ever full. This brute runs forty feet when allowed, in size, that is. A giant carnivorous fish, very tough."

  "Number two is Architeuthis, or Giant Squid," continued the Lyran. "Is that a fish? Sorry, but on my world, well, fish are curiosities."

  "It's an eyed, carnivorous mollusk with enormous arms, ten of them and it reaches eighty feet long at least. Swims well, too."

  There was a moment of silence, then Mazechazz continued. "Smooth dogfish."

  "A tiny shark," said Powers, "about three and a half feet in size. They school in thousands on Terra and eat anything that swims. Just blind agile appetite. They have a high normal breeding rate."

  "Finally we have a Baleran Salamander, so you're free of one curse, anyway. Balera, I believe, is hellishly wet, although I don't know much about it."

  Powers rose and stretched. "He's a little fellow with six legs and a leathery hide. A nuisance on Balera, which is the equivalent of a Terran swamp. He eats every vegetable known, dry or fresh, and, being only two inches long is hard to see. He doesn't bite, just eats things and breeds. There must be millions by now, on each island of Mureess. Then the eggs get carried about. They're tough and adhesive. You can guess what their warehouses looked like."

  "At least two million starved before the Council gave in," resumed the Lyran sadly. "But they gave in all the way and abolished caste privilege before the first relief ship even arrived. They'll be full members shortly. And this older report?"

  "Read the names," said Powers. He was staring out of the Club window at the stars. "They fed us our own dirt, because we hadn't eliminated all our competitors. Disease means microorganisms, so you choose the largest animal possible with efficiency, that is. Just read the list. My grandparents died, you know, but it had to be done, or we'd have destroyed ourselves. The Combine was a far greater blessing to us than it ever was to Mureess, I can assure you of that!"

  He listened in silence as the Lyran read.

  "Desmodus, the vampire bat,

  Rattus Norvegicus, the common rat,

  Mus Domesticus, the common mouse,

  The Common Locust,

  Sylvilagus, the Cottontail Rabbit,

  Passer Domesticus, the House Sparrow,

  Sturnus Vulgarus, the European Starling."

  Powers sat down and stared at his friend. "Terran life by comparison with many other worlds is terribly tough because we have so many different environments, I suppose. Hence its use on Mureess. Of course, the Combine increased breeding rates again, but adapting that bat to stand cold was the last straw," he said. "The rest of them were all ready and waiting, but the bat was tropical. We'll start with him. Desmodus is a small flying mammal about ..."

  The End

  Such Stuff As Dreams ...

  Analog – January 1968

  The entrance exam for the mysterious Survey & Contact division didn't take long—but it was a dilly, and everlasting as Death if you flubbed it!

  COMMANDER William Jahangir Powers had reached a point where he was more than simply bored and annoyed.

  He was neither a fool, nor a person who lived solely for physical action. He was a combat veteran with a distinguished service record and at the age of thirty-six, a very good officer indeed. His opinion of himself was only fair, but he had never felt outclassed by too many of his fellows. Now, however, he was feeling extremely angry.

  He looked around for the fiftieth time. The room in which he sat was small and contained a plain desk and chair, a drab sofa and a monotone rug. He had come in the only door visible in the gray wall and now had been sitting for an hour on the sofa. Across the room behind the desk, sat a fat, stupid-looking woman of about fifty, with gray hair tied up in a bun and a mottled complexion. She had a figure like a lard can and wore a smocklike dress of olive green, ill-suited to her complexion. She might have been from Earth and might not. Humanoids capable of interbreeding with Terrans had been found four times elsewhere, possibly due to independent evolution. No one knew. In any event, this one was slowly writing something by hand on a pad, and had not even looked up when he had come in. She had grunted a few words, waved at the sofa, and continued writing, as she was still doing.

  Powers stretched and yawned. His trim black-and-silver uniform felt sticky, and he was unpleasantly warm. The temperature must be at least 85° Farenheit in the small office, and he wondered where he was and grew thoughtful. Survey & Contact had a strange reputation among the regular services and did little by accident. He decided to mention it—the heat.

  "Always this hot in here, Madam?"

  An opaque, beady gaze lifted from the desk and focused on him. A nasal whine answered.

  "Survey & Contact maintains perfect temperature control throughout Headquarters. We cannot be continually annoyed and questioned by visitors if any work is to be done." With that, the woman resumed her slow progress with the scriber, paying Powers no further attention.

  Feeling silly at having spoken, he examined his wristchron—2:00 p.m., local time. He had been in the office almost two hours, waiting and doing nothing.

  WHEN THE order to report to Survey & Contact Headquarters had appeared on his desk early that same morning, he had been processing some routine requests for equipment. The official summons was blunt and directed him to be at the entrance—which entrance was not stated—at 11:45 a.m. When he had finished reading it, he suddenly realized that it was already 10:00 a.m., local time, and also that he had no idea where on Sirius Prime Base the Survey front office was located. He examined the summons and found it had no directions on it and also no time or date of dispatch, which for an official document was unusual, to say the least. To add to his annoyance, as he stared at the thin sheet of buff paper, it began to dissolve before his astonished eyes. In two seconds a little dust was the only evidence that any such document had appeared on his desk!

  All at once, the strange nature of Survey & Contact had again struck him. He had never met a Survey man or other being, and knew of no one else who had, either. All the rest of the services had an awesome respect for the branch, but no one seemed to know much about it. It was supposed to be open to any serving officer or enlisted man, but aside from the idea that it both contacted new races and functioned as a super intelligence net, little detail was really grasped by the rest of the galaxy. He could not remember when the idea of applying had first entered his mind, but the mystery was certainly in itself a factor.

  Survey & Contact recruited humans and nonhumans as well. Everyone knew that a being capable of serving in Survey & Contact category was the absolute top, but it was still almost impossible to find out anything concrete about the corps. A veil of silence existed about its operations and makeup.

  Intrigued and curious, Powers had patiently begun to amass a file of his findings about Survey, commencing the day he had first formally applied for entry, and a strange file it was. He had first transcribed every service rumor he had ever heard about Survey accomplishments, and then gone looking for more solid material. All his recent leaves had been spent in archives and dusty
libraries. The interstellar newspaper files had been combed for any item, however fragmentary. And service files to which he had regular access were also scanned, as far as his rank would carry him without direct authorization from above.

  The picture which had emerged made the strangeness of Survey & Contact both more interesting and more baffling than ever. Their personnel were paid triple service standard, for one thing! Secretive though the branch might be, this item had to be published in the annual appropriations of the Unified Services.

  Public interest was obviously minimized and diverted by someone. News stories often said little more than that a new world had been visited or opened to trade by Survey & Contact. Gradually, as Powers' interest grew, he realized that entities, human and otherwise, of the Division must be located everywhere, all through the services and in civilian life as well. But the anonymity was fantastic.

  Omnipresent, but invisible, Survey & Contact seemed to be all about, had a hand in everything, but was never seen or even acknowledged, except in the sparsest and least-revealing way. Further, Survey & Contact apparently seemed to have its own ships, bases and equipment. No one ever seemed to have seen any of these either, or at least would acknowledge it. A whole new world!

  WITHIN HIS own service, Powers had heard, on good authority, of at least three major crises in which battle fleets had been held ready. They were never needed. "S. & C. got in first" was the story in each case. The crises had simply evaporated and the fleets had then been taken off the standby list. Powers had friends in the regular intelligence outfits, but on questioning, they knew less than he.

  Powers' ultimate decision to join was based not only on what he had learned of the extraordinary work of the Mystery Division, but also on his own increasing boredom. A bachelor, with each increase in rank, his desk grew fuller and his planet-side duty longer. His personal initiative and drive seemed to him to grow lazier as well. At the time when the Survey legend began to grow upon his mind, he was actually thinking of leaving the Space Force and looking for a more exciting civilian career, if only to stop the walls of routine closing in. The less he could find out about Survey, the more attractive the idea had become, until finally it had assumed the force of nothing less than a compulsion.

  His own application for the Division had been made over a Galac year earlier. Since then, he had continued his duties as a commander, Sirian Combine Space Force, without any real hint as to what had become of the request. But official forms had begun to appear on his desk at Sirius Prime, where he was serving a hitch at Grand Base Communications, and he had dutifully filled them out. They were mostly psychological questionnaires and almost all had been meaningless, at least to him. All had borne the magic title of Survey & Contact on their covers however, and so he had doggedly persisted.

  One had ordered him to write an essay about the joys of dying of thirst! "Stress the appeal and pleasure of water deprivation," the form said. Another asked him how —in two thousand words or less—he would explain a new color to someone who had not seen it. Still another stated that he must imagine he was the survivor of an aerial disaster on his own planet, Terra, and that he had managed to save a two-month old baby. He and his charge had parachuted to an uninhabited island in the Tropics. A list of the plant and animal life on and around the island was attached. Problem—in a thousand words or less—how to feed the baby.

  The endless questions and tests, which seemed to have no clear, discernible reason behind them, had finally begun to get him down. Only the fact that they all emanated from the legendary Survey & Contact Division had made him persevere, giving them the fullest and best attention of which he was capable. Somewhere, he forced himself to believe, a picture must be building up of his personality, brains, and all other attributes, and these bizarre exams and essays were just more steps on the road. He simply had to assume this.

  Thus, when he had stared at the dust of the vanishing message on his desk, he got two new ideas. One, he was suddenly and absolutely sure that the summons was genuine, and two, that it would never be either confirmed or repeated. The disappearing paper was one little touch of mystery, maybe to simply pique his curiosity, perhaps yet another test of some kind. At any rate, it had to be pursued at once.

  Powers had moved quickly in the next hour, very quickly indeed. He had called for directions through the Command Center, asking for the planetary location of Survey & Contact Headquarters. The stupidest clerk he had ever encountered had taken twenty minutes to find and report the location, which then turned out to be on the far side of the same continent which housed Command Division. Raging with impatience, Powers had ordered a special, one-man jet sled, and this also had been unaccountably delayed.

  Using the highest speed possible, he had been exactly three minutes late when he braked down on a deserted landing strip near a quiet, blue arm of the ocean. Behind the strip rose a bulging, blobby gray building which seemed to have no basic design at all, and which showed no visible windows or doors. However, as Powers got out of the sled and narrowed his eyes against the sunlight, a figure appeared around a corner of the building, and moved slowly out to meet him.

  AS A COMMANDER in the Combine Navy, Powers had seen some strange members of the military services, but this specimen was outstanding. As he came to a leisurely halt in front of Powers, he brought a hand up in a sloppy salute.

  He was a tall, powerfully-built, blond man in the green uniform of a sergeant, Special Landing Forces, and appeared to be a Terran. His insignia was tarnished, his boots dirty, and he needed a shave, the yellow stubble showing through a tanned skin. His whole posture was casual and insulting. He said nothing, just stood and blinked sleepily.

  Keeping his temper barely under control, Powers returned the salute.

  "At ease, Sergeant ... if you aren't already. Is this place Survey & Contact, or an abandoned supply dump?"

  "This is it," said the tall one lazily. "You got orders here?"

  "Call me 'Sir'," blared Powers. "I am Commander William Powers, and the orders were ... well, they were verbal. Now brace up and take me inside before I get those stripes yanked off and charge you with being insolent as well as dirty and unshaven on duty."

  The sergeant gulped and straightened up a little. "Sorry, Sir, I haven't had any field duty for a long time. Guess you get out of practice, huh, Sir? You got any luggage I can carry, Sir?"

  Powers stared coldly at the man, but could read nothing in his eyes except stupidity and fright. How could Survey & Contact have an eight ball like this around to welcome visitors, he wondered? He merely waved toward the building and they set off across the dusty landing strip, the sergeant in front.

  The N.C.O. marched straight to an apparently blank wall and leaned on it. Silently, a door appeared, a black rectangular opening in the gray smoothness. The sergeant stood to one side and indicated that Powers precede him. It was not until Powers was in the corridor beyond that he realized the door behind him was closing. As he spun around, he heard a malicious cackle from outside.

  "You're a hell of an officer. Three minutes late, yet!"

  Then the door shut, as silently as it had opened. There was no knob or button on the inside.

  Fuming, but also deciding to waste no more time, Powers had walked forward along a dimly-lit corridor, blank, gray walls revealing no opening. After about a mile of meaningless curves, all appearing the same, and passing nothing but a thousand atomo bulbs in the metal ceiling, he had suddenly emerged into the office in which he now sat. And had been sitting. And sitting ...

  The sour-faced prune behind the desk had spoken exactly twice, the first time when he came raging through the door.

  "Commander Powers?" she had whined in Universal. "You are late. Please sit down and do not disturb me. I have work to do." The second time had been when he had commented on the heat.

  Inwardly, he continued to seethe. The whole day so far had been one foul-up after another. Nothing had gone right from the moment he had received the message in his o
ffice. And now, after months of filling out gibberish forms and tests devised by lunatics calling themselves psychologists, he had finally cracked the portals of the fabulous Survey & Contact Branch. Hah! A madhouse staffed by rejects and morons! The minute someone in authority appeared he would politely ask the way out, leave and withdraw his application for Survey Service.

  As he brooded over the wasted time and energy he had expended, a dull ache in his midsection reminded him that he needed lunch. He decided to check the time again and examined his wristchron. It still said 2:00 p.m. Annoyed, he held it to his ear. The thin hum of the atom battery was silent. Stopped! Sweet suffering epaullets! He had put in a new battery only two months before and they were good for three years! One more stinking item to add to a wasted day.

  Across the now stifling room, the elderly woman continued to slowly scrawl on her pad. Powers decided that she had one of the most unpleasant faces he had ever seen. As he studied it for the fiftieth time, he suddenly thought it looked not only revolting but strangely familiar. Where in the cosmos could he have seen her before? Whatever the memory was, it evaded him, and he stared at the featureless brown wall again, determined not to speak. By God, if they wanted to annoy him, he would not be annoyed. An officer of the Senior Service had more control than that. He began to formulate abstract math problems in his head, his eyes fixed and unseeing.

  At some indeterminate time later, Powers suddenly tensed, every sense alert. He was a graduate of the Lyran Nerve Training School, and his body had unmistakably sounded a subtle warning. It took a split second to identify what his system was being alerted against, and this was too long for him to take action or hold his breath. Sleep gas! Subtly it had filtered into the room and he was already going under. His last memory before he lost consciousness was one of surprise, because his eyes registered the flabby hag across the room writing steadily away, obviously unaffected. Then he passed out.