Isaac Asimov: The Early Asimov. Volume 2

'Whom will you send?"

'I don't know. I've got several good juniors under me that can do this sort of thing with their eyes closed. I'll send one of them. And meanwhile, I'll be seeing you at the faculty meeting tomorrow, won't I?'

'You will - and hearing me, too. I'm making a speech on the finger-touch stimulus.'

'Good! I've done work on it, so I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say. Till tomorrow, then.'

Left alone, Porus turned once more to the official report on the Solarian System which the messenger had handed him. He leafed through it leisurely, without particular interest, and finally put it down with a sigh.

'Lor Haridin could do it,' he muttered to himself. 'He's a good kid - deserves a break.'

He lifted his tiny bulk out of the chair and, with the report under his arm, left his office and trotted down the long corridor outside. As he stopped before a door at the far end, the automatic flash blazed up and a voice within called out to him to enter.

The Rigellian opened the door and poked his head inside. 'Busy, Haridin?'

Lor Haridin looked up and sprang to his feet at once. 'Great space, boss, no! I haven't had anything to do since I finished work on anger reactions. You've got something for me, maybe?'

'I have - if you think you're up to it. You've heard of the Solarian System, haven't you?'

'Sure! The visors are full of it. They've got interstellar travel, haven't they?'

'That's right. An expedition is leaving Alpha Centauri for Sol in a month. They'll need a psychologist to do the fine work, and I was thinking of sending you.'

The young scientist reddened with delight to the very top of his hairless dome. 'Do you mean it, boss?'

'Why not? That is - if you think you can do it.'

'Of course I can.' Haridin drew himself up in offended hauteur. 'Type A reaction! I can't miss.'

'You'll have to learn their language, you know, and administer the stimulus in the Solarian tongue. It's not always an easy job.'

Haridin shrugged. 'I still can't miss. In a case like this, translation need only be seventy-five percent effective to get ninety-nine and six tenths percent of the desired result. That was one of the problems I had to solve on my qualifying exam. So you can't trip me up that way.'

Porus laughed. 'All right, Haridin, I know you can do it. Clean up everything here at the university and sign up for indefinite leave. And if you can, Haridin, write some sort of paper on these Solarians. If it's any good, you might get senior status on the basis of it.'

The junior psychologist frowned. 'But, boss, that's old stuff. Humanoid reactions are as well known as… as - You can't write anything on them.'

'There's always something if you look hard enough, Haridin. Nothing is well known; remember that. If you'll look at Sheet 25 of the report, for instance, you'll find an item concerning the care with which the Solarians armed themselves on leaving their ship.'

The other turned to the proper page. 'That's reasonable,' said he. 'An entirely normal reaction.'

'Certainly. But they insisted on retaining their weapons throughout their stay, even when they were greeted and welcomed by fellow Humanoids. That's quite a perceptible deviation from the normal. Investigate it - it might be worth while.'

'As you say, boss. Thanks a lot for the chance you're giving me. And say - how's the squid coming along?'

Porus wrinkled his nose. 'My sixth try folded up and died yesterday. It's disgusting.' And with that, he was gone.

Tan Porus of Rigel trembled with rage as he folded the handful of papers he held in two and tore them across. He plugged in the telecaster with a jerk.

'Get me Santins of the math department immediately,' he snapped.

His green eyes shot fire at the placid figure that appeared on the visor almost at once. He shook his fist at the image.

'What on Eron's the idea of that analysis you sent me just now, you Betelgeusian slime worm?'

The image's eyebrows shot up in mild surprise. 'Don't blame me, Porus. They were your equations, not mine. Where did you get them?'

'Never mind where I got them. That's the business of the psychology department.'

'All right! And solving them is the business of the mathematics department. That's the seventh set of the damnedest sort of screwy equations I've ever seen. It was the worst yet. You made at least seventeen assumptions which you had no right to make. It took us two weeks to straighten you out, and finally we boiled it down -'

Porus jumped as if stung. 'I know what you boiled it down to. I just tore up the sheets. You take eighteen independent variables in twenty equations, representing two months of work, and solve them out at the bottom of the last, last page with that gem of oracular wisdom - "a" equals "a". All that work - and all I get is an identity.'

'It's still not my fault, Porus. You argued in circles, and in mathematics that means an identity and there's nothing you can do about it.' His lips twitched in a slow smile. 'What are you kicking about, anyway? "A" does equal "a," doesn't it?'

'Shut up!' The telecaster went dead, and the psychologist closed his lips tightly and boiled inwardly. The light signal above the telecaster flashed to life again.

'What do you want now?'.

It was the calm, impersonal voice of the receptionist below that answered him. 'A messenger from the government, sir.'

'Damn the government! Tell them I'm dead.'

'It's important, sir. Lor Haridin has returned from Sol and wants to see you.'

Porus frowned. 'Sol? What Sol? Oh, I remember. Send him up, but tell him to make it snappy.'

'Come in, Haridin,' he said a little later, voice calmer, as the young Arcturian, a bit thinner, a bit more weary than he had been six months earlier when he left the Arcturian System, entered.

'Well, young man? Did you write the paper?'

The Arcturian gazed intently upon his fingernails. 'No, sir!'

'Why not?' Poms' green eyes peered narrowly at the other, 'Don't tell me you've had trouble.'

'Quite a bit, boss.' The words came with an effort. The psychological board itself has sent for you after hearing my report. The fact of the matter is that that the Solarian System has… has refused to join the Federation.'

Tan Porus shot out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box and landed, purely by chance, on his feet.

'What!!'

Haridin nodded miserably and cleared his throat.

'Now, by the Great Dark Nebula,' swore the Rigellian, distractedly, 'if this isn't one sweet day! First, they tell me that "a" equals "a," and then you come in and tell me you muffed a Type A reaction - muffed it completely!'

The junior psychologist fired up. 'I didn't muff it. There's something wrong with the Solarians themselves. They're not normal. When I landed they went wild over us. There was a fantastic celebration - entirely unrestrained. Nothing was too good for us. I delivered the invitation before their parliament in their own language - a simple one which they call Esperanto. I'll stake my life that my translation was ninety-five percent effective.'

'Well? And then?'

'I can't understand the rest, boss. First, there was a neutral reaction and I was a little surprised, and then' - he shuddered in retrospect - 'in seven days - only seven days, boss - the entire planet had reversed itself completely. I couldn't follow their psychology, not by a hundred miles. I've brought home copies of their newspapers of the time in which they objected to joining with "alien monstrosities" and refused to be "ruled by inhumans of worlds parsecs away." I ask you, does that make sense?

'And that's only the beginning. It was light years worse than that. Why, good Galaxy, I went all the way into Type G reactions, trying to figure them out, and couldn't. In the end, we had to leave. We were in actual physical danger from those… those Earthmen, as they call themselves.'