John D. MacDonald
A Condition of Beauty
They threw the meat to him and he fed in darkness, his eyes smarted from the after effect of the blinding light which had, for a few moments, shone through the small door.
Food was good and hunger was good. So few things were good. His ears heard the tearing of the flesh from the dry bone and there was a good stinging at the corners of his jaws.
The old one crouched in the corner of the cell and ate with less noise.
He who was known as Pol threw the cleaned bone aside toward the heap of other bones. He padded with bare feet across the dirt floor and drank deeply of the single stream of water that came from the wall and fell into a deep pit at his feet.
The old one, his voice muffled with food, said, “I heard them speak, Pol. This is the year of great light, when the two suns are close. Tomorrow is the ceremony.”
“I saw one such,” Pol said. “My mother hid me and at last she sent me alone into the forest. I lived in the forest. For many months the sky was bright. And on the brightest morning of all, I heard the singing. By then I could move in the forest as quietly as any animal. I crept through the brush and I saw them. The priests and the naked giggling maidens of the village and those with drums. They went to the silver temple.”
The old one sighed. “I never saw the temple.”
Pol thumped his naked chest with a strong fist.
“I saw it and, after many days when I was certain that no one was about, I entered the temple.”
The old one gasped in awe.
“I entered the temple and I walked on the silver floors and saw the great wheels and the metal which can be looked through and all the rest of it. And I saw pictures of monsters even like you and I, Old One.”
The old one cackled. “At last you come to know yourself as a monster.”
Pol was suddenly, dejected. He sat on the floor, his back against the stone. In a lifeless voice he said, “In darkness it is hard to accept. I feel like a man. I think as a man does. It is odd to be monstrous. It is something one wishes to forget.”
Suddenly he remembered the girl. He padded to the far corner of the cell, pulled away the rock which no two of the normal ones could have lifted.
He set it on the dirt floor, hissed at the opening.
Her voice startled him, it was so close. “It is you, Pol,” she said softly.
“Who else can lift that stone, Lae? I hear your voice and in my mind I see you as a woman, a normal woman. A woman such as my mother. The old man and I have talked of how horrible it is to be a monster which must be hidden in darkness. It is easy to forget that you are one such, in this eternal darkness.”
Her fingers brushed his arm. “Touch my arm,” she said.
He did so, felt the horror within him as his fingers told him that her arm was strong, solid, thick.
“There,” Lae said. “It is best that you never forget that I am as you.”
He did not answer for many moments. He said, “Today you refused food again?”
“I did,” she said. “I grow weak.”
“Try to come through the space in the stones. I will help you.”
In a few minutes he was forced to give up as she moaned with pain, her flesh torn by the bitter edges of the rock.
“What will be gained?” she asked.
There was no humor in his low laugh. “Here in the darkness I pretend I am a man as other men. And I pretend that you are as other women. I want you with me. I want you where I can touch you.”
The old one laughed. It was a high, wild laugh — fading into something midway between a sob and a moan.
Patrol Eleven, of Planet Census Group Fifty-One, reached the projected frame of reference and each succeeding pulsation of the drive dropped velocity below supra-light to the extent that the pilot screen began to show the blazing form of Arcturus with one hundred times the luminosity of Sol.
The pulsation stopped and the screen came completely alive, adjusted for the fifty percent distortion caused by the speed of .75L.
Captain Harvey Crane, a thin tired man with weak eyes, grinned at Dan Brian, the first officer, pulled, the mike to his lips and announced to the rest of the crew:
“Here we are. Homeward bound. This is area Alice Baker Day ought one eight. Only two more areas to go. Chief Photographers Mate, report to the bridge. Arrange sectors with Mr. Brian.”
Captain Crane stood up, yawned and said, “Take it, Dan. You’ll find me in the sack if there’s anything urgent.”
When Crane had gone, Dan Brian leaned against the wall and watched Chief Photographers Mate Benton pull the prints out of the slot in the developer.
Benton was an earnest little man with nervous mannerisms.
“Hope to Heaven you don’t find anything we have to look at,” Dan Brian said sleepily. The photographer gave him an annoyed look.
When the prints were sorted for this first sector, the little man began checking their location against the sector map, using a computer to chart orbits.
He clucked when he found a half degree error in the sector map.
Finally he came to one print. He grew increasingly nervous as he looked at the sector map, clucking and licking his lips.
“What is it?” Dan asked wearily.
“Here’s one that isn’t recorded. It’s up to minimum measurements, but it doesn’t appear on the map. The comparison with the infra-red print shows that it has an atmosphere.”
“Check it again,” Dan said.
“I’ve checked it three times,” the little man snapped...
Captain Crane moaned as Dan shook him awake. Then he listened quietly. When Dan was through he said, “If Benton says it’s up to minimum size, then it is. The last census probably got lazy this close to home.”
“Can’t we be lazy too?”
Crane stared at Dan until the younger man flushed. “Yes sir. I’ll take us over there and call you when it’s time to sit down.”
Later Captain Crane at the controls, cautiously braked Patrol Eleven below one mile per second before entering the atmosphere of the previously unrecorded planet. Benton had measured it at 4,500 miles circumference at the equator.
It was in orbit around Beta Scorpii at an average radius of 88 million miles, and apparently in that portion of its orbit which, once every few years, took it almost alarmingly close to Arcturus.
He braked further as they descended through the atmosphere, as the sky lightened from black, to purple, to deep blue and the stars disappeared, as the white hard light of Beta Scorpii faded to warm orange-yellow.
The supplementary screen was aimed at the planet below. All four men in the pilot room gasped as they saw the vast ship sprawled against a gentle wooded slope. Trees blurred the edges of it, but the silver metal was still bright and untarnished.
“Measurements!” Captain Crane snapped.
Dan Brian reported five minutes later. “Overall length, sir, twenty-eight hundred feet. Three hundred and ninety feet in thickest cross-section. That makes an index of point-thirteen-ninety-two.”
Crane had lost his relaxed air. “Don’t just stand there, Mr. Brian. Check the index on the recognition log.”
Dan Brian, sweating, did as he was told. In a few moments he said, slowly, “No known military or civil type, sir. Maybe... well, it has obsolete drive. Those tubes look atomic. Some alien intelligence that—”
“Don’t talk rot, Mr. Brian! If there were any intelligence in the known universe capable of building that ship, we would have heard of it before now. Use your head and check the historical reference book. Early expeditions.”
A few moments later Dan Brian gave a muffled gasp.
“Well?” Crane said coldly.
“It checks! Sir, that’s the Victrix! I read about that when I was a little kid. The tenth ship to leave Earth.”