19 Science Fiction short stories by Jim Harmon from "Galaxy Science Fiction" continues with Chapter 10 "The Spicy Sound of Success"!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mutual Audio Network
Nineteen Science Fiction Short Stories Chapter 10 The Spicy Sound of Success (080724)
[MUSIC PLAYING] This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use, but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year, and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. [MUSIC PLAYING] You are listening to Wednesday Wonders on the Mutual Audio Network. Be amazed. The following audio drama is rated PG for Parental Guidance recommended. Chapter 10 of 19 Science Fiction Short Stories by Jim Harmon. This labor box recording is in the public domain. The spicy sound of success. There was nothing showing on the video screen. That was why we were looking at it so analytically. Transphasia, that's what it is. Ordinary Spaceman Quaid stated, with a definite thrust of his angular jaw in my direction. You can take my word on that, Captain Gavin. I can't, I told him. I can't trust your opinion. I can't trust anything. That's why I'm Captain. He'll get over feeling like that. I know. Then I'll become first officer. But look at that screen, sir, Quaid said, with an emphatic swing of his scarred arm. I've seen blank scanning like that before, and you haven't. It's your first trip. This always means Transphasia, cortex, dissolution, motor area feedback, the atchial effect, call it anything you like, is still Transphasia. I know what Transphasia is, I said moderately. It means an electoral gravitational disturbance of incoming sense data, re-channeling it to the wrong receptive areas. Besides the human brain, it also affects electronic equipment like radar and television. Obviously, Quaid glanced disgustingly at the screen. Too obvious. This time, it might not be a familiar condition of many planetary gravitational fields. On this planet, that blank kind of scope may mean our big brother kites were knocked down by hostile natives. You're playing wrong, Captain. Traditionally, alien races never interfere with their explorations. Generally, they are so alien to us they can't even recognize our existence. I drew myself up to my full height and noticed in irritation it was still an inch less than Quaids. I don't understand you, man. Look at yourself, Quaid. You've been busted to ordinary spaceman for just that kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked before. Not only your thinking is slip-shod, you've grown careless about everything else, even your own life. Just a minute, Captain, I've never been busted. In the exploration service, we regard ordinary spaceman as our highest rank. With my hazard pay, I get more hard cash than you do, and I'm closer to retirement. That's a shallow excuse for complacency. Complacency, I've seen 10,000 wonders in 20 years of space with a million variations. But the patterns repeat themselves. We learn to know what to expect, so maybe we can't maintain the reactionary cost in the service likes and officers. I resent the word reactionary, spaceman. In civilian life, I was a lapidary and learned the value of deliberation. But I never got too catalyptic to tap a million dollar gem, which is more than my contemporaries can say, many of them. Captain Gavin, Quaids said patiently, you must realize that an outsider like you, among a crew of skilled spacemen, can never be more than a figurehead. Was this the way I was to be treated? Why, this man had deliberately insulted me, his captain. I controlled myself, remembering the familiarity that had always existed between members of a crew working under close conditions, from the time of the ancient submarines in the first orbital ships. Quaid, I said, there was only one way for us to find out which of us is right about the cause of our scanning blackout. We go out and find the reason. Exactly, we go, you and me. I hope you can stand my company. I'm not sure I can, he answered reluctantly. My hazard pay doesn't cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, captain. I clapped him on the shoulder. But man, you've just been telling me all we had to worry about was common transphasia. A man with your experience could protect himself and cover even a rookie under such familiar conditions, right? Yes, sir, I suppose I could, Quaid said, bitterly aware that he had lost out somewhere and hoping it wasn't the start of a trend. Looks okay to me, I said. Quaid passed the gauntlet over his face plate. It's real, I can blur it with a smudged visor. When it blurs, it's solid. The landscape beyond the black corona left by our landing rockets was unimpressive. The rocky desert was made up of silicone and iron oxide, so it looked much the same as a terrestrial location. Yellowish white sand ran up to and around reddish brown rock climb into the pink sunlight. I don't understand it, Quaid admitted. Transphasia hit you a foul as soon as you lit it into the airlock. Apparently, Quaid, this thing is going to creep up on us. Don't sound smug, Captain. It's pity patting behind you, too. The caning call across the surface of consciousness postponed my reply. The whale was ominously forlorn, defined of description. I turned my head around slowly inside my helmet, not even sure that I'd heard it. But what else can you do with a whale but hear it? Quaid nodded. I felt this before, it usually hits sooner. Let's trace it. I don't like this, I admitted. It's not at all what I expected from what you said about Transphasia. It must be something else. It couldn't be anything else. I know what to expect. You don't. You may begin smelling sensations, tasting sounds, hearing sights, seeing tastes, touching odors, or any other combination. Don't let it bother you. Of course not, I'll soothe my nerves by counting little shocks of Lanolin jumping over a loud fence. Quaid grin behind his face plate. Good idea. Then you can have it. I'm going to try keeping my eyes open and staying alive. There was no reply. His expression was tart and greasy despite all his light talk, and I knew mine was the same. I tested the security rope between our pressure suits. It was a taut and virile base. We scaled a staccato of rocks, our suits grinding pepper against our hides. The musk summit rose before us, a minor key horizon with a shifting treble for as far as I could smell. It was primitive beauty that made you feel shocking pink inside. The most beautiful vist I had ever tasted. It couldn't be dulled even by the sensation of beef broth under my skin. "Is this Transphasia?" I asked in awe. "It has always been before," Quaid remarked, "ready to swallow your words about this being something an old hand wouldn't recognize, Captain. I'm swallowing no words until I find out precisely how they taste here. Not a bad taste. They're pretty, or haven't you noticed? Quaid, you're right. About the colors anyway. This reminds me of an oscilloscope recording from a cybernetty translator. It should. I don't suppose we could understand each other if it wasn't for our Morpha study courses in reading cross-sense translations of Centauri Blush Talk and the Like. It became difficult to understand him, difficult to try talking in the face of such splendor. You never really appreciate colors until you smell them for the first time. Quaid was as conversational as ever, though. I can't see irregularities occurring in a gravitational field. We must have compensated for the Transphasia while we still had a point of reference, the solid reality of the spaceship. But out here, where all we have to hang onto is each other, our concept of reality goes bang and deflates to a tired joke. Before I could agree with one of his theories for once, a streak of spice shot past us. It bounced back tangly and made a bitter rip between the two of us. There was no time to judge its size if it had size, or its decibel range, or its caloric count, before a small, sharp, pained dug-in and dwindled down to nothing in one long second. The new odor pattern in my head told me Quaid was saying something I couldn't quite make out. Quaid then pulled me in the direction of the nasty little pain. "Wait a minute, spaceman," I bellowed. "Where the devil do you think you're dragging me?" "Halt, that's a direct order." He stopped, "Don't you want to find out what that was? This is an exploration party, you know, sir? I'm not sure I do want to find out what that was just now. I didn't like the feel of it. But the important thing is for us not to get any further from the ship. That's important, Captain. To the best of my judgment, yes. This condition didn't begin until we got so far away from the spacer, in time or distance. I don't want it to get any worse. It's troublesome not to know black from white, but it would be a downright inconvenience not to know which way is up. Not for an experienced spaceman, Quaid griped. I'm used to freefall. But he turned back. "Just a minute," I said. "There was something strange up ahead. I want to see if short-range radar can get through our electro-gravitational jamming here." I took a sighting. My helmet set projected the pattern on the cornea, sweetness building up to a stab of pure salt. Those were the blips. Beside me, there was a thin thread of violet. Quaid had whistled. He was reading the map, too. The slope fell away sharply in front of us, becoming a deep gorge. There was something broken and twisted at the bottom, something we had known for an instant as a streak of spice. "There's one freefall," I said, "where you wouldn't live long enough to get used to it." He said nothing on the route back to the spacer. "I know all about this sort of thing, Gav," first officer Nagursky said expansively. He was rubbing the well-worn ears of our beagle mascot, Bruce. A heavy tail thudded on the steel deck from time to time. "My finger could barely get in the chafing band of my regulation collar. I was hot and tired, fresh, and only the chronological sense from a pressure suit." "What do you know all about, Nagursky?" "Dogs, spacemen, women, Transphasia." "Yes," he answered casually. "But I had immediate reference to our current psychophysiological phenomenon." I collapsed into the swivel in front of the chart table. "First off, let's hear what you know about. Never mind, make it dogs. Take Bruce, for example then. No thanks, I was wondering why you did. I didn't. His dark round face was bland. Bruce picked me, followed me home one night in Chicago port. The dog or the man who picks his own master is the most content. Bruce's content, I admitted. He couldn't be any more content and still be alive. But I'm not sure that theory works out with men. "We'd have anarchy if I tried to let these Starbucks pick their own master. I had no trouble when I was a captain," Nagursky said. "He's the reins on the men. Just offer them your advice, your guidance. They will soon see why the service selected you as captain. They will pick you themselves. Did your crew voluntarily elect you as their leader?" "Of course they did, Gav. I'm an old hand at controlling crews. Then why are you first officer under me now?" He blinked, then decided to laugh. "I've been in space a good many years. I wanted to relax a little bit more. Besides, the increase in hazard pay was actually more than my salary as a captain. I'm a notch near retirement too. Tell me, did you always feel this way about letting the men select their own leader?" Nagursky brought out a pipe. "He would have a pipe," I decided. "No, not always. I was like you at first. Fresh from the Cosmic Energy Test Lab, suspicious of everything, trying to tell the old hands what to do. But I learned that they are pretty smart boys. They know what they're doing. You can rely on them absolutely." "I leaned forward, elbows on knees. Let me tell you a thing," Nagursky. "Your trust of these damn fool space men is why you're no longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less human nature. Even I know that much." He was pained. "If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav. They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is obey me or, by Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-martial back home. "Listen," I continued earnestly, "these men aren't going to think of me, of us, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the crew is concerned, ordinary spaceman quite is the best man on this ship." "He is a good man," Nagursky said. "You mustn't be jealous of his status." The dog growled. "He must have sensed what I almost did to Nagursky. Never mind that for now," I said wearily. "What was your idea for getting our exploration parties through this Transphasia?" "There's only one idea for that," said Quaid, ducking his long head and stepping through the connecting hatch. With the captain's permission, "Go ahead, Quaid, tell him," Nagursky invited. "There's only one way to wade through Transphasia with any reliability," Quaid told me. "You keep some kind of physical contact with the spaceship. Things are strung out on a guideline, like we were, but the cable has to be run back and made fast to the hall. How far can we run it back?" Quaid shrugged. "Miles." "How many?" "We have three miles of cable. As long as I can feel, taste, see, smell, or hear that rope anchoring you to home, you aren't lost. Three miles isn't good enough. We don't have enough fuel to change sites that often. You can't use the drive in a gravitational field, you know. What else can we do, Captain?" Nagursky asked puzzlesly. "You've said that the spaceship is our only protection from Transphasia. Is that it?" Quaid gave a kurt nod. "Then," I told them, "we will have to start tearing apart this ship." Sergeant Major Hoffman and his team were doing a good job of ripping out the sight of the afterhold. Through the portal I could see the suited men expertly guiding the huge curved sections on their ray projectors. Cannibalizing is dangerous. Nagursky put his pipe in his teeth and shook his head disapprovingly. Spaceships have parts as interchangeable as a rector sets. We can take the part of the tractors and put our ship back together again after we complete the survey. You can't assemble a jigsaw puzzle if some of the pieces are missing. You can't get a complete picture, but you can get a good idea of what it looks like. We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a spaceship. "Not," he persisted, "if too many parts are missing." Nagursky, "if you're looking for a job safer than space exploration, why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?" Nagursky flushed. "Look here, Captain. You're being too damn cautious." There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this, and this isn't the way. It's my way. You heard what Quaid said. You know it yourself. The men have to have something tangible to hang on to out there. One slender cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. If the product of their own technological civilization can keep them sane, I say let them take a part of that environment with them. And departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust, you are risking more than a few men. You risk the whole mission in gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that. "I never said I wouldn't take chances, but I'm not going to take stupid chances. I might be doing the wrong thing, but I can see you would be doing it wrong." You know nothing about space, Captain. You have to trust us. "That's it exactly, first officer Nagursky," I said socially. "If you lazy, lax, complacent slobs want to do something in a particular way, I know it has to be wrong." I turned and found Wallace, the personnel man, standing in the hatchway. "Pardon, Captain, but would you say we also lacked initiative?" "I would," I answered levelly. "Then you'll be interested to hear that spaceman Quaid took a suit and a cartographer unit. He's out there somewhere alone." "The idiot," I yelped. Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it. He didn't hook on a cable, Captain, Wallace said. I suppose he intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded. "Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what I said as long as I command this spacer." "Cool off, Gav," Nagorsky advised me. "It's been done before." Anybody else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quaid is the most experienced man we have. He knows Transphasia. Trust him. I trusted him too far by letting him run around loose. He needs a leash in more ways than one, and I'm going to put one on him. For me it was a nightmare. I lay down in my cabin and thought. I had to think things through very carefully. One mistake was too many for me. My worst fear had been that someday I would overlook one tiny flaw and ruin a gem. Now, I might have ruined an exploration and destroyed a man, not a stone, because I'd missed the flaw. No one but a reckless fool would have gone out alone on a strange planet with a terrifying phenomenon, but I'd had enough evidence to see the space exploration made a man a reckless fool by doing things on one planet he had once found safe and wise on some other world. The thought intruded itself. Why hadn't I recognized this before I let Quaid escape to almost certain death? Wasn't it because I wanted him dead, because I resented the crew's resentment of my authority, and recognized in him the leader and symbol of this resentment? I threw away that idea, along with my half-used cigarette. It might very well be true, but how did that help now? I had to think. I was going after him, that was certain. Not only for humane reasons, he was the most important member of the crew. With him around, there were only two options, his and mine. Without him, I'd have endless opinions to contend with. But it wouldn't do any good to go out, no better equipped than he. There was no time to wait for tractors to be built if we wanted to reach him alive, and we certainly couldn't reach him five or ten miles out with our three miles of safety line. We would have to go in spacesuits. But how would that leave us any better off than Quaid? Why was Quaid vulnerable in a spacesuit, as I knew from experience he would be? How could we be less vulnerable, or preferably invulnerable? "Captain, you've got nothing to worry about," Quartermaster Farley said. He patted a space helmet, "paternally." "You've got yourself a self-contained environment." The suit's eye looks into yours at the arteries in the back of your eyeball so it can read your amber corpuscles and feed you your oxygen in the right amounts. You're a bottle-fed baby. If Transphasia gets you seen Limburger, turn on the radar and your air condition does nickel-oo. Nothing short of a cosmic blast can dent that hide. "You got it made." "You are right," I said. Only Transphasia comes right through these air-fast joints. Something strange about the Trans Captain, Farley said darkly. Any spaceman can tell you that. Things we don't understand. They're talking about something we do understand, sound. These suits perfectly sound proof? Well, you can pick up sound by conduction, like putting two helmets together and talking without using radio. You can't insulate enough to block out all sound and still have a man-shaped suit. You have... I know. Then you have something like a tractor or a miniature spaceship. There isn't time for that. You will have to live with the sound. What do you think he's going to hear out there, Captain? We'd like to find one of those beautiful sirens on some planet. Believe me. But... "I believe you," I said quickly. "Let's leave it at that. I don't know what he will hear. What's worrying me is how he'll hear it. In what sensory medium? I hope the sound doesn't blind him. His radar is his only chance. How do you figure on getting a better edge yourself, sir? I have the idea, but not the word for it. Total compensation, I suppose. If you can't shut out the noise, we'll have to drown it out. Farley nodded. Beat like a telephone time signal. That would do it. It would do something else. It would drive you nuts. I shrugged. It might be distracting. "Captain, take my word for it," argued Farley. Constant sonic feedback inside a spacesuit will set you rocking against the grain. "Divise some regular system of interruptions," I suggested. "Then the pattern will drive you crazy. Maybe in months with luck, I could plan some harmonic scale you could tolerate. We don't have a few months," I said. "How about music? There's a harmonic scale for you, and we can endure it. Some of it. Figaro, and asleep in the cradle of the deep, can compensate for high-pitched outside temperatures, and flight of the bumblebee to block bass notes." Farley nodded. "It might work. I can program the tapes from the library." "Good. There's one more thing. How are our stores of medicinal liquor?" Farley paled. "Captain, are you implying that I should be running short on alcohol? Where do you get off suggesting a thing like that?" "I'm getting off at the right stop, apparently," I sighed. "Okay, Farley. No evasions. And plain figures. How much drinking alcohol do we have left?" The quartermaster slumped a bit. Twenty-one liters unbroken. One more about half-full. Half-full? How did that ever happen? I mean, you had some left? We'll take this up later. I want you to run it through the synthesizer to get some light wine. Light wine? Farley looked in pain. Not whiskey? Brandy? Beer? Light wine. Then rationed out to some of the men. Rashing it to the men? That's an accurate interpretation of my orders. "But sir," Farley protested, "you don't give alcohol to the crew in the middle of a mission. It's not done. What reason can you have?" To sharpen their taste in olfactory senses. We can turn up or block out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the space surface hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better. "They're going to smell like a herd of winels," Farley said. "I don't like to think how they would taste." It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink almond and barley water to sharpen their senses. "I've observed that wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up sensory data under Transphasia, wine may help us to see where we're going." "Yes, sir," Farley said obediently, "I'll give spacemen a few quarts of wine, telling them to use it carefully for scientific purposes only, and then they'll be able to see where they are going." "Yes, sir." "I'd turn to leave, then pause briefly. You can come along, Farley. I'm sure you want to see that we don't waste any of the stuff." "There they are," Nagersky called. Quaid's footsteps again, just beyond that rocky ridge. The landscape was rich chocolate ice cream smothered with chocolate syrup, caramel, peanuts and maple syrup, eaten while you smoked an old mellow Havana. The footsteps were feigned traces of whipped cream across the dark-rich taste of the planet. I splashed some wine from my drinking tube against the roof of my mouth to sharpen my taste. It brought out the footsteps sharper. It also made the landscape more of a teenager's caloric nightmare. The four of us pulled ourselves closer together by reeling in more of our safety line. Farley and Hoffman, Nagersky and myself, were cabled together. It gave us a larger honk of reality to hold on to. Even so, things wavered for me during a wisp of time. We stumbled over the ridge, feeling out the territory. It was a sticky job crawling over melting, chunk-style Hershey bar. I was thankful for the invigorating Sousa March blasting inside my helmet. Whatever the tape had cut in, kicked on by the decibel gauge, I heard or felt something dark and ominous in the air outside. "Yes, this is definitely the trail of Quail," Nagersky said soberly. "This is serious business. I must ask whoever has been giggling on this channel to shut up. Pardon me, Captain. You weren't giggling, sir." "I've never giggled in my life," Nagersky. "Yes, sir. That's what we all thought." A moment later, Nagersky added, "Anyway, I just noticed it was my shelf. My, that is, self. The Basel Profundo, performing Figaro on my headset, climbed to a girlish shriek. A sliver of ice. This was the call Quail and I had first heard as we were about to troop over a cliff. I dug in my heels. "Take a good look around, boys," I said. "What do you see?" "Quail," Nagersky replied, "That's what I see." "You," I said carefully, "have been in space a long time. Look again." "I see our old buddy, Quail." I took another slosh of burgundy and peered up ahead. It was Quail, a man in a space suit, faceplate in the dust, two hundred yards ahead. Grudgingly I stepped forward out of the shadow of the ridge. A hysterically screaming wind rocked me on my toes. We pushed on sluggishly to Quail's side, moving to the tempo of pomp and circumstance. Farley lugged Quail over his back and read his gauges. The quartermaster rolls with grim deliberation and hiccuped. Better get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing before with Transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming wind, psychosomatic reaction, and his heating circuits compensated for the cool flesh. The poor devils got frostbite and heat prostration. The four of us managed to haul Quail back by using the power joints in our suits. Hoffman suggested that he had once seen an injured man walk back inside a suit like a robot. It was a delicate adjustment, controlling power circuits from outside a suit. It was too much for us. We were too tired, too numb, too drunk. At first sight of the spacer in the distance, Transphasia left me with only a chocolate tasting pink after image on my retina. It was now showing bare skeleton from cannibalization for tractor parts, but it looked good to me like home. The whaling call sounded through the amber twilight. I realized that I was actually hearing it for the first time. The alien stood between us and the ship. It was a great pot-bellied lizard as tall as a man. Its sound came from a flat, vibrating beaver tail. Others of its kind were coming in to view behind it. Stand your ground, I warned the others thickly. They may be dangerous. It sat up on our crisscross litter of arms. Aliens can't be hostile. Ethnic impossibility. I'll show you." Quaid was delirious, and we were drunk. He got away from us and jogged toward the herd. "Let's give him a hand," Farley shouted. "We'll take us a specimen." "I couldn't stop them. Being in alpine rope with them, I went along. At the time it even seemed vaguely like a good idea. As we lumbered toward them, the aliens fell back in a solid line except for the first curious-looking one. Quaid got there ahead of us and made a grab. The creature rose into the air with a screaming vibration of his tail and landed on top of him, flattening him instantly. "Shh, men," Nagersky said, "leave it to me, I'll surround him." The men followed the first officer's example, and the rope tined them to him. I went along cheerfully myself, until an enormous rump struck me violently in the face. My lettered boots were driven down into infertile soil, and my helmet was ringing like a bell. I got a jerky picture of the beast jumping up and down on top of the others joyously. Only the stiff space armor was holding up our slack frames. "Let's let him escape," Hoffman suggested on the audio circuit. "I'd like to," Nagersky admitted, "but the other beasts won't let us get past their circle." It was true, the aliens formed a ring around us, and each time a bouncing boy hit the line, he only bounced back on top of us. "Flat," I yelled, "our seams can't take much more of this beating." I followed my own advice and landed in the dirt beside Quaid. The bouncer came to rest and regarded us silently, head on an 80-degree angle. I was stoned sober. The others were lying around me quietly, passed out, knocked out, or taking cover. The ring of aliens drew in about us, closer, tighter, as the bouncer sat on his haunches and waited for us to move. Feeling better, I asked Quaid in the infirmary. He punched up his pillow and settled back. I guess so, but when I think of all the ways I nearly got myself killed out there. How far have you got in the tractors? I'm having the tractors torn down and the parts put back into the spaceship where they belong. We shouldn't risk losing them and getting stuck here. Are you settling for a primary expiration? No, I think I had the right idea on your rescue party. You have to meet and fight a planet on its own terms. Fighting confused sounds and tastes with music and wine was crude, but it was on the right track. Out there, we understood language because we were familiar with alien languages changed to other scents, mediums, by cybernetic translators. Using the translator, we can learn to recognize all confused data as easily. I'm starting indoctrination courses. I doubt that that is necessary, sir, Quaid said. Experienced spacemen are experienced with transphasia. You don't have to worry. In the future, I'll be able to resist sensations that tell me I'm freezing to death, if my gauges tell me it's a lie. I examined his bandy sprayed hide. I think my way of gaining experience is less painful and more efficient. Quaid squirmed. Yes, sir. One thing, sir, I don't understand how you got me away from those aliens. The aliens were trying to help. They knew something was wrong and they were prodding and probing. When the first tractor pulled up and the men got out, they seemed to realize our own people could help us easier than they could. I am not quite convinced that those babies just meant to help us all the time. But they did. First, that call of theirs, it wasn't to lead us into danger, but to warn us of the cliff, the freezing wind. They saw we were trying to find out things about their world, so they even offered us one of their own kind to study. Unfortunately, he was too much for us. They didn't give us their top man, of course, only the village idiot. It's just as well. We aren't allowed to dissect creatures that far up the intelligence scale. But why should they want to help us, Quaid demanded suspiciously? I think it's like Nagursky's dog. The dog came to him when it wanted somebody to own it, protect it, feed it, love it. These aliens want Earthmen to colonize the planet. We came here, you see. Same as the dog came to Nagursky. "Well, I've learned one thing from all of this," Quaid said. "I've been a blind, arrogant, cocksure fool, following courses that were good on some worlds, most worlds, but not good on all worlds. I'm never going to be that foolhardy again." "But you're losing confidence, Quaid. You aren't sure of yourself anymore. Isn't confidence a space man's most valuable asset?" "The hell it is," Quaid said grimly. "It's his deadliest liability. In that case, I must inform you that I am demoting you to acting executive officer." "Huh?" Quaid gawked. "But damn it, Captain. You can't do that to me. I'll lose hazard pay and be that much further from retirement." "That's tough," I sympathized. But in every service a chap gets broken in rank now and then. "Maybe it's worth it," Quaid said heavily. "Now maybe I've learned how to stay alive out here. I just hope I don't forget." I thought about that. I was nearly through with my first mission, and I could speak with experience, even if it was the least amount of experience aboard. "Quaid," I said, "space isn't as dangerous as all that. I clapped him on the shoulder fraternally. Do not adjust your sets, your tune to Wednesday wonders on the Mutual Audio Network. Tomorrow on Mutual is Thursday Thrillers, our roundup of action, adventure, mystery, crime drama, and thrillers, of course. Subscribe to the full Mutual Audio Network feed for every day of diverse audio tales. Or, find the Thursday Thrillers' feed in your favorite podcast players. (bell dings)