REPETITION

  By A. E. van Vogt

  Because a people live on a planet. Ir does not

  mean they have a civilization on that planet.

  First they must learn theMe old tricks and make

  them new—

  Illustrated by F. Kramer

  From : Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1940 - Novelette

  Artwork by Frank Kramer

  Synopsis : To Colonize a new planet is not the same as building a new

  Civilization there. And a real pioneer can like any world!

  His eyes ached! He kept blinking them as he flew, striving to keep In sight the glitter of hurtling metal that was the power-driven spacesuit of his guide.

  The man was desperately hard to see against the blazing brilliance of the remote disk of sun —incredibly small and gemlike sun, rising higher and higher from the fantastic horizon of Europa. It was almost, Thomas told himself, as if the guide was deliberately holding himself into the glare of the morning sun to distract his—Thomas’—wearying mind and dull his strength.

  More than a mile below, a scatter of forest spread unevenly over a grim, forbidding land. Pock-marked rock, tortured gravel, and occasionally a sparse, reluctant growth of Jupiter grass that shown as brown and uninviting as the bare straggle of forest—and was gone into distance as they sped far above, two shining things of metal, darting along with the speed of shooting stars.

  Several times Thomas saw herds of the tall, dapple-gray grass eaters below; and once, far to the left, he caught the sheeny glint of a scale-armored, blood-sucker gryb.

  It was hard to see his speedometer, built into the transparent head-piece of his flying space armor—hard because he had on a second headpiece underneath, attached to his electrically heated clothes; and the light from the sun split dazzlingly through the two barriers. But now that his suspicions were aroused, he strained his eyes against that glare until they watered and blurred. What he saw tightened his heavy jaw into a thin, hard line. He snapped into his communicators, his voice as cold and hard as his thoughts: “Hey, you ahead there— what’s your name? Barkett, Birk-ett—”

  “Bartlett, sir!” a young man’s voice sounded in his communicators; and it seemed to the older man’s alert hearing that the accent on the “sir” held the faintest suggestion of a sneer, and a definite hostility. “Ray Bartlett! What is it, sir?”

  “You told me this trip would be five hundred and twenty-one miles or—”

  “Or thereabouts!” The reply was swift, but the sneer was stronger, the hostility more apparent, more intentional.

  Thomas’ eyes narrowed to steely gray slits. “You said five hundred and twenty-one miles. The figure is odd enough to be presumed exact, and there is no possibility that you would not know the exact distance from the Five Cities to the platinum mines. We have now traveled five hundred and twenty-nine miles— more every minute—since leaving the Five Cities a little over an hour ago, and—”

  “So we have!” interrupted the young man with unmistakable insolence. “Now isn’t that too bad, Mr. Famous Statesman Former Explorer Thomas.”

  Thomas was silent, examining the situation for its potential menace. His first indignant impulse was to pursue the unexpected arrogance of the other, but his brain, suddenly crystal-clear, throttled the desire and leaped ahead in a blaze of speculation.

  There was murder intent here. His mind ticked coldly, with a sense of something repeated; for the threat of death he had faced before, during those bold, tremendous years when he had roamed the farthest planets. It was icily comforting to know that this was but a repetition of what he had previously experienced—comforting to remember that he had conquered in the past. In murder, as in everything else, experience counted.

  Thomas began to decelerate against the fury of built-up velocity. It would take time—but perhaps there still was time, though the other’s attitude suggested the crisis was dangerously near. There was no more he could do till he had slowed considerably. Thomas quieted his leaping pulses and said gently:

  “Tell me, is the whole community in on tills murder? Or is it a scheme of your own?*’

  ‘There’s no harm in telling you now!” Bartlett retorted. “We knew in advance that your visit here was a farce. Ostensibly you came to find out for the- Earth government if this moon of Jupiter was worth fighting about; actually, the government had decided in advance that they weren’t going to fight, and you, with your terrific reputation, were to come here and put the thing over, pretending to be fair, but—”

  His voice broke in a Hare of hate: “You sneaking coward! What about the folks who’ve been trying to make a living here, slaving, hoping, dreaming, planning, creating for the future? And for what! So that a bunch of cynical politicians can sell us down the river to a dirty, arrogant gang of Martians.”

  Thomas laughed, a hard, humorless but understanding laugh that hid the slow caution with which he slanted toward the ground. The strain of the curving dive racked his body, tore at his lungs, but he held to it grimly.

  He was alone in the sky now; the shining spacesuit of the guide had vanished into the dim distance. Evidently the man had not turned his head or noticed the deviation on his finder. Anxious for the discovery to be as long delayed as possible, Thomas said:

  “So that’s it. I see that I am now confronted with the emotional immaturities of a bunch of child minds. I wonder if the human race will ever grow up. Don’t you know that at one time the world was divided into warring nations, and before that into fiercely patriotic States; and before that human beings owed their loyalties to towns? Will we always have such fools to contend with? Well meaning fools, who understand nothing of political, social or vital economy, and are perpetually victims of their own undisciplined tie-sires and emotional incoherencies.” “Yaah!” Ray Bartlett snarled. “That kind of talk may go over big in the drawing rooms of London and New York, but it’s plain rot to the men and women who stand to lose their homes. You’re going to die because we’re not letting you get back with any lying story about Europa. We’re going to fake up some notes in your handwriting—we’ve got a handwriting expert—and then we’ll give the notes to the newspapers; and let the government try to back out after that. With you dead—” Thomas asked grimly: “And how? are you going to kill me?”

  “In about ten seconds,” the young man began tautly, “your engine—” He broke off. “Hah, you’re not behind me any more. So you’re trying to land. Well, it won’t do you any good, damn your soul! I’ll be right back that way—”

  Thomas was only fifty feet from the bleak rock when there was a sudden grinding in the hitherto silent mechanism of his atomic motor. The deadly swiftness of what happened then left no time for more than instinctive action. He felt a pain against his legs, a sharp, tearing pain, a dizzy, burning sensation that staggered his reason—and then he had struck the ground—and with a wild, automatic motion jerked off the power that was being so horribly short-circuited, that was burning him alive. Darkness closed over his brain like an engulfing blanket—

  The blurred world of rock swaying and swirling about him—that was Thomas’ awakening! He forced himself to consciousness and realized after a moment of mental blankness that he was no longer in his space-suit. And, when he opened his eyes lie could see without a sense of dazzle, now that he had only the one helmet—the one attached to his electrically heated clothes. He grew aware of something—an edge of rock—pressing painfully into his back. Dizzily, but with sane eyes, he looked up at a lean-faced young man, who was kneeling beside him.

  The young man—Ray Bartlett— returned his gaze with unsmiling hostility, and said curtly:

  “You’re lucky to be alive. Obviously you shut off the motor just in time. It was being shorted by lead grit, and burned your legs a little. IVe put some salve on, so you won’t feel any pain; and you’ll be able to walk.”*

  He stopped and climbed to his feet. Thomas shook his head to clear away the black spots, and then gazed up at the other questioningly, but he said nothing. The young man seemed to realize what was in his mind.

  “I didn’t think- I’d be squeamish with so much at stake,” he confessed almost roughly, “but I am. I came back to kill you, but I wouldn’t even kill a dog without giving him a chance. Well, you’ve got your chance, if it’s worth anything.” Thomas sat up, his eyes narrowed on the young man’s face inside the other’s helmet. Ray Bartlett was a handsome young fellow with a pleasing countenance that ordinarily must have been frank and open. It was an honest face, twisted now with resentment and a sort of dogged determination.

  Frowning with thought, Thomas looked around; and his eyes, trained for detail, saw a lack in the picture.

  “Where’s your spacesuit?”

  Ray Bartlett nodded his head skyward. His voice held no quality of friendliness as he said: “If your eyes are good, you’ll see a dark spot, almost invisible now, to the right of the sun. I chained your suit to mine, then gave mine power. They’ll be falling into Jupiter about three hundred hours from now.’’

  Thomas pondered that matter-of-factly. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t quite believe that you’ve decided to stay and die with me. I know that men will die for what they believe to be right. But I can’t quite follow the logic of why you should die. No doubt you have made arrangements to lie rescued.”

  Ray Bartlett flushed, his face growing dark with the turgid wave of angry color. “There’ll lie no rescue,” he growled from his throat. “I didn’t like what you said about undisciplined desires and emotional im maturities. I know what you meant —that we of the Five Cities were thinking selfishly of ourselves, blind to the general welfare. I’m going to prove to you that, in this matter, no individual in our community thinks of himself. I’m going to die here with you because, naturally, we’ll never reach the Five Cities on foot, and as for the platinum mines, they’re even farther away.”

  “Pure bravado!” Thomas said. “In the first place your staying with me proves nothing but that you’re a fool; in the second, I am incapable of admiring such an action. However, I’m glad you’re here with me, and I appreciate the salve on these burns.”

  Thomas climbed gingerly to his feet, testing his legs, first the right, then the left, and felt a little sickening surge of dizziness that he fought back with an effort. “Hm-m-m,” he commented aloud in the same matter-of-fact manner as before. “No pain, but weak. That salve ought to have healed the burns by dark.”

  “You take it very calmly,” said Ray Bartlett acridly.

  Thomas nodded his powerfully built head. “I’m always glad to realize I’m alive; and I feel that I can convince you that the course being pursued by the government of which I am a minister is the only sane one.”

  The young man laughed harshly. “Fat chance. Besides, it doesn’t matter. You don’t seem to realize our predicament. We’re at least twelve days from civilization—that’s figuring sixty miles a day, which is hardly possible. Tonight, the temperature will fall to a hundred below freezing, at least, though it varies down to as low as a hundred and seventy-five below,- depending on the shifting of Europa’s core, which is very hot, you know, and very close to the surface at times. That’s why human beings—and ‘other life—can exist on this moon at all. The core is jockeyed around by the Sun and Jupiter, with the Sun dominating, so that it’s always fairly warm in the daytime and why, also, when the pull is on the other side of the planet, it’s so devilish cold at night. I’m explaining this to you, so you’ll have an idea of what it’s all about.”

  “Go on,” Thomas replied without comment.

  “Well, if the cold doesn’t kill us, we’re bound to run into at least one bloodsucker gryb every few days. They can smell human blood at an astounding distance; and blood for some chemical reason drives them mad with desire. Once they comer a human being it’s all up. They tear down the largest trees, or dig into caves through solid rock. The only protection is an atomic gun, and ours went up with our suits. We’ve only got my hunting knife. Besides all that, our only possible food is the giant grass eater, which runs like a deer at the first sight of anything living, and which, besides, could kill a dozen unarmed men if it was cornered. You’ll be surprised how hungry it is possible to get within a short time. Something in the air— and, of course, we’re breathing filtered Europan air—speeds up normal digestion. We’ll be starving to death in a couple of hours.”

  “It seems to give you a sort of mournful satisfaction,” Thomas said dryly.

  The young man flashed: “I’m here to see that you don’t get back alive to the settlement, that’s all.”

  Thomas scarcely heard him. His face was screwed into a black frown. “The more you tell me, the more I am convinced that the human beings on Europa are a sorry lot, not true pioneers. They’ve been here fifty years, and they’ve built their cities with machines, and machine-operated their mines—and not a single individual has rooted himself in the soil. No one has learned to exist without the luxuries that were brought from Earth. You talk of their having slaved and created. Bah! I tell you, Ray Bartlett, this is a terrible indictment of these so-called pioneers of yours, who simply moved the equivalent of an Earth city here and live an artificial life, longing for the day, no doubt, when they’re wealthy enough to get back to the real thing.”

  The young man retorted grimly: ”Yes. Well, you try living off the soil of this barren moon—try killing a gryb with your bare hands.”

  “Not my hands,” replied Thomas as grimly. “My brains and my experience. We’re going to get back to the Five Cities in spite of these natural obstacles, in spite of you!”

  In the silence that followed, Thomas examined their surroundings. He felt his first real chill of doubt as his eyes and mind took in that wild and desolate hell of rock that stretched to every horizon. No, not every! Barely visible in the remote distance of the direction they would have to go was a dark mist of black cliff.

  It seemed to swim there against the haze of semi-blackness that was the sky beyond the horizon. In the near distance the piling rock showed fantastic shapes, as if frozen in a state of writhing anguish. And there was no beauty in it, no sweep of grandeur, simply endless, desperate miles of black, tortured deadness— and silence!

  He grew aware of the silence with a start that pierced his body like a physical shock. The silence seemed suddenly alive. It pressed unrelentingly down upon that flat stretch of rock where they stood. A malevolent silence that kept on and on, without echoes, without even a wind now to whistle and moan over the billion caves and gouged trenches that honeycombed the bleak, dark, treacherous land around them. A silence that seemed the very spirit of this harsh and deadly little world, here under that tiny, cold, brilliant sun, little more than a dazzling, distorted point in the blue-black sky.

  “Gets you, doesn’t it?” Ray Bartlett said, and there was a sneer in his voice.

  Thomas stared at him, without exactly seeing him. His gaze was far away.

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d forgotten what it felt like; and I hadn’t realized how much I’d forgotten. Well, we’d better get started.”

  As they leaped cautiously over the rock, assisted by the smaller gravitation of Europa, the young man said: “Perhaps you’ll understand better how we, who’ve built cities and homes on this far-away moon, feel about the prospect of being handed over to another government?”

  “I am not,” said Thomas curtly, “prepared to discuss the matter with a person who does not understand psychology, sociology, history and political economy. There is nothing more futile than arguing with someone who has no basis for his opinions but a vague backwash of emotions.”

  “We know what’s right and what’s human,” Ray Bartlett replied icily. “We’ve got our scientists, too, and our engineers and teachers; and I’m here to see that their decision to kill you is carried out.”

  “You have only a knife now,” Thomas commented, “and if you attacked me with that I’d have to show you the method employed by the Martian plainsmen to disarm a man with a knife. It’s very simple, really, and consistently effective.”

  “Yeah!” Ray Bartlett said roughly, his lean face tight, his formidable body tense. . “What good w ould that do? I could still tear you apart with my bare hands.”

  Thomas slowed in his swift walking to glance at the other. “I venture to suggest that, with my wide experience in my favor, you could do nothing against me. However,” he said hastily as the young man’s dark eyes flashed with unfriendly intent, “I apologize for making a provocative remark. My words might properly be construed as a dare—in fact, all threats, however veiled behind apparent reason and moral uplift, are dares—and history teaches that such provocation produces an inevitable physical conflict. Tell me, what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a metal engineer!” Ray Bartlett said gruffly.

  “Oh,” Thomas’ voice held a note of pleased surprise. “I see that I’ve been underestimating you. No one will understand better than you the metal end of this business of Mars taking over Europa.”

  “Mars isn’t taking over Europa!” Bartlett snapped. “And don’t try to pull any flattery about how easy it should be for me to understand your subtle reasoning. 1 can see through that kind of stuff.”

  Thomas ignored him. “Here are the figures. The Earth uses ten billion tons of steel every year; Mars two billion—”

  “That’s proof,” Bartlett interjected, “that they wouldn’t dare go to war with us, because even as it is, we sell them half their steel. If we cut that out, they couldn’t maintain their industries to supply peacetime needs, let alone wartime. We can tell them to go stick it.”

 

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