The incredible aliens

As he left the bridge, the airlock rumbled shut behind him, sealing off the control room from the rest of the ship. Narant climbed the spiral staircase into the observation room. One entire wall was a thick quartzite pane over-looking the control center. You could see as much from up here as down below. But somehow it wasn't the same.

Other technicists with non-combatant specialties were already strapped to seats in the room, prepared to watch the show on which their very lives might depend. The "VM" lamp winked slowly on and off, its orange glow warning against "possible violent maneuvers." Narant found a seat and obediently fastened the safety harness. He studied the view screen on the bridge below. The alien ship, seemingly unaware of the danger that now threatened it, still followed its initial course.

Narant tried to concentrate on the scrambling activity in the control center, but his rebellious mind would have none of it. Unwanted memories rose up to haunt him. He had been assigned to this trip mainly to purge those thoughts from his mind with work and action, but the cure appeared no cure at all.

Three months ago his final request for the marriage permit had returned disapproved. The accompanying explanation had been a masterpiece of scientific doggerel. It analyzed the genetic composition of Narant and Technicist 3rd Class Melda. It presented carefully worked-out Tables of Probability regarding the nature and potential achievement of the offspring of such a union. It called attention to the low probability rate of Melda and Narant begetting a genius. "Therefore," it had concluded, "it is not in the best interests of the intended participants, nor will it serve to build the race, if the aforementioned are joined in matrimony."

There followed a rare bit of sterilized philosophy: "It is to be hoped that each party mentioned in the above will readily find another individual in whom to repose his and her natural emotional interest." Narant felt, with a startling sense of the primeval, that if he should find the person who phrased that report he would delightfully club him to death.

But of course emotionalism was absurd. The whole thing had been handled dispassionately. Certain basic factors had been fed into banks of electronic calculators and, a few micro-seconds later, the resultant statistical data came out. It simply failed to measure up. There was no arguing or quibbling about the results for the calculators were mechanically infallible.

However, Narant had taken one more step: an application for "random mating." But the retention drums of the master calculators had accumulated a far too overwhelming amount of information about the advantages of scientific breeding. So that application, too, had been refused.

And shortly after, Narant found himself assigned to this cruiser bound for Restus. A report that the inhabitants had begun space flight. A distant, but conceivable threat to the security of the home planet. He knew the assignment resulted from some scientific effort to mollify his disappointment. So he left home. But he took with him the forlorn hope that on this voyage, or the next, or the one after that, he would find somewhere in the vast reaches of space an advanced people who still practiced random mating; that he might find them, analyze them and feed that information back to the master calculators. For only by placing hard new facts into the "brain" could there be any chance of changing the decision.

In the sealed combat control center, Commander Karsine finished strapping himself into the anthropometric chair in front of the view screen. A subordinate lowered the master control panel into position. Narant perked up with new interest. A specialist of Karsine's class, he realized, could manipulate that control panel with the consummate skill of a master musician at a great organ. The battery of keys, buttons and switches built into the panel gave Karsine complete domination over the thousands of small engines and servo-mechanisms, tens-of-thousands of electric tubes, and the millions of electrical synapses that comprised the fighting apparatus of the space cruiser.

Abruptly the "VM" sign began flashing more rapidly, its color changing from orange to red. A siren whooped throughout the ship. Karsine's voice, somewhat metallic over the speakers, gave the "Imminent Combat" alert. The ship was going into action.

Narant felt the seat straps pull at his chest. In the view screen below, the alien vessel began to swell rapidly. A low hum permeated the observation room. Narant glanced out the nearest port. Glistening metallic spines were expanding outward from the body of the cruiser. At the tip of each bulged the glowing cone of the force and detection heads, the cruiser's most potent tools of attack and defense.

"Engine room!" Karsine's peremptory voice snapped through the speakers.

"Engine room standing by."

"For ten seconds only, do not ... repeat, do not act on manual signal control. This is a test only. Read them off."

"Yes, sir. Reading test signals: Fire eight ... fire six ... fire nine ... fire one ... fire main." The voice paused. "Is that all, sir?"

"The ten seconds are up," reproached Karsine. Henceforth, his every command would have to be acted upon instantly. "Divert seventy per cent of main power supply into armament system."

"Yes, sir."

"Check spinal extension."

"Extended and locked. All force heads burning, Commander." Another voice had answered this time.

"Good." Karsine's brief acknowledgment for an efficient crew. "Activate the combat calculator."

"In action, sir."

There, Narant realized, was another de-humanizing achievement of Central Scientific. Years ago in the war with the repulsive exoskeletal inhabitants of Sirius 13, earth's military commanders had gone into battle with terrible ardor. To destroy the Sirians they had taken frequent, unnecessary risks, and in so doing had sacrificed dozens of brand new combat ships. So a special calculator had been designed for all craft except humble merchantmen. It kept a running check on the enemy's tactics, his power output, his course, speed and relative aggressiveness; it measured the power consumption of its own ship in counteracting enemy weapons, and a score of other factors. Once activated, the "brain" computed the mathematical probabilities of ultimate success at each instant of the battle. If the scale ever tipped in favor of the enemy craft, the calculator instantly selected the best evasion course, fired auxiliary rockets and broke off the engagement.

Narant unconsciously shook his head in disapproval. He wondered if he was getting old? Such efficiency disturbed him more than he cared to admit. Only in the histories, it seemed, could you find those thrilling battles where human ingenuity played the decisive role. Where a handful of courageous men could face outrageous odds and win through to victory by wit and resourcefulness. Yes, only in the histories.

Nowadays warfare, like love, revolved about mathematics and probability curves and trillions of electrons chasing themselves through a maze of wires and throwing switches and making decisions that once had been the prerogative of man alone.

Narant yearned for man's lost freedom to make an honest error.

Suddenly Karsine's harsh voice came blasting over the loudspeaker. "Prepare to grapple!"

Narant glanced quickly out through the port into the black sky. The alien ship, its bright metal reflecting the light of the distant sun, floated a mile away. Motionless. Or so it seemed against the unchanging stellar background.

It possessed hard sleek lines, pointed nose, flaring tail vanes. Its designers, he guessed, must still be thinking in terms of atmospheric flight. It hardly seemed the type of craft that could cross the broad interstellar reaches; probably had been built simply to plod about its neighboring planets. It must be an early development, for spaceships had never before been detected in the Restus system. More than likely the ship had not even become aware of their presence. Small wonder Karsine had decided to grapple.