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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe November 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
[_"Now this here planet," he said cautiously, "is whacky in a lot of ways. First of all they call it Mert. Just plain Mert. And they live in houses strictly from Dickens, all carriages, no sewers, narrow streets, stuff like that." But that wasn't all.... Travis, in reaching Diomed III before any others, found himself waging a one-man fight against more than this; he was bucking the strangest way of life you have ever heard of!_]
conquest over time
by ... Michael Shaara
What was the startling secret of Diomed III that almost caused Travis to lose his life? And who was Lappy?...
* * * * *
When the radiogram came in it was 10:28 ship's time and old 29 wasexactly 3.4 light years away from Diomed III. Travis threw her wideopen and hoped for the best. By 4:10 that same afternoon, minus threeburned out generators and fronting a warped ion screen, old 29 touchedthe atmosphere and began homing down. It was a very tense moment.Somewhere down in that great blue disc below a Mapping Command shipsat in an open field, sending up the beam which was guiding them down.But it was not the Mapping Command that was important. The MappingCommand was always first. What mattered now was to come in second, anykind of second, close or wide, mile or eyelash, but second come hellor high water.
The clouds peeled away. Travis staring anxiously down could seenothing but mist and heavy cloud. He could not help sniffing the airand groaning inwardly. There is no smell quite as expensive as that ofburned generators. He could hear the Old Man repeating over and overagain--as if Allspace was not one of the richest companies inexistence--"burned generators, boy, is burned _money_, and don't youforget it!" Fat chance me forgetting it, Travis thought gloomily,twitching his nostrils. But a moment later he did.
For Diomed III was below him.
And Diomed III was an Open Planet.
It happened less often, nowadays, that the Mapping Command ran acrossintelligent life, and it was even less often that the intelligent lifewas humanoid. But when it happened it was an event to remember. Forspace travel had brought with it two great problems. The first wasContact, the second was Trade. For many years Man had prohibitedcontact with intelligent humanoids who did not yet have space travel,on the grounds of the much-discussed Maturity Theory. As time went by,however, and humanoid races were discovered which were biologicallyidentical with Man, and as great swarms of completely alien, oftenhostile races were also discovered, the Maturity Theory went intodiscard. A human being, ran the new slogan, is a Human Being, and socame the first great Contact Law, which stated that any humanoid race,regardless of its place on the evolutionary scale, was to becontacted. To be accepted, "yea, welcomed," as the phrase went, intothe human community. And following this, of course, there came Trade.For it was the businessmen who had started the whole thing in thefirst place.
Hence the day of the Open Planet. A humanoid race was discovered bythe Mapping Command, the M.C. made its investigation, and then sentout the Word. And every company in the Galaxy, be it monstrous huge orpiddling small, made a mad rush to be first on the scene. TheGovernment was very strict about the whole business, the idea beingthat planets should make their contracts with companies rather thanthe government itself, so that if any shady business arose the companyat fault could be kicked out, and there would be no chance of ageneral war. Also, went the reasoning, under this system there wouldbe no favorites. Whichever company, no matter its resources, had aship closest at the time of the call, was the one to get firstbargaining rights. Under this setup it was very difficult for any onecompany to grow too large, or to freeze any of the others out, andquite often a single contract on a single planet was enough totransform a fly-by-night outfit into a major concern.
So that was the basis of the Open Planet, but there the real story hasonly begun. Winning the race did not always mean winning the contract.It was what you found when you got down that made the job of a ContactMan one of the most hazardous occupations in history. Each new planetwas wholly and completely new, there were no rules, and what youlearned on all the rest meant nothing. You went from a matriarchywhich refused absolutely to deal with men (the tenth ship to arrivehad a lady doctor and therefore got the contract) to a planet wherethe earth was sacred and you couldn't dig a hole in it so mining wasout, to a planet which considered your visit the end of the world andpromptly committed mass suicide. The result of this was that asuccessful Contact Man had to be a remarkable man to begin with: acombined speed demon, sociologist, financier, diplomat and geologist,all in one. It was a job in which successful men not only madefortunes, they made legends. It was that way with Pat Travis.
Sitting at the viewscreen, watching the clouds whip by and the firstdark clots of towns beginning to shape below, Travis thought about thelegend. He was a tall, frail, remarkably undernourished looking manwith large soft brown eyes. He did not look like a legend and he knewit, and, being a man of great pride, it bothered him. More and more,as the years went by, his competitors blamed his success on luck. Itwas not Pat Travis that was the legend, it was the luck of Pat Travis.Over the years he had learned not to argue about it, and it was onlyduring these past few months, when his luck had begun to slip, that hementioned it at all.
Luck no more makes a legend, he knew, than raw courage makes afighter. But legends die quick in deep space, and his own had beena-dying for a good long while now, while other lesser men, the luckall theirs, plucked planet after planet from under his nose. Now atthe viewscreen he glanced dolefully across the room at his crew: thecurly-headed young Dahlinger and the profound Mr. Trippe. In contrastto his own weary relaxation, both of the young men were tensed andanxious, peering into the screen. They had come to learn under thegreat Pat Travis, but in the last few months what they seemed to havelearned most was Luck: if you happened to be close you were lucky andif you weren't you weren't. But if they were to get anywhere in thisbusiness, Travis knew, they had to learn that luck, more often thannot, follows the man who burns his generators....
* * * * *
He stopped thinking abruptly as a long yellow field came into view. Hesaw silver flashing in the sun, and his heart jumped into his throat.Old 29 settled fast. One ship or two? In the distance he could see thegray jumbled shapes of a low-lying city. The sun was shining warmly,it was spring on Diomed III, and across the field a blue riversparkled, but Travis paid no attention. There was only one silvergleam. Still he waited, not thinking. But when they were close enoughhe saw that he was right. The Mapping Command ship was alone. Old 29,burned generators and all, had won the race.
"My boys," he said gravely, turning to the crew, "Pat Travis ridesagain!" But they were already around him, pounding him on the back. Heturned happily back to the screen, for the first time beginning toadmire the view. By jing, he thought, what a lovely day!
That was his first mistake.
It was not a lovely day.
It was absolutely miserable.
* * * * *
Travis had his first pang of doubt when he stepped out of the ship.
The field was empty, not a native in sight. But Dahlinger was outbefore him, standing waist high in the grass and heaving deep lungfulsof the flower-scented air. He yelled that he could already smell thegold.
"I say, Trav," Trippe said thoughtfully from behind him, "where's th
efatted calf?"
"In this life," Travis said warily, "one is often disappointed." Afigure climbed out of a port over at the Mapping Command ship and camewalking slowly toward them. Travis recognized him and grinned.
"Hey, Hort."
"Hey Trav," Horton replied from a distance. But he did not sayanything else. He came forward with an odd look on his face. Travisdid not understand. Ed Horton was an old buddy and Ed Horton should behappy to see him. Travis felt his second pang. This one went deep.
"Anybody beat us here?"
"No. You're the first, Trav."
Dahlinger whooped. Travis relaxed slightly and even the glacial Trippecould not control a silly grin.
Horton caught a whiff of air from the open lock.
"B u r n e d generators? You must've come like hell." His face showed hisrespect. Between burning a generator and blowing one entirely there isonly a microscopic distance, and it takes a