A. van Vogt - The Voyage of the Space Beagle

Morton laughed. “Once we’re on our way again, you and the others can discuss the pro and con of that from now till the end of the voyage.” He broke off. “Any other objections? Grosvenor?”

Grosvenor shook his head. “The screen sounds effective to me, sir.”

Morton said, “All those against, speak up.” When no one spoke, he directed a command to the men on the cage. “Move that thing over here, so we can start preparing it for energization.”

Ixtl felt the faint throb in the metal as the motors started. He saw the bars move. Then he grew conscious of a sharp, pleasant tingling sensation. It was a physical activity inside his body, and while it was in progress it hampered the working of his mind. When he could think again, the cage floor was rising above him — and he was lying on the hard surface of the space ship’s outer shell.

With a snarl, he scrambled to his feet as he realized the truth. He had forgotten to readjust the atoms in his body after firing the vibrator. And now he had passed through the metal floor of the cage.

“Good heavens!” Morton’s bass exclamation almost deafened Grosvenor.

A scarlet streak of elongated body, Ixtl darted across the shadowy reach of the impenetrable metal of the ship’s outer wall to the air lock. He jerked himself down into its dazzling depths. His adjusted body dissolved through the two inner doors. And then he was at one end of a long, gleaming corridor, safe — for the moment. And one fact stood out.

In the imminent struggle for control of the ship, he would have one important advantage, aside from his individual superiority. His opponents did not yet know the deadliness of his purpose.

It was twenty minutes later. Grosvenor sat in one of the auditorium seats in the control room and watched Morton and Captain Leeth consulting together in low tones on one of the tiers leading up to the main section of the instrument board.

The room was packed with men. With the exception of guards left in key centres, everybody had been ordered to attend. The military crew and its officers, the heads of science departments and their staffs, the administrative branches, and the various technical men who had no departments — all were either in the room or congregated in the adjoining corridors.

A bell clanged. The babble of conversation began to fade. The bell clanged again. All conversation ceased. Captain Leeth came forward.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “These problems keep arising, do they not? I am beginning to feel that we military men have not properly appreciated scientists in the past, I thought they lived out their lives in laboratories, far from danger. But it’s beginning to dawn on me that scientists can find trouble where it never existed before.”

He hesitated briefly, then went on in the same dryly humorous tone. “Director Morton and I have agreed that this is not a problem for military forces alone. So long as the creature is at large, every man must be his own policeman. Go armed, go, in pairs or groups — the more the better.”

Once more he surveyed his audience, and his manner was grimmer when he continued. “It would be foolish for you to believe that this situation will not involve danger or death for some among us. It may be me. It may be you. Nerve yourself for it. Accept the possibility. But if it is your destiny to make contact with this immensely dangerous creature, defend yourself to the death. Try to take him with you. Do not suffer, or die, in vain.

“And now” — he turned to Morton — “the Director will guide a discussion regarding the utilization against our enemy of the very considerable scientific knowledge which is aboard this ship. Mr. Morton.”

Morton walked slowly forward. His large and powerful body was dwarfed by the gigantic instrument board behind him, but nevertheless he looked imposing. The Director’s grey eyes flicked questioningly along the line of faces, pausing at none, apparently simply assessing the collective mood of the men. He began by praising Captain Leeth’s attitude, and then he said, “I have examined my own recollections of what happened, and I think I can say honestly that no one — not even myself — is to blame for the creature’s being aboard. It had been decided, you may remember, to bring him aboard in the confines of a force field. That precaution satisfied our most precise critics, and it was unfortunate that it was not taken in time. The being actually came into the ship under his own power by a method which could not be foreseen.” He stopped. His keen gaze once more swept the room. “Or did anybody have something stronger than a premonition? Please hold up your hand if you did.”

Grosvenor craned his neck, but no hands were raised. He settled back in his seat, and was a little startled to see that Morton’s grey eyes were fixed on him. “Mr. Grosvenor,” said Morton, “did the science of Nexialism enable you to predict that this creature could dissolve his body through a wall?”

In a clear voice, Grosvenor said, “It did not.”

“Thank you,” said Morton.

He seemed satisfied, for he did not ask anyone else. Grosvenor had already guessed that the Director was trying to justify his own position. It was a sad commentary on the ship’s politics that he should have felt it necessary. But what particularly interested Grosvenor was that he had appealed to Nexialism as a sort of final authority.

Morton was speaking again. “Siedel,” he said, “give us a psychologically sound picture of what has happened.”

The chief psychologist said, “In setting about to capture this creature, we must first of all straighten our minds about him. He has arms and legs, yet floats in space and remains alive. He allows himself to be caught in a cage, but knows all the time that the cage cannot hold him. Then he slips through the bottom of the cage, which is very silly of him if he does not want us to know that he can do it. There is a reason why intelligent beings make mistakes, a fundamental reason that should make it easy for us to do some shrewd guessing as to where he came from, and, of course, to analyse why he is here. Smith, dissect his biological make-up!”

Smith stood up, lank and grim. “We’ve already discussed the obvious planetary origin of his hands and feet. The ability to live in space, if evolutionary at all, is certainly a remarkable attribute. I suggest that here is a member of a race that has solved the final secrets of biology; and if I knew how we should even begin to start looking for a creature that can escape from us through the nearest wall, my advice would be: Hunt him down, and kill him on sight.”

“Ah…” Kellie, the sociologist, said. He was a bald-headed man, fortyish, with large, intelligent eyes. “Ah — any being who could fit himself to live in a vacuum would be lord of the universe. His kind would dwell on every planet, clutter up every galaxy. Swarms of him would be floating in space. Yet we know for a fact that his race does not infest our galactic area. A paradox that is worthy of investigation.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean, Kellie,” said Morton.

“Simply — ah — that a race which has solved the ultimate secrets of biology must be ages in advance of man. It would be highly sympodial, that is, capable of adaptation to any environment. According to the law of vital dynamics, it would expand to the farthest frontier of the universe just as man is trying to do.”

“It is a contradiction,” acknowledged Morton, “and would seem to prove that the creature is not a superior being. Korita, what is this thing’s history?”

The Japanese scientist shrugged, but he stood up and said, “I’m afraid I can be of only slight assistance on present evidence. You know the prevailing theory: that life proceeds upward — whatever we mean by upward — by a series of cycles. Each cycle begins with the peasant, who is rooted to his bit of soil. The peasant comes to market; and slowly the market place transforms into a town, with ever less ‘inward’ connection to the earth. Then we have cities and nations, finally the soulless world cities and a devastating struggle for power, a series of frightful wars which sweep men to fellahdom, and so to primitiveness, and on to a new peasanthood. The question is: Is this creature in the peasant part of his particular cycle, or in the big-city, megalopolitan era? Or where?”