The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

Time crept unmeasurably past them.

The Second said: “He’s lost the first four games. But he’s not making the same moves every time. I wish we’d made a board... “

“Shut up about the board! We’d be watching it instead of the panel. Now stay alert, Mister.”

After what seemed a long time, the Second said: “Well, I’ll be!”

“What?”

“Our side got a draw in that game.”

“Then the beam can’t be on him. Are you sure... “

“It is! Look, here, the same indication we got last time. It’s been on him the better part of an hour now, and getting stronger.”

The Commander stared in disbelief; but he knew and trusted his Second’s ability. And the panel indications were convincing. He said: “Then someone-or something-with no functioning mind is learning how to play a game, over there. Ha, ha,” he added, as if trying to remember how to laugh.

The berserker won another game. Another draw. Another win for the enemy. Then three drawn games in a row.

Once the Second Officer heard Del’s voice ask coolly: “Do you want to give up now?” On the next move he lost another game. But the following game ended in another draw. Del was plainly taking more time than his opponent to move, but not enough to make the enemy impatient.

“It’s trying different modulations of the mind beam,” said the Second. “And it’s got the power turned way up.”

“Yeah,” said the Commander. Several times he had almost tried to radio Del, to say something that might keep the man’s spirits up-and also to relieve his own feverish inactivity, and to try to find out what could possibly be going on. But he could not take the chance. Any interference might upset the miracle.

He could not believe the inexplicable success could last, even when the checker match turned gradually into an endless succession of drawn games between two perfect players. Hours ago the Commander had said good-bye to life and hope, and he still waited for the fatal moment.

And he waited.

“-not perish from the earth!” said Del Murray, and Newton’s eager hands flew to loose his right arm from its shackle.

A game, unfinished on the little board before him, had been abandoned seconds earlier. The mind beam had been turned off at the same time, when Gizmo had burst into normal space right in position and only five minutes late; and the berserker had been forced to turn all its energies to meet the immediate all-out attack of Gizmo and Foxglove.

Del saw his computers, recovering from the effect of the beam, lock his aiming screen onto the berserker’s scarred and bulging midsection, as he shot his right arm forward, scattering pieces from the game board.

“Checkmate!” he roared out hoarsely, and brought his fist down on the big red button.

“I’m glad it didn’t want to play chess,” Del said later, talking to the Commander in Foxglove’s cabin. “I could never have rigged that up.”

The ports were cleared now, and the men could look out at the cloud of expanding gas, still faintly luminous, that had been a berserker; metal fire-purged of the legacy of ancient evil.

But the Commander was watching Del. “You got Newt to play by following diagrams, I see that. But how could he learn the game?”

Del grinned. “He couldn’t, but his toys could. Now wait before you slug me.” He called the aiyan to him and took a small box from the animal’s hand. The box rattled faintly as he held it up. On the cover was pasted a diagram of one possible position in the simplified checker game, with a different-colored arrow indicating each possible move of Del’s pieces.

“It took a couple of hundred of these boxes,” said Del. “This one was in the group that Newt examined for the fourth move. When he found a box with a diagram matching the position on the board, he picked the box up, pulled out one of these beads from inside, without looking-that was the hardest part to teach him in a hurry, by the way,” said Del, demonstrating. “Ah, this one’s blue. That means, make the move indicated on the cover by a blue arrow. Now the orange arrow leads to a poor position, see?” Del shook all the beads out of the box into his hand. “No orange beads left; there were six of each color when we started. But every time Newton drew a bead, he had orders to leave it out of the box until the game was over. Then, if the scoreboard indicated a loss for our side, he went back and threw away all the beads he had used. All the bad moves were gradually eliminated. In a few hours, Newt and his boxes learned to play the game perfectly.”

“Well,” said the Commander. He thought for a moment, then reached down to scratch Newton behind the ears. “I never would have come up with that idea.”

“I should have thought of it sooner. The basic idea’s a couple of centuries old. And computers are supposed to be my business.”

“This could be a big thing,” said the Commander. “I mean your basic idea might be useful to any task force that has to face a berserker’s mind beam.”

“Yeah.” Del grew reflective. “Also... “

“What?”

“I was thinking of a guy I met once. Named Blankenship. I wonder if I could rig something up... “

Alien . . .

What does alien mean to you? Alien corn . . . alien concept . . . alien national . . . alien life form?

Bug eyed monsters, giant squid, robots, supermen, fallout mutations? Snakes, cannibals. Communists, sexual deviants? What shape or posture triggers your recoil from stranger-danger?

Alien: alien . . . adj. 1) Belonging or pertaining to another; strange; foreign; esp. not belonging or owing allegiance to the same country; belonging to the citizens of a foreign state. 2) Wholly different in nature; incongruous; ... n. 1) A person of another family, race or nation. 2) A foreign-born resident of a country in which he does not possess the privileges of a citizen. 3) One excluded from certain privileges; one estranged, as from royal favor. . . .

(Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary)

There were three kinds of aliens in “Fortress Ship”: the Berserker, the offstage extraterrestrials, and the dog-ape Newton. The next selection contains still another kind of alienism—and an alienist.

“Now, we’re quite private in here. You can tell me your troubles. The pond I think you said . . .”

“We never really liked that pond in the garden. At times it was choked with a sort of weed, which, if you pulled one thread, gleefully unraveled until you had an empty basin before you and the whole of the pond in a soaking heap at your side. Then at other times it was as clear as gin, and lay in the grass staring upwards. If you came anywhere near, the gaze shifted sideways, and it was you that was being stared at, not the empty sky. If you were so bold as to come right up to the edge, swaggering and talking loudly to show you were not afraid, it presented you with so perfect a reflection that you stayed there spellbound and nearly missed dinner getting to know yourself. It had hypnotic powers.”

“Very well. Then what happened?”

“Near the pond was a small bell hung on a bracket, which the milkman used to ring as he went to tell us upstairs in the bedroom that we could go down and make the early-morning tea. This bell was near a little avenue of rose trees. One morning, very early indeed, it tinged loudly and when I looked out I saw that the empty bottles we had put out the night before were full of bright green pond-water. I had to go down and empty them before the milkman arrived. This was only the beginning. One evening I was astounded to find a brace of starfish coupling on the ornamental stone step of the pool, and, looking up, my cry to my wife to come and look was stifled by the sight of a light peppering of barnacles on the stems of the rose trees. The vermin had evidently crept there, taking advantage of the thin film of moisture on the ground after the recent very wet weather. I dipped a finger into the pond and tasted it: it was brackish.”