Instinct Read online

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  INSTINCT

  BY GEORGE O. SMITH

  _You can keep a good man down, if you've got enough headstart, are alert and persistent ... so long as he limits himself to acting like a good man...._

  Illustrated by Martinez

  It was 047-63-10 when he opened the door. Before his superior could chewhim for prepunctuality, Huvane said as the chief looked up and openedhis mouth to start:

  "Sorry, but you should know. Terra is at it again."

  Chelan's jaw snapped shut. He passed a hand over his face and asked in atone of pure exasperation. "The same?" and as Huvane nodded, Chelan wenton, "Why can't they make a mistake and blow themselves out of our hair?How far did they get this time?"

  "All the way."

  "And out?"

  Huvane sat down shaking his head slowly. "Not yet, but they're over thehump, you know." Huvane's face brightened ever so slightly. "I can't becriticized for not counting them, chief. But I'll estimate that theremust be at least a couple of hundred atoms of 109 already. And you knowthat nobody could _make_ 109 if they hadn't already evolved methods ofmeasuring the properties of individual atoms. So as soon as they findthat their boom-sample doesn't behave like the standard mess out of abombardment chamber, they won't rest until they find out why. They'llfind out. Then it'll be 109, 109, 109 until we're forced to clobber themagain."

  Bitterly Chelan looked up. "I don't think I need the lecture. I admiretheir tenacity. I admire their ambition. I admire their blasphemous,consignatory, obscenity attitude of acting as if the Great Creator hadconcocted the whole glorious Universe for their own playground. Yes,"said the chief wearily, "singly they aren't bad traits. Boiled down intothe self-esteem of a single race, I don't admire them any more. I'msimply scared."

  "Yeah. Well, we've got time."

  "Not much. What's their space potential this time?"

  "Still scragged on the mass-inertia-relativity barrier. Tailburners ...er, chemical reaction engines. Manned and unmanned orbital flights. Halfa dozen landings on their sister planet. No," said Huvane as he saw thechief's puzzlement, "I don't mean Number Two ... the one they call Venusthis time. I mean their co-orbital companion. _The_ Moon. They stillcall it that."

  The chief looked up wonderingly. "Do you suppose," he asked solemnly,"that there is really something called a 'racial memory'?"

  "It's against all the theory," objected Huvane. "But there seems tobe--" his voice trailed off absently. It returned after some thought:"I've tried to sort it out, just as if I were one of them. Therecurrence of their ... er ... 'names of antiquity' as they call them,seem to recur and recur. Their Planet Two, now called Venus, was calledAstarte last time, and before that it was Ishtar."

  "Other way around."

  "No matter. The names are still being used and, according to theirbelief, merely parallel names culled out of local pagan religiousbeliefs."

  The chief nodded. "That's only part of the parallelism. The big thing isthe way they follow the same pattern. Savage, agrarian, urban, right onup the ladder according to the rules of civic science but squabbling andbattling all the way right on up and out into space. Hell, Huvane,warfare and conflict I can both understand and cope with, but not theTerran flavor. They don't come out bent on conquest or stellarcolonialism. They come out with their little private fight still goingon and each side lines up its volume of influence and pits one againstthe other until the whole section of that spiral arm is glittering likea sputtering spark along a train of black powder. I wish," he saidsavagely, "that we could cut off that arm and fling it deep intoextragalactic space."

  Huvane shook his head. "And leave the problem for our children tosolve?"

  "They'll have one to solve, I think," said Chelan. "In another twentythousand years the Terrans will be right back doing business at the sameold stand. Unless we can solve it for once and for all right now."

  Huvane looked around as if he were seeking another door to the chief'soffice. "How?" he asked sarcastically. "The first time we greeted themand they took both our welcome and us for everything they could beforewe pulled the rug out from under them. The second time we boxed them offand they broke out after converting the isolation screen into anoffensive weapon. The third time we tried to avoid them and they ranwild exploiting less ambitious races. The fourth time we missed the boatand they were chewing at our back door before we knew about them;containing them was almost a nova job. The fifth time we went in andtried to understand them, they traded us two for one. Two things theydidn't want for one they did," Huvane's lips curled, "and I'm not surethat they didn't trade us the other way around; two they needed for onethey declared useless. Sixth? that was the last time and they just cameout shooting as if the whole galaxy automatically objected. This time?Who knows?" Huvane sat down again and put his hands between his knees.

  "They don't operate like _people_. Sensible folk settle their ownproblems, then look for more. Terra? One half of the globe is againstthe other half of the globe. Fighting one another tooth and nail, theystill find time to invent and cross space to other planets and continuetheir fight on unknown territory."

  "Maybe we'd better just admit that we don't know the solution. Then wecan clobber Terra back to the swamp, juggle the place into another iceage, put the details down in History, and hope that our remote progenywill be smarter than we."

  "Like maybe we're smarter than our remote ancestors?" jeered Huvane.

  "Got a better idea?"

  "Maybe. Has anybody really taken a couple of them and _analyzed_ them?"

  "It's inhumane."

  "I agree, but--?"

  "Get me a healthy, well-balanced specimen of somewhatbetter-than-average education and training. Can do?"

  "Can do. But how are you going to keep him?"

  "I don't intend to study him like I'd study a bug under a microscope.This one won't get away. Make it in fourteen versaids, Huvane."

  "Make it in ten plus or minus a radite or two. So long!"

  * * * * *

  The beast at Cape Canaveral stood three hundred and fifteen feet talldwarfing her creators into microscopic proportions. Swarming up and downthe gantry, bug-sized humans crawled in and out of check ports withinstrument checks, hauling hoses, cables, lines. Some thousand feetaway, a puff-bomb of red smoke billowed out and a habit-flattened voiceannounced: "At the mark, X Minus Fifteen Minutes ... ... ... Mark! XMinus Fifteen Minutes!"

  Jerry Markham said, "That's me!" He looked up at the lofty porthole andalmost lost his balance over backwards sighting it. He was a healthyspecimen, about twenty-four and full of life. He had spent the day goingthrough two routines that were sometimes simultaneous and at other timesserially; one re-stating his instructions letter by letter including thevarious alternatives and contingencies that involved his makingdecisions if the conditions on Venus were according to this theory orthat. The other was a rigorous medical checkup. Neither of them showedthat Jerry Markham had spent the previous night in activities notrecommended by his superiors but nothing that would bounce him if theyknew. He could hardly be broken for living it up at a party.

  He shook hands with the boss and stepped into the elevator. It was nothis idea of a proper send-off. There should be bands playing and girlsthrowing paper tape, flowers and a few drinks. Sally should send him offwith a proud smooch of lipstick and a tearful promise to wait. Insteadit was all very military and strict and serious--which is why he'dwhooped it up the night before. He'd had his good night and good by withSally Forman, but now eighteen hours later he was fit and raring for areturn match.

  Jerry's mind was by no means concerned with this next half hour, whichwould be the most peri
lous part of his flight. Tomorrow would take careof itself. The possibility that thirty minutes from now he might be deadin a flaming pyre did not cross his mind, the chance that an hour fromnow he could be told that his bird was off-course and his fatestarvation if it obtained an untrue orbit or abrupt destruction if itdidn't orbit at all--nothing bothered him.

  He sat there chanting the count down with the official timer and bracedhimself when the call came:

  "Zero! Fire!"

  Inwardly, Jerry Markham's mind said, "We're