On September the 24th, 1965, the Venusian spaceship Investigator floated gently to Earth in Times Square.
The sleek metal belly of the ship touched feather-light upon the asphalt "X" of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stubby stabilizing legs extended from ports along the sides of the hull, bracing the ship's mass against dangerous rolling, leaving it hulking there like some metallic beetle at rest.
The sun was almost directly overhead, sending yellow-gold serpentine glints wriggling on the gleaming surface of the ship. After the very slight thumping as the ship settled into place, there was no sound throughout the nearby streets of New York.
Absent was the noise of traffic, the hubbub of voices, the hurry-scurry of pedestrians. Nothing but heavy oppressive silence everywhere outside the body of the ship. No apprehensive eye appeared at a window to stare at the visitor from the nearest planet. No telephone was picked up in nervous haste to warn the authorities of the possible menace to the peoples of Earth. Just the silence and the dancing sunlight.
Inside the spaceship, there was swift, practiced activity.
The Venusians were a picked, trained crew. This, the first contact with the third planet, called for quick reaction, accurate evaluation, and competent decision.
Each of the five aboard had a job to do immediately upon landing. With no conversation, they were all at their tasks. It was an operation they'd practiced many times over, back at their home base on Venus. They were sick of the thing even before being sent to Earth. But their training had paid well, for now their motions were automatic, each separate action swift, sure and precise.
Gwann, the pilot, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed with the intensity of concentration, checked and re-checked his instruments and gauges. His nimble three-digited hands, with their long, flat palms, flickered from button to switch to dial. He locked the stabilizing legs into position, once each leg had made its contact securely with the surface outside. He dampered the power of the interplanetary drive, leaving its deadly emanations at a low, and therefore safe, degree of pulsation. He checked the release valves of the individual skimmers, making certain at the same time that, should the atmosphere outside be hostile to Venusian breathing, the tanks were filled and the cockpit seals were tight and break-free.
Drog, the navigator, used compass, ruler and stylus upon the scant, almost rudimentary Earth map, to determine the exact point of contact with the third planet. Venusian telescopes were able to see—very indistinctly—continental outlines at the twenty-million-mile distance to their neighbor planet. But the foggy overhang that shrouded their home planet had made sharp topographical drawing well-nigh impossible.
Volval, as Drog passed him the information, relayed the findings by light-beam back to their home base. The geographical location, coded into the tight beam, sped outward from the surface of Earth toward Venus, where it would not be received for at least a minute and a half. Volval, having transmitted the data, waited impatiently while the Venusian biochemist tested the outside surface against their leaving the ship.
Jorik, the biochemist, revolved the small metal "cage" with its quivering, burbling Venusian life-forms on it back into the space over his work-table. The animals seemed unharmed by their exposure to the alien planet, but he began more definitive tests upon the samplings of atmosphere and soil and vegetation brought back by a tiny robo-skimmer that had searched throughout a three-mile radius of the ship immediately after the landing, and had returned by homing beam to its tiny access port in the thick metal side of the ship.
While Volval waited in increasing irritation, and Jorik ran his tests, Klendro, the most expendable member of the expedition, studied his speech over and over, his three-valved heart squirting its watery blood through his tiny, hairlike arteries and veins.
Klendro was almost a social outcast with these others, these real spacemen, though his job, he felt, was the most important. Klendro was the Venusian ambassador to the governments of Earth. He went over his speech again, hoping that the Earth broadcasts picked up now and then on Venus had been accurate enough for the Venusian linguists to write him a speech that wouldn't embarrass the Earth people by its inane misuses of their tongue.
Broadcasts had indicated that the major powers on Earth were the United States—whatever those were—of America and Soviet Russia. The Russian broadcasts, however, being nothing more than a series of eulogies declaring the happiness of life in Russia, had been too lacking in breadth to give the linguists much to work on. They had therefore chosen English as the tongue in which Klendro was to make his speech.
He lifted the scroll once more and began reading his speech half aloud, having a bit of trouble, as usual, in controlling the square-tipped surface of his tongue in forming the unfamiliar syllables.
"Pipple of Arth," he said, slowly and with much effort, "it is with grett plazzer that we mek this, tha farst contact with arr nebber planet. We are from tha second planet from yer—or mebbe Uh shudd seh arr—sun. Tha planet you knaw as Venus. We feel that we can share with arr nebber planet the froots of arr—of arr—" Klendro braced himself, then forced out awkwardly, "moot-yoo-ull sa-yan-tific ri-sarch...."
He refolded the long coil of the scroll and stuffed it into his belt-sack. Well, he told himself, for better or worse, I've got to give this speech. He wished he were anywhere but here.
Some of the broadcasts had indicated a certain belligerency in the inhabitants of this alien planet. He wondered, with a kind of sick fright, if he would ever have the opportunity to deliver the speech, even badly. Some of the more esoteric phrasings of the Earth broadcasts had eluded the interpretations of the Venusian linguists. One of the more recurrent phrases was a "slug in the guts." They were not sure exactly what this entailed, but, from the context, the linguists were certain that it was something dire, possibly fatal.
Klendro was a very unhappy Venusian.
"Volval!" Klendro heard Drog cry out. "Did you send that stuff?"
"Yes," the light-beam operator called back. "I'm waiting on Jorik now."
"All set here," called Jorik, coming into Volval's compartment, followed by Gwann. "The atmosphere is breathable. A little heavy on the oxygen and light on the carbon dioxide, but that was expected before we took off. If we take deep inhales and periodic radiation, we should be all right."
"Fine," said Gwann, the pilot and leader, as Klendro came into the room with the others. "Better keep your guns loose in their holsters, though. You know what they've told us about the Earthmen."
"Hot-headed." Volval nodded.
"Will we take the skimmers?" asked Jorik. "Or do you think the Earthmen would prefer being met without the barrier-screens around us?"
"They'd prefer it, all right!" said Drog. "However, in my opinion—"
"We're going to have to chance it sooner or later without the screens," said Gwann. "The batteries in the skimmers won't last forever. We might as well go out there as we are."
"Who goes first?" asked Jorik.
"Well," Gwann shrugged, "if the crowds look hostile, I should go, as your leader. If they seem merely curious, then it's up to Klendro, as our ambassador, to make his speech."
Jorik frowned. "Now, wait, Gwann. Perhaps I ought to tell you. The sight records on the robo-skimmer showed no evidence of Earthmen outside the ship."
"That's ridiculous," said Gwann, his eyes flashing. "Venus reports this city is one of the most populous."
Jorik smiled wryly. "Then the populace certainly ducked out of sight quickly when they saw the robo-skimmer coming."
Gwann seemed on the point of making a sharp retort, and instead turned away toward the exit lock. "Since things seem suspicious, I'd best go first."
"Sir," said Volval, laying a hand upon his leader's arm.
"Yes?" queried Gwann, pausing.
"Good luck, sir," Volval faltered, drawing his hand back.
"Thanks," said Gwann, not unkindly. "For Venus," he added.
"For Venus," the others echoed.
Gwann released the safety lock on the circular metal door and turned the valve handle. Slowly, the door recessed itself in the metal pocket in the ship's wall, and Gwann went out into the yellow glow of the sunlight glittering in Times Square.
The sun was glowing crimson on the horizon when the five Venusians met once more at the door of their ship.
"Nothing—no clue, no people," said Jorik, his face wrinkled with puzzlement. "I can't understand it."
"Perhaps some holocaust...?" Volval began weakly.
"Or a war?" Drog hinted gravely.
"Impossible!" said Gwann, leaning against one of the legs of the gigantic ship. "There is a conspicuous absence of anything that might be construed as a weapon of war. There are no bodies in the buildings or in the streets. No wreckage anywhere."
"Perhaps they have been frightened by our appearance and have gone into hiding?" asked Klendro, fingering the edge of his now futile scroll where it protruded from his belt-sack.
"Nonsense," said their leader. "From all we've learned of the Earthmen, fright would only make them aggressive. They would not have hidden from us; they'd have tried to shoot us down when we emerged from the ship."
"There was one thing...." said Jorik slowly. "I almost did not see it, but its shadow passed close by me on the side of one of the buildings, and I looked up barely in time to get a glimpse of it before it vanished."
"What was it like?" asked Gwann quickly.
"Some sort of animal, probably carnivorous," said Jorik. "I cannot be certain, of course, but I saw a mouth with teeth bespeaking flesh-eating. Quite a—" he repressed a shudder—"quite a large mouth."
"Strange," said Gwann. "Exceedingly strange. You saw only the one?"
Jorik nodded.
"Well," said Gwann, "one carnivore cannot have accounted for a population that runs into the millions. Besides, the Earthmen would be able to deal with mere animal life."
Klendro remembered the "slug in the guts" and blanched.
"What should we do, sir?" asked Volval. "Our orders were to make peaceful contact with the Earthmen. If there are no Earthmen—?"
"Calm yourself, Volval." Gwann smiled, patting the younger man upon the shoulder. "If there are Earthmen to contact, we'll make that contact. I have an idea."
"What, sir?" asked Drog.
"We shall each take one of the skimmers and investigate the surface of the planet. Now, while our maps are incomplete, I feel that Drog can draw us up competent enough maps to guide us over the surface of Earth."
"I can try, sir," said Drog.
"We'll meet back here at the ship in five days," said Gwann. "All of you take along enough supplies for five days, plus an extra day's rations in case of emergency. The homing beam on our ship will bring you safely back if you get lost."
"One thing, sir," said Jorik, his brow creased in a frown. "We'd best all take along extra ammunition for the guns."
"The carnivores?"
The biochemist nodded. "Where there's one, there are bound to be others. That one I saw was large enough to bite a chunk out of a skimmer."
Klendro, pale already, lost more color.
Each was assigned a continent to check. Of the two extra continents, Drog took one, and Gwann the other, the consensus being that the pilot and navigator could better cover extra territory than the others, who were less used to piloting the sleek skimmers.
Volval was to go to the Europe-Asia land mass, Gwann to Africa and Antarctica, Klendro to Australia, Jorik to South America, and Drog to Arctica, after first checking over the North American Continent on which they had landed.
"Something exceedingly strange," said Jorik, before they separated, "about the consolidation of their civilization. So much wasted land area."
"The sooner I get back to Venus, the happier I'll be," said Gwann, keeping his voice down so that only Jorik, the biochemist, could hear him. "This place is eerie. It's—it's like a ghost planet."
"And there's something wrong about the buildings. They are abominably inefficient. I can barely conceive the uses of some of the artifacts."
"Maybe," said Gwann suddenly, "we never will know!"
"Sir," said Volval, approaching the pilot, "I've discovered some maps." He held out a packet of papers, tinted blue and brown.
"Good work, Volval," said Gwann, taking the packet. "Where did you find them?"
"In one of those small shops, not far from the ship, sir. I cannot read the designations, of course, but I thought that, by a comparison with the maps from Venus Observatory, we might—"
"That's intelligent thinking," said Gwann, nodding. "Their maps are bound to be similar to ours. Klendro! What can you make of these?"
The ambassador came over and took the thick packet. The paper of the maps, as he did so, tore apart, and bits and pieces of the soft, pulpy edges dropped in a shower to the street.
"Not very substantial material, is it?" he muttered, unfolding the topmost of the maps. He looked over the colored line drawings on the page in some bewilderment. The letters spelling out "Rand McNally" meant nothing to his alien eyes. ............