October 1, 2025 • 35 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Control Group by Roger d. The cool green disc of
Alphard six on the screen was infinitely welcome after the
arid desolation and stinking swamp lands of the inner planets,
an airy jewel of a world that might have been
(00:20):
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 MARKO four
down all at once, but for the greater caution of Striker,
nominally captain of the group, and of Gibson, engineer and
(00:42):
linguist Xavior. The ship's little mechanical had, as was usual
and proper no voice in the matter. Reconnaissance Spiral First
Arthur Striker said firmly. He chuckled at Farrell's instant scowl,
his little eyes twinkling, and his naked paunch quaking over
(01:02):
the belt of his shipboard shorts, Chapter one, sub section five,
paragraph twenty seven. No planetfall on an unreclaimed world shall
be deemed safe without proper Ferrell, as Striker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic impatience. Do you sleep with that damned
(01:23):
Reclamation's handbook?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Lee?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
How far at six isn't an unreclaimed world. It was
never colonized before the hymenop invasion back in thirty twenty five,
so why should it be inhabited now. Gibson, who for
four hours had not looked up from his interminable chess
game with Exavior, paused with a beleaguered night in one
(01:47):
blunt brown hand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No point in.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
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 and
twenty six light years from Soul, at the old limits
of terror and expansion, and there's no knowing what we
(02:10):
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 seven O Fuchi, and I think you live for
the day, Pharaoh said acidly, when we'll stumble across a
functioning dome of live, buzzing hymenops. Damn it, Git, the
(02:34):
bees pulled out a hundred years ago before you and
I were born. Neither of us ever saw hymenop and
never will. But I saw them, Striker 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
(02:56):
and left. How can we know whether they'd leave a
rear guard booby trap. He put a paternal hand on
Ferrell's shoulder, understanding the young man's eagerness and knowing that
their close knit team would have been the more poorly
balanced without it. Gibbs right, he said, He nearly added,
(03:16):
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 reorientationship by landing blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in your shields and find
(03:37):
a reconnaissance spiral, will you. Grumbling Pharaoh punched coordinates on
the ringwave board that lifted the Marco four out of
her descent and restored the bluish enveloping haze of her repellors.
Striker's caution was justified. On the instant the speeding, streamlined
shape that had flashed up, unobserved from below, swerved sharply,
(04:01):
and exploded in a cataclysmic blaze of atomic fire that
brought 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, Striker said minutes later. Deliberately,
he adopted the smug tone best calculated to sting Farrell
(04:24):
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, Striker turned to Gibson, who
was busily assessing the damage done to the ship's more
(04:45):
fragile equipment, and to Xavior, who searched the planet's surface
with the ship's magno scanner. The Marco four ringwave generators
humming gently hung at the moment just inside the orbit
of Alphard's s single dun colored moon. Gibson put down
a test meter with an air of finality. Nothing damaged,
(05:08):
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. Striker 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
(05:30):
is hardly likely to have developed efficient spacecraft. Striker 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
(05:53):
in his fat, good humored face. We'll have to find
out who they are and why they're here. You know. Well,
it 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. Well,
(06:15):
there were three empty domes on five, which is a
desert planet. Pharaoh 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
(06:36):
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, Pharaoh said, with
the faint malice of one too recently caught in the wrong.
(06:59):
How Fard six was surveyed and seated with Terran bacteria
around the year three thousand, 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
(07:19):
gone for over one hundred years. Striker 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 one hundred years to condition their human
(07:41):
slaves to ignorance of everything beyond their immediate environment. Motives
behind that conditioning usually escape us, but that's beside the point.
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.
(08:07):
Striker made a padding turn around 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
(08:27):
terror and 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. Probably The same objection
that rules out the bees applies to any trans Alphardian culture.
(08:49):
They'd have to be beyond the atomic fission stage as
they 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. Striker
(09:12):
turned on him, almost angrily. Well, if they're not cymenops
or humans or aliens, then what in God's name are they? Aye,
there's the rub, Perrell 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
(09:34):
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. Striker threw up his
hands and surrendered. We can't identify them by theorizing, and
that brings us down to the business of first hand investigation.
(09:56):
Who's going to bell the cat this time? I'd like
to go, Gibson said at once. The ZiT computer can wait.
Striker vetoed his offer as promptly. No, the ZiT comes first.
We may have to run for it, and we can't
set up a transferred jump without the computer. It's got
to be me or Arthur. Ferrell felt the familiar chill
(10:20):
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 fleeting Hymenop conquerors,
would have broken him long ago. But that same hard
(10:43):
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. God knows I'd
(11:04):
go mad if I had to stay in ship and
listen to Lee memorizing his handbook subsections, or to Gibb
practicing dead languages with Xavier. Striker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that had so nearly wrecked the
Marco for good enough, though, it wouldn't be more diverting
to listen for hours to you improvising enharmonic variations on
(11:29):
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 heelihopper for a low level check. Striker
(11:50):
looked at Ferrell. All right, Arthur, good enough, Ferrell said,
and to Xavier, who had not moved from his post
at the magno scanner, how's it look, Zafe? Have you
pinned down their base yet? The mechanical answered him, in
a voice as smooth and clear and as inflectionless as
(12:11):
a cellow Note.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
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
(12:36):
the bulk of the Marco four. They crowded about the
vision screen, jostling Saviour'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
(12:59):
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,
Ferrell said, Relief replaced in some measure his earlier uneasiness,
which means that their terran and can be dealt with
(13:21):
according to Reclamation's routine. Is that hulk spaceworthy zaith Xavior's
mellow drone assumed the convention vibrato that indicated its dark puzzlement.
Its breached hull makes the ship incapable of light. Apparently,
it is used only to supply power to the outlying hamlets.
(13:44):
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 general through a crudely governed process
of continuous atomic fission. Farah, himself, appalled by the information,
(14:09):
still found himself able to chuckle at Striker's bellow of consternation.
Continuous fission. Good God, only mad men would deliberately run
a risk like that, Pharaoh 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
(14:32):
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. Striker finished in an awed voice.
(14:54):
Primitive isn't the word, GiB The thing is prehistoric. Rocket
propulsion hasn't been used in spacecraft since how long zave
Xavier supplied the information with mechanical infallibility, since the year
twenty one hundred, when the ringwave propulsion communication principle was discovered.
(15:16):
That principle has served men since. Ferrell stared in blank
disbelief at the anomalous craft on the screen. Primitive, as
Striker 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
(15:39):
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 aposterity, the sullen atomic fires
banked in that oxidizing home, Striker said plaintively, If you're right,
(16:04):
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
(16:25):
it's a Terran artifact, we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not, any problem posed by one group
of human beings, Striker 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
(16:47):
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,
(17:13):
and when the navigator forestalled him by remaining grimly, Quiet continued.
The obvious premise is that a Terran ship must have
been built by Terrance. Question was it flown here or
built here? Couldn't have been built here, Stryker said, Alphard
six was surveyed just before the Bees took over in
(17:35):
thirty twenty five, and there was nothing of the sort here.
Then it couldn't have been built during the two and
a quarter century, since it's obviously much older than that.
It was flown here. Well, we progress, Farrell said dryly,
Now if you'll tell us how we're ready to move.
(17:56):
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
(18:19):
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. Ferrell shook his head at the inference. I've
read any number of fanciful romances on the theme give,
but it won't stand up in practice. No ship board
(18:42):
society could last through a thousand year space voyage. It's
a physical and psychological impossibility. It's got to be some
other explanation. Gibson shrugged. We can only eliminate the least
likely alternatives and accept the simplest one remaining. Well, then
we can eliminate this one now, Perrell said flatly.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
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
(19:28):
until around the year three thousand. 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, Striker 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
(19:51):
forty generations speculative fiction. To the contrary, the later generations
would have been too far removed in ideology and intent
from their ancestors. Date of adapted shipboard life as the norm,
date of atrophied physically, perhaps even have mutated, And they'd
never have fought past the bees during the Hymenop invasion
(20:13):
and occupation, Pharaoh 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 three thousand, Gibson said, and it is now. Therefore,
it must have arrived at some time during the two
(20:34):
hundred years of Hymenop occupation and evacuation. Pharaoh 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
(20:57):
haven't touched on all the possibilities, and reminded him, we
haven't even established yet that these people were never under
Hymenop control. President 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, Pharaoh
(21:22):
threw up his hands in disgust. Next you'll say, this
is an ancient tear and 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, Zave,
But uncertainty nagged uneasily at him. When Pharaoh found himself
(21:44):
alone in the helihop, with the forest flowing beneath like
a leafy river, and Xavior scoutered disappearing bullet like into
the dusk ahead. We never found a colony so advanced.
Pharaoh thought, Suppose this is a hymenop experiment that really
paid off. The bees did some weird and wonderful things
(22:07):
with human guinea pigs. What if they created the ultimate
booby trap here and primed it with conditioned myrmadons in
our own form. Suppose he thought and derided himself for
thinking of it. Suppose one of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed. Xavier's voice a mellow drone from the
(22:31):
Helahopper'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.
(22:53):
Striker's voice followed querulous with hurry, I'd better pull ZAV back.
It may be something lethal, don't Gibson's baritone advised. Surprisingly,
there was excitement in the engineer's voice. I think I
think they're trying to communicate with us. Ferrell was on
the point of demanding acidly to know how one went
(23:14):
about communicating by means of a fluctuating electric field, when
the unexpected cessation of forest diverted his attention. The heelihopper
scudded over a cultivated area of considerable extent fields stretching
below in a vague random checkerboard of lighter and darker earth,
(23:34):
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, Ferrell reported, the one nearest the city,
(23:55):
I think there's something odd going on down Catastrophe struck
so suddenly that he was caught completely unprepared. The hilahpper'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
(24:20):
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
(24:41):
over bright, 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. Ferrell sat up, groaning, when full consciousness
made his position clear. He had been shot down by
(25:03):
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 Ferrell's
(25:26):
stare and spoke. His words were utterly unintelligible, but his
gesture was unmistakable. Ferrell followed him dumbly out of the
infirmary and down a bare corridor whose metal floor rang
coldly under foot. An open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall and let in a flood
(25:48):
of reddish Alphardian sunlight. Ferrel slowed to look out, wondering
how long he had lain unconscious, and felt panic knife
at him when he saw Xavir scout lying port, open
and undefended on the square outside. The mechanical had been
as easily taken as himself, then Striker and Gibson, for
(26:11):
all their professional caution, would fare no better. They could
not have overlooked the capture of Farrell and Exavior, and
when they tried, as a matter of course, to rescue them,
the Marko 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
(26:34):
what had happened, followed without protest and 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 sound
proofed place that could have been nothing but a nursery.
(26:57):
The implication behind its presence stopped Farrell short a crash,
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
(27:18):
apart 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.
(27:43):
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 in defeated the bees on their
own invaded ground. He followed his white smocked guide through
(28:06):
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 spears for Striker and Gibson had been
(28:26):
well grounded. The Marko I 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.
(28:49):
Without pausing in his stride, he sprang out and through
the port and down the steep plain of the ramp.
The rough stone pavement of the square drummed underfoot, sow
muscles at him, and weakness was like a weight about
his neck. He expected momentarily to be blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marko fur with the startled shouts of
(29:11):
his guide ringing unintelligibly in his ears. The port yawned.
He plunged inside and stabbed at controls without waiting to
seat himself. The port slung 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
(29:33):
of his coup, that he all but fainted when Striker,
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?
Ferrell gaped at him, speechless. Striker lumbered past him and
took the controls, spiraling the Marko four down. Men swarmed
(29:58):
outside the ports. When the Reclamationation's 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
(30:20):
no trouble, Ferrell said dumbly. I don't understand. They didn't
shoot you, and zaved 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, and an acronism you forgot.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Last night.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
You piloted the helihopper into one of those lines, and
the crash puts 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. Striker
put in understanding of the error under which Ferrell had labored,
(31:05):
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 screen set off its engines. Ferrell dropped
into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction.
(31:29):
He was suddenly exhausted and his head ached.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Dully.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
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 Save and
I recognized the old language. The natives reported your accident,
(31:53):
and we came down at once. They really came from Tara.
They lived through a thousand years of The ship left
Terra for Sirius in twenty one seventy one, Gibson said,
but not with these people aboard or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less than a light year when its
(32:13):
hydroponic 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 deductible from the situation. Here Pharoh put
(32:33):
his hands to his temples and groaned the crash. Most
have scrambled my wits, GiB Where did they come from?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
From?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
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 stopped the ship with
a captive crew of Tarrans conditioned to believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and grounded it here in disabled condition.
(33:04):
They left for Alphard five then to watch developments succeeding
generations of colonists grew up. Excepting the fact that their
ship had missed serious and made planet fall here, they
still don't know where they really are, made planet fall
by luck. They never knew about the Hymenops, and they
struggled along with an inadequate technology in the hope that
(33:26):
a later expedition would find them. They found the truth
hard to take, but they're eager to enjoy the fruits
of terror and assimilation. Striker Grinning brought Ferrell a frosted
drink that tinkled invitingly, an unusually fortunate ending to a
Hymenop experiment. He said, these people progressed normally because they've
(33:47):
been left alone. Reorienting them will be a simple matter.
They'll be properly spoiled colonists within another generation. Ferrel Slip
sipped his drink appreciatively.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
But I don't.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
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 give 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
(34:25):
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. Pharrell shook his head.
It's a reverse application, isn't it, of the old saubot
Terrans being incapable of understanding and alien culture. Of course,
(34:45):
said Gibson, surprised. It's obvious enough. Surely, as hard as
they tried, the bees never understood us either. End of
Control Group by Roger d.
Control Group by Roger d. The cool green disc of
Alphard six on the screen was infinitely welcome after the
arid desolation and stinking swamp lands of the inner planets,
an airy jewel of a world that might have been
(00:20):
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 MARKO four
down all at once, but for the greater caution of Striker,
nominally captain of the group, and of Gibson, engineer and
(00:42):
linguist Xavior. The ship's little mechanical had, as was usual
and proper no voice in the matter. Reconnaissance Spiral First
Arthur Striker said firmly. He chuckled at Farrell's instant scowl,
his little eyes twinkling, and his naked paunch quaking over
(01:02):
the belt of his shipboard shorts, Chapter one, sub section five,
paragraph twenty seven. No planetfall on an unreclaimed world shall
be deemed safe without proper Ferrell, as Striker had expected,
interrupted with characteristic impatience. Do you sleep with that damned
(01:23):
Reclamation's handbook?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Lee?
Speaker 1 (01:26):
How far at six isn't an unreclaimed world. It was
never colonized before the hymenop invasion back in thirty twenty five,
so why should it be inhabited now. Gibson, who for
four hours had not looked up from his interminable chess
game with Exavior, paused with a beleaguered night in one
(01:47):
blunt brown hand.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No point in.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
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 and
twenty six light years from Soul, at the old limits
of terror and expansion, and there's no knowing what we
(02:10):
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 seven O Fuchi, and I think you live for
the day, Pharaoh said acidly, when we'll stumble across a
functioning dome of live, buzzing hymenops. Damn it, Git, the
(02:34):
bees pulled out a hundred years ago before you and
I were born. Neither of us ever saw hymenop and
never will. But I saw them, Striker 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
(02:56):
and left. How can we know whether they'd leave a
rear guard booby trap. He put a paternal hand on
Ferrell's shoulder, understanding the young man's eagerness and knowing that
their close knit team would have been the more poorly
balanced without it. Gibbs right, he said, He nearly added,
(03:16):
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 reorientationship by landing blind on an unobserved planet.
We're too close already. Cut in your shields and find
(03:37):
a reconnaissance spiral, will you. Grumbling Pharaoh punched coordinates on
the ringwave board that lifted the Marco four out of
her descent and restored the bluish enveloping haze of her repellors.
Striker's caution was justified. On the instant the speeding, streamlined
shape that had flashed up, unobserved from below, swerved sharply,
(04:01):
and exploded in a cataclysmic blaze of atomic fire that
brought 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, Striker said minutes later. Deliberately,
he adopted the smug tone best calculated to sting Farrell
(04:24):
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, Striker turned to Gibson, who
was busily assessing the damage done to the ship's more
(04:45):
fragile equipment, and to Xavior, who searched the planet's surface
with the ship's magno scanner. The Marco four ringwave generators
humming gently hung at the moment just inside the orbit
of Alphard's s single dun colored moon. Gibson put down
a test meter with an air of finality. Nothing damaged,
(05:08):
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. Striker 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
(05:30):
is hardly likely to have developed efficient spacecraft. Striker 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
(05:53):
in his fat, good humored face. We'll have to find
out who they are and why they're here. You know. Well,
it 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. Well,
(06:15):
there were three empty domes on five, which is a
desert planet. Pharaoh 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
(06:36):
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, Pharaoh said, with
the faint malice of one too recently caught in the wrong.
(06:59):
How Fard six was surveyed and seated with Terran bacteria
around the year three thousand, 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
(07:19):
gone for over one hundred years. Striker 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 one hundred years to condition their human
(07:41):
slaves to ignorance of everything beyond their immediate environment. Motives
behind that conditioning usually escape us, but that's beside the point.
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.
(08:07):
Striker made a padding turn around 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
(08:27):
terror and 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. Probably The same objection
that rules out the bees applies to any trans Alphardian culture.
(08:49):
They'd have to be beyond the atomic fission stage as
they 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. Striker
(09:12):
turned on him, almost angrily. Well, if they're not cymenops
or humans or aliens, then what in God's name are they? Aye,
there's the rub, Perrell 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
(09:34):
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. Striker threw up his
hands and surrendered. We can't identify them by theorizing, and
that brings us down to the business of first hand investigation.
(09:56):
Who's going to bell the cat this time? I'd like
to go, Gibson said at once. The ZiT computer can wait.
Striker vetoed his offer as promptly. No, the ZiT comes first.
We may have to run for it, and we can't
set up a transferred jump without the computer. It's got
to be me or Arthur. Ferrell felt the familiar chill
(10:20):
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 fleeting Hymenop conquerors,
would have broken him long ago. But that same hard
(10:43):
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. God knows I'd
(11:04):
go mad if I had to stay in ship and
listen to Lee memorizing his handbook subsections, or to Gibb
practicing dead languages with Xavier. Striker laughed for the first
time since the explosion that had so nearly wrecked the
Marco for good enough, though, it wouldn't be more diverting
to listen for hours to you improvising enharmonic variations on
(11:29):
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 heelihopper for a low level check. Striker
(11:50):
looked at Ferrell. All right, Arthur, good enough, Ferrell said,
and to Xavier, who had not moved from his post
at the magno scanner, how's it look, Zafe? Have you
pinned down their base yet? The mechanical answered him, in
a voice as smooth and clear and as inflectionless as
(12:11):
a cellow Note.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
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
(12:36):
the bulk of the Marco four. They crowded about the
vision screen, jostling Saviour'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
(12:59):
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,
Ferrell said, Relief replaced in some measure his earlier uneasiness,
which means that their terran and can be dealt with
(13:21):
according to Reclamation's routine. Is that hulk spaceworthy zaith Xavior's
mellow drone assumed the convention vibrato that indicated its dark puzzlement.
Its breached hull makes the ship incapable of light. Apparently,
it is used only to supply power to the outlying hamlets.
(13:44):
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 general through a crudely governed process
of continuous atomic fission. Farah, himself, appalled by the information,
(14:09):
still found himself able to chuckle at Striker's bellow of consternation.
Continuous fission. Good God, only mad men would deliberately run
a risk like that, Pharaoh 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
(14:32):
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. Striker finished in an awed voice.
(14:54):
Primitive isn't the word, GiB The thing is prehistoric. Rocket
propulsion hasn't been used in spacecraft since how long zave
Xavier supplied the information with mechanical infallibility, since the year
twenty one hundred, when the ringwave propulsion communication principle was discovered.
(15:16):
That principle has served men since. Ferrell stared in blank
disbelief at the anomalous craft on the screen. Primitive, as
Striker 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
(15:39):
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 aposterity, the sullen atomic fires
banked in that oxidizing home, Striker said plaintively, If you're right,
(16:04):
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
(16:25):
it's a Terran artifact, we can discover the reason for
its presence. If not, any problem posed by one group
of human beings, Striker 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
(16:47):
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,
(17:13):
and when the navigator forestalled him by remaining grimly, Quiet continued.
The obvious premise is that a Terran ship must have
been built by Terrance. Question was it flown here or
built here? Couldn't have been built here, Stryker said, Alphard
six was surveyed just before the Bees took over in
(17:35):
thirty twenty five, and there was nothing of the sort here.
Then it couldn't have been built during the two and
a quarter century, since it's obviously much older than that.
It was flown here. Well, we progress, Farrell said dryly,
Now if you'll tell us how we're ready to move.
(17:56):
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
(18:19):
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. Ferrell shook his head at the inference. I've
read any number of fanciful romances on the theme give,
but it won't stand up in practice. No ship board
(18:42):
society could last through a thousand year space voyage. It's
a physical and psychological impossibility. It's got to be some
other explanation. Gibson shrugged. We can only eliminate the least
likely alternatives and accept the simplest one remaining. Well, then
we can eliminate this one now, Perrell said flatly.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
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
(19:28):
until around the year three thousand. 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, Striker 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
(19:51):
forty generations speculative fiction. To the contrary, the later generations
would have been too far removed in ideology and intent
from their ancestors. Date of adapted shipboard life as the norm,
date of atrophied physically, perhaps even have mutated, And they'd
never have fought past the bees during the Hymenop invasion
(20:13):
and occupation, Pharaoh 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 three thousand, Gibson said, and it is now. Therefore,
it must have arrived at some time during the two
(20:34):
hundred years of Hymenop occupation and evacuation. Pharaoh 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
(20:57):
haven't touched on all the possibilities, and reminded him, we
haven't even established yet that these people were never under
Hymenop control. President 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, Pharaoh
(21:22):
threw up his hands in disgust. Next you'll say, this
is an ancient tear and 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, Zave,
But uncertainty nagged uneasily at him. When Pharaoh found himself
(21:44):
alone in the helihop, with the forest flowing beneath like
a leafy river, and Xavior scoutered disappearing bullet like into
the dusk ahead. We never found a colony so advanced.
Pharaoh thought, Suppose this is a hymenop experiment that really
paid off. The bees did some weird and wonderful things
(22:07):
with human guinea pigs. What if they created the ultimate
booby trap here and primed it with conditioned myrmadons in
our own form. Suppose he thought and derided himself for
thinking of it. Suppose one of those suicidal old interstellar
ventures did succeed. Xavier's voice a mellow drone from the
(22:31):
Helahopper'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.
(22:53):
Striker's voice followed querulous with hurry, I'd better pull ZAV back.
It may be something lethal, don't Gibson's baritone advised. Surprisingly,
there was excitement in the engineer's voice. I think I
think they're trying to communicate with us. Ferrell was on
the point of demanding acidly to know how one went
(23:14):
about communicating by means of a fluctuating electric field, when
the unexpected cessation of forest diverted his attention. The heelihopper
scudded over a cultivated area of considerable extent fields stretching
below in a vague random checkerboard of lighter and darker earth,
(23:34):
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, Ferrell reported, the one nearest the city,
(23:55):
I think there's something odd going on down Catastrophe struck
so suddenly that he was caught completely unprepared. The hilahpper'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
(24:20):
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
(24:41):
over bright, 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. Ferrell sat up, groaning, when full consciousness
made his position clear. He had been shot down by
(25:03):
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 Ferrell's
(25:26):
stare and spoke. His words were utterly unintelligible, but his
gesture was unmistakable. Ferrell followed him dumbly out of the
infirmary and down a bare corridor whose metal floor rang
coldly under foot. An open port near the corridor's end
relieved the blankness of wall and let in a flood
(25:48):
of reddish Alphardian sunlight. Ferrel slowed to look out, wondering
how long he had lain unconscious, and felt panic knife
at him when he saw Xavir scout lying port, open
and undefended on the square outside. The mechanical had been
as easily taken as himself, then Striker and Gibson, for
(26:11):
all their professional caution, would fare no better. They could
not have overlooked the capture of Farrell and Exavior, and
when they tried, as a matter of course, to rescue them,
the Marko 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
(26:34):
what had happened, followed without protest and 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 sound
proofed place that could have been nothing but a nursery.
(26:57):
The implication behind its presence stopped Farrell short a crash,
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
(27:18):
apart 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.
(27:43):
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 in defeated the bees on their
own invaded ground. He followed his white smocked guide through
(28:06):
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 spears for Striker and Gibson had been
(28:26):
well grounded. The Marko I 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.
(28:49):
Without pausing in his stride, he sprang out and through
the port and down the steep plain of the ramp.
The rough stone pavement of the square drummed underfoot, sow
muscles at him, and weakness was like a weight about
his neck. He expected momentarily to be blasted out of existence.
He reached the Marko fur with the startled shouts of
(29:11):
his guide ringing unintelligibly in his ears. The port yawned.
He plunged inside and stabbed at controls without waiting to
seat himself. The port slung 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
(29:33):
of his coup, that he all but fainted when Striker,
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?
Ferrell gaped at him, speechless. Striker lumbered past him and
took the controls, spiraling the Marko four down. Men swarmed
(29:58):
outside the ports. When the Reclamationation's 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
(30:20):
no trouble, Ferrell said dumbly. I don't understand. They didn't
shoot you, and zaved 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, and an acronism you forgot.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Last night.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
You piloted the helihopper into one of those lines, and
the crash puts 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. Striker
put in understanding of the error under which Ferrell had labored,
(31:05):
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 screen set off its engines. Ferrell dropped
into a chair at the chart table, limp with reaction.
(31:29):
He was suddenly exhausted and his head ached.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Dully.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
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 Save and
I recognized the old language. The natives reported your accident,
(31:53):
and we came down at once. They really came from Tara.
They lived through a thousand years of The ship left
Terra for Sirius in twenty one seventy one, Gibson said,
but not with these people aboard or their ancestors. That
expedition perished after less than a light year when its
(32:13):
hydroponic 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 deductible from the situation. Here Pharoh put
(32:33):
his hands to his temples and groaned the crash. Most
have scrambled my wits, GiB Where did they come from?
Speaker 2 (32:42):
From?
Speaker 1 (32:42):
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 stopped the ship with
a captive crew of Tarrans conditioned to believe themselves descendants
of the original crew, and grounded it here in disabled condition.
(33:04):
They left for Alphard five then to watch developments succeeding
generations of colonists grew up. Excepting the fact that their
ship had missed serious and made planet fall here, they
still don't know where they really are, made planet fall
by luck. They never knew about the Hymenops, and they
struggled along with an inadequate technology in the hope that
(33:26):
a later expedition would find them. They found the truth
hard to take, but they're eager to enjoy the fruits
of terror and assimilation. Striker Grinning brought Ferrell a frosted
drink that tinkled invitingly, an unusually fortunate ending to a
Hymenop experiment. He said, these people progressed normally because they've
(33:47):
been left alone. Reorienting them will be a simple matter.
They'll be properly spoiled colonists within another generation. Ferrel Slip
sipped his drink appreciatively.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
But I don't.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
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 give 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
(34:25):
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. Pharrell shook his head.
It's a reverse application, isn't it, of the old saubot
Terrans being incapable of understanding and alien culture. Of course,
(34:45):
said Gibson, surprised. It's obvious enough. Surely, as hard as
they tried, the bees never understood us either. End of
Control Group by Roger d.
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