Murray Leinster Read Online Free Page B

panic as they strapped him in the chair. Then he knew why. Fellenden held him in this time track! Fellenden mattered! The fact that he had escaped to here! The equations and the explanation he’d given Rodney could not dismiss them as meaningless! He hated Fellenden with a terrible, despairing hatred. But he had to stop hating him and put all his mind on slowing time—
    He fought to achieve it with all the strength of one of the four best brains in the country. He was trying when they drew back from the chair and waited, white-faced, for the switch to be thrown.
    He sobbed, then. But he was still trying when—

THE ETHICAL EQUATIONS
    Space enigma. In the May, 194s, issue of Astounding Science Fiction appeared a novelette by Leinster entitled ‘First ContactIt dealt in an entirely new way with the meeting in space of humankind and aliens with an advanced technological background. The story made a great impact at the time: it has appeared in several anthologies, and the problems connected with its filming led to the development of the Jenkins Systems mentioned in the Introduction to this book. l The Ethical Equations’ appeared in the very next issue of ASF. It covers a very similar situation - the first contact in deep space with an alien spaceship - but with a very different outcome.
    It is very, very queer. The Ethical Equations, of course, link conduct with probability, and give mathematical proof that certain patterns of conduct increase the probability of certain kinds of coincidences. But nobody ever expected them to have any really practical effect. Elucidation of the laws of chance did not stop gambling, though it did make life insurance practical. The Ethical Equations weren’t expected to be even as useful as that. They were just theories, which seemed unlikely to affect anybody particularly. They were complicated, for one thing. They admitted that the ideal pattern of conduct for one man wasn’t the best for another. A politician, for example, has an entirely different code - and properly - than a Space Patrol man. But still, on at least one occasion—
    The thing from outer space was fifteen hundred feet long, and upward of a hundred and fifty feet through at its middle section, and well over two hundred in a curious bulge like a fish’s head at its bow. There were odd, gill-like flaps just back of that bulge, too, and the whole thing looked extraordinarily like a monster, eyeless fish, floating in empty space out beyond Jupiter. But it had drifted in from somewhere beyond the sun’s gravitational field - its speed was too great for it to have a closed orbit - and it swung with a slow, inane, purposeless motion about some axis it had established within itself.
    The little spacecruiser edged closer and closer. Freddy Holmes had been a pariah on the Amina all the way out from Mars, but he clenched his hands and forgot his misery and the ruin of his career in the excitement of looking at the thing.
    ‘No response to signals on any frequency, sir,’ said the communications officer, formally. ‘It is not radiating. It has a minute magnetic field. Its surface temperature is just about four degrees absolute.’
    The commander of the Amina said, ‘HrrnnphP Then he said, ‘We’ll lay alongside.’ Then he looked at Freddy Holmes and stiffened. ‘No,’ he said, ‘1 believe you take over now, Mr. Holmes.’
    Freddy started. He was in a very bad spot, but his excitement had made him oblivious of it for a moment. The undisguised hostility with which he was regarded by the skipper and the others on the bridge brought it back, however.
    ‘You take over, Mr. Holmes,’ repeated the skipper bitterly. 1 have orders to that effect. You originally detected this object and your uncle asked Headquarters that you be given full authority to investigate it. You have that authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?’
    There was fury in his voice surpassing even the rasping dislike of the voyage out. He was a