Hugo awards the short st.., p.40
Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 1), page 40
Tam was a cat. A tiger, to be strictly accurate.
In his profession, Brook had expected to catch a few tigers by the tail but not so literally. Deep space is no place for such strenuous exercise. But science must be served, and the Biolabs were serving their science in pretty big platefuls. Tam was a new-model tiger, and even a tame tiger can be a husky handful in space. Biolabs might be, but Brook was not too sure that Tam was tame. The space-testing course would give him an excellent opportunity to find out...
* * * *
Long ago, interplanetary expansion reaching as far as Pluto convinced man of one thing. Before risking the black and empty unknowns beyond the Solar System, man would need a partner with greater strength, endurance, and quicker reflexes than his own. Machines could not completely fill the need. Devices such as mass detectors, proximity alarms and radiation counters could extend man's meager senses. Automatic calculators could solve problems of logic and astrogation more rapidly than man ever had. But there were limits beyond which mechanical extensions of his faculties could not serve.
Emergencies in space occur too rapidly for mankind's reflexes to function, and even robot piloting equipment was too unreliable and subject to breakdown. The race needed outside help, a partner, preferably an organic adaptation with high intelligence potential, yet with reflexes not atrophied by civilization. Only such a being could relieve man of the physical strains and crushing responsibility during microsecond emergencies in space. It must be a helper, strong, agile, courageous, nimble of thought, with the cold nerve to carry through instantaneous decision in spite of the distraction, danger and inevitable panic. For partner, man needed superman. He had to settle for superbeast.
Biolabs, trying to create a demigod in man's own image, inevitably turned first to the higher primates. For varieties of reasons monkeys, apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, et cetera, all failed to qualify, usually because their one-track minds derailed trains of thought after about one full minute of concentration. They were mercurial, inattentive, disinterested though curious, and even more inclined to panic than were men.
Next on the list, predictably, was man's ancient ally, the dog. Canines took eagerly to space travel, adapted readily to odd atmospheric compounds, showed little unhealthy response to differences in pressure, were not easily thrown into panic, and had the real advantage of loyal devotion to their masters. On the debit side, their slave-complex gave them a complete incapacity to initiate ideas, to think logically and understand even the most elementary arithmetic. They remained slaves and companions, pets rather than partners. They were stubbornly stupid as if the breed had been behind the door when brains were given out. Dogs were not the answer.
Housecats had their day – but failed, too, due to their closed-circuit minds, their limited reactions to directed mutation, especially to growth stimuli. Larger than the size of a well-fed Persian, the animals became lethargic and morose, usually dying of obscure glandular complaints. Cat-minds and cat-bodies both had definite limitations supplied by nature; they were difficult to teach, full of blind spots, and rigidly limited in size and potentials of mechanical ability.
A rat experiment promised more, but proved deadly dangerous. Rats were highly intelligent and startlingly adaptable. Controlled mutation took care of anatomical limitations, gave them increased size, developed delicate, skillful hands. Rodent minds blotted up technical educations, learned quickly, remembered well, and quickly made use of all available knowledge. Unfortunately – from the human point of view – serious character flaws became rapidly apparent. The beasts were species-consciously working together with maniac efficiency, vicious between groups with no quarter asked or given, treacherous in their jealousy and hatred for mankind, suicidally savage in implementing their traditional feuds with cats, dogs ... and man.
That experiment had to be quickly discontinued. In self-defense, the experimenters in Biolabs slaughtered the races of mutant rats, and felt the odd guilt of genocide while carrying out the massacre. Even so, the brutes almost got out of hand, and there were casualties.
* * * *
Backtracking, Biolabs tried their techniques on larger cats, all carnivores, and all notorious for trigger-tempers. The lions were most intelligent, but too lazy ever to be taught to work for a living. Also, they lived in family groups, hunted in concert, and resisted all attempts to separate them from their group way of life. Some other large cats were exclusively hunters, and remained so. Even in mutation, instincts and interests stayed set, and all processes designed to change them produced only neuroses.
Oddly enough, one of the least promising branches of the cat family showed most signs of success. Only after leopards and cheetahs and lions had been tried did anyone think of trying to tame and reconstruct tigers. Tam was not the first of his kind, but he was the most recent, and in some ways, the most startling. With eight generations of selected pedigree behind him, not to mention much scientific meddling with gene-patterns, he was a magnificent animal.
A few of the larger apes had got through, managing to get past the various stages of processing, retaining their mutant factors and remembering enough of their educations to be useful. A very few of them were actually in service as stand-by space pilots. Quite a number of the large cats of various species had made the grade. In the main they were successful experiments, and useful as human facsimiles, if not always as pilot-surrogates. However, Tam was unique of his kind. The first, but not, Biolabs hoped, the last. They held great hopes for him, and for the vast avenues of scientific achievement his success would open up.
"Our job," Brook explained, "is not just a dry run. We have to make a complete circuit of the rings of Saturn, as you know, following a patterned course. But that's only part of the job. We also have to pick up the robot cameras automatically trained upon the planet from various points in the rings, we have to replace film and reset the cameras, check the mechanisms, and then bring back the exposed film. I'd say we were night-watchmen punching time docks in various parts of a big warehouse, but I don't suppose you'd know anything about that."
"I know," said Tam. "And you can stop patronizing me. My education is quite thorough. Possibly better than yours in many ways."
"Monkey tricks, maybe. And some parroting of general background culture. Probably you've had training in simulated close-up maneuvering, but it's not the real thing. Matching motion and latching onto a non-spherical chunk of matter flipping over and over in its own crazy rotation pattern is one of the trickiest deals you'll ever encounter. Every decision and every reflex action stands a good chance of being your last."
Tam smiled with aggravating calm. "Long speech, bwana. Is it supposed to frighten me?"
"It should. Sitting on my hands while a green pilot does it always frightens me."
"Do I frighten you, bwana?" jeered Tam.
"Any raw test pilot does. And you seem rawer than most. This isn't your jungle, pussycat. This is space. It's big and tough and mean."
Tam stared unblinkingly, his eyes cold and luminous.
"Perhaps it is just a bigger jungle. Don't you think I am big and tough and mean?"
"It doesn't worry me, pussycat. You're a long way from your home jungle. This is my jungle. I know it. I like it. If you try throwing your weight around in my jungle, I'll pull your fangs for you and make you gum them down. Savvy."
Tam laughed. "Little man talks big. A few generations ago, my ancestors considered mankind too low-grade game even to hunt. We left man-eating to the old, the toothless, the crippled of our kind. There are other jungles, other hunts. And don't call me pussycat. Tomcat, at least. My name is Tam. I am surrogate pilot 97C. Tam is simpler, unless you prefer to call me 'sir.' "
"All right, chum. When the mother ship drops us off, we travel to the rings on robot pilot. We can check the magnetic tapes and feed them in. I'll let you know when to take over. And when I do, you're on your own. You'll have to trim orbit, set a course as it's marked on the charts, and do your own worrying. I don't take over unless you flub out. Understood?"
"Right, Bwana Brook. It should be an interesting test voyage." His luminous eyes became veiled and thoughtful.
* * * *
Sleeping, Tam dreamed:
Race memories stirred and he roamed deep jungle. Hot lances of sungold streamed through the filtering lacy foliage overhead. It lay in pools on shadowy pathways among the tangled masses of cool greenery. His senses knew and recognized the smell of rotting vegetation, the soft caress of thick mud by the river, the slashing cut of sawgrass on his flanks, the sounds of rustling small life deep-hidden in the forest. In retrospect, he caught a sharp scent of fresh blood, and the rank taste of raw flesh, salty, rich, satisfying. Blood-memories knew all these things and many more, their arrogant tiger-stalk as lords of their environment, a joy of hunting and slaying, the mystical darkness of an untouched wilderness, a contemptuous, but oddly disturbing, knowledge of mankind.
Other memories prowled the dark fastness of mind, the pride of being, the knowledge of instincts smothered or distorted by mutation, the reluctant yielding of body patterns, retention of the old sureness and grace, the warping of senses and desires, but still the hot, flaring identity of tiger-being. Form might be altered, paws become hands, new motivations take the place of old, but something remained. Something elemental.
"Tiger, tiger,
Burning bright."
Sleeping, Tam moved restlessly.
Like a triggered spring, he awoke. He awoke, remembering.
To blunt the weariness of passing hours, he studied "The Space Pilot's Handbook."
Saturn; possible orbits from Titan...
Saturn, rings of...
Ring "A" – outermost ring, outer diameter one hundred sixty-nine thousand miles, inner diameter one hundred forty-nine thousand miles, divided by two minor gaps. Separated by two thousand miles interval "Cassini's Gap" from Ring "B" smaller and brighter about sixteen thousand five hundred miles breadth, contacts Ring "C" at inner diameter, so-called Crepe Ring, darkish and diffuse, inner diameter ninety-two thousand miles, although extremely diffuse matter extends eight thousand five hundred miles to surface of planet Saturn.
Composition of Rings – diffuse matter, largely rock debris and solid-frozen-ammonia snow, believed wreckage of satellite destroyed by tidal action.
Tam slammed the book shut. Nothing there not already memorized. Nothing to occupy his mind, release pressure built up in his nervous system. He paced the restricted interior of the ship as restlessly as a cat in a cage.
* * * *
The hours dragged past somehow. The mother ship dropped the survey cruiser.
"Relax," advised Brook, not unkindly. "You've wound yourself up too tightly."
"I feel all right," said Tam, shooting a quick glance at the dark emptiness beyond the viewplates. A large slice of the glowing globe of Saturn occupied one side of the visible.
"We'll have to close the cover flaps on the viewplates."
"Don't do me any favors," snapped Tam.
"I'm not. It's required. You're supposed to make this run on instruments. However, if it will make you feel any better, you can switch on the outside televiewers. They relay a picture inside. There's no regulation against that. In fact, you'll have to use them when we try to sneak up on the camera placements. Remember, they're no different from any other asteroids. Just junk heaps of loose rock, mostly stuck together with frozen ammonia."
"I know that." Savagely.
"All right, friend. You'll be flying broken pieces of orbits. Don't get jerky or impatient, or you'll blast us in to Saturn, or halfway across space. The escape velocity of Saturn is a little over 22 mps, which is rough, so don't get careless. I won't bother you, unless you flub and I have to take over. So good luck. It's all yours."
Calm flowed into Tam as he felt the controls in his hands. He gripped them solidly, learning the feel, experimenting, getting to know the responses. Race memories rose from his deepest subconscious. A sense of power, of mastery, knowledge of his new environment, and sureness of his ability to deal with it.
He became, like any pilot, part of the ship. Its reflex was his reflex. He was the ship...
Sureness. Power. Happiness, such as he had never known, never dreamed existed...
Once around the rings of Saturn, dipping in and out of the agglomerations of cosmic debris, implementing split-seconds of decision with exact timing of action. Normally only a demented space pilot would subject himself or his ship to such continuous strains, such frequent changes of direction, such intricacies of maneuver. The test allowed only a minimum of departure from the scheduled pattern, only a minimum of initiative to the apprentice pilot. But, no sanely planned spaceflight would skirt so closely the infinite possibilities of disaster.
Disaster came, of course. In space, emergency comes quickly, from any angle, and is by definition unpredictable. It was a small thing, but a diamond is small. The random factor in this case was a chunk of meteoric debris, basically identical to the rest of the local matter, but with one important difference. This one was not part of the ring. It was a rogue meteor caught in the gravity of Saturn, possibly pursuing a violently eccentric orbit of its own, possibly heading for Saturn on collision course.
It never reached Saturn. The space cruiser, with Tam at the controls, got in the way.
Emergency is sudden and definite. It can be complete and fatal. But a survey cruiser, new-model, is planned with high margin for error. End over end went the ship, like an insect hit on the wing, but not smashed. Tam eventually wrestled some sense into ship motion by firing auxiliary jets in sequence, but the main drive was off. While the flip-ups lasted, both Tam and Brook had a rough ride.
"That was fun," commented Brook. "Shall we do it again?"
"You're joking, of course."
"Only to hide how scared I am," admitted Brook uneasily.
"What happened? Or is this just part of a rigged gimmick to see how I'll react in a real emergency?"
"No gimmick. I think we can assume that something hit us. It happens. The question is, how much damage is done? Can we fix it? And how much time do we have?"
"What do you want me to do?" inquired Tam.
"You figure out where we're heading on the new orbit. I will check the ship."
In a few moments, Tam glanced up from his figures.
"We're in trouble," he observed.
"I guessed that," agreed Brook. "How bad?"
"Present orbit will intersect the surface of Saturn. At our present speed, the ship will burn up in atmosphere long before we crash. In any case, the surface of Saturn is not a comfortable alternative. We will have to repair the ship. Have you located the damage?"
"None inside," said Brook. "Use the outside viewers to scan. Maybe you can see something."
"Main jets are jammed apparently," said Tam a minute later. "They shut off automatically. Won't go on again. What happens now?"
Brook shrugged. "That depends on the damage. We can go outside and poke around, but we haven't dry-dock facilities. I can't make a prognosis until I see what's wrong."
"Outside," said Tam, closing his eyes briefly.
"Outside. Get your suit on, buster. Bring torches."
"Right, chief."
NINE YARDS OF OTHER CLOTH
Manly Wade Wellman
High up that almighty steep rocky slope with the sun just sunk, I turned as I knelt by my little campfire. Looking down slope and down to where the river crawled like a snake in the valley bottom, I saw her little black figure splash across the shallow place I'd found an hour back. At noontime I'd looked from the mountain yonder across the valley and I'd seen her then, too, on another height I'd left behind. And I'd thought of a song with my name in it:
On yonder hill there stands a creature,
Who she is I do not know . . .
Oh no, John, no, John, no ...
But I knew she was Evadare. I'd fled from before her pretty face as never I'd fled from any living thing, not from evil spell-throwers nor murder-doers, nor either from my country's enemies when I'd soldiered in foreign parts and seen battle as the Bible prophet-book tells it, confused noises and garments rolled in blood. Since dawn I'd run from Evadare like a rabbit from a fox, and still she followed, climbing now along the trail I'd tried not to leave, toward the smoke of the fire I'd built before I knew she was still coming.
No getaway from her now, for night dropped on the world, and to climb higher would be to fall from some steep hidden place. I could wait where I was or I could head down and face her. Wondering which to do, I recollected how first we'd come on each other in Hosea's Hollow.
I'd not rightly known how I'd wandered there—Hosea's Hollow. I hadn't meant to, that was certain sure. No good-sensed man or woman would mean to. Folks wished Hosea's Hollow was a lost hollow, tried to stay out of it and not think about it.
Not even the old Indians relished to go there. When the white folks ran the Indians off, the Indians grinned over their shoulders as they went, calling out how Kalu would give white men the same hard times he'd given Indians.
Kalu. The Indian word means a bone. Why Kalu was named that nobody could rightly say, for nobody who saw him lived to tell what he looked to be. He came from his place when he was mad or just hungry. Who he met he snatched away, to eat or worse than eat. The folks who'd stolen the Indians' country near about loaded their wagons to go the way they'd come. Then—and this was before the tune of the oldest man I'd heard tell of it—young Hosea Palmer said he'd take Kalu's curse away.
Folks hadn't wanted Hosea to try such. Hosea's father was a preacher—he begged him. So did Hosea's mother and so did a girl who'd dreamed to marry Hosea. They said if Hosea went where Kalu denned, he'd not come back, but Hosea allowed Kalu was the downright evil and couldn't prevail against a pure heart. He went in the hollow, and true he didn't come out, but no more did Kalu, from that day on. Both vanished from folks' sight and knowledge, and folks named the place Hosea's Hollow, and nary path led there.
