Part 1

White Spot

A Novelet by MURRAY LEINSTER

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Startling Stories Summer 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

The planet did not look promising, but they had no choice. When a ship's drive blows between star-systems, it has to be fixed. If metal parts must be recast and machined, and burned-out wiring has to be pieced together and insulated by hand, the job takes literally months. And if, then, getting home is a matter of more months of journeying with a drive that still limps, while coughing and cutting off for seconds or until it is tinkered with--why, the traveler has to find some way to renew his food supply.

It is for such occasions that the Interstellar Code requires all ships to carry an emergency kit with seeds and agricultural directions.

The _Danaë_, therefore, limped to the nearest Sol-type star to hunt for a planet on which to plant some crops. There was Borden and his wife, Ellen. There was Sattell, whom they would be glad to part with when they got home. There was Jerry, who was diffident enough to be tolerable in spite of his lack of years. They were all at the forward vision-port when they approached the only possible planet.

"It's fifty million miles out," Borden said. "A bit on the hot side. But the sun is smaller than Sol, so it may not be too bad. At least there are polar caps--small ones."

"No seas," Sattell said. "Pretty barren."

The others said nothing. It did not look at all encouraging.

The _Danaë_ went in on a spiral descending orbit. Borden looked for other planets. He found a gas giant with a high-speed rotation. It was flattened, oblate. He checked it with the two polar caps on the nearer world and said worriedly:

"If the ecliptic's where I think it is, there'll be no seasons to speak of. I was hoping this planet was near its equinox, because the ice-caps are so nearly the same size."

Ellen said absorbedly, "I think I see a tinge of olive-green around that ice-cap. The smaller one."

"Probably vegetation," agreed her husband. "But I don't see any more. The place does look to be mostly desert."

They went in closer, circling as they headed for atmosphere.

Then Jerry said diffidently: "Could that be ice, there?"

* * * * *

There was a white spot in the middle of the sandy-colored northern hemisphere. It was the size of a pin head to the naked eye. Borden swung a telescope on it. They were nearly above the point now, where day turned into night.

The sunlight fell upon the white spot at a flat angle. If the whiteness were perpetual snow on the tops of mountains, the mountains should cast shadows. But Borden could not make out shadows near the white. Automatically he snapped the telecamera before he gave up the effort to understand the white spot.

"I doubt it's snow," he said. "I don't know what it is."

"Surely you can make a guess!" said Sattell, with that elaborate courtesy which was getting on everyone's nerves.

"I can't," Borden said briefly.

The ship moved to the dark side of the planet, and presently plunged into its shadow.

They went on for hours, watching for lights. There were none. When they came out to sunlight again they had descended a long way during their time in the planet's night.

They could see that the surface of the planet was pure tumbled sand dunes with occasional showings of stone. They were three-quarters of the way around when they saw the white spot again. This time they were no more than four or five hundred miles high. They could tell its size.

It was all of three hundred miles long, north and south, and from fifty to seventy-five miles wide. There were thin hair-lines running from it, remarkably straight on the whole, to the north and south. They were very, very fine lines. The patch was still white. As they came to be in line between it and the sun, their shadow would have passed almost over it.

The white spot changed abruptly. One instant it was white, the next, a patch of it had turned silver. That silvery appearance spread out and out in a swift rippling motion. The patch became silver all over its entire surface.

Then it turned to flame.

There was a screaming of alarm gongs. The emergency feed-back screens went on and everything went black outside. The lights in the ship dimmed down to mere dull-red glows.

There was silence.

The ports showed blackness. The drive, of course, ceased to operate. The ship had sealed itself in a shell of screening, through which nothing at all could penetrate, but which drew upon the ship's power-tanks for as much energy as it neutralized outside. And the drain was so great that the interior lights were dim red spots and not lights at all.

For five heart-beats the blackness persisted while the four in the ship stayed frozen.

The feed-back screen cut off. Again they saw the planet below. The white patch once more was white, instead of flame. But as they looked, the silvery look spread out all over it in glittering ripples, and they seemed to look into the heart of a sun's ravening furnaces before the feed-back screen came into existence for their defense. The ports were blacked out again.

The ship hurtled on toward emptiness. It was blind. It was helpless.

Borden moved an emergency light to shine on the output meter. The needle was fast against the pin. The feed-back screen was not only drawing maximum safe power. It was working on an effective short circuit of the ship's entire power supply. Busbars carrying that current would be heating up. They would melt at any instant.

Borden's fingers moved swiftly. He set up a shunt for on-switch operation of the feed-back field.

He threw the last cross-over tumbler and waited, with sweat beading his forehead. Something had flung a beam of pure heat-energy at the _Danaë_. It should have volatized the small space-craft immediately, but it had been left on for four seconds.

When it ended, the feed-back screen cut off, too. Then the _Danaë_ had been detected a second time and the planetary weapon used again. Now, with the feed-back field on-switch instead of relay, _if_ the heat ray turned off again the feed-back field wouldn't, and the _Danaë_ should be indetectable to anything but a permeability probe. The space-ship would seem to have been destroyed, if the heat-beam went off before the ship's power failed.

* * * * *

It did. A relay clicked somewhere, cut a current flow of some tens of thousands of amperes. The lights inside the ship flashed to full brightness. Borden's eyes flicked to the power-meters. The operational power-tank meter read zero. The emergency reserve power-tank meter showed a reading that made fresh sweat come out on Borden's face.

But the ports stayed black. Absolutely any form of energy striking the feed-back field outside would be neutralized. No light would be reflected. Any detector-field would be exactly canceled, as if nothing whatever existed where the _Danaë_ hurtled onward some few hundred miles above the planet's surface.

The _Danaë_, at the moment, was in the position of having made a hole about itself to crawl into. But it couldn't use its drive. It couldn't see out. It was hiding in blackness of its own creation, like a cuttlefish in its own ink.

"Dee," Ellen Borden asked her husband in a shaky voice, "what happened?"

"Something threw a heat-ray at us," said Borden. He mopped his forehead. "We should have exploded to incandescent gas. But our feed-back field stopped it. The heat-ray cut off when we should have been destroyed--and so did our field, so there we were again! And so we got a second beaming. But now we aren't. At least we appear not to be. So we can live until we crash."

Sattell said in a suddenly high-pitched voice, "How long will that be?"

"I don't know the gravity," Borden told him. "But it does take time to fall four hundred miles. We have some velocity, too. It's under orbital speed but it'll help. I'm going to figure something out."

He swung in the control-chair and hit keys on the computer. The size of the white spot. It had all turned silvery, then all of it had flamed. Why? The amount of power in the heat-ray--a rough guess. Nobody could have figures on what a ship's tanks would yield on short-circuit, but the field had had to neutralize some hundreds of megawatts of pure heat.

The amount of overlap--the size of the heat-ray itself--was another guess and a wild one. And why had all of the white spot spat flame? Every bit of it? Three hundred miles by an average of sixty.... Even at low power--

The computer clicked.

"Sun-power," Borden said grimly, after a moment. "That figures out just about right. Not more than a kilowatt to the square yard, but eighteen thousand square miles has plenty of square yards! We've been on the receiving end of a sun-mirror heat-ray, and if it had been accurately figured we'd have fried." Then he said, "But a sun-mirror doesn't work at night!"

He punched keys again. Presently he looked at his wrist-chronometer. He waited.

"We're falling!" Sattell cried shrilly. "Do something!"

"Forty seconds more," said Borden. "I'm gambling your life, Sattell, but I'm gambling Ellen's and mine too, not to mention Jerry's. Calm down."

His eyes turned to the meter that showed the feed-back-field drain. It was drawing precisely the amount of power needed to cancel out the sunlight falling on it, as well as the starlight, and the light reflected from the day side of the world below them. That drain was less than it had been. They were crossing the planet's terminator--the line dividing the light side from the dark side--as they plunged toward the sandy deserts.

* * * * *

The drain dropped abruptly. They had moved into the planet's shadow. Into night.

Instantly, Borden flicked off the feed-back field. His eyes darted to the nearest object radar dial. They were still sixty miles high, but falling at a tremendous speed. Borden's hands moved quickly over the controls. Lift. Full atmosphere drive on a new course.

"We won't crash," he said evenly, "unless we're shot at with something that works in the dark. But that sun-mirror business is odd. There's only a certain size of sun-mirror that's economical. When they get too big there are better weapons for the money. That one was big! So maybe it's the best weapon this planet has. In which case we'll be nearest safety at one of the ice-caps. Sun-mirrors will be handicapped in polar regions!"

"They--tried to kill us!" Sattell panted suddenly. "They don't like strangers! They fired on us without warning! We can't land on this planet! We've got to go on!"

"If you want to know," Borden told him, "we haven't any fuel to go on with. And we happen to be short of food. And did you remember--"

The ship's drive cut off. It had been burnt out and repaired by hand, with inevitable drawbacks. Since the repair, it had run steadily for as long as three days at a time. But also it had stopped four times in one hour, and it had needed tinkering with three times in one day.

It ought to be overhauled. For now it had cut off, and they were forty miles high. If it came on again they would live; if it didn't, they wouldn't.

After six spine-chilling seconds the drive came on again. Ten minutes later it went off for two seconds. Half an hour later it made that ominous hiccoughing which presaged immediate and final failure. But it didn't fail.

It was not pleasant to be so close to a planet they could not afford to leave, with a drive that threatened to give up the ghost at any instant, and with something on the planet which had used a sun-mirror beam to try to volatilize the _Danaë_ without parley. Apparently the four in the small ship had the choice of dying on this planet or not too far away in space.

They needed food, and they needed fuel. Above all, if the planet was inhabited, they needed friendship, and they weren't likely to get it.

They were only ten miles high when signs of dawn appeared ahead. Of course, if they happened to be moving with the planet's rotation, they'd be moving into sunset from the night. They didn't know. Not yet. But there were gray clouds ahead, to the right and below.

A little later they were five miles high and the clouds were still below. There was twilight ahead. At two miles altitude the drive hesitated for a moment, and caught again after all four in the control room had stopped breathing.

Red sunlight appeared before the ship in a spreading, sprawling thin line. At five thousand feet the ship had slowed to a bare crawl--a few hundred miles an hour.

And the dawn came up like thunder.

II

To the left and behind was desert, stretching away in the dawnlight, in every conceivable shade of tawny yellow and red, with blue shadows behind the hummocks in the sand, and with an utterly cloudless sky overhead. To the right and ahead was an area of straggling, stunted vegetation beneath rose-tinted cloud masses with the dazzling white of snow against the horizon. There were other clouds above the snow.

The drive burbled erratically. The ship dropped like a stone. Then the drive flickered on, and off, and on and off again so that ship's whole fabric shook.

Borden threw the drive off and on again and the induction surge of current cleared whatever was wrong for a moment. They felt the ship fighting wind pressure that was trying to turn it end over end. Then it steadied, and nothing happened--and still nothing happened.

The crash came violently. Ellen was flung against Borden and held fast to him. Jerry collapsed to the floor. Sattell went reeling and banged against the end wall of the control room.

There was stillness.

Borden stared at the screens, then got up painfully and went to a port. The ship had landed in soil which seemed to be essentially sand. It had splashed the soil aside in coming to ground. But it was not desert sand. There was moisture here. Beyond the impact area a straggling ground cover grew. It looked like grass, but it was not.

Nearby was one greenish object which looked like a cactus without its spines. It had a silky covering like down. A little farther on Borden could see three or four things quite like stunted, barkless trees.

The ground was gently rolling. In the distance the growing light showed a whiteish haze, and clouds in the sky. All shadows were long and stretched-out. This was not far from the ice-cap. Indeed, it appeared that snow was nearby. But from the port on the opposite side of the ship the beginning of the planetary desert could be seen.

"We're down," said Borden with relief. "Now we've got to find out if anybody saw us land, and if so, whether they'll insist on killing us or whether we can make friends."

Sattell said, "You've got to arm me, Borden! Dammit, you can't leave me unarmed on a hostile planet!"

"I'd like to have four weapons ready instead of three, though if we have to fight a whole planet even four won't be much good. But I can't risk letting you have anything dangerous in your hands," Borden said.

Sattell ground his teeth.

Jerry said apologetically, "Shall I test the air, sir?"

Borden nodded. He regarded Sattell with a weary, worried frown, while Jerry readied the test. The situation was bad, but Sattell was troublesome too.

Two months ago, while the drive was still in process of repair, Borden had heard a strangled cry from Ellen. He found her struggling to scream as she fought Sattell.

Borden's appearance had ended the struggle, of course. Sattell had been confined to his bunk for two weeks before he was able to move about again. But Borden hadn't been able to kill an unconscious man then, and he couldn't kill Sattell in cold blood now. But Sattell could kill anybody. And he would, if he got the chance.

"It's the devil, Sattell," Borden said somberly. "If I didn't think you were a rat I could make a bargain to forget what's happened until we get the ship safely home. But I don't think you'd keep a bargain."

Sattell snarled at him and turned away. Jerry looked up from the tiny air-testing cabinet. He'd drawn in a sample of outer air and a silent discharge had turned its oxygen to ozone, which a reagent absorbed. A hot silver wire stayed bright, and so proved the absence of chlorine or sulphur, CO_{2} tested negligible, and hot magnesium took up nitrogen. The remnant of the sample did not react with reagent after reagent, so it had to be noble gases.

"It seems all right, sir," said Jerry. "If I may, I'll go in the air-lock and take a direct sniff. May I, sir?"

"Unless Sattell wants to volunteer," Borden observed. "I would think better of you, Sattell, if you volunteered for first landing."

Sattell laughed shrilly. "Oh, yes! I'll walk out on a hostile planet, and let you take off and leave me! Even if you can't leave the planet, you can come down ten thousand miles away. You'd like to do that, too!"

"Meaning," Borden said, "that _you_ would.... All right, Jerry. Go ahead."

"Yes, sir." Jerry went out. They heard the inner air-lock door open.

Borden said heavily, "It would be sensible to lock you up while we're aground, Sattell. I can't leave the ship with you inside and free. You've already said what you'd do if you could--take off and maroon us."

Jerry's voice came from the air-lock through a speaker.

"Mr. Borden, sir, the air's wonderful! You don't realize what canned air is like until you breathe fresh again. Wonderful, sir! I'm going out."

Borden nodded to Ellen. She moved over to watch through a port as Jerry made the first landing on this unnamed planet of an unnamed sun. She could see the straggling ground-cover vegetation, and the thing that looked like a cactus except that it wasn't, and the trees. She saw Jerry step to the ground and look about, breathing deeply.

Behind her, Borden said bitterly:

"We were blasted at without challenge. But it was with a sun-mirror that was not too efficient. The local race may not have any other power than sunlight. If so, they won't be up here by the ice-cap! If we weren't spotted by radar as we landed, we may make good repairs, raise food, and get back to space without our presence being known--because they should think they had wiped us out."

* * * * *

Ellen gasped suddenly from the port: "Dee! Natives! They've seen Jerry! They're coming close!"

Borden moved quickly to look over her shoulder. Sattell took a second port. They stared out at the strange world about the _Danaë_.

Jerry had kicked a hole in the sod and picked up a bit of it to examine closely. And, not sixty yards from him, three creatures were regarding him with intense curiosity.

They were furry bipeds. They stood as erect as penguins, not bending forward in the least. They had enormously long arms which almost reached to the ground beside them. From what should have been their chins, single tentacles drooped--like the trunk of an elephant, except that it was beneath the mouth opening instead of above it. They stared at Jerry with manifest mounting excitement, making gestures to each other with their trunks and arms.

Borden moved to warn Jerry through the outside speaker. But Jerry looked up directly at the creatures. He spoke to them quietly.

At the sound of his voice their manner changed. Borden thought irrelevantly of the way a dog flattens his ears when his master speaks to him. But these creatures flattened all their fur. Jerry spoke again. He waved his hand. He glanced at the _Danaë_'s port and nodded reassuringly.

The three creatures moved hesitantly toward him. Two of them stopped some forty yards distant. One came on. Suddenly it wriggled with an odd effect of embarrassment. The flattening of its fur became more noticeable.

A fourth creature of the same kind came loping over a rise in the ground. It used its long arms to balance itself as an ape might do, but an ape does not run upright. This creature did. It saw Jerry and stopped short, staring.

The creature which had advanced toward Jerry appeared to be more and more embarrassed. Jerry moved to meet it. When he was ten feet away the creature lay down on the ground and rolled over on its back. It waved its trunk wildly, as if supplicating approval.

Jerry bent over and scratched the furry body as if he knew exactly what it wanted. The two others who had been its companions loped forward, plunged to the ground, rolled over on their backs and waved their trunks as wildly as the first. Jerry scratched them.

The fourth creature, which had stared wide-eyed, suddenly waved its arms and burst into a headlong rush. Its haste seemed frantic. It scuttled frenziedly, made a leap, turned over as it soared, landed on its back two yards from Jerry and slid to his feet.

When Jerry scratched it, it wriggled ecstatically. Its trunk waved as though it were experiencing infinite bliss.

Borden said slowly, "Something on this planet tried to burn us down with a heat-ray not half an hour ago. We land--and this happens! What sort of place is this, anyhow?"

III

It was a queer place, they soon learned. The climate was cool, but pleasant. There were no radio waves beneath a readily detectable ionosphere. Yet apparatus over an area three hundred miles by an average sixty--the white spot--had responded in seconds; in parts of seconds.

Which meant electric control. Which implied radio. But there were no radio waves, which should have been proof that there was no civilization on this planet capable of doing what certainly had been done. Which was nonsense.

On the fourth day after landing there had been no alarm, but there was a good-sized group of furry bipeds always waiting hopefully about the _Danaë_ for one of the humans to come out and scratch them. All but Sattell. When he came out of the _Danaë_, the bipeds moved away. They would not go near him.

"I am not comfortable," Borden said to Jerry. "Something drained power from us. Enough to run the ship for two years was drained out in eight seconds! But we land, and the only inhabitants are your fine furry friends whose one purpose in life seems to be to get scratched. They act more like pets than wild animals, and sometimes more like people than pets. But if they're pets, did their masters try to kill us? What does go on on this planet, anyhow?"

Jerry said modestly, "I'm beginning to understand the furry creatures a little, sir. They're remarkably intelligent, for animals. They want me to go somewhere with them. I'd like to. Is it all right?"

Borden said, "If you think it's safe. Ellen has the planting well under way, and the fuel synthesizer is working after a fashion, although I'd a lot rather have it working near the equator. I'm getting along fairly well with rebuilding our drive, but there's a long job ahead. If other planetary inhabitants don't find us and kill us, we're all right. If they do find us, what you do won't matter. Go along if you like, within reason. But I wish you could take Sattell with you."

That couldn't be done. The two-legged creatures hung about the ship wearing an air of happy anticipation when all the humans were inside, and flopping eagerly on their backs to be scratched, when they came out. But when Sattell tried to approach one of the creatures, they fled as if in terror. Not one had ever been knowingly within a hundred yards of him--and he hated them.

When Jerry first reported that they had some sort of language and could exchange simple facts--he didn't know whether they could exchange ideas or not--Sattell savagely insisted that those who knew of the existence of the ship should be killed, and any others who discovered it also killed. The idea would be to keep the news of the _Danaë's_ landing from reaching whatever other race might inhabit the white spot of the heat-ray.