MESSENGER

                          By William Morrison

               He had to find a single planet somewhere
             in the vast Universe. The trouble was, if he
             found it--would he remember what he must do?

           [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.]


He knew that there had been trouble, and he had been told what he had
to do. The trouble was he had forgotten. He didn't remember where it
was.

He had been speeding past an off-color white dwarf when it happened.
If he had taken the trouble to look around, he would have seen that
the white star was going to explode. He knew a potential nova when he
took a good look at one. But after all these centuries he had grown
careless, and when the blast had come--the small star suddenly blazing
into a billion-fold brilliance--the penetrating radiation had hit him
with full intensity. There had been no ship to protect him, no clothing
that might serve as a shield. His kind had done away with such things
eons before, as they had learned to move through space by using some
of the radiant energy that filled it.

He had blacked out completely.

When he came to again, he was far past the nova, in the dazzling
brightness of a rarefied cloud of radiant hydrogen atoms. The nova
itself had lost so much of its momentary brilliance that it was now
indistinguishable from the myriads of other stars. He himself was
speeding on with feverish haste toward a nebular cluster a thousand
light years away.

He slowed down. He had the feeling that the distant cluster was not his
proper destination. But what was? What star, what planet was the spot
in space he had to find? And what was he supposed to do once he got
there?

And who had given him the instructions? Where, in the vast immensity
of the universe was the place called "home", the place where he could
return for the information he had forgotten?

He didn't recall. He knew only, with that same distressing vagueness,
that somewhere there was something he had been ordered to do. And that
once given, the order had to be carried out.

He traveled aimlessly, by feeling alone. Time meant nothing to him as
an individual, for his kind had long mastered the problems of age. But
time meant much to those he had been sent to--to do what? Was it to
help? They must be waiting for him now. They must be wondering why he
didn't come.

He would have to hurry. Hurry to do something he didn't yet suspect,
but would sooner or later remember.

After a few centuries, he began, in his anxiety, to talk to himself,
as is the way of individuals too long alone. "That star cluster there
could be it," he said to himself hopefully, and veered toward the right.

"Doesn't look familiar, though," he muttered. "Maybe if I would get
closer--"

He came close enough to see the thousands of stars as individuals, to
pick out the satellites circling the bright discs of light, to study
the pale planets themselves and their tiny subsatellites. As he turned
his attention from one to another, disappointment slowly filled him.
No, this was not the place. There was nothing in the configuration of
the stars, nothing in the size or position of the planets that sounded
a familiar chord in his consciousness. He would have to go further--or
turn back.

       *       *       *       *       *

He left the place behind him. The next time the same thing happened he
didn't have quite so much hope, and his disappointment was less keen.
But it was disappointment none the less. Time was passing, and they
must be waiting for him impatiently.

After a while the hope and the disappointment both died away almost
completely. The former shrank to a tiny spark that grew dimmer and
dimmer as the centuries passed. He wondered if it would ever wink out
entirely.

It was characteristic of him that the anxiety this caused was only
for those who were waiting, expecting him hourly, and wondering why
he didn't come. He had no sense of fear for himself, no feeling of
despairing loneliness that might be expected to arise from being so
long isolated in space. It was only that he would have liked some one
to talk to, besides himself.

On a fair number of planets he found animal-like creatures in
different stages of development, and on a few he discovered life that
was intelligent. It was with these that he had a renewed feeling of
anticipation, the spark of hope glowing momentarily before it faded
again.

"It's intelligent life I've got to find," he told himself. "But where?"

His astronomical memory, insofar as it covered the post-nova
period, was perfect, and he paid more attention to the details of
star-and-planet configuration than he had ever done before. Gradually
a star-map formed in his mind, a map that covered enormous distances
of space. Those places he had investigated and eliminated from
consideration were slowly crossed off. It was a large needle he had to
find, and his own powers were considerable, but the haystack he had to
search was infinite. There was no telling how many more centuries would
pass before he found it.

And then another thought struck him. They'd know back home that
something had gone wrong. Would they send someone else to do the job in
his place?

He rather doubted it. He had a vague feeling that there weren't many
with his own peculiar talents. What had to be done had to be done by
him, or left undone altogether.

More time passed. And one day, when the space charted on his brain-map
had grown to vast dimensions, and the spark of hope had become so tiny
that he was not quite sure any longer that it was there at all, he
noted from a distance a galaxy that seemed familiar.

"That's it!" he cried. "That's it!"

The spark flared, and as he sped toward the galaxy it became a flame.
It was a lens-shaped assemblage of stars, with two small spiral arms
composed of a few million stars each, and it was seemingly not too
different from millions of other galaxies he had passed in the course
of all those centuries. But to him, seeking so desperately, this galaxy
was unique. It was the right one. He coursed through it from spiral arm
to spiral arm, and now there could be no doubt. The star he wanted was
small and yellowish, far from the center of the lens. It had a rather
elaborate planetary system, which he recognized at once.

This was it. The third planet, the one with a single subsatellite, was
the one he had been sent to find. To find, and perhaps to help. But how?

The finding of the planet had solved one problem. So far it had given
him not a hint toward the solution of the second--the reason why he had
been sent here.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was life on this ball of mud and water, a great deal of life,
both vegetable and animal. And some of the latter could, without too
great a distortion of the truth, be called intelligent. It had raised
cities, tunneled into mountains, changed the appearance of sections of
the planet itself. It was to this intelligent life that he had been
sent.

A dim memory of the need for caution kept him from letting himself be
seen. "I'd only frighten them," he thought. "I'll have to investigate
thoroughly before I reveal myself. And maybe the investigation will
remind me of what I have to do."

The first thing was to come down to earth. Choosing the dark side of
the planet, shaded from the central sun by its own bulk, he shrank his
body and let himself drop in the gravitational field. From time to time
he slowed his fall in order to keep from flaming through the atmosphere
and attracting their attention. And at a thousand feet above the
surface he came to a complete stop, hovering over a city, and making up
his mind where to land.

Something droned toward him through the air, colored lights winking
on and off. He darted downward and to one side. Where the city lights
faded out, he let himself fall all the way to the ground.

He was off a dimly lit highway. Small metal vehicles ran along it,
their lights momentarily tearing apart the darkness ahead of them. A
glance through the metal at the creatures inside the vehicles gave him
a queer thrill. Yes, these were the ones he had been sent to.

Quickly reshaping his body and clothing himself so that he seemed to
be one of them, he began to walk along the highway. Cars sped past him,
picking him out in their headlights. None of them stopped, but he had
time to probe their minds and listen to their language.

What he found was not pleasant. Among all the feelings which controlled
their thoughts, fear was easiest to detect. And along with the fear
were hatred and envy and greed, anxiety and guilt. Oddly enough, there
were also hope and affection for each other, but it was the worse
feelings that predominated. There was no doubt that they needed help.

That didn't make any clearer, however, what he had to do. He had an
idea that it was not his mission to work out a detailed solution. He
had to do some simple thing, something--

The two men were lying in wait, either for him or for some other
pedestrian they judged sufficiently unwary. He sensed them long before
the first one stepped out toward him, a cigarette in one hand and what
was supposed to be an ingratiating look on the brutal face.

"Got a match, bud?"

The other man suddenly plunged at him from the side, an arm wrapping
itself around his neck. The assailant tried to bend him back, the
forearm cutting across his windpipe. The arm of the first man swung, a
rough fist smashing at his face.

Then the two assailants screamed in pain and terror. Where they had
touched him, fist and arm broke into flame. Both men turned from him in
horror, and ran off wildly, as if to get away from themselves.

He hadn't meant to hurt them, but they had contrived their own
punishment. Perhaps--no, that wasn't it. He wasn't here to punish
either.

He walked along, and soon he found himself entering the city. A man in
a blue uniform watched him suspiciously and ordered him gruffly to get
moving.

"I am moving," he said pleasantly.

"Don't you get wise with me," said the bluecoat, and raised a
threatening club.

He paid no attention to the club and kept on, toward the heart of the
city.

What he saw only confirmed the impression he had obtained from the
minds of the men and women in the cars. Too many thoughts were mean and
ignoble, arising only from selfish and vicious desires. Many of those
who saw him seemed to sense his strangeness, and moved toward him with
a single impulse--to take advantage of his ignorance. Men spoke to him
out of the sides of their mouths, offering him bargains. Women offered
themselves.

"_Look, Mac, this stuff is hot, see? Just came off a truck_--"

"_Wanta look at some nice pictures, Mister?_"

"_I can give you a good address, Bud._"

"_Out for a good time, Jack?_"

The planet was sick. Had he been sent to cure it?

       *       *       *       *       *

He came to an area of broad lighted streets. Lights glittered
everywhere, attracting the attention of those around him by going on
and off. Great posters advertised the attractions inside places of
amusement.

He entered one of them, an astonished ticket-collector calling after
him, "Hey, where's your ticket, Bud?" But there was something about him
that prevented the man from pursuing.

He lost himself in the darkness and watched the screen. Here, in
brief and vivid form, was pictured the life of the planet. Women in
bathing suits plunged into a pool and formed a pattern which imitated
sensuously the petals of an unfolding rose. A small animal leaped
through hoops and climbed a ladder. Groups of men drove against each
other for possession of an object which they kicked occasionally
into the air. An elderly man looked grim and made a speech into a
microphone. And then a film showed the main business of the planet,
which seemed to be the killing of its supposedly intelligent
inhabitants. Bombs exploded, planes crashed, desperate lines of men ran
forward to meet their deaths.

Something quickened in his mind. He almost remembered now. This was
what he had come here about.

His will moved, and the theatre vanished behind him. Now he was on the
battlefield itself.

The reality was worse than the image, far worse. Here were not only the
roars of the great guns, but the curses and screams of the wounded, the
gasps of the dying. Here were not only horrible sights and sounds, but
the odors of death--the sharp nitrogenous fragrance of explosives, the
heavy sulfurous smoke of burning oil, the sickening smell of sweating
or decaying flesh.

A cloud came into being from the explosion of a mortar shell, and two
men dropped to the ground. In answer to the mortar, the flaring barrel
of a tank gun spoke hoarsely, and half the crew of the mortar fell in
turn. But there seemed no end to this deadly dialogue. The next moment
there came the burst of a bomb from a low-flying plane, and the tank
half turned over on its side, a heap of smoking steel.

He knew at last why he had been sent here. He knew now what he had to
do.

He ripped the flaring-mouthed gun from the tank. His hands twisted the
thick metal into a shape it had never known before, bent it into a
strange curve, fashioned it so that it would emit overtones to chill
the souls of those who heard it. His brain charged the instrument with
the energy of his own mind, energy that would send its voice to the far
corners of this diseased planet, and leave not a single individual deaf
to its dreaded tones.

Putting the improvised horn to his lips, Gabriel blew the call for
which the planet had so long been waiting.