Eric Russell: Panic Button

Moving fast, the crew manhandled crates and cartons out of the ship and into the house. The bulkiest item consisted of forty thousand cigarettes in air-tight cans. The beneficiary of this forethought, a thug able to spell simple words, was a heavy smoker.

Leonard Nash went on board the ship, gave his successor a sardonic smirk in passing. The crew finished their task. The technicians returned. Leaning from the air-lock door, an officer bawled final injunctions at the lone spectator.

“Remember, you must press until the blue lens lights up. Keep away from the local gin-traps and girlie shows—they’ll ruin your constitution. See you in four years.”

The metal disk clanged shut and screwed itself inward. With a boom the ship went up while the man with a world to himself became a midget, a dot, nothing.

Navigator Reece sat in the fore cabin gazing meditatively at the star-held when Copilot McKechnie arrived to keep him company. Dumping himself in a pneumatic chair, McKechnie stretched out long legs.

“Been gabbing with that bum we picked up. He’s not delirious with happiness. Got as much emotion as a lump of rock. And as many brains. It’s a safe bet his clean sheet means nothing whatever; he won’t be back a year before the cops are after him again.”

“Did he have any trouble on that last world?”

“None at all. Says a bunch of weirdies landed six or seven months ago. They pushed a hunk of brotherly love at him and then scooted. He says they seemed to be in a hurry.”

“Probably had a nice grab in prospect somewhere.”

“Or perhaps we’ve got them on the run. Maybe they’ve discovered at long last that we’re outgrabbing them in the ratio of seven to one. Those Antareans are still staking claims by the old method. Ship finds a planet, beams the news home, sits tight on the claim until a garrison arrives. That might take five, ten or twenty years, during which time the ship is out of commission. Meanwhile, a ship of ours discovers A, dumps one man, pushes on to B, dumps another man, and with any luck at all has nailed down C and D by the time we’ve transported a garrison to A. The time problem is a tough one and the only way to cope is to hustle.”

“Dead right,” agreed Reece. “It’s bound to dawn on them sooner or later. It’s a wonder they didn’t knock that fellow on the head.”

“They wouldn’t do that, seeing he’d pressed the button,” McKechnie observed.

“Button? What button?”

“There’s a button in that house. Pressing it switches on a blue light.”

“Is that so?” said Reece. “And what else?”

“Nothing else. Just that. A blue light.”

Reece frowned heavily to himself while he thought it over. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do unwanted visitors. That’s why they scoot.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“See here, to get into space a species must have a high standard of intelligence. Agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Unlike lunatics, the intelligent arc predictable in that they can be depended upon always to do the intelligent thing. They never, never, never do things that are pointless and mean nothing. Therefore a button and a blue light must have purpose, intelligent purpose.”

“You mean we’re kidding the Antareans with a phony setup, a rigmarole that is fundamentally stupid?”

“No, boy, not at all. We’ve fooling them by exploiting a way of thinking that you are demonstrating right now.”

“Me?” Reece was indignant.

“Don’t get mad about it. The outlook is natural enough. You’re a spaceman in the space age. Therefore you have a great reverence for physics, astronautics and everything else that created the space age. You’re so full of respect for the cogent sciences that you’re apt to forget something.”

“Forget what?”

McKechnie said, “That psychology is also a science.”