Seed of the Gods

and more evident that the fate of all life on this planet is dependent on the findings of Rack the New One in the distant reaches of space. XIV Ref: F-454-269-1933-B-555 X&A Restriction Code 2 Blink Priority Urgent-Urgent Origin: U.P.X. Pharos, Sector P-232, Capt. Bradley J. Gore Cmmd. Des: Exploration and Alien Search Headquarters, Sec. 1, Xanthos II, Attention urged High Admiral Jackson G. Sparks. Sub: III Planet, Life Zone Class Xanthos II sun, sector P-232. Inhabited Humanoid. N.Y. 30,456, Month 7, Day 14, U.P.X. Pharos, Capt. Bradley J. Gore, Cmmd., blink beaconed Chicago class star, position R-77.99, V-22.23, H-1.19, L-99.4, Sector P-232, Tri-Chart Ref. P-232-44. (See attached survey charts.) Short blink Expo, scouts Pharos IV and V, beginning Month 7, Day 16 resulted planetary sighting, system A Type, Month 8, Day 10. Star class Xanthos II, planets number 9, III planet life Zone A-l. (Attached survey chart position sun R-80.76, V-34.45, H-5.99, L-87.53.) Lifetype: Class I-B Humanoid. C-Scale. Questionable. (See attached Tri-Tape Personal-Personal Capt. Bradley J. Gore to High Admiral Jackson G. Sparks.) Possible T rating T-l or T-2, possible P-9 or P-10. Questionable rating explained: Non-metal culture, sub-atomic, but with extensive use of biological material formed from extracts from two insect forms, durable, radiation resistant, highly flexible use in building, making seldom-worn clothing and utilitarian objects. Planetary Conditions: Scale .99 Oxygen atmosphere, various heavy gases in lethal quantities. (See atmo-analysis attached.) Vegetation: limited. Soil Condition: critical. (See agri-analysis attached.) Life Scale: Under study. Technology: Limited production of aforementioned biological building material and liquid all-purpose food extracted from specific algal type sea plant. Language: None. Repeat. None. Communication via telepathic pictures. Population: Numbers unknown. Four distinct racial types living in symbiosis. Explanation of above: Preliminary hypno-contact indicates lack of number system. Thus, questions regarding population answered in imcomprehensible picture showing numbers estimated in thousands for population density. Difficulty reconciling pictures from alien minds with number system. (See Tri- Tape, Janti-III Planet Sector P-232.) Justification Blink Priority Urgent-Urgent: Humanoid life endangered by rapidly deteriorating planetary conditions. Oxygen replenishment factor:—.87. Atmospheric life factor, —10.09. Population factor:—4.68. Rec. U.P.X. Officer Cmmd.: Immediate contact. Transmigration III Planet, Sector P-232, Xanthos II type sun, position R-54.66, V-56.78, H-87.55, L-11.0. Signed: Bradley J. Gore, Capt, Cmmd. U.P.X. Pharos. Ref: F- 454-269-1933-B-555 X&A Restriction Code 2 Blink Priority Urgent-Urgent Endorsements Blinkstat Capt. Bradley J. Gore, Cmmd., U.P.X. Pharos, Sector P-232. N.Y. 30,456, Month 12, Day 14. Smith, Adm., Cmmd. Sector P-232: Affirmative. Tarsus, Adm., Cmmd. P-Group 4 X&A: Affirmative. Larkins, H. Adm., Hdq. 2 Troup Z&A Pegram IV: Rec. furthur study. Note: Discretion H. Adm. Larkins, Hdq. 2 Troup X&A, Pegram IV, info, presented representative civilian board. Results: Inconclusive. Evers, Jonathan, H. Adm. (R), President Xanthos U.: Rec. further study . Parthin, Avery (Miss), President's Board Applied Humanity, U.P. Central: Rec. affirmative request Capt. Bradley J. Gore. Bragg, Amos, Chm. Board Natural Resources, U.P. Central: Rec. hearing before Combined Congress, U.P. Fulton, Gregory, Asst. Pres. George O. Borne, U.P. Central: Rec. detailed study planetary conditions. Ref: F-454-269-1933-B-555 X&A Restriction Code P. Personal 1-A Blink Priority Urgent-Urgent Personal-Personal Origin: Sector P-232, U.P.X Pharos, Capt. Bradley J. Gore, Cmmd. Des: Personal-Personal High Adm. Jackson G. Sparks, X&A Hdq. Sect. 1, Xanthos II. (Transcript verbal content Tri-Tape Personal-Personal Ref. F-454-269-1933-B-555-AX34. Admiral, I know this is highly irregular, but you know me from way back. You've always said that I didn't like to follow the system and that is explanation enough, I suppose, for the rank that I hold. I like to think that I'm a man who dislikes the planetary piles of red tape which have been thrown up around Exploration and Alien Search work. Now I know you're already saying, «Same old Brad.» I guess you're right. I've been known to go out on a limb. Remember the time I called a three buck pass in the championship game between the Academy and Xanthos U? We lost, but it was because some little bastard on the Xanthos team missed his assignment and was in the wrong grid and the ball hit him right in the chest. Well, I've always been a high roller, haven't I? Jack, I'm not used to this type of communication. I don't like looking into those glassy little eyes in front of me. I hope you'll excuse my appearance. I'm just in from planet-side. I really don't know where to start. Maybe I should begin about 75,000 New Years back. I know you're a student of history, but please be patient with me—I'm not trying to refresh your memory. I just need to ramble a little until I get this thing straight in my mind. Besides, you own me. You're the bastard, if you'll pardon the familiarity, Admiral, who talked me into X&A in the first place when I had my mind set on Intersystem Transport, where the loot is. You turned me on with that summer trip to old Terra II. Damn, my back still aches when I think of the digging we did. Remember? We were camped there on that ruined world beside a river that had been killed and that never had the chance to come back to life. We speculated about what kind of junk they dumped into it—it was still dead a few millennia after the last people had given up trying to revive the world and left it for greener places. We couldn't believe it was possible to kill a planet, but there was the proof and we decided that it was a phase we went through as a race. I remember how the soil had all been eroded away, how the rock stuck through like bare bones, and how there was almost no vegetation. But remember, Jack, dead as Terra II was, how there was life on her? There were crawling things and flying things and there was air, even if it did stink. I've had a lot of time, during these past few weeks while that fruity little telepath you stuck me with has been lifting the skulls of these poor bastards on this Godforsaken little planet, for thinking and I remember what we talked about. We talked about the destiny of the race and we always went back, if you remember, to that big question of who the hell are we? You're supposed to stop asking that question when you leave the college soph coffee tables, but I think the whole X&A program is just another way of phrasing it. And I'm amazed that we haven't found an answer. Hell, we've been in space for thirty thousand years and we still don't know whether or not we had parents or whether we were just laid out on a flat rock in the sun somewhere. I've been thinking about the way you explained our inability to trace our racial origin. You said that the average man can't even tell you his great grandfather's name, and damn it, you were right. I couldn't tell you mine. You said that when a man can't even remember his great-grandfather's name, it isn't odd that a race can't trace its origin back some 75,000 N.Y. When I went back to the Academy and started digging into the records you said that all the trouble could have been saved if one of my ancestors had taken the trouble to write down the names of his ancestors and passed the list down to his kids. But no one thought of that in my family and no one thought of it in the race. We have only a few old legends. We came from space. That much is sure. We've done enough work on the home planet, old Terra II—and the name alone is indicative of the fact that there must have been a Terra I—to know that until our race came there and unloaded a regular zoo of life on her, she was a barren planet. Life began on Terra II 75,000 N.Y. ago. And on all the other planets we've settled in 30,000 N.Y. we've found only enough life to fill a thimble. But now we've hit the jackpot. I had to laugh when I filled in that official report. I've done it a hundred times and I've never had anything to write in answer to the questions about life other than data about some weird bugs and nutty plants. And this is a good indication of the fact that I'm not all wrong when I say that there's too much red tape in the program. How many hundreds of sheets of blinkstat paper have been wasted on those blank pages regarding life? How much does it cost to blink a stat from four hundred light-years away? The point is, I guess, that we thought there'd be a time when those blanks regarding life on a new planet would be needed. Or we hoped so. Man, it sent a chill through me when I inked it in: Lifetype: Class 1-B Humanoid. And I can feel the vibrations caused by those words all the way out here. I'll bet my report has been fingered by everyone from old George Borne down to the office boy in X&A Headquarters and I'll bet the paranoid types are messing their pants. I've got a pretty good cross-section of society right here in my own crew and I think I've got a good idea of what the reaction was out there on the home worlds. I'm telling you this, Jack. These poor bastards on this sad little planet are not the ones who shot up those central galaxy worlds we stew about so much. I've seen those worlds. I've walked the streets of the dead cities. You and I both know that the people who built those cities were not even vaguely humanoid. Those ruined worlds have nothing to do with this situation, and I hope you'll keep reminding people of that. Those cats there in the thick stars were blood-thirsty sons-of-bitches, and we've been having nightmares ever since the first X&A ship came back and showed us the pictures and the message they found burned into the skin of one of the planets: Look on this, ye who aspire, and quake. Build not, for we shall return. It's enough to give you the creeps, I'll admit. Twenty worlds killed. Up to 200 billion beings done in. And our quaking isolationists think that every time we go out on a mission we're going to run head on into the planet-killers. But you know my views on this; I think they did themselves in. Our explorations of those worlds uncovered nothing to indicate that they had developed anything half as sophisticated as the blink drive. The worlds they inhabited were packed together around five suns in the same neighborhood. We've had ships all over this fucking galaxy and found only those twenty dead planets out there toward the center behind that big beautiful grouping of New York type stars. We haven't covered every star system in the galaxy, not by a long shot, but a civilization that could do what they did would be able to detect our ships if they came within four hundred light-years the way a blinking ship sends signals ahead of itself through the continuum. So I'm going to be damned unhappy if you people back there at headquarters let those fear-ridden isolationists delay a decision on this thing until it's too late. I suppose I wouldn't