Conquest Over Time.

by Michael Shaara.

What was the startling secret of Diomed III that almost caused Travis to lose his life? And who was Lappy?...

When the radiogram came in it was 10:28 ship's time and old 29 was exactly 3.4 light years away from Diomed III. Travis threw her wide open and hoped for the best. By 4:10 that same afternoon, minus three burned out generators and fronting a warped ion screen, old 29 touched the atmosphere and began homing down. It was a very tense moment.

Somewhere down in that great blue disc below a Mapping Command ship sat in an open field, sending up the beam which was guiding them down.

But it was not the Mapping Command that was important. The Mapping Command was always first. What mattered now was to come in second, any kind of second, close or wide, mile or eyelash, but second come h.e.l.l or high water.

The clouds peeled away. Travis staring anxiously down could see nothing but mist and heavy cloud. He could not help sniffing the air and groaning inwardly. There is no smell quite as expensive as that of burned generators. He could hear the Old Man repeating over and over again--as if Alls.p.a.ce was not one of the richest companies in existence--"burned generators, boy, is burned _money_, and don't you forget it!" Fat chance me forgetting it, Travis thought gloomily, twitching his nostrils. But a moment later he did.

For Diomed III was below him.

And Diomed III was an Open Planet.

It happened less often, nowadays, that the Mapping Command ran across intelligent life, and it was even less often that the intelligent life was humanoid. But when it happened it was an event to remember. For s.p.a.ce travel had brought with it two great problems. The first was Contact, the second was Trade. For many years Man had prohibited contact with intelligent humanoids who did not yet have s.p.a.ce travel, on the grounds of the much-discussed Maturity Theory. As time went by, however, and humanoid races were discovered which were biologically identical with Man, and as great swarms of completely alien, often hostile races were also discovered, the Maturity Theory went into discard. A human being, ran the new slogan, is a Human Being, and so came the first great Contact Law, which stated that any humanoid race, regardless of its place on the evolutionary scale, was to be contacted. To be accepted, "yea, welcomed," as the phrase went, into the human community. And following this, of course, there came Trade.

For it was the businessmen who had started the whole thing in the first place.

Hence the day of the Open Planet. A humanoid race was discovered by the Mapping Command, the M.C. made its investigation, and then sent out the Word. And every company in the Galaxy, be it monstrous huge or piddling small, made a mad rush to be first on the scene. The Government was very strict about the whole business, the idea being that planets should make their contracts with companies rather than the government itself, so that if any shady business arose the company at fault could be kicked out, and there would be no chance of a general war. Also, went the reasoning, under this system there would be no favorites. Whichever company, no matter its resources, had a ship closest at the time of the call, was the one to get first bargaining rights. Under this setup it was very difficult for any one company to grow too large, or to freeze any of the others out, and quite often a single contract on a single planet was enough to transform a fly-by-night outfit into a major concern.

So that was the basis of the Open Planet, but there the real story has only begun. Winning the race did not always mean winning the contract.

It was what you found when you got down that made the job of a Contact Man one of the most hazardous occupations in history. Each new planet was wholly and completely new, there were no rules, and what you learned on all the rest meant nothing. You went from a matriarchy which refused absolutely to deal with men (the tenth ship to arrive had a lady doctor and therefore got the contract) to a planet where the earth was sacred and you couldn't dig a hole in it so mining was out, to a planet which considered your visit the end of the world and promptly committed ma.s.s suicide. The result of this was that a successful Contact Man had to be a remarkable man to begin with: a combined speed demon, sociologist, financier, diplomat and geologist, all in one. It was a job in which successful men not only made fortunes, they made legends. It was that way with Pat Travis.

Sitting at the viewscreen, watching the clouds whip by and the first dark clots of towns beginning to shape below, Travis thought about the legend. He was a tall, frail, remarkably undernourished looking man with large soft brown eyes. He did not look like a legend and he knew it, and, being a man of great pride, it bothered him. More and more, as the years went by, his compet.i.tors blamed his success on luck. It was not Pat Travis that was the legend, it was the luck of Pat Travis.

Over the years he had learned not to argue about it, and it was only during these past few months, when his luck had begun to slip, that he mentioned it at all.

Luck no more makes a legend, he knew, than raw courage makes a fighter. But legends die quick in deep s.p.a.ce, and his own had been a-dying for a good long while now, while other lesser men, the luck all theirs, plucked planet after planet from under his nose. Now at the viewscreen he glanced dolefully across the room at his crew: the curly-headed young Dahlinger and the profound Mr. Trippe. In contrast to his own weary relaxation, both of the young men were tensed and anxious, peering into the screen. They had come to learn under the great Pat Travis, but in the last few months what they seemed to have learned most was Luck: if you happened to be close you were lucky and if you weren't you weren't. But if they were to get anywhere in this business, Travis knew, they had to learn that luck, more often than not, follows the man who burns his generators....

He stopped thinking abruptly as a long yellow field came into view. He saw silver flashing in the sun, and his heart jumped into his throat.

Old 29 settled fast. One ship or two? In the distance he could see the gray jumbled shapes of a low-lying city. The sun was shining warmly, it was spring on Diomed III, and across the field a blue river sparkled, but Travis paid no attention. There was only one silver gleam. Still he waited, not thinking. But when they were close enough he saw that he was right. The Mapping Command ship was alone. Old 29, burned generators and all, had won the race.

"My boys," he said gravely, turning to the crew, "Pat Travis rides again!" But they were already around him, pounding him on the back. He turned happily back to the screen, for the first time beginning to admire the view. By jing, he thought, what a lovely day!

That was his first mistake.

It was not a lovely day.

It was absolutely miserable.

Travis had his first pang of doubt when he stepped out of the ship.

The field was empty, not a native in sight. But Dahlinger was out before him, standing waist high in the gra.s.s and heaving deep lungfuls of the flower-scented air. He yelled that he could already smell the gold.

"I say, Trav," Trippe said thoughtfully from behind him, "where's the fatted calf?"

"In this life," Travis said warily, "one is often disappointed." A figure climbed out of a port over at the Mapping Command ship and came walking slowly toward them. Travis recognized him and grinned.

"Hey, Hort."

"Hey Trav," Horton replied from a distance. But he did not say anything else. He came forward with an odd look on his face. Travis did not understand. Ed Horton was an old buddy and Ed Horton should be happy to see him. Travis felt his second pang. This one went deep.

"Anybody beat us here?"

"No. You're the first, Trav."

Dahlinger whooped. Travis relaxed slightly and even the glacial Trippe could not control a silly grin.

Horton caught a whiff of air from the open lock.

"B u r n e d generators? You must've come like h.e.l.l." His face showed his respect. Between burning a generator and blowing one entirely there is only a microscopic distance, and it takes a very steady pilot indeed to get the absolute most out of his generators without also spreading himself and his ship over several cubic miles of exploded s.p.a.ce.

"Like a striped-tailed ape," Dahlinger chortled. "Man, you should see the boss handle a ship. I thought every second we were going to explode in technicolor."

"Well," Horton said feebly. "Burned generators. Shame."

He lowered his eyes and began toeing the ground. Travis felt suddenly ill.

"What's the matter, Hort?"

Horton shrugged. "I hate like heck to be the one to tell you, Trav, but seein' as I know you, they sent me--"

"Tell me what?" Now Dahlinger and Trippe both realized it and were suddenly silent.

"Well, if only you'd taken a little more time. But not you, not old Pat Travis. By d.a.m.n, Pat, you came in here like a downhill locomotive, it ain't my fault--"

"Hort, straighten it out. What's not your fault?"

Horton sighed.

"Listen, it's a long story. I've got a buggy over here to take you into town. They're puttin' you up at a hotel so you can look the place over. I'll tell you on the way in."

"The heck with that," Dahlinger said indignantly, "we want to see the _man_."

"You're not goin' to see the man, sonny," Horton said patiently, "You are, as a matter of fact, the last people on the planet the man wants to see right now."

Dahlinger started to say something but Travis shut him up. He told Trippe to stay with the ship and took Dahlinger with him. At the end of the field was a carriage straight out of Seventeenth Century England. And the things that drew it--if you closed your eyes--looked reasonably similar to horses. The three men climbed aboard. There was no driver. Horton explained that the 'horses' would head straight for the hotel.

"Well all right," Travis said, "what's the story?"

"Don't turn those baby browns on me," Horton said gloomily, "I would have warned you if I could, but you know the law says we can't show favoritism...."