Robert Silverberg: Why?

And we left Capella XXII, after a six-month stay, and hopskipped across the galaxy to Dschubba, in the forehead of the Scorpion. And after the eight worlds of Dschubba had been seen and digested and recorded and classified, and after we had programmed all our material for transmission back to Earth, we moved on again, Brock and I.

We zeroed into warp and doublesqueaked into the star Pavo, which from Earth is seen to be the brightest star of the Peacock. And Pavo proved to be planetless, save for one ball of mud and methane a billion miles out; we chalked the mission off as unpromising, and moved on once again.

Brock was the coordinator; I, the fine-tooth man. He saw in patterns; I, in particulars. We had been teamed for eleven years. We had visited seventy-eight stars and one hundred sixty-three planets. The end was not quite in sight.

We hung in the greyness of warp, suspended neither in space nor in not-space, hovering in an interstice. Brock said, “I vote for Markab.”

“Alpha Pegasi? No. I vote for Etamin.”

But Gamma Draconis held little magic for him. He rubbed his angular hands through his tight-cropped hair and said, “The Wheel, then.”

I nodded. “The Wheel.”

The Wheel was our guide: not really a wheel so much as a map of the heavens in three dimensions, a lens of the galaxy, sprinkled brightly with stars. I pulled a switch; a beam of light lanced down from the ship’s wall, needle-thin, playing against the Wheel. Brock seized the handle and imparted axial spin to the Wheel. Over and over for three, four, five rotations; then, stop. The light-beam stung Alphecca.

“Alphecca it will be,” Brock said.

“Yes. Alphecca.” I noted it in the log, and began setting up the coordinates on the drive. Brock was frowning uneasily.

“This failure to agree,” he said. “This inability to decide on a matter so simple as our next destination—”

“Yes. Elucidate. Expound. Exegetize. What pattern do you see in that?”

Scowling he said, “Disagreement for the sake of disagreement is unhealthy. Conflict is valuable, but not for its own sake. It worries me.”

“Perhaps we’ve been in space too long. Perhaps we should resign our commissions, leave the Exploratory Corps, return to Earth and settle there.”

His face drained of blood. “No,” he said. “No. No.”

We emerged from warp within humming-distance of Alphecca, a bright star orbited by four worlds. Brock was playing calculus at the time; driblets of sweat glossed his face at each integration. I peered through the thick quartz of the observation panel and counted planets.

“Four worlds,” I said. “One, two, three, and four.”

I looked at him. His unfleshy face was tight with pain. After nearly a minute he said, “Pick one.”

“Me?”

“Pick one!”

“Alphecca II.”

“All right. We’ll land there. I won’t contest the point, Hammond. I want to land on Alphecca II.” He grinned at me—a bright-eyed wild grin that I found unpleasant. But I saw what he was doing. He was easing a stress-pattern between us, eliminating a source of conflict before the chafing friction exploded. When two men live in a spaceship eleven years, such things are necessary.

Calmly and untensely I took a reading on Alphecca II. I sighted us in and actuated the computer. This was the way a landing was effected; this was the way Brock and I had effected one hundred sixty-three landings. The ion-drive exploded into life.

We dropped “downward”. Alphecca II rose to meet us as our slim pale-green needle of a ship dived tail-first towards the world below.

The landing was routine. I sketched out a big 164 on my chart, and we donned spacesuits to make our preliminary explorations. Brock paused a moment at the airlock, smoothing the purple cloth of his suit, adjusting his air-intake, tightening his belt cincture. The corners of his mouth twitched nervously. Within the head-globe he looked frightened, and very tired.

I said, “You’re not well. Maybe we should postpone our first look-see.”

“Maybe we should go back to Earth, Hammond. And live in a beehive and breathe filthy grey soup.” His voice was edged with bitter reproach. “Let’s go outside,” he said. He turned away, face shadowed morosely, and touched the stud that peeled back the airlock hatch.

I followed him into the lock and down the elevator. He was silent, stiff, reserved. I wished I had his talent for glimpsing patterns: this mood of his had probably been a long time building.

But I saw no cause for it. After eleven years, I thought, I should know him almost as well as I do myself. Or better. But no easy answers came, and I followed him out onto the exit stage and dropped gently down.

Landing One Six Four was entering the exploratory stage.

The ground spread out far to the horizon, a dull orange in color, rough in texture, pebbly, thick of consistency. We saw a few trees, bare-trunked, bluish. Green vines swarmed over the ground, twisted and gnarled.

Otherwise, nothing.

“Another uninhabited planet,” I said. “That makes one hundred eight out of the hundred sixty-four.”

“Don’t be premature. You can’t judge a world by a few acres. Land at a pole; extrapolate utter barrenness. It’s not a valid pattern. Not enough evidence.”

I cut him short. “Here’s one time when I perceive a pattern. I perceive that this world’s uninhabited. It’s too damned quiet.”

Chuckling, Brock said, “I incline to agree. But remember Adhara XI.”

I remembered Adhara XI: the small, sandy world far from its primary, which seemed nothing but endless yellow sand dunes, rolling westward round and round the planet. We had joked about the desert-world, dry and parched, inhabited only by the restless dunes. But after the report was written, after our data were codified and flung through subspace towards Earth, we found the oasis on the eastern continent, the tiny garden of green things and sweet air that so sharply was unlike the rest of Adhara XI. I remembered sleek scaly creatures slithering through the crystal lake, and an indolent old worm sleeping beneath a heavy-fruited tree.

“Adhara XI is probably swarming with Earth tourists,” I said. “Now that our amended report is public knowledge. I often think we should have concealed the oasis from Earth, and. returned there ourselves when we grew tired of exploring the galaxy.”

Brock’s head snapped up sharply. He ripped a sprouting tip from a leathery vine and said, “When we grow tired? Hammond, aren’t you tired already? Eleven years, a hundred sixty-four worlds?”

Now I saw the pattern taking fairly clear shape. I shook my head, throttling the conversation. “Let’s get down the data, Brock. We can talk later.”

We proceeded with the measurements of our particular sector of Alphecca II. We nailed down the dry vital statistics, bracketing them off so Earth could enter the neat figures in its giant catalogue of explored worlds.

GRAVITY—1.02 E.

ATMOSPHERIC CONSTITUTION—ammonia/carbon dioxide

Type ab7, unbreathable

ESTIMATED PLANETARY DIAMETER—.87 E.

INTELLIGENT LIFE— none

We filled out the standard tests, took the standard soil samples. Exploration had become a smooth mechanical routine.

Our first tour lasted three hours. We wandered over the slowly rising hills, with the spaceship always at our backs, and Alphecca high behind us. The dry soil crunched unpleasantly beneath our heavy boots.

Conversation was at a minimum. Brock and I rarely spoke when it was not absolutely necessary—and when we did speak, it was to let a tight, tense remark escape confinement, not to communicate anything. We shared too many silent memories. Eleven years and one hundred sixty-four planets. All Brock had to do was say “Fomalhaut”, or I “Theta Eridani”, and a train of associations and memories was set off in whose depths we could browse silently for hours and hours.