Raymond F. Jones
Regulations provide
There is nothing that a government can do that a privnts citizen can't do better — except make war and spend money.
That had been the philosophy and firm conviction of Joe, senior, now dead and gone these thirty years. Young Joe Williams was himself pushing sixty, but he had never found occasion to take issue with his father's belief. Rather, with the march of years, he had become more thoroughly convinced of it than ever.
He leaned forward across his desk a moment to look from the window of his second-story office to the vast landing field in front of the building. He confirmed his first glance. The figure he had seen was that of Inspector O'Conners, red tape artist deluxe.
What went wrong with a man's genes, Joe wondered, to make a bureaucrat out of him? A deep inner necessity for dependence on the power of the group? Whatever it was made it impossible for the red tape artists to stand on their own feet, think their own thoughts, and come to their own conclusions. They were afraid to spit without the authority of public law which they could call to mind by paragraph and line.
And Melvin O'Conners was a thoroughbred of his kind, Joe thought sourly. As long as the company had to endure an Inspection Office upon the premises, why did the chief inspector have to be Melvin O'Conners?
His secretary buzzed a moment later and the inspector came in. You could spot one of them a block away, thought Joe. There was something about the cut of their clothes, the shine of their shoes, their air of "You can't push John Law around, Bud."
"They still up there?" asked O'Conners.
"Well, where would they go?" growled Joe. "They'll circle Earth in that orbit until the next ice age at the rate you're unwinding the red tape. For the sake of a comma in some regulation you'd let people in distress hang on a sky hook for" — he glanced at the clock — "eighteen hours since they first asked to come in — while you fumble around to determine whether their ancestoral stock is pure enough to allow them to set foot on our sacred terra firma. It hasn't been six months since nine of them died because of your precious regulations. If I were on the Intergalactic Advisory Mission, I'd tell everybody to steer so clear of Sol that you'd feel like we were in solitary confinement."
"But, fortunately — for your business — you're not." The inspector glanced out at the field lined with tremendous machine shops, laboratories, and hotels — and the more than a hundred intergalactic ships in various stages of repair and disrepair.
"Fortunately, I'm not. The cross I bear is Emergency Inspection. Do they land or don't they? How long are you going to let those people — ?"
"Stop calling them people. They probably have six heads and forty-eight tentacles, and eat their young for breakfast."
"Anybody that has brain enough to transport themselves a hundred thousand light-years across space is people in my book," said Joe. He picked up a thick cigar and chomped heavily on it. "And they're in trouble. Do they land or don't they?"
"We're proceeding according to I.G. Board agreement," said O'Conners. "Regulations provide —"
"That even if a guy is about dead he can go ahead and die as long as he hasn't got a letter of introduction from I.G."
"Regulations provide," continued the inspector patiently, "that in case of first contact between a visiting race and a given planet, the representatives arriving shall present adequate data for identification which shall then be verified through the I.G. Central Operations unit. That is what we are doing."
"Even if it kills the strangers."
"No exceptions were provided or could be provided for emergency cases. You know that very well. You cannot have forgotten the Trojan incident of Malabar Seven. And so we are proceeding according to regulations and agreement. Any of us would get the same treatment from their planet, wherever that might be."
"You mean you haven't even got them pegged, yet? I told you yesterday they were from Nerane IV and I pointed it out on the charts and showed your central operators the encyclopedic data —"
O'Conners waved disparagingly. "Your sorter isn't official. It has to be verified by our official machines."
"'Sfunny," said Joe, "that after all these hundreds of years the word 'official' is still synonymous with inefficiency and general chowder-head-edness. My sorter gets the data in fifteen minutes — yours hasn't got it in more than eighteen hours."
"Official sources require accuracy. We could not afford to be wrong if the landing of this ship involves violation of the I.G.B. regulations, or if these creatures cannot be identified. Your sorter is not concerned with such factors, understandably. You are concerned only with repairing the vessel and making a profit on the operation."
"And what a wicked thing that is! Eh?" said Joe. "We've been over this before. I know when I'm licked, but when will that obsolete monstrosity get its official bowels in gear and give out with the data? I've had a crew standing by since yesterday."
O'Conners didn't answer. He looked speculatively around the plush, luxurious office that was Joe's one vice and his only indulgence. He looked out at the vast properties that represented as much as a small nation might have once possessed. The great shops and laboratories rivaled a government facility.
"We'll be taking you over one of these days," said the inspector. "A government can't tolerate a private enterprise of this scope. This should belong to the people."
"Like the Tyrannosaurus," muttered Joe in a cloud of smoke, "He must have kicked and jumped and squealed to the last, too. And you've got just about as much chance now as he had. As long as there is space, you bureaucrats will never be on top again. It took a civil world war to get your kind off the top of the heap once, and you're off for good. In an expanding economy civilization simply passes by while you fuss and holler. It's only in a shrinking world that people think they need bureaucrats and socialists to tell them what to do."
O'Conners shook his head sadly, "The government needs men like you. It's tragic that the organising and technical ability you possess should be coupled with such atavism."
He turned to the door. "I'll send yon an official clearance to bring them in as soon as — and if — the sorter verifies the data given by the disabled craft, and central confirms it."
He left.
Every time, Joe thought. Every time it was like this. Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. He went to the window and looked out upon the hundred or so craft from every part of the universe that lay on the landing field. That they represented genius incredibly far removed from his comprehension troubled O'Conners not at all. One of them, a huge vessel a mile and a half long and fifteen hundred feet in diameter had come almost three million light-years out of space, the farthest communication that men of Earth had yet had with other sentient beings.
But O'Conners was not impressed. He'd kept them in an orbit above Earth's barrier screen for three days while he checked their credentials.
If there had turned up the slightest inconsistency in the communication between their alien minds and his primtive Earth mentality, he'd have refused entry to their crippled and nearly helpless vessel. He would probably have let them die in space rather than let them down, Joe thought bitterly. The bureaucratic mind!
He stepped back to the desk and called his repair superintendent. "Winfield, have you heard anything new from the Nerane IV?"
"Not for the last five hours. They might be dead by now if they're in any serious personnel trouble aboard."
"Yeah, they might be, mightn't they? Just like six months ago when he held the Cordomarians off until nine of them died. Nine specimens of the most brilliant intellect we've ever known — sacrificed to a regulation. We're bringing them down. It's not going to happen again."
"But O'Conners - !"
"They have an ellipsoidal hull. He couldn't tell them from a Croesan Nightwing or a Hammerlane."