Narant's personal problem seemed of more
            importance than his mission as an interstellar
             investigator. But they combined when he met--

                         The Incredible Aliens

                        By William Bender, Jr.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                               July 1954
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It was only a tiny dot on the view screen when the military lookout
on the armed cruiser identified it as an alien spaceship and sounded
the general alert. Technicist Ninth Class Narant, chief psychanalyst
aboard, studied its approach with a rebellious, almost passionate hope
that the impossible was at last going to happen.

Or was it impossible? They were the first men to visit this planetary
system. Why couldn't they expect to encounter a truly superior race for
a change?

Intently, Narant examined the course of the alien craft. Rather
mischievously he hoped the stranger would suddenly adopt evasion
tactics showing it had detected their presence in the black void
between the 6th and 7th planets of the Star Restus. That would
certainly be a sign of superiority! And what a blow to Central
Scientific Headquarters back home. The anti-detection shield was one of
their proudest accomplishments.

And yet, though still wishful, Narant realized deep in his heart that
such hopes were blighted. Illogical and improbable. No people in the
Universe could even compare with them. Explorers and merchants and
military ships and privateers had prowled all the great planetary
systems of the galaxy. They and their technology reigned supreme
everywhere. Indeed, the accumulated evidence of their supremacy even
formed the irrefutable foundation of Central Scientific's dogma on
selective breeding.

"I must ask you to leave the bridge now, doctor." The voice, crisp and
authoritative, crackled over Narant's shoulder.

Commander Karsine had entered the control room during Narant's brief
reverie in front of the viewing screen. An able and successful combat
officer still in his early thirties, Karsine wore the light weight
space armor the regulations prescribed for moments of impending action.
Even if the enemy blasted a hole in the control room itself, that armor
could protect Karsine long enough to save or disintegrate the cruiser,
as the case might be.

"Commander," Narant suddenly blurted. "One request. I should like to
remain this one time and observe your tactics right here."

"Denied." Karsine explained brusquely that only combat personnel were
allowed in the central control room during contact with a strange
vessel. "But," he ended, patronizingly, "you can watch from the
observation room. When we have made the capture, I'll be happy to
review my operations with you."

_When_ we have made the capture. The Commander's abundant self
confidence only served to further depress Narant. Out there in the
void rode a space vessel of an altogether unknown race. And there was
no question in Karsine's mind but that their cruiser would take the
alien. Not "_if_" we make the capture. Simply, "_when_." It was small
solace for Narant to recall that he himself had firmly established
Self Confidence as one of the highest-rated mental traits for military
command. It had been one of his major projects as a Psychanalyst 4th
Class.

       *       *       *       *       *

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.

The force heads on Narant's side of the cruiser began to shimmer under
the surge of power being fed to them. They grew red hot, almost
translucent. They would hold fire until the beam became powerful enough
to withstand tremendous forces. Sometimes in grappling, an enemy craft
had been known to discharge its main rocket batteries in an effort to
wrench loose. But any second now....

"Execute grapple!" Karsine ordered.

The cruiser shuddered. Lights dimmed as the force heads sucked at every
available bit of power. With a blinding flash, a blue-white ribbon of
energy streaked across the mile-wide void to the alien ship. It flicked
the nose of the Restus craft, gripped, and swept over the entire hull
like a glittering cocoon.

"Tension indicator: Nine-eight-point-eight," reported a too-casual
voice over the speaker. "Enemy ship secured."

"Opposing force?"

"Negative."

Karsine cautiously studied his dials, alert for the first sign of
a counter-blow. Nothing happened. A minute dragged by. The tension
indicators remained constant; detection heads, zero. And then: "Bring
it alongside."

The grappling beam slowly began to contract, bringing the alien ship
closer. As it passed through the invisibility screen, multi-colored
de-action rays focussed upon it, nullifying virtually every weapon
known to man.

Narant's hopes dissolved. The emptiness left only an aching futility.
As usual, the capture had been simple ... and complete.

"Advance parties prepare to go aboard," commanded the loudspeaker.

A man behind Narant unbuckled his straps, got up and stretched. "Here
we go again," he said. And then, to nobody in particular: "I used to
get a kick out of investigating strange creatures. Now it's work. Just
work."

Narant looked over his shoulder at the cruiser's anthropometrist. He
would have to board the ship right behind the combat team, analyze
the tools, controls, living conditions of the crew. Perhaps he, too,
experienced this ennui of persistent success?

       *       *       *       *       *

Narant had ended his preparations in the psych-examination chamber by
the time they brought the first of the alien people to him. Narant
stared in sudden amazement. The creature was humanoid. It had a
well-formed head with a squat, shrunken nose and steep brows; there
were prehensile arms, and hands with five fingers. But the man was
hairy and, Narant winced, immodestly naked.

The humanoid was still in the grip of the paralytic when they took him
into the examination chamber and strapped him to the table. Narant
judged the alien a little taller, give or take a few inches, than a
normal human being. His interest began to perk up. It always did when
he could study another creature that had learned to conquer space.
For perhaps the first time in three months, thoughts of Melda were
over-shadowed by the immediate prospect of exploring the mysteries of
an alien mind.

As the attendant came back out of the chamber, Narant secured the door.
"How many of them?" he asked.

The attendant shook his head in evident amazement. "Four. I don't know
how they do it, but that ship had only a four man crew."

"Impossible," Narant exclaimed.

"That's all there are," the man insisted. "We've covered the whole
ship."

"But how could they...?"

"The engineers are working on that now. I heard one of them remark
about the great number of automatic controls, but even so ... isn't
that one for the book?"

That, Narant agreed, was one for the book. Four men. The space vessels
he knew usually held scores of crewmen and specialists to handle the
manifold emergencies that arose in flight. His imagination soaring,
Narant turned rapidly to begin his experiments.

He started the automatic recorder that would code his findings on
a thin strip of tape and then, more excited than usual, began the
examination. Inside the chamber, a giant multi-faceted crystal began to
rotate slowly in the gimbals which held it suspended from the ceiling.
Sharp individual beams of light swept over the face of the alien being
on the table. One by one, the lights flickered over him and passed on,
each one probing, measuring, comparing with universal norms, and then
recording its findings on both dial and tape.

Long before the five-hour examination was over, the hopes of
Technicist 9th Class Narant far transcended any he had experienced in
the past three months. The aliens had almost human potential. They
were fun-loving, kindly, clannish. Their resourcefulness _and their
ingenuity_ were literally unsurpassed.

But then the most amazing fact of all revealed itself: The time-lapse
since this race had been entirely primitive was fantastically short.
In one brief--almost abrupt--transition, they had gone from jungle to
the conquest of space. The mind, the racial background and the obvious
achievements of these creatures presented such a picture of rapid
advancement as to stagger the imagination.

Once he had transmitted the coded tapes to Central Scientific, Narant
sought out the anthropometrist. His lingering doubts vanished when
the two compared findings. Everything inside the spaceship had been
designed expressly for these strange creatures with the five fingers
and the prehensile hands and arms.

As the cruiser finally pointed toward home, Narant was a new man. Of
course their information would set the scientific world spinning on
its collective ear. But more important, it would have vast personal
significance. According to the crystal, the mating pattern of these
surprisingly progressive beings was entirely one of random selection!

Already that data would be digesting inside the master calculators.
The knowledge would become a part of all future decisions. Probability
rates would change strikingly ... especially those that governed the
issuance of "random-mating" licenses. For Narant, the voyage had been a
tremendous success.

       *       *       *       *       *

However, in the space experimental laboratories near the Nevada desert
on the third planet of the sun Restus, no such optimism existed.

Twenty-four hours had passed since the S-X-2 had vanished. They had
had a precise fix on it as it blistered through the void on an elliptic
course that would return it automatically to Earth. Everything had
seemed to be going perfectly. All the bugs of the first Spacerocket
Experimental had evidentally been straightened out in making the "2".
And then, some 250-thousand miles beyond Saturn, it had disappeared.
Just like that.

Dr. Gordon Basset glanced distastefully at the telephone on his desk.
Then he began thumbing through the metropolitan directory for a number.
The hands that held the directory were strong, supple. They would have
been a revelation to Technicist Ninth Class Narant, if he had seen them.

But then Technicist Ninth Class Narant himself would have been
something of a revelation to Dr. Gordon Basset, what with his twenty
claw-like extensors.

Basset found the number, dialed, and waited for the connection.

"Hello, Dr. Farrell? Basset here. I've got bad news on the S-X-2.... No
details yet, but the ship has broken contact.... Yes, I must presume
it's lost.... I'll file a complete report as soon as possible....
What's that?... I suppose you're right--we'll have the S.P.C.A. on our
necks for sacrificing four more test animals. What the hell, they
can't expect us to send men on these experimental flights!"

Basset talked for a moment longer and then replaced the phone. He
sighed. Another report. Another failure. Another requiem to be written
for a lost ship--and four chimpanzees.