Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy

Here, with life freshly up from the sea, freshly launched on the long climb to maturity and self-realization—was nothing but horror. With so lush a vegetation, so easily capable of supporting them side by side in abundance, the monsters were actually feeding on each other. Great lumbering beasts they were with their bristling hides and huge tails, charging between the giant tree ferns; gouging living chunks from one another while razor-toothed birds with scaly wings flapped overhead, screaming for the remnants. As the sounds of carnage came through the audio ports, the youngest Oarsman keeled over in a faint.

Even the Conductor was visibly shaken. The Bosun-Colonel turned to him with a sick expression.

“Surely it’s a lost cause, Skipper. Life like this will never have a soul worth saving.”

“Not in its present stage,” the Old Man was forced to agree. “Still, one never knows the devious paths that evolution takes.” He considered the scene for a thoughtful, shuddering interval. “Perhaps in several thousand millenniums…”

The Bosun-Colonel tried to visualize the possibility of Ethical Life ever materializing through these swamp mists, but the logic against it was too insurmountable for the imagination.

“Even so,” he conceded, “granting the impossible—whatever shape it took, the only worthwhile species would still be…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“Meat-eaters,” the Conductor supplied grimly.

On hearing this, the Oarsman who had just revived promptly fainted again.

“It’s too deep in the genes,” the Conductor continued, “too far advanced for us to tamper with. All we can hope to do is modify their moral outlook. So that by the time they achieve star travel, they’ll at least have a basic sense of Fair Play.”

Sighing, bowed by responsibilities incommensurate with his chronological youth, he gave the order wearily. It was snapped down the chain of command to the Senior Yard-bird:

“All paws stand by to lower the Ethics Ray! Step lively, lads—bugger off, now…”

There was a din of activity as the outer locks were opened and the bulky mechanism was shipped over the side. It squatted on a cleared rise of ground in all its complex, softly ticking majesty, waiting for the First Human to pad within range of its shedding Grace and Uplift. The work party scrambled back to the ship, anxious to be off this sinister terrain. Once more the crew gathered at the visiplate as the planet fell away beneath them, the Ethics Ray winking in the day’s last light like a cornerstone. Or perhaps a tambourine…

Night closed down on the raw chaotic World, huge beasts closed in on the strange star-fallen souvenir. They snuffled over it; then enraged at discovering it was nothing they could fill their clamoring mindless stomachs with, attempted to wreck it. They were unsuccessful, for the Machine had been given an extra heavy coat of shellac and things to withstand such monkeyshines. And the Machine, in its own finely calibrated way, ignored its harassers, for they had no resemblance to the Life it had been tuned to influence.

Days lengthened into decades, eons! The seas came shouldering in to stand towers tall above the Ethics Ray, lost in the far ooze below. Then even the seas receded, and the mountains buckled upward in their place, their arrogant stone faces staring changelessly across the epochs. Until they too were whittled down by erosion. The ice caps crept down, crackling and grinding the valleys. The ground stretched and tossed like a restless sleeper, settled, and the Ethics Ray was brought to light once more.

As it always had, it continued beaming its particular signal, on a cosmic ray carrier modulated by a pulse a particular number of angstroms below infrared. The beasts that blundered within its field were entirely different now, but they still weren’t the Right Ones. Among them were some shambling pale bipeds, dressed in skins of other beasts, who clucked over its gleaming exterior and tried to chip it away for spearheads. In this of course they were unsuccessful.

And then one day the First Human wandered by, paused square in the path of the beam. His physiology was only approximate, his I.Q. was regrettably low—but he was Pre-Moral Life, such as it was, on this planet.

The Ethics Ray made the necessary frequency adjustments, tripped on full force. The Primitive froze under the bombardment, its germ plasm shifting in the most minute and subtle dimensions. Then, its mission fulfilled, the Ethics Ray collapsed into heavy molecules and sank into the ground. The first convert raced away in fright, having no idea what had happened. Neither did his billion sons and daughters…

Back on the home base, the Conductor reported in at the Ethication of Primitive Planets office. It was a magnificently imposing building, as befitting the moral seat of the universe. And the Overseer was an equally imposing human with ears greyed by service. His congratulations were unreserved.

“A splendid mission, lad,” he said, “and I don’t mind suggesting—strictly entre nous—that it could jolly well result in a Fleet Conductorship for you.”

The Conductor was overwhelmed.

“Now just let me jot down the essentials while they’re still fresh in mind,” he continued, pawing through a desk drawer. “Botheration! I seem to have traded the last of my styluses. Do you happen to have one on you?”

“With pleasure.” The Conductor handed over his monogrammed gold stylus, receiving in exchange a toy silence-maker.

“My youngster traded it to me this morning,” the Overseer chuckled.

He wrote rapidly for several moments, then gave the stylus back. The Conductor found a weathered paper-weight in his rear pocket, which he traded him for it. It looked like it might have come from this very desk at one time. Then with a smart salute, he about-faced.

On the way out, a pair of secretaries paused in their trading of a pelt brush for a tail-curler to watch him admiringly. As well they might. Fleet Conductor!

The future Fleet Conductor of a solar system he would never think of calling Antares paused at the door. In its polished panel he regarded himself with due appreciation. He had sown the seeds of civilization on a far-flung planet where, countless light years from now, they would flower to maturity. Not among the strongest or cleverest species, to be sure, but among those most worthy of applying First Principles, the moral law of give and take.

Among those remote cousins of the Conductor himself—who under no circumstances would ever think of himself as resembling a rather oversized trader rat.

If we went sailing off through the sky to somebody else’s planet, you may depend upon it, every one who went would have a different purpose in mind. There’d be conquerors and colonists and missionaries and (by the millions, sooner or later) tourists.

Mrs. Clingerman suggests that extra-terrestrial visitors on Earth might also have mixed motives . . .

Everybody has his own way of weathering a hangover. Maggie’s husband’s way was to ignore the whole matter, stoutly denying, if pressed, that he suffered at all. Maggie never denied Mark the right to this brave pretense, but she had long ago rioted that on such days the family car needed a great deal of tinkering with, which necessitated Mark’s lying down under it or in it for several hours. Maggie refused any such face-saving measures. Right after breakfast on the day after the party she took to her bed, fortified with massive doses of B 1, a dull book and, for quiet companionship, Gomez, the cat.

The window cooler hummed invitingly in the darkened bedroom; the curtains belled out in the breeze, and Maggie, shedding everything but her slip, climbed gratefully into bed. The book was called Hunting Our Feathered Friends With a Camera, and Maggie, who knew nothing of photography or birds, began to read it in the hope of being bored into sudden sleep.