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diff --git a/24949.txt b/24949.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbe7303 --- /dev/null +++ b/24949.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1042 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Control Group, by Roger Dee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Control Group + +Author: Roger Dee + +Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24949] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTROL GROUP *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + _"Any problem posed by one group of + human beings can be resolved by any + other group." That's what the Handbook + said. But did that include primitive + humans? Or the Bees? Or a ..._ + + +CONTROL GROUP + +By ROGER DEE + + +The cool green disk of Alphard Six on the screen was infinitely welcome +after the arid desolation and stinking swamplands of the inner planets, +an airy jewel of a world that might have been designed specifically for +the hard-earned month of rest ahead. Navigator Farrell, youngest and +certainly most impulsive of the three-man Terran Reclamations crew, +would have set the _Marco Four_ down at once but for the greater caution +of Stryker, nominally captain of the group, and of Gibson, engineer, and +linguist. Xavier, the ship's little mechanical, had--as was usual and +proper--no voice in the matter. + +"Reconnaissance spiral first, Arthur," Stryker said firmly. He chuckled +at Farrell's instant scowl, his little eyes twinkling and his naked +paunch quaking over the belt of his shipboard shorts. "Chapter One, +Subsection Five, Paragraph Twenty-seven: _No planetfall on an +unreclaimed world shall be deemed safe without proper--_" + +Farrell, as Stryker had expected, interrupted with characteristic +impatience. "Do you _sleep_ with that damned Reclamations Handbook, Lee? +Alphard Six isn't an unreclaimed world--it was never colonized before +the Hymenop invasion back in 3025, so why should it be inhabited now?" + +Gibson, who for four hours had not looked up from his interminable chess +game with Xavier, paused with a beleaguered knight in one blunt brown +hand. + +"No point in taking chances," Gibson said in his neutral baritone. He +shrugged thick bare shoulders, his humorless black-browed face unmoved, +when Farrell included him in his scowl. "We're two hundred twenty-six +light-years from Sol, at the old limits of Terran expansion, and there's +no knowing what we may turn up here. Alphard's was one of the first +systems the Bees took over. It must have been one of the last to be +abandoned when they pulled back to 70 Ophiuchi." + +"And I think _you_ live for the day," Farrell said acidly, "when we'll +stumble across a functioning dome of live, buzzing Hymenops. Damn it, +Gib, the Bees pulled out a hundred years ago, before you and I were +born--neither of us ever saw a Hymenop, and never will!" + +"But I saw them," Stryker said. "I fought them for the better part of +the century they were here, and I learned there's no predicting nor +understanding them. We never knew why they came nor why they gave up and +left. How can we know whether they'd leave a rear-guard or booby trap +here?" + +He put a paternal hand on Farrell's shoulder, understanding the younger +man's eagerness and knowing that their close-knit team would have been +the more poorly balanced without it. + +"Gib's right," he said. He nearly added _as usual_. "We're on rest leave +at the moment, yes, but our mission is still to find Terran colonies +enslaved and abandoned by the Bees, not to risk our necks and a valuable +Reorientations ship by landing blind on an unobserved planet. We're too +close already. Cut in your shields and find a reconnaissance spiral, +will you?" + +Grumbling, Farrell punched coordinates on the Ringwave board that lifted +the _Marco Four_ out of her descent and restored the bluish enveloping +haze of her repellors. + +Stryker's caution was justified on the instant. The speeding streamlined +shape that had flashed up unobserved from below swerved sharply and +exploded in a cataclysmic blaze of atomic fire that rocked the ship +wildly and flung the three men to the floor in a jangling roar of +alarms. + + * * * * * + +"So the Handbook tacticians knew what they were about," Stryker said +minutes later. Deliberately he adopted the smug tone best calculated to +sting Farrell out of his first self-reproach, and grinned when the +navigator bristled defensively. "Some of their enjoinders seem a little +stuffy and obvious at times, but they're eminently sensible." + +When Farrell refused to be baited Stryker turned to Gibson, who was +busily assessing the damage done to the ship's more fragile equipment, +and to Xavier, who searched the planet's surface with the ship's +magnoscanner. The _Marco Four_, Ringwave generators humming gently, hung +at the moment just inside the orbit of Alphard Six's single dun-colored +moon. + +Gibson put down a test meter with an air of finality. + +"Nothing damaged but the Zero Interval Transfer computer. I can realign +that in a couple of hours, but it'll have to be done before we hit +Transfer again." + + * * * * * + +Stryker looked dubious. "What if the issue is forced before the ZIT unit +is repaired? Suppose they come up after us?" + +"I doubt that they can. Any installation crudely enough equipped to +trust in guided missiles is hardly likely to have developed efficient +space craft." + +Stryker was not reassured. + +"That torpedo of theirs was deadly enough," he said. "And its nature +reflects the nature of the people who made it. Any race vicious enough +to use atomic charges is too dangerous to trifle with." Worry made +comical creases in his fat, good-humored face. "We'll have to find out +who they are and why they're here, you know." + +"They can't be Hymenops," Gibson said promptly. "First, because the Bees +pinned their faith on Ringwave energy fields, as we did, rather than on +missiles. Second, because there's no dome on Six." + +"There were three empty domes on Five, which is a desert planet," +Farrell pointed out. "Why didn't they settle Six? It's a more habitable +world." + +Gibson shrugged. "I know the Bees always erected domes on every planet +they colonized, Arthur, but precedent is a fallible tool. And it's even +more firmly established that there's no possibility of our rationalizing +the motivations of a culture as alien as the Hymenops'--we've been over +that argument a hundred times on other reclaimed worlds." + +"But this was never an unreclaimed world," Farrell said with the faint +malice of one too recently caught in the wrong. "Alphard Six was +surveyed and seeded with Terran bacteria around the year 3000, but the +Bees invaded before we could colonize. And that means we'll have to rule +out any resurgent colonial group down there, because Six never had a +colony in the beginning." + +"The Bees have been gone for over a hundred years," Stryker said. +"Colonists might have migrated from another Terran-occupied planet." + +Gibson disagreed. + +"We've touched at every inhabited world in this sector, Lee, and not one +surviving colony has developed space travel on its own. The Hymenops had +a hundred years to condition their human slaves to ignorance of +everything beyond their immediate environment--the motives behind that +conditioning usually escape us, but that's beside the point--and they +did a thorough job of it. The colonists have had no more than a century +of freedom since the Bees pulled out, and four generations simply isn't +enough time for any subjugated culture to climb from slavery to +interstellar flight." + +Stryker made a padding turn about the control room, tugging unhappily at +the scanty fringe of hair the years had left him. + +"If they're neither Hymenops nor resurgent colonists," he said, "then +there's only one choice remaining--they're aliens from a system we +haven't reached yet, beyond the old sphere of Terran exploration. We +always assumed that we'd find other races out here someday, and that +they'd be as different from us in form and motivation as the Hymenops. +Why not now?" + +Gibson said seriously, "Not probable, Lee. The same objection that rules +out the Bees applies to any trans-Alphardian culture--they'd have to be +beyond the atomic fission stage, else they'd never have attempted +interstellar flight. The Ringwave with its Zero Interval Transfer +principle and instantaneous communications applications is the only +answer to long-range travel, and if they'd had that they wouldn't have +bothered with atomics." + +Stryker turned on him almost angrily. "If they're not Hymenops or humans +or aliens, then what in God's name _are_ they?" + + * * * * * + +"Aye, there's the rub," Farrell said, quoting a passage whose aptness +had somehow seen it through a dozen reorganizations of insular tongue +and a final translation to universal Terran. "If they're none of those +three, we've only one conclusion left. There's no one down there at +all--we're victims of the first joint hallucination in psychiatric +history." + +Stryker threw up his hands in surrender. "We can't identify them by +theorizing, and that brings us down to the business of first-hand +investigation. Who's going to bell the cat this time?" + +"I'd like to go," Gibson said at once. "The ZIT computer can wait." + +Stryker vetoed his offer as promptly. "No, the ZIT comes first. We may +have to run for it, and we can't set up a Transfer jump without the +computer. It's got to be me or Arthur." + +Farrell felt the familiar chill of uneasiness that inevitably preceded +this moment of decision. He was not lacking in courage, else the +circumstances under which he had worked for the past ten years--the +sometimes perilous, sometimes downright charnel conditions left by the +fleeing Hymenop conquerors--would have broken him long ago. But that +same hard experience had honed rather than blunted the edge of his +imagination, and the prospect of a close-quarters stalking of an unknown +and patently hostile force was anything but attractive. + +"You two did the field work on the last location," he said. "It's high +time I took my turn--and God knows I'd go mad if I had to stay inship +and listen to Lee memorizing his Handbook subsections or to Gib +practicing dead languages with Xavier." + +Stryker laughed for the first time since the explosion that had so +nearly wrecked the _Marco Four_. + +"Good enough. Though it wouldn't be more diverting to listen for hours +to you improvising enharmonic variations on the _Lament for Old Terra_ +with your accordion." + +Gibson, characteristically, had a refinement to offer. + +"They'll be alerted down there for a reconnaissance sally," he said. +"Why not let Xavier take the scouter down for overt diversion, and drop +Arthur off in the helihopper for a low-level check?" + +Stryker looked at Farrell. "All right, Arthur?" + +"Good enough," Farrell said. And to Xavier, who had not moved from his +post at the magnoscanner: "How does it look, Xav? Have you pinned down +their base yet?" + +The mechanical answered him in a voice as smooth and clear--and as +inflectionless--as a 'cello note. "The planet seems uninhabited except +for a large island some three hundred miles in diameter. There are +twenty-seven small agrarian hamlets surrounded by cultivated fields. +There is one city of perhaps a thousand buildings with a central square. +In the square rests a grounded spaceship of approximately ten times the +bulk of the _Marco Four_." + +They crowded about the vision screen, jostling Xavier's jointed gray +shape in their interest. The central city lay in minutest detail before +them, the battered hulk of the grounded ship glinting rustily in the +late afternoon sunlight. Streets radiated away from the square in +orderly succession, the whole so clearly depicted that they could see +the throngs of people surging up and down, tiny foreshortened faces +turned toward the sky. + +"At least they're human," Farrell said. Relief replaced in some measure +his earlier uneasiness. "Which means that they're Terran, and can be +dealt with according to Reclamations routine. Is that hulk spaceworthy, +Xav?" + +Xavier's mellow drone assumed the convention vibrato that indicated +stark puzzlement. "Its breached hull makes the ship incapable of flight. +Apparently it is used only to supply power to the outlying hamlets." + +The mechanical put a flexible gray finger upon an indicator graph +derived from a composite section of detector meters. "The power +transmitted seems to be gross electric current conveyed by metallic +cables. It is generated through a crudely governed process of continuous +atomic fission." + + * * * * * + +Farrell, himself appalled by the information, still found himself able +to chuckle at Stryker's bellow of consternation. + +"_Continuous fission?_ Good God, only madmen would deliberately run a +risk like that!" + +Farrell prodded him with cheerful malice. "Why say mad _men_? Maybe +they're humanoid aliens who thrive on hard radiation and look on the +danger of being blown to hell in the middle of the night as a +satisfactory risk." + +"They're not alien," Gibson said positively. "Their architecture is +Terran, and so is their ship. The ship is incredibly primitive, though; +those batteries of tubes at either end--" + +"Are thrust reaction jets," Stryker finished in an awed voice. +"Primitive isn't the word, Gib--the thing is prehistoric! Rocket +propulsion hasn't been used in spacecraft since--how long, Xav?" + +Xavier supplied the information with mechanical infallibility. "Since +the year 2100 when the Ringwave propulsion-communication principle was +discovered. That principle has served men since." + +Farrell stared in blank disbelief at the anomalous craft on the screen. +Primitive, as Stryker had said, was not the word for it: clumsily ovoid, +studded with torpedo domes and turrets and bristling at either end with +propulsion tubes, it lay at the center of its square like a rusted relic +of a past largely destroyed and all but forgotten. What a magnificent +disregard its builders must have had, he thought, for their lives and +the genetic purity of their posterity! The sullen atomic fires banked in +that oxidizing hulk-- + +Stryker said plaintively, "If you're right, Gib, then we're more in the +dark than ever. How could a Terran-built ship eleven hundred years old +get _here_?" + +Gibson, absorbed in his chess-player's contemplation of alternatives, +seemed hardly to hear him. + +"Logic or not-logic," Gibson said. "If it's a Terran artifact, we can +discover the reason for its presence. If not--" + +"_Any problem posed by one group of human beings_," Stryker quoted his +Handbook, "_can be resolved by any other group, regardless of ideology +or conditioning, because the basic perceptive abilities of both must be +the same through identical heredity_." + +"If it's an imitation, and this is another Hymenop experiment in +condition ecology, then we're stumped to begin with," Gibson finished. +"Because we're not equipped to evaluate the psychology of alien +motivation. We've got to determine first which case applies here." + + * * * * * + +He waited for Farrell's expected irony, and when the navigator +forestalled him by remaining grimly quiet, continued. + +"The obvious premise is that a Terran ship must have been built by +Terrans. Question: Was it flown here, or built here?" + +"It couldn't have been built here," Stryker said. "Alphard Six was +surveyed just before the Bees took over in 3025, and there was nothing +of the sort here then. It couldn't have been built during the two and a +quarter centuries since; it's obviously much older than that. It was +flown here." + +"We progress," Farrell said dryly. "Now if you'll tell us _how_, we're +ready to move." + +"I think the ship was built on Terra during the Twenty-second Century," +Gibson said calmly. "The atomic wars during that period destroyed +practically all historical records along with the technology of the +time, but I've read well-authenticated reports of atomic-driven ships +leaving Terra before then for the nearer stars. The human race climbed +out of its pit again during the Twenty-third Century and developed the +technology that gave us the Ringwave. Certainly no atomic-powered ships +were built after the wars--our records are complete from that time." + +Farrell shook his head at the inference. "I've read any number of +fanciful romances on the theme, Gib, but it won't stand up in practice. +No shipboard society could last through a thousand-year space voyage. +It's a physical and psychological impossibility. There's got to be some +other explanation." + + * * * * * + +Gibson shrugged. "We can only eliminate the least likely alternatives +and accept the simplest one remaining." + +"Then we can eliminate this one now," Farrell said flatly. "It entails a +thousand-year voyage, which is an impossibility for any gross reaction +drive; the application of suspended animation or longevity or a +successive-generation program, and a final penetration of +Hymenop-occupied space to set up a colony under the very antennae of the +Bees. Longevity wasn't developed until around the year 3000--Lee here +was one of the first to profit by it, if you remember--and suspended +animation is still to come. So there's one theory you can forget." + +"Arthur's right," Stryker said reluctantly. "An atomic-powered ship +_couldn't_ have made such a trip, Gib. And such a lineal-descendant +project couldn't have lasted through forty generations, speculative +fiction to the contrary--the later generations would have been too far +removed in ideology and intent from their ancestors. They'd have adapted +to shipboard life as the norm. They'd have atrophied physically, perhaps +even have mutated--" + +"And they'd never have fought past the Bees during the Hymenop invasion +and occupation," Farrell finished triumphantly. "The Bees had better +detection equipment than we had. They'd have picked this ship up long +before it reached Alphard Six." + +"But the ship wasn't here in 3000," Gibson said, "and it is now. +Therefore it must have arrived at some time during the two hundred +years of Hymenop occupation and evacuation." + +Farrell, tangled in contradictions, swore bitterly. "But why should the +Bees let them through? The three domes on Five are over two hundred +years old, which means that the Bees were here before the ship came. Why +didn't they blast it or enslave its crew?" + +"We haven't touched on all the possibilities," Gibson reminded him. "We +haven't even established yet that these people were never under Hymenop +control. Precedent won't hold always, and there's no predicting nor +evaluating the motives of an alien race. We never understood the +Hymenops because there's no common ground of logic between us. Why try +to interpret their intentions now?" + +Farrell threw up his hands in disgust. "Next you'll say this is an +ancient Terran expedition that actually succeeded! There's only one way +to answer the questions we've raised, and that's to go down and see for +ourselves. Ready, Xav?" + + * * * * * + +But uncertainty nagged uneasily at him when Farrell found himself alone +in the helihopper with the forest flowing beneath like a leafy river and +Xavier's scouter disappearing bulletlike into the dusk ahead. + +We never found a colony so advanced, Farrell thought. Suppose this is a +Hymenop experiment that really paid off? The Bees did some weird and +wonderful things with human guinea pigs--what if they've created the +ultimate booby trap here, and primed it with conditioned myrmidons in +our own form? + +Suppose, he thought--and derided himself for thinking it--one of those +suicidal old interstellar ventures _did_ succeed? + +Xavier's voice, a mellow drone from the helihopper's Ringwave-powered +visicom, cut sharply into his musing. "The ship has discovered the +scouter and is training an electronic beam upon it. My instruments +record an electromagnetic vibration pattern of low power but rapidly +varying frequency. The operation seems pointless." + +Stryker's voice followed, querulous with worry: "I'd better pull Xav +back. It may be something lethal." + +"Don't," Gibson's baritone advised. Surprisingly, there was excitement +in the engineer's voice. "I think they're trying to communicate with +us." + +Farrell was on the point of demanding acidly to know how one went about +communicating by means of a fluctuating electric field when the +unexpected cessation of forest diverted his attention. The helihopper +scudded over a cultivated area of considerable extent, fields stretching +below in a vague random checkerboard of lighter and darker earth, an +undefined cluster of buildings at their center. There was a central +bonfire that burned like a wild red eye against the lower gloom, and in +its plunging ruddy glow he made out an urgent scurrying of shadowy +figures. + +"I'm passing over a hamlet," Farrell reported. "The one nearest the +city, I think. There's something odd going on down--" + +Catastrophe struck so suddenly that he was caught completely unprepared. +The helihopper's flimsy carriage bucked and crumpled. There was a +blinding flare of electric discharge, a pungent stink of ozone and a +stunning shock that flung him headlong into darkness. + + * * * * * + +He awoke slowly with a brutal headache and a conviction of nightmare +heightened by the outlandish tone of his surroundings. He lay on a +narrow bed in a whitely antiseptic infirmary, an oblong metal cell +cluttered with a grimly utilitarian array of tables and lockers and +chests. The lighting was harsh and overbright and the air hung thick +with pungent unfamiliar chemical odors. From somewhere, far off yet at +the same time as near as the bulkhead above him, came the unceasing +drone of machinery. + +Farrell sat up, groaning, when full consciousness made his position +clear. He had been shot down by God knew what sort of devastating +unorthodox weapon and was a prisoner in the grounded ship. + +At his rising, a white-smocked fat man with anachronistic spectacles and +close-cropped gray hair came into the room, moving with the professional +assurance of a medic. The man stopped short at Farrell's stare and +spoke; his words were utterly unintelligible, but his gesture was +unmistakable. + +Farrell followed him dumbly out of the infirmary and down a bare +corridor whose metal floor rang coldly underfoot. An open port near the +corridor's end relieved the blankness of wall and let in a flood of +reddish Alphardian sunlight; Farrell slowed to look out, wondering how +long he had lain unconscious, and felt panic knife at him when he saw +Xavier's scouter lying, port open and undefended, on the square outside. + +The mechanical had been as easily taken as himself, then. Stryker and +Gibson, for all their professional caution, would fare no better--they +could not have overlooked the capture of Farrell and Xavier, and when +they tried as a matter of course to rescue them the _Marco_ would be +struck down in turn by the same weapon. + +The fat medic turned and said something urgent in his unintelligible +tongue. Farrell, dazed by the enormity of what had happened, followed +without protest into an intersecting way that led through a bewildering +succession of storage rooms and hydroponics gardens, through a small +gymnasium fitted with physical training equipment in graduated sizes and +finally into a soundproofed place that could have been nothing but a +nursery. + +The implication behind its presence stopped Farrell short. + +"A _creche_," he said, stunned. He had a wild vision of endless +generations of children growing up in this dim and stuffy room, to be +taught from their first toddling steps the functions they must fulfill +before the venture of which they were a part could be consummated. + +One of those old ventures _had_ succeeded, he thought, and was awed by +the daring of that thousand-year odyssey. The realization left him more +alarmed than before--for what technical marvels might not an isolated +group of such dogged specialists have developed during a millennium of +application? + +Such a weapon as had brought down the helihopper and scouter was +patently beyond reach of his own latter-day technology. Perhaps, he +thought, its possession explained the presence of these people here in +the first stronghold of the Hymenops; perhaps they had even fought and +defeated the Bees on their own invaded ground. + +He followed his white-smocked guide through a power room where great +crude generators whirred ponderously, pouring out gross electric current +into arm-thick cables. They were nearing the bow of the ship when they +passed by another open port and Farrell, glancing out over the lowered +rampway, saw that his fears for Stryker and Gibson had been well +grounded. + +The _Marco Four_, ports open, lay grounded outside. + + * * * * * + +Farrell could not have said, later, whether his next move was planned or +reflexive. The whole desperate issue seemed to hang suspended for a +breathless moment upon a hair-fine edge of decision, and in that instant +he made his bid. + +Without pausing in his stride he sprang out and through the port and +down the steep plane of the ramp. The rough stone pavement of the square +drummed underfoot; sore muscles tore at him, and weakness was like a +weight about his neck. He expected momentarily to be blasted out of +existence. + +He reached the _Marco Four_ with the startled shouts of his guide +ringing unintelligibly in his ears. The port yawned; he plunged inside +and stabbed at controls without waiting to seat himself. The ports swung +shut. The ship darted up under his manipulation and arrowed into space +with an acceleration that sprung his knees and made his vision swim +blackly. + +He was so weak with strain and with the success of his coup that he all +but fainted when Stryker, his scanty hair tousled and his fat face +comical with bewilderment, stumbled out of his sleeping cubicle and +bellowed at him. + +"What the hell are you doing, Arthur? Take us down!" + +Farrell gaped at him, speechless. + +Stryker lumbered past him and took the controls, spiraling the _Marco +Four_ down. Men swarmed outside the ports when the Reclamations craft +settled gently to the square again. Gibson and Xavier reached the ship +first; Gibson came inside quickly, leaving the mechanical outside making +patient explanations to an excited group of Alphardians. + +Gibson put a reassuring hand on Farrell's arm. "It's all right, Arthur. +There's no trouble." + +Farrell said dumbly, "I don't understand. They didn't shoot you and Xav +down too?" + +It was Gibson's turn to stare. + +"No one shot you down! These people are primitive enough to use metallic +power lines to carry electricity to their hamlets, an anachronism you +forgot last night. You piloted the helihopper into one of those lines, +and the crash put you out for the rest of the night and most of today. +These Alphardians are friendly, so desperately happy to be found again +that it's really pathetic." + +"_Friendly?_ That torpedo--" + +"It wasn't a torpedo at all," Stryker put in. Understanding of the error +under which Farrell had labored erased his earlier irritation, and he +chuckled commiseratingly. "They had one small boat left for emergency +missions, and sent it up to contact us in the fear that we might +overlook their settlement and move on. The boat was atomic powered, and +our shield screens set off its engines." + +Farrell dropped into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction. He +was suddenly exhausted, and his head ached dully. + +"We cracked the communications problem early last night," Gibson said. +"These people use an ancient system of electromagnetic wave propagation +called frequency modulation, and once Lee and I rigged up a suitable +transceiver the rest was simple. Both Xav and I recognized the old +language; the natives reported your accident, and we came down at once." + +"They really came from Terra? They lived through a thousand years of +flight?" + +"The ship left Terra for Sirius in 2171," Gibson said. "But not with +these people aboard, or their ancestors. That expedition perished after +less than a light-year when its hydroponics system failed. The Hymenops +found the ship derelict when they invaded us, and brought it to Alphard +Six in what was probably their first experiment with human subjects. The +ship's log shows clearly what happened to the original complement. The +rest is deducible from the situation here." + +Farrell put his hands to his temples and groaned. "The crash must have +scrambled my wits. Gib, where _did_ they come from?" + +"From one of the first peripheral colonies conquered by the Bees," +Gibson said patiently. "The Hymenops were long-range planners, +remember, and masters of hypnotic conditioning. They stocked the ship +with a captive crew of Terrans conditioned to believe themselves +descendants of the original crew, and grounded it here in disabled +condition. They left for Alphard Five then, to watch developments. + +"Succeeding generations of colonists grew up accepting the fact that +their ship had missed Sirius and made planetfall here--they still don't +know where they really are--by luck. They never knew about the Hymenops, +and they've struggled along with an inadequate technology in the hope +that a later expedition would find them. They found the truth hard to +take, but they're eager to enjoy the fruits of Terran assimilation." + +Stryker, grinning, brought Farrell a frosted drink that tinkled +invitingly. "An unusually fortunate ending to a Hymenop experiment," he +said. "These people progressed normally because they've been let alone. +Reorienting them will be a simple matter; they'll be properly spoiled +colonists within another generation." + +Farrell sipped his drink appreciatively. + +"But I don't see why the Bees should go to such trouble to deceive these +people. Why did they sit back and let them grow as they pleased, Gib? It +doesn't make sense!" + +"But it does, for once," Gibson said. "The Bees set up this colony as a +control unit to study the species they were invading, and they had to +give their specimens a normal--if obsolete--background in order to +determine their capabilities. The fact that their experiment didn't tell +them what they wanted to know may have had a direct bearing on their +decision to pull out." + +Farrell shook his head. "It's a reverse application, isn't it of the old +saw about Terrans being incapable of understanding an alien culture?" + +"Of course," said Gibson, surprised. "It's obvious enough, surely--hard +as they tried, the Bees never understood us either." + + +THE END + +[Illustration] + + + + +Transcriber's Note: + + This etext was produced from _Amazing Science Fiction Stories_ + January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that + the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling + and typographical errors have been corrected without note. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Control Group, by Roger Dee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTROL GROUP *** + +***** This file should be named 24949.txt or 24949.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/9/4/24949/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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