“What stage effects!” marveled the cheering throng. “What magic! What realism! What a finish!”
What — no encore?
1985
Hitch Your Spaceship to a Star
The astrologers of figulus knew the future, but they had yet to learn about naked truth.
From the beginning of Time, Man has been on the move, ever outward. First he spread over his own planet, then across the Solar System, then outward to the Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, measled with the colonies of Man.
Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundred and six (11,406), an incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth. Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory more than 1000 colonies, all in Sector F.U.B.A.R.3. For half a millennium, those colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the rest of Humanity.
The Galactic Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to re-establish contact with the Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of Mankind.
Breakfast on the hopeful consisted of ocher juice, parabacon, toastettes, mock omelet, papjacks, sausage, (don’t ask) and Hester’s coffee. It was called Hester’s coffee because Hester made it and Hester drank it; the others had to draw the line somewhere.
This morning, all hands had gathered for the prelanding meal. At the head of the round table sat Captain Standforth himself, under the glassy eyes of nearly two score defunct birds mounted on the walls, the stuffing of which was his only true vocation. Descended from those Standforths, the ones who had so routinely over the past seven generations covered themselves with glory in the service of the Galactic Patrol, the captain had been compelled by both his family and destiny to enlist when his turn came, just as the patrol had been compelled by family and history to take him, inadvertently and unhappily proving that sometimes neither nature nor nurture may create character. Taxidermy? A Standforth? Regrettably, yes.
Gathered around, scoffing down the fabrifood, were the rest of the expendable captain’s expendable crew, plus his lone expendable passenger, Councilman Morton Luthguster, as plump and pompous as a pouter pigeon crossed with a blimp. The crew consisted of second-in-command Lieutenant Billy Shelby, young and idealistic but not to awfully bright; Astrogator Pam Stokes, very bright and very beautiful but a stranger to passion; Ensign Kybee Benson, whose encyclopedic knowledge of human societies did not keep him from being personally antisocial; and stockily blunt Chief Engineer Hester (of the coffee) Hanshaw, proud mistress of the engine room.
The captain wiped his lips on a toastette, then ate it. “Well,” he said to his murky band, “we’ll be landing soon.” His mild eyes gleamed with visions of this unknown planet and the unimaginable new birds he would soon disembowel.
Councilman Luthguster, swirling a forkful of papjack in pseudoleo, said, “What is this place we’re coming to, Ensign Benson? What are its characteristics?”
“No one knows for sure about this one, Councilman,” the ensign told him. “The old records simply say the colonies were a group of like-minded people whose goal was a simple life free of surprises.”
“Well, we’ll be a surprise,” the councilman said.
Jim Downey and Hank Carpenter stood gazing up into the clear green sky, where the sun — good old Ptolemy, nicknamed sun after the good old Sol from which their forebears had so long ago departed — poised midway up its morning arc. “They’re late,” Jim said.
“They’ll get here,” Hank assured him.
Councilman Luthguster said, “What’s the name of the place, Ensign Benson? I’ve noticed that the name the colonists give their settlements frequently offers a clue to their social structure.”
“It’s called Figulus,” Ensign Benson said.
“Figulus?”
Blank looks around the table. Billy Shelby said, “Wasn’t he one of the founders of ancient Rome? Figulus and Venus.”
“No, Billy,” said Ensign Benson.
Jim frowned skyward. “You don’t suppose they got the coordinates wrong? Landed someplace else on Figgy?” Behind them, on the knoll where they stood, the pleasant town dreamily awaited.
“They’re dawdling over their breakfast, like as not,” Hank replied. “In fact, there they come yonder.”
“Publius Nigidius Figulus,” Ensign Benson said. “He was the most learned Roman of his age, a writer and a statesman, died circa forty-five B.C.”
Billy looked sad. “Died at the circus? That’s awful.”
“Terrible,” the ensign agreed. “Figulus was most noted for his books on religion and—”
“We’re,” Pam Stokes said, her ancestral slide rule moving like a live thing in her slender-fingered hands, a subtle alteration simultaneously taking place in the faint aura of engine hum all about them, “here.”
Everyone jumped up to look out the view ports at Figulus, third of ten planets in orbit around the Sollike star called Ptolemy. Only Ensign Benson remained at the table, draining his vial of ocher juice. “And astrology,” he finished.
“People of Figulus—”
“Hi, Senator,” Jim said.
Councilman Luthguster frowned across the top of his P.A.-system microphone at the two locals at the foot of the extruded stairs. He was on the platform at the top. Both were middle-aged, mild-mannered, Jim with a gray cardigan and a pipe, Hank with eyeglasses and a tweed jacket. All four elbows sported leather patches. “I am a councilman,” he informed them.
“Ha!” said Hank. “That’s a five-buck you owe me, Jim.”
Jim scratched his head. “I would have sworn a plenipotentiary from Earth would be at least a senator.”
Councilman Luthguster stared. “I haven’t told you that yet,” he told the world through the P.A. system.
Just inside the ship where the others waited, Ensign Benson frowned and said, “What’s going on out there?” He edged closer to the open hatch, where he could hear both sides of the conversation.
“Well, in any event,” Hank was saying, while his pal Jim sadly produced a five-buck from his wallet and handed it over, “the councilman is not the one we have to talk to here. No, we want the man in charge.”
“You mean the captain?”
Hank said, “No, no, he’s just some sort of hobbyist along for the ride. We want the — what will you call him? Social scientist. Anthropologist.”
“Sociologist,” Jim suggested. “Ethnologist.”
Ensign Benson stepped out onto the light. “Social engineer,” he said.
“How do you do, sir,” Hank said, smiling behind his glasses, coming up the ladder with hand outstretched. “I’m Hank Carpenter, mayor of Centerville.”
Back on the ground, Jim made a dang-it gesture with his pipe. “I knew he’d be a Scorpio! Dang it, that’s what we should have bet on.”
Ensign Benson accepted Hanks firm but friendly handshake. “Centerville?”
“Well, sir,” Hank said, “it happens that this is the center of the universe. May not look like much, but that’s what it is and why our forebears came here. But let’s quit jawing. You and the councilman and the four inside the ship, come on to town and meet the folks.”