To the Sons of Tomorrow

Irving Cox, Jr.

The Olympus could never return to her home planet;
her crew was destined to live out their lives among
the savages of this new planet. But savages could be
weaned from their superstitions and set on the road
to knowledge, Theusaman thought. Or could they?

Baiel had always shown me the degree of respect prescribed in the Space Code. Aboard the Olympus we clashed only once, and that was when I ordered the emergency landing.

"You've no right to risk it, Captain Theusaman," he protested.

"We can't do anything else," I answered. "We're ninety-three million light years away from the Earth, and twenty-five outside the patrol area."

"Sir, this star sector is totally new to us!" Baiel was standing by the control panel, a tall, thin man in his early thirties. His face was hollowly angular, sun-bronzed and capped with a brush of thick, black hair. He looked away from the sight dome and I saw bitterness and anger blazing in his blue eyes. "This is an exploratory expedition, Captain Theusaman. We were sent out to record the conditions beyond the periphery of the Earth charts, and it's vitally important for us to return with the data."

"I'm aware of that, Baiel."

"Then face the facts. We've blown our dorsal tubes and lost our emergency fuel. Unless we restock with fissionable material, we've no chance of getting back to Earth. You believe we can restock on that unknown planet out there, but-"

"I know we can. I've seen the spectroanalysis; it doesn't lie."

"Not in the statement of data. But-with the best of intentions-a man can lie in the generalization he draws from the data. The spectroanalysis tells us that planet out there has an atmosphere like ours. It tells us there's an abundance of fissionable material in the mineral chemistry. But suppose it can't be recovered with any of the machines we have aboard? If we land, we'll have no chance of rising again."

"It's a necessary risk."

"No, Captain Theusaman! We have almost enough energy in our functioning tubes to reach the outer fringe of the patrol area. From there we'd be close enough to beam an emergency call back to Earth. One of the patrols might pick it up in time to-"

"Might," I snapped. "I'm glad you recognize that as a possibility, Baiel."

"Even if none of us survives, our data will still be there; sooner or later an Earth ship would find the Olympus."

"You risk more than I do, Baiel."

"But our information would be saved for the scientific processors."

"I prefer to save the men. We know they can live on that planet, even if we find no fissionable material. The issue is settled."

"There's one other consideration, Captain Theusaman. With our dorsal tubes gone, we can't maneuver. Even you can understand, sir, that a crash-landing-"

"I've given the orders, Baiel. Will you execute them, or must I have you cabinized for insubordination?"

"Very well, sir."

He departed without saluting.

Baiel was right, on both counts. I knew there was a chance he might be. Yet I had made emergency landings before. Nothing had ever gone wrong.

This time it did. As soon as we nosed into the stratosphere we were in trouble. The Olympus angled down too sharply. The gyrometers failed, since they were engineered to make use of the compensating drive from the dorsal tubes. I tried to bring the ship up into the freedom of space again, but the best I could manage was a slow, corkscrew dive toward the unknown planet.

As we spun through the cloud wreath, I studied the globe carefully. Within limits, I could still select the place where I wanted to land. The planet was capped at both poles by gleaming ice fields which spread down over the sphere like giant hands. Only a narrow equatorial band was free of ice. The landing site I chose was a wooded area at the edge of the glacier. The nearby ridge of jagged mountains suggested volcanic action, and the possible presence of the fissionable metals we wanted.

We crash-landed at the base of the glacier, skipping over the ragged ice until the bow caught and shattered in a deep ice gorge. The safety stabilizers functioned in all the cabins that were not pierced by ice. Our heaviest casualties were among the tube-room crew and the astrographers. Only one of the scientists survived. I ordered station formation on the frozen meadow outside the ship. Baiel bawled out the roster, while I ticked off the names of the survivors: forty crewmen, none seriously wounded; one scientist, fatally hurt; and fifteen of the female staff of astrographical clerks. Counting Baiel and myself, we numbered fifty-eight.

As the last of the names was read off, we stood for a moment shivering in the icy wind. Slowly Baiel looked up from the ship's roll and let his blue eyes move along the buckled hulk of the Olympus. Then he glanced at me, and the set of his jaw was as coldly emotionless as the ice bank behind him.

"Have you any further orders to give, Captain Theusaman?" His tone was frankly insolent. I clenched my fists, but checked the response I might have made. Baiel and I were the only Space Officers with the expedition; any difference between us would be disastrous.

"Turn all hands into the stern cabins," I said, "and break out the landing gear. It'll keep us warm. Detail five men to check on the damage, and have them report to me."

An hour later Baiel and I stood at the control panel reading through the list of damages. Remarkably little had happened-nothing, at least, that we could not repair with material we had at hand. We organized all survivors into repair crews of five each; even the women were given assignments.

Baiel and I made preliminary soil tests for fissionable metals. The computer prognosis from such highly selective data is never infallible, but the probable degree of error is no more than .0006. Over a period of two hours we made five tests, with the same results. There was fissionable matter on the planet-no doubt of that-but it was locked in a chemical combination we could not release without building a giant separation plant such as we used on Earth.

"Our data is too limited if we sample so close to the ship," I told Baiel.

"Possibly." There was a long pause before he added the prescribed, "sir."

I nodded toward the hill sloping away from the glacier toward a forest of tangled pines. "We'll make another test down there." With a shrug, Baiel followed after me obediently.

Three miles from the Olympus, in a thick grove of trees, we found the man. Naked, he lay bound over a heap of boulders, his dead eyes staring up at the sky. A gash had been torn in his chest and his blood had spilled out over chunks of glacial ice arranged in a crude pyramid beside him.

To both of us, the sight of a man and the thing it implied was vaguely terrifying. For almost five centuries expeditions of Earthmen had explored the skies, slowly reaching beyond our own solar system toward the stars. Where the atmosphere was hospitable, we had built thriving colonies. But nowhere had we found a race of people like ourselves. The planets had been so consistently untenanted that we had grown to expect nothing else.

Now here, on this unknown world, twenty-five million light years beyond the periphery of the Earth patrols-here we found men, men like ourselves!

Baiel cut the thongs and lifted the rigid body off the pile of rock. "If you don't mind, Captain," he said, "I'd like to examine-this-up in the ship lab. Since there's a chance-just a chance, sir"-His sarcasm was unmistakable, "-that we'll be staying here, I want to know what we're up against."

Late that night, while the rest of the expedition slept, Baiel and I carried the body into the laboratory. Baiel performed a thoroughgoing, workman-like autopsy. It was impossible not to admire his efficiency and skill. We were momentarily united in the rising excitement of mutual curiosity.

"There's a fascinating structural similarity to our own," Baiel pointed out. "Identical organs; identical blood composition. All the differences are minor-a smaller brain case, with a retreating forehead, and pronounced orbital ridges. And look at those teeth and the chinless jaw!"

"In a way, it suggests Bonn's Hypothesis," I said.

"Aubrey Bonn? Why, he's the laughing stock of the Anthropological Academy. We've never found a whisper of evidence to suggest a basis for his Hypothesis."

"How could we? There have never been any people on any of the planets we've explored."

Baiel dropped his scalpel and stepped back from the table, kneading his chin thoughtfully. "Bonn said that an identical chemistry and atmosphere, plus identical time phase, would produce an identical chronology of the species. This planet may do that. It should have been obvious when we had the negative tests for fissionable material. The Earth itself is the only planetary body we know where we've had to build separation plants to recover the metal."

"But, according to Bonn's Hypothesis, the resemblance should be exact." With disgust, I glanced at the torn corpse on the table. "None of us has an idiot's skull like that."

"We may have had once, Captain. You're forgetting the time phase. This planet is the Earth as it was millennia in the past, in the age of the great glaciers. The ice cap here has obviously reached its maximum penetration. It will begin to recede now, decade by decade, and civilization will slowly take root where now there is nothing but primitive savagery."

"Civilization, out of that brain, Baiel?"

He smiled at the ape-face of the corpse. "Not that, but the one that comes after. Perhaps the new...