Isaac Asimov: The Early Asimov. Volume 2

A dead silence prevailed during that pause. The two hundred and eighty-eight delegates - one from each of the two hundred and eighty-eight oxygen-atmosphere, water-chemistry worlds of the System - waited patiently for him to speak.

Beings of every manlike type and shape were there. Some were tall and polelike, some broad and burly, some short and stumpy. There were those with long, wiry hair, those with scanty gray fuzz covering head and face, others with thick, blond curls piled high and still others entirely bald. Some possessed long, hair-covered trumpets of ears, others had tympanum membranes flush with their temples. There were those present with large gazellelike eyes of a deep-purple luminosity, others with tiny optics of a beady black. There was a delegate with green skin, one with an eight-inch proboscis and one with a vestigial tail. Internally, variation was almost infinite.

But all were alike in two things.

They were all Humanoid. They all possessed intelligence.

The president delegate's voice boomed out then: 'Delegates! The system of Sol has discovered the secret of interstellar travel and by that act becomes eligible for entrance into the Galactic Federation.'

A storm of approving shouts arose from those present and the Arcturian raised a hand for silence.

'I have here,' he continued, 'the official report from Alpha Centauri, on whose fifth planet the Humanoids of Sol have landed. The report is entirely satisfactory and so the ban upon travel into and communication with the Solarian System is lifted. Sol is free, and open to the ships of the Federation. Even now, there is in preparation an expedition to Sol, under the leadership of Joselin Arn of Alpha Centauri, to tender that System the formal invitation into the Federation.'

He paused, and from tv/o hundred and eighty-eight throats came the stentorian shout: 'Hail, Homo Sol! Hail, Homo Sol! Hail!'

It was the traditional welcome of the Federation for all new worlds.

Tan Porus raised himself to his full height of five feet two -he was tall for a Rigellian - and his sharp, green eyes snapped with annoyance.

'There it is, Lo-fan. For six months that damned freak squid from Beta Draconis IV has stumped me.'

Lo-fan stroked his forehead gently with one long finger, and one hairy ear twitched several times. He had traveled eighty-five light years to be here on Arcturus II with the greatest psychologist of the Ferderation - and, more specifically, to see this strange mollusk whose reactions had stumped the great Rigellian.

He was seeing it now: a puffy, dull-purple mass of soft flesh that writhed its tentacular form in placid unconcern through the huge tank of water that held it. With unruffled serenity, it fed on the green fronds of an underwater fern.

'Seems ordinary enough,' said Lo-fan.

'Ha!' snorted Tan Porus. 'Watch this.'

He drew the curtain and plunged the room into darkness. Only a dim blue light shone upon the tank, and in the murk the Draconian squid could barely be discerned.

'Here goes the stimulus,' grunted Porus. The screen above his head burst into soft green light, focused directly upon the tank. It persisted a moment and gave way to a dull red and then almost at once to a brilliant yellow. For half a minute it shot raggedly through the spectrum and then, with a final glare of glowing white, a clear bell-like tone sounded.

And as the echoes of the note died away, a shudder passed over the squid's body. It relaxed and sank slowly to the bottom of the tank.

Porus pulled aside the curtain. 'It's sound asleep,' he growled. 'Hasn't failed yet. Every specimen we've ever had drops as if shot the moment that note sounds.'

'Asleep, eh? That's strange. Have you got the figures on the stimulus?'

'Certainly! Right here. The exact wave lengths of the lights required are listed, plus the length of duration of each light unit, plus the exact pitch of the sounded note at the end.'

The other surveyed the figures dubiously. His forehead wrinkled and his ears rose in surprise. From an inner pocket, he drew forth a slide rule.

'What type nervous system has the animal?'

'Two-B. Plain, simple, ordinary Two-B. I've had the anatomists, physiologists and ecologists check that until they were blue in the face. Two-B is all they get. Damn fools!'

Lo-fan said nothing, but pushed the center bar of the rule back and forth carefully. He stopped and peered closely, shrugged his shoulders and reached for one of the huge volumes on the shelf above his head. He leafed through the pages and picked out numbers from among the close print. Again the slide rule.

Finally he stopped. 'It doesn't make sense,' he said helplessly.

'I know that! I've tried six times in six different ways to explain that reaction - and I failed each time. Even if I rig up a system that will explain its going to sleep, I can't get it to explain the specificity of the stimulus.'

'It's highly specific?' questioned Lo-fan, his voice reaching the higher registers.

'That's the worst part of it,' shouted Tan Porus. He leaned forward and tapped the other on the knee. 'If you shift the wave length of any of the light units by fifty angstroms either way - any one of them - it doesn't sleep. Shift the length of duration of a light unit two seconds either way - it doesn't sleep. Shift the pitch of the tone at the end an eighth of an octave either way - it doesn't sleep. But get the right combination, and it goes straight into a coma.'

Lo-fan's ears were two hairy trumpets, stiffly erect. 'Galaxy!' he whispered. 'How did you ever stumble on the combination?'

'I didn't. It happened at Beta Draconis. Some hick college was putting its freshmen through a lab period on light-sound reactions of molluscoids - been doing it for years. Some student runs through his light-sound combinations and his blasted specimen goes to sleep. Naturally, he's scared out of his wits and brings it to the instructor. The instructor tries it again on another squid - it goes to sleep. They shift the combination -nothing happens. They go back to the original - it goes to sleep. After they fooled around with it long enough to know they couldn't make head or tail of it, they sent it to Arcturus and wished it on me. It's six months since 7 had a real night's sleep.'

A musical note sounded and Porus turned impatiently.

'What is it?'

'Messenger from the president delegate of Congress, sir,' came in metallic tones from the telecaster on his desk.

'Send him up.'

The messenger stayed only long enough to hand Porus an impressively sealed envelope and to say in hearty tone: 'Great news, sir. The system of Sol has qualified for entrance.'

'So what?' snorted Porus beneath his breath as the other left. 'We all knew it was coming.'

He ripped off the outer sheath of cello-fiber from the envelope and removed the sheaf of papers from within. He glanced through them and grimaced.

'Oh,Rigel!'

'What's wrong?' asked Lo-fan.

'Those politicians keep bothering me with the most inconse-quential things. You'd think there wasn't another psychologist on Eron. Look! We've been expecting the Solarian System to solve the principle of the hyperatomo any century now. They've finally done it and an expedition of theirs landed on Alpha Centauri. At once, there's a politician's holiday! We must send an expedition of our own to ask them to join the Federation. And, of course, we must have a psychologist along to ask them in a nice way so as to be sure of getting the right reaction, because, to be sure, there isn't a man in the army that ever gets proper training in psychology.'

Lo-fan nodded seriously. 'I know, I know. We have the same trouble out our way. They don't need psychology until they get Into trouble and then they come running.'

'Well, it's a cinch I'm not going to Sol. This sleeping squid is too important to neglect. It's a routine job, anyway - this business of raking in new worlds; a Type A reaction that any sophomore can handle.'