"Murray Leinster - First Contact (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

in parallel lines, just as well ,. . . basic bodily functions. I mean,” he added conscientiously,
“any living being of any sort must ingest, metabolize, and excrete. Perhaps any intelligent brain
must perceive, apperceive, and find a personal reaction. Fm sure I’ve detected irony. That implies
humor, too. In short, sir, I think they could be likable.”
The skipper heaved himself to his feet.
“H-m-m,” he said profoundly, “we’ll see what they have to say.” . . -
He walked to the communications room. The scanner for the vision plate in the robot was in
readiness. The skipper walked in front of it. Tommy Dort sat down at the coding machine and tapped
at the keys. Highly improbable noises came from it, went into a microphone, and governed the


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frequency-modulation of a signal sent through space to the other spaceship. Almost instantly the
vision- screen which with one relay—in the robot— showed the interior of the other ship lighted
up. An alien came before the scanner and seemed to look inquisitively out of the plate. He was
extraordinarily manlike, but he was not human. The impression he gave was of extreme baldness and
a somehow humorous frankness.
“I’d like to say,” said the skipper heavily, “the appropriate things about this first
contact of two dissimilar civilized races, and of my hopes that a friendly intercourse between the
two peoples will result.”
Tommy Dort hesitated. Then he shrugged and tapped expertly upon the coder. More improbable
noises.
The alien skipper seemed to receive the message. He made a gesture which was wryly
assenting. The decoder on the Lianvabon hummed to itself and word-cards dropped into the message
frame. Tommy said dispassionately:
“He says, sir, ‘That is all very well, but is there any way for us to let each other go
home alive? I would be happy to hear of such a way if you can contrive it. At the moment it seems
to me that one of us must be killed.”
The atmoaphere was of confusion. There were too many questions to be answered all at once.
Nobody could answer any of them. And all of them had to be answered.
The Lianvabon could start for home. The alien ship might or might not be able to multiply
the speed of light by one more unit than the Earth vessel. If it could, the Lianvabon would get
close enough to Earth to reveal its destination—and then have to fight. It might or might not win.
Even if it did win, the aliens might have a communication system by which the Llanvabon’s
destination might have been reported to the aliens’ home planet before battle was joined. But the
Lianvabon might lose in such a fight. If she were to be destroyed, it would be better to be
destroyed here, without giving any clue to where human beings might be found by a forewarned,
forearmed alien battle fleet.
The black ship was in exactly the same predicament. It too, could start for home. But the
Lianvabon might be faster, and an overdrive field can be trailed, if you set to work on it soon
enough. The aliens, also, would not know whether the Lianvabon could report to its home base
without returning. If the alien were to be destroyed, it also would prefer to fight it out here,
so that it could not lead a probably enemy to its own civilization.
Neither ship, then, could think of flight. The course of the Lianvabon into the nebula
might be known to the black ship, but it had been the end of a logarithmic curve, and the aliens
could not know its properties. They could not tell from that from what direction the Earth ship
had started. As of the moment, then, the two ships were even. But the question was and remained,
“What now?”