The Lost Kafoozalum Part 6

"How about weapons?"

We are all startled. Cray is looking whitish like the rest of us but maintains his normal manner, i.e. offensive affection while pointing out that _Gilgamesh_ can hardly be taken for a Menace unless she has some means of aggression about her.

Lennie says The Explorer Cla.s.s were all armed--

Fine, says Cray, presumably the weapons will be thoroughly obsolete and recognizable only to a Historian--

Lennie says the construction of no weapon developed by the s.p.a.ce Department has ever been released; making it plain that anyone but a Nitwit knows that already.

Eru and Kirsty have been busy for some time writing notes to each other and she now gives a small sharp cough and having collected our attention utters the following Address.

"There is a point we seem to have missed. If I may recapitulate, the idea is to take this s.h.i.+p _Gilgamesh_ to Incognita and make it appear as though she had crashed there while attempting to land. I understand that the s.h.i.+p has been buried in the polar cap; though she must have been melted out if the people on _Crusoe_ examined the engines. Of course the cold--All the same there may have been ... well ...

changes. Or when ... when we thaw the s.h.i.+p out again--"

I find I am swallowing good and hard, and several of the others look sick, especially Lennie. Lennie has his eyes fixed on the colonel; it is not prescience, but a slight sideways movement of the colonel's eye causes him to blurt out, "What is _he_ doing here?"

Meaning Mr. Yardo who seems to have been asleep for some time, with his eyes open and grinning like the spikes on a dog collar. The colonel gives him another sideways look and says, "Mr. Yardo is an expert on the rehabilitation of s.p.a.ce-packed materials."

This is stuff transported in un-powered hulls towed by grappling-beams; the hulls are open to s.p.a.ce hence no need for refrigeration, and the contents are transferred to specially equipped orbital stations before being taken down to the planet. But--

Mr. Yardo comes to life at the sound of his name and his grin widens alarmingly.

"Especially meat," he says.

It is maybe two hours afterwards, Eru having adjourned the meeting abruptly so that we can ... er ... take in the implications of the new data. Lennie has gone off somewhere by himself; Kirsty has gone after him with a view to Mothering him; Eru, I suspect, is looking for Kirsty; Pavel and Aro and Dillie and the Crow are in a cabin arguing in whispers; Nick and P. Zapotec are exploring one of the Hoppers, cargo-carrying, drop-shaped, and I only hope they don't hop through the hull in it.

B and I having done a tour of the s.h.i.+p and ascertained all this have withdrawn to the Conference Room because we are tired of our cabins and this seems to be the only other place to sit.

B breaks a long silence with the remark that However often you see it M'Clare's technique is something to watch, like choosing my statement to open with, it broke the ice beautifully.

I say, "Shall I tell you something?"

B says Yes if it's interesting.

"My statement," I inform her, "ran something like this: The best hope of inducing a suspension of the aggressive att.i.tude of both parties, long enough to offer hope of ultimate reconciliation, lies in the intrusion of a new factor in the shape of an outside force seen to be impartially hostile to both."

B says: "Gosh. Come to think of it Liz you have not written like that in years, you have gone all pompous like everyone else; well that makes it even _more_ clever of M'Clare."

Enter Cray Patterson and drapes himself sideways on a chair, announcing that his own thoughts begin to weary him.

I say this does not surprise me, at all.

"Lizzie my love," says he, "you are twice blessed being not only witty yourself but a cause of wit in others; was that bit of Primitive Lee with which M'Clare regaled us really not from the hand of the mistress, or was it a mere pastiche?"

I say Whoever wrote that it was not me anyway.

"It seemed to me pale and luke-warm compared with the real thing,"

says Cray languidly, "which brings me to a point that, to quote dear Kirsty, seems to have been missed."

I say, "Yep. Like what language it was that these people wrote their log in that we can be _certain_ the Incognitans won't know."

"More than that," says B, "we didn't decide who they are or where they were coming from or how they came to crash or anything."

"Come to think of it, though," I point out, "the language and a good many other things must have been decided already because of getting the right hypnotapes and translators on board."

B suddenly lights up.

"Yes, but look, I bet that's what we're here for, I mean that's why they picked us instead of s.p.a.ce Department people--the s.h.i.+p's got to have a past history, it has to come from a planet somewhere only no one must ever find out _where_ it's supposed to be. Someone will have to fake a log, only I don't see how--"

"The first reel with data showing the planet of origin got damaged during the crash," says Cray impatiently.

"Yes, of course--but we have to find a reason why they were in that part of s.p.a.ce and it has to be a _nice_ one, I mean so that the Incognitans when they finally read the log won't hate them any more--"

"Maybe they were bravely defending their own planet by hunting down an interplanetary raider," I suggest.

Cray says it will take only the briefest contact with other planets to convince the Incognitans that interplanetary raiders can't and don't exist, modern planetary alarm and defense systems put them out of the question.

"That's all he knows," says B, "some interplanetary pirates raided Lizzie's father's farm once. Didn't they, Liz?"

"Yes in a manner of speaking, but they were b.u.ms who pinched a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p from a planet not many pa.r.s.ecs away, a spa.r.s.ely inhabited mining world like my own which had no real call for an alarm system, so that hardly alters the argument."

"Well," says B, "the alarm system on Incognita can't be so hot or the observation s.h.i.+ps could not have got in, or out, for that matter, unless of course they have some other gadget we don't know about."

"On the other hand," she considers, "to mention Interplanetary raiders raises the idea of Menace in an Unfriendly Universe again, and this is what we want to cancel out.

"These people," she says at last with a visionary look in her eye, "come from a planet which went isolationist and abandoned s.p.a.ce travel; now they have built up their civilization to a point where they can build s.h.i.+ps of their own again, and the ones on Gilgamesh have cut loose from the ideas of their ancestors that led to their going so far afield--"

"How far afield?" says Cray.

"No one will ever know," I point out to him. "Don't interrupt."

"Anyway," says B, "they set out to rejoin the rest of the Human Race just like the people on _Gilgamesh_ _really_ did, in fact, a lot of this is the truth only kind of backwards--they were looking for the Cradle of the Race, that's what. Then there was some sort of disaster that threw them off course to land on an uninhabited section of a planet that couldn't understand their signals. And when Incognita finally does take to s.p.a.ce flight again I bet the first thing the people do is to try and follow back to where _Gilgamesh_ came from and make contact with them. It'll become a legend on Incognita--the Lost People ... the Lost ... Lost--"

"The Lost Kafoozalum," says Cray. "In other words we switch these people off a war only to send them on a wild goose chase."

At which a strange voice chimes in, "No, no, no, son, you've got it all _wrong_."

Mr. Yardo is with us like a well-meaning skeleton.

During the next twenty-five minutes we learn a lot about Mr. Yardo including material for a good guess at how he came to be picked for this expedition; doubtless there are many experts on Reversal Of Vacuum-Induced Changes in Organic Tissues but maybe only one of them a Romantic at heart.

Mr. Yardo thinks chasing the Wild Goose will do the Incognitans all the good in the galaxy, it will take their minds off controversies over interhemispherical trade and put them on to the quest of the Un.o.btainable; they will get to know something of the Universe outside their own little speck. Mr. Yardo has seen a good deal of the Universe in the course of advising on how to recondition s.p.a.ce-packed meat and he found it an Uplifting Experience.

We gather he finds this desperate bit of damfoolery we are on now pretty Uplifting altogether.