"Leinster, Murray - First Contact" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

Tommy Dort took the messages to the skipper.
УLookhere, sir!Ф he said urgently. УThese people are almost human, and theyТre likable cusses.Ф
The skipper was busy about his important task of thinking things to worry about, and worrying about them. He said tiredly:
УTheyТre oxygen breathers. Their air is twenty-eight percent oxygen instead of twenty, but they could do very well on Earth. It would be a highly desirable conquest for them. And we still donТt know what weapons theyТve got or what they can develop. Would you tell them how to find Earth?Ф
УN-no,Ф said Tommy, unhappily.
УThey probably feel the same way,Ф said the skipper dryly. УAnd if we did manage to make a friendly contact, how long would it stay friendly? If their weapons were inferior to ours, theyТd feel that for their own safety they had to improve them. And we, knowing they were planning to revolt, would crush them while we couldЧfor our own safety! If it happened to be the other way about, theyТd have to smash us before we could catch up to them.Ф
Tommy was silent, but he moved restlessly.
УIf we smash this black ship and get home,Ф said the skipper, УEarth Government will be annoyed if we donТt tell them where it came from. But what can we do? WeТll be lucky enough to get back alive with our warning. It isnТt possible to get out of those creatures any more information than we give them, and we surely wonТt give them our address! WeТve run into them by accident. Maybe if we smash this ship there wonТt be another contact for thousands of years. And itТs a pity, because trade could mean so much! But it takes two to make a peace, and we canТt risk trusting them. The only answer is to kill them if we can, and if we canТt, to make sure that when they kill us theyТll find out nothing that will lead them to Earth. I donТt like it,Ф added the skipper tiredly, Уbut there simply isnТt anything else to do!Ф

On the Lianvabon, the technicians worked frantically in two divisions. One prepared for victory, and the other for defeat. The ones working for victory could do little. The main blasters were the only weapons with any promise. Their mountings were cautiously altered so that they were no longer fixed nearly dead ahead, with only a 5Т traverse. Electronic controls which followed a radio-locator master-finder would keep them trained with absolute precision upon a given target regardless of its maneuverings. More, a hitherto unsung genius in the engine room devised a capacity-storage system by which the normal full-output of the shipТs engines could be momentarily accumulated and released in surges of stored power far above normal. In theory, the range of the blasters should be multiplied and their destructive power considerably stepped up. But there was not much more that could be done.
The defeat crew had more leeway. Star charts, navigational instruments carrying telltale notations, the photographic record Tommy Dort had made on the sixmonthsТ journey from Earth, and every other memorandum offering clues to EarthТs position, were prepared for destruction. They were put in sealed files, and if any one of them was opened by one who did not know the exact, complicated process, the contents of all the files would flash into ashes and the ash be churned past any hope of restoration. Of course, if the Lianvabon should be victorious, a carefully not-indicated method of reopening them in safety would remain.
There were atomic bombs placed all over the hull of the ship. If its human crew should be killed without complete destruction of the ship, the atomic-power bombs should detonate if the Lianvabon was brought alongside the alien vessel. There were no ready-made atomic bombs on board, but there were small spare atomic-power units on board. It was not hard to trick them so that when they were turned on, instead of yielding a smooth flow of power they would explode. And four men of the Earth-shipТs crew remained always in spacesuits with closed helmets, to fight the ship should it be punctured in many compartments by an unwarned attack. -
Such an attack, however, would not be treacherous. The alien skipper had spoken frankly. His manner was that of one who wryly admits the uselessness of lies. The skipper of the Lianvabon, in turn, heavily admitted the virtue of frankness. Each insistedЧperhaps truthfullyЧthat he wished for friendship between the two races. But neither could trust the other not to make every conceivable effort to find out the one thing he needed most desperately to concealЧthe location of his home planet. And neither dared believe that the other was unable to trail him and find out. Because each felt it his own duty to accomplish that unbearableЧto the otherЧact, neither could risk the possible existence of his race by trusting the other. They must fight because they could not do anything else.
They could raise the stakes of the battle by an exchange of information beforehand. But there was a limit, to the stake either would put up. No information on weapons, population, or resources would be given by either. Not even the distance of their home bases from the Crab Nebula would be told. They exchanged information, to be sure, but they knew a battle to the death must follow, and each strove to represent his own civilization as powerful enough to give pause to the otherТs ideas of possible conquestЧand thereby increased its appearance of menace to the other, and made battle more unavoidable.
It was curious how completely such alien brains could mesh, however. Tommy Dort, sweating over the coding and decoding machines, found a personal equation emerging from the at first stilted arrays of word cards which arranged themselves. He had seen the aliens only in the vision screen, and then only in light at least one octave removed from the light they saw by. They, in turn, saw him very strangely, by transposed illumination from what to them would be the far ultraviolet. But their brains worked alike. Amazingly alike. Tommy Dort felt an actual sympathy and even something close to friendship for the gill-breathing, bald, and dryly ironic creatures of the black space vessel.
Because of that mental kinship he set upЧthough hopelesslyЧa sort of table of the aspects of the problem before them. He did not believe that the aliens had any instinctive desire to destroy man. In fact, the study of communications from the aliens had produced on the Lianvabon a feeling of tolerance not unlike that between enemy soldiers during a truce on Earth. The men felt no enmity, and probably neither did the aliens. But they had to kill or be killed for strictly logical reasons.
TommyТs table was specific. He made a list of objectives the men must try to achieve, in the order of their importance. The first was the carrying back of news of the existence of the alien culture. The second was the location of that alien culture in the galaxy. The third was the carrying back of as much information as possible about that culture. The third was being worked on, but the second was probably impossible. The firstЧand allЧwould depend on the-result of the fight which must take place.
The aliensТ objectives would, be exactly similar, so that the men must prevent, first, news of the existence of EarthТs culture from being taken back by the aliens, second, alien discovery of the location of Earth, and third, the acquiring by the aliens of information which would help them or encourage them to attack humanity. And again the third was in train, and the second was probably taken care of, and the first must await the battie.
There was no possible way to avoid the grim necessity of the destruction of the black ship. The aliens would see no solution to their problems but the destruction of the Lianvabon. But Tommy Dort, regarding his tabulation ruefully, realized that even complete victory would not be a perfect solution. The ideal would be for the Lianvabon to take back the alien ship for study. Nothing less would be a complete attainment of the third objective. But Tommy realized that he hated the idea of so complete a victory, even if it could be accomplished. He would hate the idea of killing even non-human creatures who understood a human fitting out a fleet of fighting ships to destroy an alien culture because its existence was dangerous. The pure accident of this encounter, between peoples who could like each other, had created a situation which could only result in wholesale destruction.
Tommy Dort soured on his own brain which could find no answer which would work. But there had to be an answer! The gamble was too big! It was too absurd that two spaceships should fightЧneither one primarily designed for fightingЧso that the survivor could carry back news which would set one race to frenzied preparation for war against the unwarned other.
If both races could be warned, though, and each knew that the other did not want to fight, and if they could communicate with each other but not locate each other until some grounds for mutual trust could be reached.
It was impossible. It was chimerical. It was a day-dream. It was nonsense. But it was such luring nonsense that Tommy Dort ruefully put it into the coder to his gillbreathing friend Buck, then some hundred thousand miles off in the misty brightness of the nebula.
УSure,Ф said Buck, in the decoderТs word-cards flicking into space in the message frame. УThat is a gooddream. But I like you and still wonТt believe you. If I said that first, you would like me but not believe me, either. I tell you the truth more than you believe, and maybe you tell me the truth more than I believe. But there is no way to know. I am sorry.Ф
Tommy Dort stared gloomily at the message. He felt a very horrible sense of responsibility. Everyone did, on the Lianvabon. If they failed in this encounter, the human race would run a very good chance of being exterminated in time to come. If they succeeded, the race of the aliens would be the one to face destruction, most likely. Millions or billions of lives hung upon the actions of a few men.
Then Tommy Dort saw the answer.
It would be amazingly simple, if it worked. At worst it might give a partial victory to humanity and the Lianvabon. He sat quite still, not daring to move lest he break the chain of thought that followed the first tenuous idea. He went over and over it,excitedly finding objections here and meeting them, and overcoming impossibilities there. It was the answer! He felt sure of it.
He felt almost dizzy with relief when he found his way to the captainТs room and asked leave to speak.
it is the function of a skipper, among others, to find things to worry about. But the LlanvabonТs skipper did not have to look. In the three weeks and four days since the first contact with the alien black ship, the skipperТs face had grown lined, and old. He had not only the Lianvabon to worry about. He had all of humanity.
УSir,Ф said Tommy Dort, his mouth rather dry because of his enormous earnestness, Уmay I offer a method of attack on the black ship? IТll undertake it myself, sir, and if it doesnТt work our ship wonТt be weakened.Ф
The skipper looked at him unseeingly.
УThe tactics are all worked out, Mr. Dort,Ф -he said heavily. УTheyТre being cut on tape now, for the shipТs handling. itТs a terrible gamble, but it has to be done.Ф
УI think,Ф said Tommy carefully, УIТve worked out a way to take the gamble out. Suppose, sir, we send a message to the other ship, offeringЧФ
His voice went on in the utterly quiet captainТs room, with the visiplates showing only a vast mistiness outside and the two fiercely burning stars in the nebulaТs heart.

The skipper himself went through the air lock with Tommy. For one reason, the action Tommy had suggested would need his authority behind it. For another, the skipper had worried more intensely than anybody else on the Lianvabon, and he was tired of it. If he went with Tommy, he would do the thing himself, and if he failed he would be the first one killedЧand the tape for the Earth-shipТs maneuvering was already fed into the control board and correlated with the master-timer. If Tommy and the skipper were killed, a single control pushed home would throw the Lianvabon into the most furious possible all-out attack, which would end in the complete destruction of one ship or the otherЧor both. So the skipper was not deserting his post.
The outer air lock door swung wide. It opened upon that shining emptiness which was the nebula. Twenty. miles away, the little round robot hung in space, drifting in an incredible orbit about the twin central suhs, and floating ever nearer and nearer. It would never reach either of them, of course. The white star alone was so much hotter than EarthТs sun that its heat-effect would produce EarthТs temperature on an object five times as far from it as Neptune is from Sol. Even removed to the distance of Pluto, the little robot would be raised to, cherry-red heat by the blazing white dwarf. And it could not possibly approach to the ninety-odd millions miles which is the EarthТs distance from the sun. So near, its metal would melt and boil away as vapor. But, half a light-year out, the bulbous object bobbed in emptiness.
The two spacesuited figures soared away from the Lianvabon. The small atomic drives which made then minute spaceships on their own had been subtly aItered, but the change did not mterfere with their funotioning They headed for the communication robot.
*** Proofer's note : something must be missing here***
skipper, out us space, said gruffly
УMr Dort, all my life I have longed for adventure. This is the first time I could ever justify it to myself.Ф
His voice came through TommyТs space-phone receivers. Tommy wet his lips and said:
УIt doesnТt seem like adventure to me, sir. I want terribly for the plan to go through. I thought adventure was when you didnТt care?Т
УOh, no,Ф said the skipper. УAdventure is when you toss your life on the scales of chance and wait for the pointer to stop.Ф
They reached the round object. They clung to its short, scanner-tipped horns.
УIntelligent, those creatures,Ф said the skipper heavily. УThey must want desperately to see more of our ship than the communication room, to agree to this exchange of visits before the fight.Ф
УYes, sir,Ф said Tommy. But privately, he suspected that BuckЧhis gill-breathing friendЧwould like to see him in the flesh before one or both of them died. And it seemed to him that between the two ships had grown up an odd tradition o~ courtesy, like that between two ancient knights before a tourney, when they admired each other wholeheartedly before hacking at each other with all the contents of their respective armories.
They waited.
Then, out of the mist, came two other figures. The alien spacesuits were also power-driven. The aliens themselves were shorter than men, and their helmet openings were coated with a filtering material to cut off visible and ultraviolet rays which to them would be lethal. It was not possible to see more than the outline of the heads within.
TommyТs helmet phone said, from the communication room on the Lianvabon: