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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59174 ***
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+                             TASK MISSION
+
+                           BY FOX B. HOLDEN
+
+               _Captain Jorl thought Arcturus IV was the
+             answer to all he had ever wanted. And it was.
+             But there was also a twist.... How can there
+             be an ideal where everything is perfection?_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+               Worlds of If Science Fiction, April 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel stood waiting in his fore-waist bridge; he looked
+again through its heavy, slotted quartz windows and now he could see
+them coming. He could make out the toy-like silhouette of their jeep,
+emerging in reckless, bounding leaps from the edge of the cultivated
+forest. Now they were racing at full tilt across the hard-packed yellow
+sand of the desert in a bee-line for the ship that had landed them here
+a scant three weeks ago.
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel watched them, their excitement a visible thing
+as they pounded up clouds of saffron behind them, and knew without
+activating his personal communicator what they'd have to tell him.
+
+"We've hit it again!" they'd tell him.
+
+He turned his big body from the curving windows, quickly calculated the
+time it would take the jeep to reach the flaring stern of the _White
+Whale_, figured how many minutes it would take the pneumatic lift to
+whisk them three hundred and twelve feet up to the fore-waist, and
+snatched open the door of his liquor cabinet.
+
+Sam Carruthers would be the first one to say it.
+
+Thin, quiet Sam, who'd been in space as ship's surgeon and psychiatrist
+for as long as Joel himself. It had been twenty-two years since they'd
+left the Academy together. Sam had taken his specialty training in
+space medicine, while he, Joel, had let himself get sucked into
+qualifying as pilot.
+
+Twelve years of the Academy. And twenty-two more being ordered around
+the freezing hell of God's black universe like a toy on a string.
+
+And for all of it, Sam still had that look in his dark, brooding
+eyes--the look that had been glazed with shock, but which had still not
+surrendered, the day they told Sam he wasn't going to make pilot.
+
+The look would still be there four minutes and thirty seconds from now
+when he led the others into the fore-waist bridge to holler "We've hit
+it again!" It would always be.
+
+Joel tilted the liquor bottle and one big, clumsy-looking hand poured
+steadily into the thick glassite flagon he held in the other. He downed
+it in a gulp.
+
+Hit it again _hell_!
+
+And behind Sam there would be the first officer, Dobermann. Little,
+wiry German who knew more about languages and semantics than the guy
+who'd invented them, and the best astro-navigator you could find in
+this or any other galaxy. Sure, they always gave Nicholas Joel nothing
+but the best. That was part of it. Part and parcel of the whole damn
+conspiracy.
+
+Dobermann wouldn't say anything when he came in. But there'd be a
+thorough-going, successful, mission-accomplished look on his handsome
+face. Dobermann never missed.
+
+And Southard.... Still a kid, still wet behind the ears, but a hell of
+a promising astrophysicist, backed up with plenty of biochemistry and
+geophysics. It was still a big, romantic adventure to Southard, and he
+wore the single red, gleaming stripe of ship's second officer on his
+broad young shoulders as though it was the thick gold circle of a full
+captaincy.
+
+Joel filled the flagon and emptied it a second time. He went back to
+the windows, the liquor bottle and flagon still in his hands.
+
+To most men, he supposed, the panorama that spread for miles from the
+stern of the up-ended _White Whale_ would be a thing of sheer beauty.
+It would be hard for them to believe that there existed other planets
+far beyond the rim of their own hostile Solar System which could equal
+or exceed the soft beauty of the oasis they called Earth. But there it
+was--gently-rolling, golden desert beneath a temperate, dark-gold sun,
+flanked at one gently curving edge by a forest that looked as though
+it had been scientifically planned and landscaped for beauty. It was a
+big forest that covered a full third of the planet, and at its opposite
+edge it gave way to twelve thousand miles of unblemished shoreline
+which descended into gleaming, azure ocean.
+
+And in the forest, on the ocean, even on the wide expanse of desert,
+there were people. Intelligent, strong, peaceful, quiet people, who
+might have been natives of Earth's Pacific islands of three centuries
+ago, save that their flesh was lighter in tone; their sun was not as
+young as Sol.
+
+Farmers, mostly, Carruthers had reported. Some merchants, some
+travelers and explorers, even some men of a very young science, but,
+mostly, farmers ... it was the way they lived. A good way, Joel
+thought. A good way, in a good place.
+
+He looked through the fore-waist bridge windows, and what he saw was
+beautiful.
+
+But he filled the flagon again.
+
+A buzzer sounded softly from the compact secondary control console
+which banked a full third of the bridge's fore bulkhead, and
+deliberately, Joel let it buzz a second and a third time before he
+fingered the stud that slid the small metal door open behind him. He
+turned as they came through it.
+
+Fatigue and sweat lined Sam's thin face; Dobermann was audibly out of
+breath. Southard had to duck slightly to get into the room, but when
+he straightened he seemed as fresh as when the party had left the ship
+seventeen days before.
+
+Joel returned their salute with the full flagon still in his left hand,
+and then beat Carruthers to the punch.
+
+"All right, so we've hit it one more time! Bully for us--" He drained
+the flagon, reached for the bottle.
+
+Without Carruthers, there would have been an awkward silence. But after
+twenty-two years, Sam knew his man.
+
+"Ahh, you've shown us more than this, Skipper. I suppose it is a little
+better than our prelim reports indicate, if you want to get technical.
+The people want to co-operate. They're intelligent, healthy, and
+friendly and they realize fully what we're trying to do. They want to
+help us, and say we're welcome to all the mneurium-4 we want. 'Course
+there's only a few hundred pure megatons of it lying around, but, if
+you want to get technical--"
+
+"Go to hell," Joel said, and poured his flagon half full. He felt a
+little better, but it would take more than a half-bottle of Martian
+Colony Bond and Sam's wise answers to change things. "Go right straight
+to hell!" He sniffed at the Bond. "So the long arm of Superior
+Civilization has reached out its clanking claws again to make the
+Universe a Better Place to Live in, has it? God help 'em if they
+_believed_ all the hog-wash you fed 'em, Sam."
+
+The thin face sobered. "I spoke to them in good faith, Nicholas, and
+they did believe me. The fact is, they--"
+
+"All right, I get your point! Got my mind made up, so don't start
+confusing me with facts." He transfixed the three of them with a
+restless look; a look they had grown used to. It was a gaze that
+matched the rest of him; the unruly, untrimmed black hair, the short,
+thick beard which was unneeded on a chin and jaw as big and square as
+Joel's, the careless, unmilitary carriage of his thick shoulders and
+blocky body, the blood-shot metal-blue eyes themselves. But during the
+split-second the gaze was upon them, they knew pages were flipping in
+Joel's massive head. Pages of regulations, procedures, memorized down
+to the last foot-note.
+
+"Let's go in order with your reports," Joel snapped.
+
+Southard stepped forward. "Constellation Boötis, Arcturus, planet IV.
+Preliminary analysis of ore-samples indicate rich lodes of mneurium-4,
+relatively close to the surface, and in unprecedentedly great number.
+Purity is unbelievably high, with--"
+
+"All right, Southard, good report. Dobermann."
+
+"Minimum of linguistic difficulty, coupled with a surprisingly high
+aptitude on the natives' part for language learning. In the seventeen
+days I had with them, I'm almost certain those with whom I worked
+learned at least half as much English as I did of their tongue,"
+the German said. He added, simply, as though the seventeen days of
+exhausting gesticulating, diagramming, systematizing, learning,
+recording, had never existed, "There will be no language difficulty,
+sir."
+
+"Good. Now you, Sam, and no schmaltz!"
+
+"Healthy people, no cancer, no TB, no coronary troubles--"
+
+"The mneurium-4, I know. Go on."
+
+"Average IQ in the 120's--and there's something for us to keep in
+mind in spite of our big technological and scientific jump on them.
+They're still working with wood, iron and crude steel, but they won't
+be for long. Agrarian civilization so far; they've got a representative
+type of government--democracy, and a damn good one, and they're
+psychologically suited for just what they've evolved along that line.
+They actually practice what they preach, from the individual status
+right on up through the framework of their government. Open, honest,
+sincere--they have to be, because of the high degree of uniformity of
+IQ, and because--now get this--they _want_ to be. It's the way their
+minds are built, and--"
+
+"All right, so if I believe you, we won't be fighting to get what we
+want. They're willing to meet our terms, that it?"
+
+"Yes, Skipper. Access to all scientific data with which we can supply
+them now, and as much more later as they think they'll require, in
+exchange for reasonable mining rights."
+
+"_Reasonable?_" Joel thundered. He slammed the heavy bottle down on
+the old-fashioned mahogany desk at his elbow. "Was _that_ in the
+contract you made with them? How do you know what the hell they mean by
+reasonable?"
+
+"Sir, if I may--"
+
+"All right, Dobermann, go ahead and enlighten me."
+
+"I worked a number of hours with them on that point, to make certain
+there would be no errors in the semantics involved. They have learned,
+despite their lack of scientific medical knowledge, that as long as
+there is mneurium-4 around, they don't get sick. They trust us to leave
+enough to insure their own well-being."
+
+"That's crazy," Joel shot back at his first officer. "How in God's name
+can they know about mneurium-4 and how to use it when we've only known
+about it and have been scratching the universe for it for less than
+thirty years? That's goddam nonsense--" He refilled the flagon, spilled
+a little of the potent liquor on his beard as he downed it.
+
+"No, Nicholas," Sam said. "You're the bug on history around here. Think
+a minute."
+
+Joel drew a sleeve across his mouth, and pages flipped in his head
+again. Yes, Sam was right. Back as far as the twentieth century,
+there had been isolated tribes in South America which had been found
+free of the diseases that had plagued their more civilized neighbors
+of the north, and it had taken the medical experts years to find
+out exactly why. Invariably, the answer had been usage of the most
+promising materials provided by nature which were closest at hand.
+A tribe stumbled onto something, used it--experimentally at first,
+then wastefully, but finally, with a thousand years' practice, pretty
+efficiently. And it had nothing to do with the fact that they still
+went around with spears and animal-hide shields....
+
+"All right, I get your point, Sam," Joel said. Sam quit talking,
+and for a moment there was silence in the limited confines of the
+fore-waist bridge. Then Joel put the bottle and the flagon down on the
+desk, turned his back to it and faced them.
+
+"From the way you boys talk this thing up, it all must be just
+jim-dandy. Maybe better than on that rock back in Aldeberan, or even
+better than we did in Altair, or Fomalhaut, or Procyon Seven, or any
+of the rest of 'em...." He paused again, watched their faces. They
+remembered--all except Southard, who hadn't been with them on any of
+the old strikes. But his youthful enthusiasm just about made up for the
+fierce pride that shone in the eyes of the others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back home, the _White Whale_, of all of Earth's great fleet of
+Explorer-class ships, had hung up the most enviable record. She had
+brought back rare elements known to men but unobtainable by them within
+the confines of their own tiny Solar System, or rare life-forms,
+impossible to study effectively in their native habitats, or precious
+new data which were beyond the reach of the astronomer's observatory.
+It meant progress. It meant a living force in the universe, a force of
+learning and of knowing, which would tolerate no barrier, which would
+broach neither defeat nor ultimate conclusion. In short, it meant Man.
+
+Nicholas Joel knew it, and he still hated space.
+
+Since that first indoctrination blast out to the moon and back when
+he'd been a plebe--since that day that he'd realized for the first
+time how _big_ it was. And how big men ought to be, but weren't. Big
+muscles, but little minds....
+
+He still wondered just how the hell they'd sucked him in. They'd
+hit him somewhere inside, in a place he'd forgotten to guard--his
+instructors, his Commandant, the Secretary of Science himself. They'd
+sweet-talked him into staying those twelve years. Young man, they had
+told him, yours is a body and a brain with an adaptability to space
+exploration the like of which has never been duplicated in our records.
+You hate to fly, yet you are the best cadet pilot ever to enter the
+Academy. You dislike technical and scientific study, yet your grades in
+this field are the highest on record. You despise the regimen of the
+military necessary to survival in Space, yet, unaccountably, your cadet
+commands have been the most efficient and best handled of any in our
+knowledge.
+
+Young man, they had said, here's the works on a silver platter--be a
+pilot--you owe it to yourself, to the world, to humanity!
+
+Say you'll take our ships where no other man would dare, and you can
+write your own ticket for the rest of your life! _But you simply have
+to be a Pilot, young man...._
+
+And he remembered how it had been with Sam, who would have moved the
+Earth with arms and legs tied behind him to have qualified. Sam, who
+had hungered for it, but had taken a lesser assignment cheerfully, just
+so, at least, he could be a part of some other pilot's team in space.
+
+Sam, who had that look in his eyes.
+
+But since his assignment to the _White Whale_ fifteen years ago, there
+had never been a sign--not the slightest, that Joel had been able to
+detect, that he was doing anything but what he most wanted. That took
+guts, and guts. Joel understood.
+
+And so now they'd hit it again. Mneurium-4, the "wonder-element"
+that science had discovered would put a host of Earth's most dreaded
+diseases to rout, but which it had not been able to obtain or
+synthesize despite years of exhaustive effort.
+
+Captain Joel, they had told him, the radio-astronomers say there could
+be mneurium-4 somewhere out in Boötis. Get some.
+
+And in spite of them and their damned passion for onward-and-upward, if
+they insisted he pilot space to bring them back one new gew-gaw after
+another to play with, then he'd bring them back gew-gaws until they
+choked! _Choked!_
+
+And the world he wanted--the world he'd always wanted, would just have
+to be for somebody else.
+
+Then he looked at their faces, and they were waiting.
+
+"All right, I get your point! Don't just stand there--Southard, get
+your 'copters going! I want a fully plotted area of operation for the
+next six months, including jump-off point as of tomorrow at 0600 hours,
+and on this desk by 2200 tonight! Dobermann, you won't have anything
+to do for awhile, so you can get Southard's servodrillers going for
+him; get 'em all out, form 'em on the port flank in details of five. I
+want to see it by 2100. Sam, has Dobermann given you any practice in
+their lingo? Good--all right, it's time I met 'em--you'll take me to
+their capital city or wherever it is their top people are and we'll
+get things down in black and white. I'll be ready for you in twenty
+minutes. Any questions?"
+
+There weren't. Joel's three officers turned and left, each scrambling
+to his new assignment, glad to actually get started before something
+happened to upset the unexpected simplicity of the whole thing. There'd
+never been a mission that had come off as smoothly as this one was
+beginning. It promised to make them feel guilty to draw their pay
+checks for it. For once, it looked as though Joel was going to get what
+he came after without having to fight down to raw nerve and bone to get
+it. Good. The Captain had an easy one coming.
+
+When they'd gone, Joel dropped his great frame into the ancient chair
+behind his big desk and got to work with the ship's intercom, flipping
+it to main circuit. He did ten minutes' talking in six, and Phase
+One was organized, down to the last ship's guard, down to the last
+assistant servomech.
+
+Then he had fourteen minutes until Carruthers was due, ready to drive
+him to meet these people in their cultivated forest.
+
+So for every one of the fourteen minutes, Captain Nicholas Joel leaned
+back in the chair, shut his eyes tight, and filled in a little more of
+the world he wanted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The roads were of hard-packed dirt, but level, and wide. Occasionally,
+as Sam Carruthers drove, they would pass through a hamlet, or go by
+small knots of men and women in carriages and wagons drawn by striped
+animals resembling Earth's African zebra. The farms were small but
+numerous, and none, Joel noted, had been entirely cleared; the trees
+had been thinned, and they were of a far more slender variety than grew
+elsewhere, but they had not been eliminated. It set well with him. Joel
+had always liked trees, and he had a feeling he was going to like other
+people who did to such an obvious extent.
+
+Buildings, he noted, were almost entirely of wood; structures very
+similar to those he remembered having seen in a history text dealing
+with the western United States in the nineteenth century. A few were of
+stone, some of small, brick cubes; all were pleasing enough to the eye.
+And the people themselves were--
+
+The people looked up as the jeep roared past; looked up from their work
+in the fields, looked out from their wagons and carriages, looked from
+their saddled mounts at the roadside. But there was no fear in their
+glances, only the quick puzzlement of inquiring intelligence.
+
+They were straight, well-bodied people, clothed simply in colorful
+garments which Joel assumed were made of cloth; the men were tall and
+broad and he could mentally picture the powerful muscles that rippled
+beneath their shirts. And the women--The women were the most graceful
+creatures he had ever seen, even those who were obviously no longer
+young; they were less fully clad than their men, and Captain Nicholas
+Joel liked that.
+
+He liked it because it was honest. Where there was something beautiful,
+why in the name of anything holy or otherwise should it be covered
+up? That was the trouble with Earth and her people. There were too
+few things of real beauty, and when they did exist, humans seemed to
+have a psychotic compulsion for either ignoring them or hiding them
+completely. And those who did hesitate for a stolen moment's admiration
+were hurriedly hollered back to their jobs.
+
+"You're surprised that they're not cluttering up the roads, trying to
+get a closer look at us?" Sam was hollering over the howl of the warm,
+oxygen-rich atmosphere.
+
+"Good discipline," Joel grunted, still occupied with his own thoughts.
+
+"Well, you're partly right. But more than that, we haven't stopped to
+look at _them_! It's sort of a half-courtesy, half-pride they have.
+They won't slow a stranger down if he doesn't slow them down, figuring
+that if he wanted to, he would; the prerogative is his. And, if he's
+not that interested, then neither are they!"
+
+"You're sure some expedition didn't get here before we did?" Joel
+asked. "I mean--hell, they could be from Earth--"
+
+"Ever hear of an Earthman with two hearts, Skipper? But physically
+that's about the only difference I could find. Psychologically--" The
+Space surgeon hesitated.
+
+"Psychologically what?"
+
+"Take too long to explain--we're coming into the capital city you were
+talking about. And besides--" he grinned in a sidelong glance at Joel,
+"you might even have the brains to figure it out all by yourself."
+
+"Go to hell!"
+
+In a moment Carruthers was busy with the jeep, tooling it through
+narrowing streets, slowing it to almost a walk as men and women
+hastened out of their way, crowded the board sidewalks to allow them
+to pass unhampered. The buildings were much like those he had seen
+in the rural districts; a little larger, a bit taller, but none more
+than fifty feet in height. Neatly painted, their thin glass windows
+bright and clean, they did not look like part of a city at all, Joel
+reflected, much less part of a capital city. And everything was so
+quiet.
+
+Maybe too quiet. He felt a little chill at the base of his spine, but
+kept looking straight ahead.
+
+"You're sure, Sam, about leaving my guns back at the ship?"
+
+Carruthers just grinned again. And then they turned abruptly, and
+hauled up in front of a long, low building of flagstone.
+
+"This is it," the surgeon said. "No reporters, no photographers,
+no autograph seekers, no brass band or politicians. But you're on,
+Skipper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel felt naked without his guns, and he felt
+off-balance and out of place. Standing in the sedate, oval-shaped
+council-chamber with these peaceful-looking people confronting him, he
+felt clumsy in his heavy black leatheroid uniform, big, highly-polished
+black boots. He felt as if he looked like what he'd been forced to be
+on other occasions, facing forms of life so alien that no difference
+counted--like a man-at-arms, like a conqueror.
+
+Suddenly, he was glad Sam had made him leave his guns back at the ship.
+
+"Nicholas Joel, United Americas Intergalactic Exploration Fleet, of
+the Ship _White Whale_, commanding!" Carruthers was introducing him in
+English, and he wished that Sam would have had the good sense to have
+said "This is Captain Joel" and let it go at that. Didn't the grinning
+idiot know it must have been an awful pill for these people to swallow
+all at once? That there were, to begin with, such things as other
+planets and other galaxies--and that there were, even more incredibly,
+other creatures that lived on them. And, whether they cared to believe
+it or not, some of these creatures had just landed among them, and
+there was nothing they could do about it!
+
+Sam was picking his way along now in their speech, and then at an
+obvious gesture, Joel knew he was being introduced to their top man.
+Sam waved an arm toward the tallest of the twelve-man group, who arose
+from the opposite side of a polished wooden table, and bowed gently
+from the waist.
+
+"His Excellency and Prime Governor, K'hall-i-k'hall."
+
+Joel hesitated, then returned the bow. He had never bowed in his life,
+but a salute to somebody dressed in civilian clothes seemed crazy.
+
+"Sam, you mean he's Prime Governor of--"
+
+"The whole planet."
+
+"Am I always supposed to say his name twice?"
+
+"That is his name. That's the way they do it. Now shut up, Skipper, and
+let me do the talking. I'm going to go through the whole works again
+with 'em. Then we sign. Then you get a tour of the town so the people
+can be introduced to you officially. But don't go making any speeches!
+Behave, and we're in business."
+
+"You go to--"
+
+But Sam had already started talking in the liquid-sounding language,
+and Joel decided it was better for him to keep his own mouth shut and
+be thought stupid than open it and remove all doubt. Damn it, the whole
+thing was making him feel just the way he had twenty years ago, when
+he landed his first explorer on an alien world! It had been that long,
+and how many hundred meetings with alien life-forms since then, under
+how many fantastic circumstances, on how many God-forsaken, unworldly
+places? By now he was supposed to know the score. By now he was
+supposed to have seen everything. By now he knew the book inside and
+out, and had the ability to take charge no matter where in the black
+universe they sent him. Nicholas Joel, United Americas Intergalactic
+Exploration Fleet, of the Ship _White Whale_, commanding....
+
+But nobody was challenging his right to have what he'd come for!
+
+No _trouble_, that was the hell of it, and--and there was nothing to
+hate.
+
+For a miserable moment, Captain Nicholas Joel stood becalmed, with not
+so much as a breeze in his sagging sails.
+
+But he would not let them know it. He looked levelly into the eyes of
+each of the twelve, but even that did little to make him feel more at
+ease.
+
+For he saw wisdom in the lined, kindly faces. He saw a humility and
+sincerity that matched the simple clothing they wore. He saw a kindness
+that men talked about in books and sometimes felt in their hearts, but
+seldom held openly in their faces for the world to see. These men were
+handsome in their physical stature, but they could have been little men
+three feet high, and they would have been the biggest that Joel had
+ever seen.
+
+Now they were talking in subdued tones to Sam, and then one produced a
+document, and handed Sam a slender writing stylus.
+
+"Hey Sam--" The hoarseness of his voice unnerved him, but Joel plowed
+ahead. "Hadn't you oughtta read that thing?"
+
+"It's already been read, Skipper. By Dobermann. It took him three days
+to draw it up--he did most of the writing himself. It's already been
+electrostated; we've got ten copies of our own. Now keep your mouth
+shut or they'll think we don't trust them. You sign first, because
+you're the guest. Then K'hall-i-k'hall, and it's all over."
+
+Sam's thin face had a seriousness in it that Joel knew he did not dare
+question. _The trouble is_, the thought stung him, _you doubt, because
+you were born and raised on Earth. Sam knows that. And he knows how
+these people think. And he says sign.... So sign, you big boob._
+
+Silently, Joel took the stylus from Sam, bent quickly over the
+papyrus-like document, and put his name, rank and ship where
+Sam pointed. Then he gave the stylus to Sam, who returned it to
+K'hall-i-k'hall. And in another instant, all the mneurium-4 the _White
+Whale_ could lift clear was theirs for the taking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once he'd put his mind to it, Joel could converse in the language of
+his hosts as fluently as either Dobermann or Carruthers, and within a
+month he had been able to finish a limited round of visits to a full
+dozen of the smaller cities and towns. These people had respected his
+wish that he be allowed to roam their streets and public buildings
+without official escort, and with an ever-quickening fading of his
+self-consciousness, he did.
+
+He did, more and more frequently.
+
+And from the vantage point of their peacefully winding roads or their
+quaint little shops where they dispensed a fluid amazingly similar
+to Martian Colony Bond, Joel could hate the _White Whale_ from a
+comfortable distance, and with a healthy, untiring diligence. This he
+also did, more and more frequently.
+
+It was during one of these self-assigned off-duty periods, alone in his
+personal jeep, that his most recent pint of Bond decided to harass
+him, and he discovered almost too late that he had ignored a turn
+of the dirt roadway. He skidded wickedly, and frightened one of the
+zebra-like animals drawing a vehicle much resembling a four-wheeled
+surrey. The animal let go with a terrified whinny, and with a sickening
+splintering noise, the _dhennah_ went plunging off the road into the
+deep drainage ditch at its edge. There was also another sound, and Joel
+practically stood the jeep on its nose slewing it to a stop.
+
+By the time he was out and running back, the frightened animal had
+gotten itself out of the ditch and was working frantically to bring the
+_dhennah_ out after it. But the vehicle was canted at a crazy angle,
+and it was obvious to Joel that at least one of its starboard wheels
+was broken, and that it would take more than one _kaelli_ to haul it
+out.
+
+None of this, he reflected as he ran, was going to help diplomatic
+relations a bit. And he was no Dobermann. But it was none of these
+things that worried him at the moment.
+
+She was screaming bloody murder, and still was hard at it when he
+jumped into the ditch.
+
+She stopped when he clambered up on the steeply tilted narrow seat to
+which she clung. There was suddenly not a sound from her as his big
+hands circled her waist and gently lifted her to the ground.
+
+Then he discovered that his voice was stuck. Dammit, an explorer
+captain for over fifteen years, and he didn't know what to say when he
+banged up some farm girl's _dhennah_!
+
+"I--ah, am terribly sorry. It will be replaced, of course. Very stupid
+and clumsy of me. I--ah, you hurt?" Rather smooth, at that!
+
+She smiled. Slender lips, golden-colored eyes, delicately contoured
+face--all seemed to smile together. A breeze ruffled her tawny mass of
+shoulder-length hair, and Nicholas Joel just stood there.
+
+"You are forgiven, the _dhennah_ was not a costly one. I know how
+difficult it must be for you to guide those machines of yours at such
+terrible speeds ... but of course the speeds are necessary to you in
+your work. Thank you for helping me."
+
+Joel reassured himself that if only the conversation were in his mother
+tongue, he would of course not feel so ridiculously at a loss for
+words. After all, this young female was only an--an alien being.
+
+"It was my pleasure, of course," Joel said. He thought perhaps if he
+could manage a smile--"I am gratified that you accept my clumsiness
+with such excellent grace. As intruders to begin with, my men and I--"
+
+"Intruders, sir?" She had taken a few steps away from him to stroke the
+neck of the _kaelli_ and quiet it, but she was still looking at him.
+"Why intruders? At one time, all the people of this world were not of
+one great community as they are now, surely you know that. But when
+one group travelled and visited another, no one thought of it as an
+intrusion." She laughed. "Are we all not one under the sun?"
+
+"But they were of your own kind, from elsewhere on your own planet--"
+
+"A visitor is a visitor," she said, as though suddenly puzzled. "What
+can it matter where he is from?"
+
+Joel started to reply, but checked himself. Of course these people
+had no way of knowing. Of course they were still under the impression
+that intelligent life, wherever it might exist, would necessarily be
+in their own form. The fact that it might not be had never occurred
+to them! Then that was why they had not feared the _White Whale_
+and her crew. It was something Carruthers had probably perceived at
+once, something he could no doubt explain. But now Joel was seeing it
+first-hand for himself. Psychologically, this girl and her people were
+incapable of conceiving a way of life based on different reasons for
+living than their own, with different motives, different--ambitions.
+
+Just, he reflected, as his own people were psychologically incapable of
+greeting a stranger without subconscious suspicion.
+
+To these people, a visitor was--a visitor, and therefore a friend!
+
+He wondered how many others beside himself, Carruthers and Dobermann
+knew.
+
+"Perhaps it does not matter at all," Joel said, and he was surprised at
+the gentleness in his voice. He had not felt it that way in his throat
+for a long time. Not for a terribly long time. "Now, if you'll let me
+help you with that harness, we'll free your _kaelli_, and see what can
+be done about getting you on toward your destination!"
+
+Joel's big fingers started fumbling with the thick leather thongs
+of the _kaelli's_ rig. The harness felt strange and confusing to
+hands disciplined to the limiting exactnesses of servocircuits and
+pressure-control studs, and the complexity of their co-ordination was
+thrown into confusion by sheer simplicity.
+
+The girl laughed as she watched his efforts, then guided his hands
+with her own, and Joel felt a strange warmth mounting in his neck.
+And when the _kaelli_ was at last freed, he said, "Now then, where
+can I take you? I owe you something more than just the replacement of
+your _dhennah_. I shall drive slowly so that the _kaelli_ can follow,
+and you can see for yourself what it is like to ride in one of our
+machines!"
+
+"But--they go like the wind!"
+
+"Indeed they do!" Joel laughed, unaccountably pleased with her
+excitement. "Yes, ma'm, just like the wind!"
+
+Quite unexpectedly, she reached for his hand, and Joel clasped hers
+with a quickness he had not intended. But then he was leading her to
+the jeep, helping her into it.
+
+He started the powerful turbine engine, chuckled aloud at her quick
+gasp, then joined in her laughter.
+
+"Just like the wind!" he cried and they were off.
+
+The day was clear and bright and to Joel the air itself seemed to come
+alive with a heady excitement. This was something, it told him. This
+was not to hate. This was not to drink in bitterness. This was _not_ to
+be alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel paced the fore-waist bridge. There was a full,
+untouched flagon on the mahogany desk, and the bottle of Martian Colony
+Bond stood, tightly corked, beside it.
+
+He sat down, hating the feel of the chair of command beneath his big
+body.
+
+What he was thinking was wrong, of course. But no man could be two men;
+a man could not split himself down the middle and say: this is your
+life _here_, this is your life _there_, for it is unthinkable that a
+man be prisoner of one life only--No, a man could not do that; a man
+had only one life.
+
+Wrong, was it?
+
+And who, any more a man than himself, could dare to be judge?
+
+He would call Carruthers; he would explain, and Carruthers would inform
+the rest. As for Command--
+
+A buzzer roared on the desk in front of him. It was the dispatch unit
+communicator--it would be Southard.
+
+A huge forefinger hit the toggle almost hard enough to wrench it from
+its socket.
+
+"Command!" Joel grated into the sensitive pick-up. "Proceed with your
+message." He reached for the flagon, drained it, filled it again.
+
+"Lieutenant Southard calls Command from Servogroup 4." The youngster's
+voice sounded tight, excited. Now what the hell--"Request task mission.
+Request task mission. Position--"
+
+Joel quickly jacked in the ship's armory circuit. An alarm klaxon would
+be electrifying the entire complement of combat personnel stationed
+in that quarter of the ship even as armory communications was taking
+down the co-ordinates Southard was dictating. And within one minute
+and forty-five seconds after that, combat units would be assembling in
+machine-like precision, deploying into advance order at the ship's
+stern.
+
+And as the two huge sections between the _White Whale's_ slender
+atmosphere fins opened like hungry steel mouths, disgorging flat,
+thick-bodied machines with their grim burdens of armed men and
+destroyer-artillery. Ship's Guard would be taking up defense positions,
+manning gun stations which commanded an energy potential sufficient to
+destroy a minor planet in a single, searing second of blue-white heat.
+
+All this was automatic. A dispatch-unit request for task mission was
+an order, momentarily transcending even Command authority. It worked
+that way because the men who travelled space had learned that with the
+first foot they rose off the surface of Earth, theirs was no longer the
+privilege of living, but the task of survival. Space was emergency. And
+if you regarded it otherwise, it would kill you.
+
+Joel waited. He watched only the sweep second hand on his desk
+chronometer; he did not need his screens, for he knew too well what was
+transpiring three hundred and twelve feet below him. He had seen it too
+many times. And too many times had he waited the necessary two minutes,
+listened to the taut silence of the waiting communicator.
+
+"Command to Southard. Task mission dispatched and advancing. Now
+describe your situation."
+
+"As follows--" The young lieutenant's voice was still taut, but it was
+not at the edge of panic. Of that Joel was certain. It was just that
+this was the first time, and it wasn't a field exercise, and it hadn't
+just been learned the night before from an Academy manual....
+
+"Servounit 4, sample tapping with four facilities at two hundred feet.
+Metal encountered; processed. Object depth-screened; fabricated.
+Extends from minus two zero zero to minus five two seven. Diameter
+three zero feet. Further investigation withheld pending arrival of task
+mission. Over for Command."
+
+_Over for Command_, the young voice said. So many, many times....
+
+He was not exactly the same Nicholas Joel, now. He was Command....
+
+"All right, boy, sit easy and try to relax. What the hell is it you've
+got holed up out there?"
+
+"It's a--a space ship, sir."
+
+"What class?"
+
+"I don't know, sir. It isn't Terrestrial."
+
+"All right, what do the counters tell you?"
+
+"It's about a thousand years old, sir. That's as close as the counters
+can come, working off a screen. Perhaps, sir, you'd--"
+
+"Well I don't want to look at pictures! Inform task mission when they
+show up that I'm coming out for a look around--and I'll have their
+hides if they go unnailing things before I get there. You got any Bond
+with you, Southard?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"All right, you get my point? Don't drink it all! This is Command,
+_Whale_, out!"
+
+Joel broke the circuit just as the admittance buzzer went off; he
+thumbed a stud and the narrow bulkhead door slid back, admitting
+Carruthers and Dobermann.
+
+"Was wondering when you two were going to report. Sent a T-M to
+Southard--says he's found a space ship two hundred feet under the
+desert. Sometimes I think that kid works too hard. All right, got the
+'copter ready?"
+
+"Warming up on the waist ramp now," Dobermann said.
+
+Joel stood up, reached for his guns and belt and strapped them around
+his thick middle. He gave Carruthers a quick look. The thin face was
+taut, almost expressionless, but there was an excitement smouldering in
+the dark eyes; the old excitement Joel had seen in them so many times
+before.
+
+"No objections to the artillery this time, I take it, Sam?" Joel
+grunted as he clasped the big buckle, let the weight of the blasters
+sag their holsters down into position on his thighs. "Damn good of you!
+And I'm glad you understand these people so well--while we're on our
+way maybe you can tell me why they bury space ships."
+
+"Maybe we ought to ask them, Skipper," Sam said with a half-smile on
+his thin lips.
+
+"I get your point. But maybe they should've told us! Come on."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Joel's order, the task mission's guns had been reversed; drawn about
+the area where Southard's servounits were noisily sucking up sand,
+they no longer were concentrated on the excavation site, but instead
+defended it, slender snouts commanding an immense circular field of
+fire.
+
+"You don't trust them at that, do you, Nicholas?" Carruthers said above
+the racket of the servounits. "Lord, you could slaughter an army--"
+
+"This is what it says to do in the goddamn books!" Joel snapped.
+"You're the guys who were so glad to make a strike."
+
+The heavy, tracked machinery with its towering drill-housings and
+down-thrust vacuum-scoops whined and growled in a nerve-wrenching
+discord of power. Men sweated under the mild sun with a silent hurry,
+with a disciplined excitement.
+
+Southard was fast and efficient.
+
+Dobermann was silent, watching, analyzing.
+
+Carruthers had the hungry look in his eyes that Joel did not understand.
+
+And Joel was impatient. It was a tableau of men and machines that he
+had watched before, and always, at the end of it, there was something
+big for him to handle--frustrating if not dangerous, a mind and
+bone-wearying struggle if not an outright battle. They never came
+smooth, never.
+
+"Forehull clear, sir!" It was Southard, calling from the lip of the
+immense hole his machines had excavated.
+
+"Cut your servos!"
+
+Southard signalled to his units, and they muttered slowly into silence,
+and then the silence hung over them all like a heavy thing, and Captain
+Nicholas Joel knew that what happened next was up to him.
+
+With a motion of one gauntleted hand he brought Dobermann and
+Carruthers in next to him, and then the three of them walked with a
+disciplined haste to the sandy lip, past Southard, and looked down.
+
+A pitted forehull jutted up out of the moist sand two hundred feet
+below them, its plates glittering darkly in the rays of the powerful
+illumination units which had already been lowered.
+
+Dobermann's quick eyes took in each detail in seconds, and then they
+darted up to Joel's face. Carruthers was silent, and his face was white.
+
+"All right, let's get some winch-lifts over here!" Joel bellowed.
+"Torches, can-openers, let's get with it!"
+
+And within minutes, Joel was on his way down in a bucket, big boots
+planted solidly on a small mountain of heavy tools.
+
+Dobermann was following, and Carruthers was in the third bucket.
+
+Joel's bare hands were exploring the gnurled lip of the forehull
+lock-hatch before either of them hit bottom. Dobermann was first up
+beside him, a heavy torch cradled in his short, thick arms.
+
+"Ready?"
+
+"Won't need that thing," Joel grunted. "Nobody locked up when they
+left. Give me a hand."
+
+The hatch, like the rest of the hull, was pitted, but despite the
+moistness of the sand in which the ship was imbedded, there were
+no indications of corrosion. Joel made a mental note to have the
+lubricants in which the hinge-gymbals were packed analyzed later; they
+were still as good as new; the hatch was giving almost easily.
+
+Carruthers, with an arc lantern, lit their way inside.
+
+They walked into what was obviously a pilots' compartment. Instruments,
+control panels, ack-seats, notations on metal-leaf note-pads which they
+did not understand; Dobermann copied them.
+
+They descended ladder-walks into the fore-waist; crew compartment.
+Functional, compact, reflecting the same efficient engineering which
+they had encountered in the previous compartment.
+
+Through a second bulkhead opening; supply compartment. Through another;
+cargo hold. It was not empty, and loading gear was in evidence,
+although neatly stowed in its locks.
+
+"Mneurium-4," Carruthers said. The words made a hollow sound in the
+emptiness behind them.
+
+They kept going. Armory. All units still in place. Engine room.
+Dobermann's counter ticked slowly in the stillness. Still a little kick
+left in the piles. Machine-shop; lab. Spotless, perfect order. Finally,
+tubes. The smooth metal gleamed in the light of Carruthers' lamp.
+
+And that was all.
+
+Joel turned wordlessly and started back up the ladder-walks. Dobermann
+and Carruthers clanged hollowly after him, scrambling to keep up.
+
+Joel didn't stop until he had climbed back into one of the buckets, and
+then he waved impatiently. Machinery whined above him, and his bucket
+swung clear.
+
+At the lip, he motioned for Southard.
+
+"All right, I want ten of your people with technical research rates.
+Leave them with Dobermann and Carruthers. Issue return orders to your
+T-M, and then get these units out of here and digging up what we came
+after."
+
+"But--yes sir."
+
+Dobermann and Carruthers were at the lip, climbing out of their
+buckets. There was a puzzled look, even on Dobermann's usually taciturn
+face.
+
+"You two," Joel snapped, "will have a crew of researchers. Ten men.
+Take twenty-four hours and scrape the insides of this thing. Carruthers
+will report directly to me when you're finished. Dobermann, you'll nail
+K'hall-i-k'hall to a wall somewhere and don't let him down until you
+find out what became of whoever flew this tank."
+
+He turned and walked away before anyone could protest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel drained the flagon. He looked again at the faded
+image in the small, rectangular frame, finally returned it to the
+breast pocket of his tunic. Then he looked up across the mahogany desk
+at Carruthers and Dobermann.
+
+"So," he said slowly, "so he told you he didn't know, did he?"
+
+"Yes, Captain, that is what he told me. He was surprised about the
+space ship. He called the others in. There was the same reaction.
+They--"
+
+Joel leaped to his feet. "Don't give me that!" he thundered. He grabbed
+at the bottle of Bond; spilled it as he poured. "You _know_ he knows!"
+
+"Captain, I was quite convinced."
+
+"Quite convinced, quite convinced, were you.... All right, Dobermann,
+get out of here. You find out anything, let me know. Sam, I want to
+talk to you. Go on Dobermann, _git_!"
+
+Joel slumped back behind the desk as his first officer pivoted, left.
+He tried a swallow from the flagon; fumbled at his tunic pocket for
+the small frame, extracted it; looked at it again. Then put it back a
+second time.
+
+Carruthers sat down opposite him.
+
+"You going to talk to me, Nicholas, or pass out before you get the
+chance?"
+
+"All right, Sam." Joel got up, put the Bond back in its cabinet;
+emptied the flagon and put it in too. "I get your point. Only you
+listen. The crew of that ship was deliberately murdered. Cold-bloodedly
+murdered, and it isn't going to happen to us."
+
+"I see." The ship's surgeon eyed the tips of his fingernails, then
+slowly looked up into Joel's red, swollen face. "Naturally, there
+wouldn't be any bodies around to prove your theory, would there,
+Skipper? And no signs of struggle. We didn't see any. Of course,
+their guns _were_ racked up pretty neatly--But it's all there in the
+report--" he waved a slender hand toward a roll of tape on the desk.
+
+"Never mind your sarcastic technicalities! They were--"
+
+"Nicholas, sit down. And listen."
+
+"All right. But I _don't_ get your point! And I don't want any of your
+double-talk! The trouble with you guys--"
+
+"First of all, Nicholas, you know that crew wasn't murdered or anything
+of the kind. And you know, and Dobermann realizes that you know _he_
+knows, that K'hall-i-k'hall was lying in his teeth. And K'hall-i-k'hall
+knows _we_ know it."
+
+Joel lowered his eyes. "All right, Sam," he said. No, there hadn't been
+any use in trying to drum up a bunch of tripe--no use in trying to
+fool Sam. He had known that from the start. But sometimes--sometimes,
+even when a man knew he was fooling himself, he had to give it a try,
+just to see-- "They went native, didn't they, Sam?" he said.
+
+"Yes, Skipper. They did. Somebody back where they came from needed that
+mneurium-4 real bad. Somebody had guts and sweat and brains enough to
+get ships into space looking for it. And in their own way, somebody had
+faith enough to think they'd get it if it was to be found. Only, as you
+say--"
+
+"Liked it here, I suppose. Liked it better than anything they'd ever
+seen before--and that can of theirs had a thumping set of drives, so
+they'd seen plenty."
+
+There was silence for a moment. And then Sam said, "Well, Nicholas,
+there it is. The psychology of the thing is obvious enough, isn't it?"
+Carruthers gave him a meaningful look, and Joel's nerves rebelled at it.
+
+"All right, I get your point!" A big fist slammed down on the desktop.
+"So somebody didn't get their mneurium-4! Somebody probably ornery
+enough to keep on living anyway. What do you want to bet they're still
+going strong, who or wherever they are out in that black hell up there?
+What do you want to bet, Sam?"
+
+The surgeon's thin lips smiled gently. "I'd bet right along with you,
+Nicholas. They're probably still going strong. I imagine they made out."
+
+"But K'hall-i-k'hall--"
+
+"Is proprietor of a very pleasant world. A world of very nice people,
+Nicholas, who enjoy living in their way, and get a kick out of seeing
+other people enjoy it. They think a little differently than a lot of
+folks."
+
+"That makes 'em bad, I suppose?"
+
+"No."
+
+Joel looked into the thin face, the intent, dark eyes. The look was in
+them.
+
+And Joel guessed he was finally letting himself realize what the look
+really meant.
+
+It was a look that meant a hunger for all that Joel hated, and more....
+
+It was a look that meant, even now after all these years, that Sam
+still hurt inside, and hurt badly.
+
+"Why--why couldn't it have been the other way _around_, Sam," Joel said
+hoarsely.
+
+The other looked up at him. "You do hate it that much, don't you."
+
+"Look Sam, you've gotta get my point! I don't think that crew did
+anything wrong! They didn't. They just decided to stop being hunks of
+machinery."
+
+Carruthers smiled. "I get your point, Skipper. And I'm going to let you
+figure this one out all by yourself. But I'd like to tell you something
+first, just sort of as a point of information; maybe it'll help.
+Skipper, I had a girl once, too."
+
+Joel stood still. Then he turned, opened his mouth to speak, then
+clamped it hard shut.
+
+"They told me I couldn't pilot. But I could help, and my help was
+needed--everybody's was, because this wasn't a matter of a government
+project. This was a matter of a race of people who were building a
+ladder--a big, tall ladder, Nicholas. Sometimes it was a killer.
+Sometimes a heartbreaker. Sometimes a laughingstock. _But it belonged
+to men, and they lived and died for it; they built it, and it's theirs
+to climb, Nicholas!_"
+
+Joel watched the other's worn face, and now the hurt was naked in it.
+
+"She said, Nicholas, that it was all off if I decided to go up to
+space. I loved her, Skipper. _And I loved the tall ladder._"
+
+Joel whirled. "Sure, and what's it got us, Sam? A bellyful of cold,
+aching loneliness--our guts twisted and squeezed until the life's
+dried up in 'em--and what do we get? What do those wrangling, yapping,
+bellyaching rotters back home give us for it? Pension us off when we
+can't see our blast-off studs anymore and forget about us.
+
+"They take the stuff we bring 'em--just as if it grew on trees, just as
+if it grew into a neat, pretty package somewhere all by itself! With
+money they can buy it--with enough money they can buy all of it! Even
+if we had to get it with the air sucked out of us, with our brains
+boiled out of us, with our crazy heads busted in.
+
+"And you know what, Sam? There was even a time when they said we
+couldn't do it at all! A hundred years ago, they laughed at us for
+trying to get to the moon! They laughed, Sam--and those who didn't
+laugh _didn't even give a damn at all_!
+
+"So I was to tell the girl I'd marry her later, but that right now they
+thought I ought to be a pilot! I was to say to my life: I'll live you
+later, but right now I've got to be a pilot.... And I was to freeze my
+insides for twenty years showing 'em they were wrong to laugh, and that
+it was time they gave a damn, that what I could bring home was going to
+mean a lot to the world they live on!
+
+"And like a fool I did!
+
+"And Sam--Sam, they're still yapping like little dogs for a piece
+of meat--not just a good piece of meat, but all wrapped up nice and
+fancy, no mistakes allowed, every time they whistle! And the whistling
+gets so easy, Sam--so easy. You can even do it while you're stabbing
+your neighbor in the back, while you're selling his kids down the
+river--even while you're taking your next breath to yap some more!
+
+"They can go to hell, Sam! They can go to hell."
+
+Joel slumped down in the chair behind the mahogany desk.
+
+The surgeon looked at him, looked away.
+
+"You've made up your mind, then."
+
+"That's right."
+
+"I suppose Dobermann and I can get the ship back somehow."
+
+"You'll make it."
+
+"I guess we will. Unless the rest feel the way you do--and I know half
+the crew thinks this is quite a place. In which case, of course, I
+suppose they'll survive, back home, even without the mneurium-4--they
+have for a long time. But there is one thing."
+
+"Yeah, yeah."
+
+"These people are fine people, as you've--found out. You couldn't even
+replace that _dhennah_."
+
+"How did you--"
+
+"They're swell folks, Nicholas, and always will be," the surgeon said
+softly, "and they've never built a thing, _and never will_.
+
+"They don't know greed, because no one has ever achieved anything worth
+another's wanting.
+
+"They don't know jealousy, because no one has ever obtained anything
+that another couldn't.
+
+"They don't know hate, because no one has ever discovered a thing for
+which to fight that another thinks of sufficient value to fight for.
+
+"Only--if they don't know hate or jealousy, Skipper--then, _they don't
+know love_!"
+
+Quietly, Carruthers rose from his chair. For a moment, he hesitated.
+"What is it you're lonely for, Nicholas?" he asked, and then he left
+the fore-waist bridge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a mushroom of sun-fire against the blackness of the cool
+night, and a thunder of power.
+
+Slowly, ponderously, the _White Whale_ backed down her column of flame,
+hesitated, flared again for a final time from her thick stem, and then
+settled to Earth.
+
+Gantries rolled into position. And the sound of lock-hatches clanging
+open thrilled the length of the _White Whale_, and there were the
+muffled voices of men, and the voices became shouts with the joy loud
+in them.
+
+The men trooped down from their great metal monster as fast as the
+lifts would carry them, and in small groups and in crowds they made
+their boisterous way across the landing plaza and toward home.
+
+And when the shouts had died, a last man descended the smooth sides of
+the _White Whale_.
+
+His eyes glanced over the great bulk of her, making certain she was
+secure. Then he, too, walked from her, but not as quickly as the rest.
+
+Captain Nicholas Joel walked slowly, because he was tired.
+
+On every side of him, in dark shadow against the night, there were
+tall, slender, streamlined shapes pointing toward the stars.
+
+His slow boot-steps echoed from their hulls as he passed, a tiny midge
+of a thing, between them.
+
+As Sam had said, these were things that Man had made.
+
+And among them again was the _White Whale_.
+
+They had said he was a good pilot.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Task Mission, by Fox B. Holden
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59174 ***