Lawrence F. Willard

The computer classified it
"rabbit" and Montresig was not
one to argue, long ears or not!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Commander Losure gave orders to his navigator to bring the ship in on the satellite out of sight of the prying telescopes which no doubt existed on such an invitingly green planet. He was a cautious man and didn't intend to lose any more crew members if he could help it. He could tell by the unusually poor handling of the ship that the crew was still demoralized from the brush with the high I.Q. slugs on that last planet which they had approached so directly. They'd lost three men in that scrap, one of them a highly-valued anthropologist. There were only two more of those left in the freeze locker. Too bad it couldn't have been a radio operator, there were plenty of those on ice.

The Commander's thoughts were interrupted by his second officer who entered without the customary military burp.

"I'll forgive you this time, Montresig," said the Commander, "but we can't relax regulations now, can we. Anything new to report on this planet?"

"No, Your Loftiness," said Montresig, after giving a belated burp, "there's nothing to add to what we already know, but then we've just come to rest on this clinker of a moon. I don't imagine, however, that we've located our long lost ancestors or our mythical home planet. There doesn't seem to be a race in this galaxy that walks upright on two good legs with two arms, two eyes, nose, mouth and other standard equipment."

"Could be we'll find one this time," said the Commander. "We know it's an oxygen planet, and that there are intelligent beings there, judging from the cities we can see and their use of radio."

"Maybe," grumbled Montresig, "but they won't be men. If they're not slugs they'll be talking fish or intellectual spiders, or something equally repulsive. And I can tell you one thing, whatever we find, if it has brains it will want to fight."

"Now Montresig, don't be bitter. We've only examined a couple hundred planets. There are many more and you know we'll have to take a look at as many as we can. I tell you, however, we won't take any more chances. Unless we find out they're pretty much like us we won't go near the damn planet."

"How do you propose to find that out, Your Loftiness? We can't see anything that small by telescope, we haven't learned much so far by listening to them, and it's pretty dangerous business using the dredge...."

"Ah, my dear Montresig, the crux of the matter is that we can tell about them, I believe, from listening to them. Judging from the reports I got from Communications, this is the talkingest planet in the galaxy. They are utilizing the entire radio spectrum we know and, I suspect, some portions of it we don't know. All they do is talk. There must be millions of individuals on that planet jabbering in a dozen different languages. Our language technicians have decoded two of the major tongues already and have fed the information to the main computer. All radio signals in those languages are now being fed directly to the computer and the information is being classified and cross-referenced."

Montresig's furry countenance brightened. "Then we won't have to send down the dredge?"

"I hope not, Montresig, I do not like to bring strange life forms aboard the ship. Remember planet 187 in the Dghorzid system?"

Montresig shuddered. "I'll never forget. When that monster materialized in the hold I snapped on the stasis field and it had no effect. I tried every last trick in the bag including seven kinds of poison gas. Luckily the dredge operator was able to catch him and throw him back where he came from but the hold was a shambles and two men had to have extensive repair work."

"Well," said the Commander, "I don't like the dredge at all, but I suppose it's better than landing and having to do battle with slugs. I swear I was certain there was no intelligent life on that planet. By the way, I'm having an anthropologist thawed out now, that leaves only one more in the freeze locker and we can't operate without one. Take care nothing happens to him, Montresig."

Commander Losure made the sign of dismissal and Montresig burped gracefully and withdrew. The Commander signaled communications. After a considerable delay a burp sounded from the speaker on the wall and a voice announced: "Troniff here. May I serve Your Loftiness?"

"Troniff," said the Commander, "the delay is inexcusable. Does the computer have its belly full yet?"

"Your Loftiness, the reference tapes are full, but the machine is unable to present a full picture of the dominant life form. It appears, however, that they are much like us in general body shape. Unfortunately, we can get no reference point from which to judge their size. They are exceedingly ferocious and blood thirsty, and apparently war among themselves continuously."

"I'm tempted to leave now," said the Commander. "I'll have to use the dredge, I suppose.... Are you sure it won't do some good to listen to their communications awhile longer?"

The speaker was silent for a moment, then Troniff spoke.

"I don't like to mention this, Your Loftiness, but my engineers have found several unidentified types of emission besides those carrying speech frequencies. They think that one particular type characterized by an extremely broad frequency range just might be transmission of visual images...."

"I don't believe it," said the Commander. "We've been trying to do that for hundreds of years without success and so far as we've been we've never found another race in the galaxy as far advanced technologically as ours. These people don't even have space flight."

"They have artificial satellites up," said Troniff, "We're monitoring signals from one, and from what I gather they're apt to have something up on this moon before long."

"Any chance of finding out how they transmit visual images—if they really do?"

"Not a chance," said Troniff. "My engineers can't even conceive of a device that could convert these signals into a picture."

"That's all, Troniff. Notify Montresig that he's to meet me immediately in the dredge room with the anthropologist and a dredge operator."

The commander sighed. What irony that the only truly peaceful race in the galaxy should be the only one to discover interstellar flight. For four thousand years the Kaar had had their ships and had colonized hundreds of planets until they had lost track of which one they started from. In all that time they had avoided planets with intelligent life, had never found any other ships in space. Now, thought the Commander, we have to go looking for trouble just to satisfy our curiosity as to where we started from.

Montresig introduced the newly-thawed anthropologist to him on the dredge room balcony and Commander Losure briefed him on the importance of his job.

"We don't believe this race has any connection with ours," said the Commander. "It's too savage. And yet, we haven't found another race as far advanced in science, nor one that appears to be so similar to ours. Our problem is to find out a little more about them, their physical size, whether it's safe to contact them, which I personally doubt."

"Is it your intention to bring back one of these intelligent beings with the dredge?" asked the anthropologist.

"You know better than that, or maybe you don't," said the Commander. "Anyway, you should know that it is against our code of ethics to cause harm to any intelligent being. That dredge is set to reject any living creature capable of a high order of thought and that control is sealed against our use. The idea is to bring back artifacts that might tell us something about the people of the planet... maybe they have a written language and have something that approximates our scrolls, maybe they have drawings. I'd especially like to snag one of the visual image receptors our communications engineers think they have."

"The dredge operator is ready," said Montresig. "The computer controls have been switched to this balcony and the stasis beam has been checked."

Commander Losure looked up at the dredge operator in his glassed-in booth high on the opposite wall of the hold. He gave a quick hand signal and transferred his attention to the floor of the vast hold below him. A shimmering mistiness began to form in the center of the floor. Commander Losure could feel the tension of his companions as they waited. It was a blind grab; the dredge operator had no way of knowing what would be scooped up at the end of his force beam. Slowly the mistiness grew more dense, darkening to an impenetrable cloud, and then vanished with an audible snap leaving a strange alien mechanism on the floor of the hold. It resembled a huge cylinder resting on tractor-like treads.

From the balcony the men scurrying across the floor seemed dwarfed by the object. Unheeding of any danger they swarmed over it, measuring, testing, amassing information to be fed to the computer.

"Holy Ghosts of My Departed Ancestors," gasped Montresig, "what is it?"

"You know as much about it as I do, my dear fellow," the Commander said. "As soon as the engineers get through poking at it we'll find out what the computer thinks it is."

"I'll bet it's a weapon of some sort," said Montresig. "They're almost always fighting down there according to the data we have and there's frequent mention of a device called a hydrogen bomb. If it's what I think it is I have no desire to visit them in person."

A figure detached itself from the group of men surrounding the huge contrivance and came hurrying to the elevator entrance beneath the balcony. In a moment he appeared on the balcony, burped perfunctorily, and handed Commander Losure several sheets of script. The Commander read them into a microphone grill which was part of the remote panel feeding into the main computer. He waited until a red light glowed, indicating that the material had been integrated. He pressed a stud and spoke into the microphone again. "Classify," he said.

"Information in storage banks reveals object to be a gun," said the loudspeaker. "Gun: an instrument variously known as revolver, heater, rod, betsy, automatic, typewriter, gat, which refer to. Carried by gunmen, cowboys, mobsters, killers, cons, doughboys, cops, G-men, marines, gangsters and kids, which refer to. Weapon fires projectile known as bullet, lead, shell, slug, which refer to. Solid projectile pierces body of individual causing serious injury and death. It is used with that intention. No information on size of instrument previous to captured speciman which is nearly fourteen zeng ... about five and a quarter man-lengths ... long. Sample excerpt demonstrating use: 'Blinky snapped the gun from his holster and fired from the hip. (sound of explosion) The big cowpoke grabbed at his chest and blood spurted between his fingers. With a look of surprise on his face he slumped to the barroom floor.'"

"What do you make of that?" asked the Commander.

"I'd have been surprised, too," said Montresig.

"They're bloodthirsty giants," said the anthropologist. "If that's a pocket weapon they'd be so big you couldn't get one into this hold.

"I don't believe it," said the Commander. "I think there's something wrong somewhere. Possibly guns come in various sizes. This could be a stationary weapon, perhaps, to blow buildings apart instead of people, though I can't figure out why anybody would want to. I'm going to send the dredge back once more to make sure we aren't being misled."

"I think you're wrong," said Montresig. "All evidence does point to a race of giants, evil creatures at best, even if maybe they do have two eyes, a nose and a mouth like us. Not that I don't think it's a good idea to send the dredge back," he added hastily at the sight of Commander Losure's glowering countenance.

The Commander signaled to the dredge operator again and they waited while he returned the gun to wherever he got it and fished for something else from the surface of the green planet.

The anthropologist cleared his throat. "You can't deny that the telescope shows us the most gigantic cities to be found anywhere in the galaxy."

"That doesn't necessarily mean that the inhabitants are physically large, only that there may be a lot of them," said the Commander.

"Or both."

Their attention turned to the floor of the hold as the opaque cloud rapidly grew darker and vanished again with a snap.

Montresig's reaction was the same as before.

"Great Shades of My Holy Ancestors," he said. "What is it?"

"It is assuredly an animal," said the Commander, "not unlike some we have on our own planet. I'll have the biologists and medics examine it." He turned to the anthropologist. "You go, too, Alfvis."

The animal, which had appeared stunned when it first appeared, now began to turn around, making clicking noises on the floor. As the men approached it from all directions it looked about nervously, opened its mouth to show some glistening teeth and proceeded to make a long, harsh noise. Alfvis made the mistake of approaching too closely to the beast which wheeled and kicked him head over heels some distance away. Montresig touched a red button on the railing and stasis beams converged on the animal freezing it instantly. It toppled over and lay stiffly on the floor of the hold. Alfvis dragged himself to his feet and shouted up to the balcony. "Ask the computer about animals with long ears."

The Commander spoke into the microphone again. "Four-legged animal, long ears. Classify."

"Rabbit," said the computer. "An animal variously known as bunny, hare, coney, peter, uncle wiggly. Strong rear legs. Progresses over ground erratically. Consumes vegetation. Multiplies with great rapidity. Lays egg at Easter Time. It is generally considered timid and is hunted for food. Sample excerpt demonstrating relationship: 'Lon climbed over the stone wall and continued across the woodlot towards his cabin, the carcasses of three rabbits slung over his shoulder ... there would be rabbit stew tonight.'"

"Holy Gods in Their Celestial Quarters," said Montresig. "Did you hear that? Is there any question in your mind now about the size and ferocity of these people?"

"Considerable," said the Commander. "That computer has made mistakes before, witness that last planet. Those were supposed to be garden snails, those slugs that gave us such a walloping. I don't think we get the right information through to it."

"But Your Loftiness," wailed Montresig, "everything adds up, you can see for yourself ... their giant cities, their warring on each other, the information the computer gave us ... it isn't safe to land on that planet."

"No, I suppose not," sighed the Commander. "But do you realize the implications? Here we have a highly advanced race just ready to take off into space ... and according to our information they are savage war-making giants. If I bring that news back our Supreme Goodness is apt to issue orders to evacuate several hundred planets and move to some other galaxy—Let's try the dredge once more."

Commander signaled the dredge operator and waited a reasonable length of time before he was informed that something was wrong with it and that it would be some time before repairs could be made.

"I give up," said Commander Losure. "I have orders not to land on a questionable planet and I've learned my lesson. Either that computer has a few loose connections or those people are broadcasting pure nonsense. I just don't believe in giants, much less in scientific ones. Get ready to leave, Montresig, and see that you make an accurate written report of this whole situation."

"What do we do with the animal, Your Loftiness?"

"The dredge is busted, so what do you think we can do with it? Heave it out the airlock. It can stay here on the moon until the first explorers come up from the planet, which won't be long, and they can have rabbit stew."

The great ship lifted from the dark moonscape, leaving behind the frozen form of the first earth being to have crossed space, a surprise for the crew of the first manned moon rocket, if not the makings of rabbit stew.

Somewhere, a million miles beyond the sun, the ship accelerated rapidly. The Commander looked up from his desk as Montresig entered smartly with a precision burp.

"Alfvis is back in the freeze locker and repairs are going forward on the dredge, but it'll be a long job."

"It doesn't matter," said the Commander. "We're going home. I'm committed to bringing back a report on this planet now, but I don't like it and will advise further study of it by other expeditions before any desperate measures are taken such as evacuating the galaxy."

"It's funny about that rabbit," said Montresig. "I noticed as we shoved it out the lock that it had semi-circles of some hard metal, probably iron, nailed to its feet."

"That is peculiar," said the Commander. "Almost like the shoes we attach to the feests' hooves before the children ride them. Just for the fun of it, Montresig, why don't you give that information to the computer and see what it says?"

"Can't," said Montresig. "I wiped the memory tanks clean. I don't think it means much, anyway; a rabbit's a rabbit, shoes or no shoes."

The Commander nodded and Montresig burped and withdrew.