Ounce of Prevention

Through the great eye, the first mate followed the descent of the golden ball as it floated gently down to the surface of the world beneath his ship.

When it settled silently and secretly in the shadows of an obscure alley of the glittering city under him, he sighed with satisfaction.

The last of their deadly cargo had been planted.

He snapped off the Eye's glowing lens and briskly left the observation chamber.

The captain was mixing drinks in his cabin when he entered. "Ah," he said, "I was expecting you. Do you like a splash of water with yours?"

"Straight, sir, if you please." He took the chalice that was given to him."We've laid the last egg, Captain."

"I know. I watched it go down in my Eye. Excellent job of direction, mister."

"Thank you, sir."

"To peace," said the Captain.

"To peace."

Their cups clinked. The potent liquor seared the first mate's throat and his eyes watered. He was not accustomed to strong drink and actually did not care for it, but a junior officer did not decline a toast with his captain. "Good stuff, sir," he managed to gasp.

"It's swill," the Captain said, flatly. "But it's standard ration for officers doing Prevention work. Wait until we get back to the other side of the galaxy. I'll take you to a bar where we can celebrate the end of our mission with some really good stuff."

"I'd like that, sir."

The Captain seemed pleased. "You're a good sort. Best first mate I've ever worked with. Now let's make for space and watch the fireworks, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

It was not long before their ship – a radiant, humming disc of golden metal – had pulled away from the intricate city beneath and was climbing steadily out of the planet's atmosphere and gravitational field.

In the observation chamber, the first mate and his captain sat and waited. The Eye showed them the slowly receding globe of the thriving world. Its vegetation appeared as great patches of lush green, and its oceans glimmered silver in the sun. Veil-like clouds encircled the globe in varying degrees of thickness.

Looming a short distance from this world was another, larger planet, to which this one was but a satellite. Their view of the larger world was almost completely obscured by clouds: only rarely could they catch a glimpse of its steaming seas and Luxuriant primeval greenery.

The first mate broke the silence. "How long have you been in Prevention work, sir?"

The Captain said, wryly, "Ever since I lost my temper and blasted a few cutthroat natives on Colony 9230. The higher-ups decided I was too impulsive to be a benevolent governor, and so they reassigned me to Prevention. That's longer ago than I care to remember." His eyes grew hard.

The first mate was surprised by this overly-personal revelation. Perhaps the drink had gone to the Captain's head, he thought. Aloud, he said, "It's a worthy project, Captain; don't you agree?"

The senior officer grunted. "Worthy? I suppose so. Anything that promotes the welfare of the Galactic Association is worthy, isn't it? And anything that does not is – " there was a slight edge to his voice – " 'illogical.' And we must be logical by all means, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right. Then give the order to activate. The sooner you do, the sooner we go home. That's the best logic I know."

Instantly, the first mate walked toward a microphone. He snapped it on and, (continued on page 128) Ounce of Prevention (continued from page 59) trying his best to emulate the Captain's tones of gruff authority, piped, "Attention, Activator!"

The robot voice of the Activator responded, calm and expressionless: "Activator alert, sir."

The young officer clearly articulated a short code of words and numbers.

"Order assimilated, sir," replied the robot.

The first mate took a breath and gave the command: "Activate!"

A split second after he uttered the last syllable, an impulse signal started for the satellite, traveling at the speed of light. On the teeming world – unknown to the highly civilized inhabitants – thousands of the carefully placed golden balls received the signal. Within them, acids flowed, walls of metal were dissolved, chemicals mingled, intricate mechanisms became operative . . .

And the forces of Hell were unleashed.

The first mate and the Captain watched the Eye as a network of silent explosions blossomed like white pearls over the entire visible surface of the satellite. The pearls of smoke grew larger, merged, and covered the planet in an impenetrable shell of white. The planet seemed to swell slightly and then, after some time, the lethal clouds began to thin out and disperse.

Gone were the stretches of green vegetation. Gone were the silvery seas. Gone, the first mate knew, was the very atmosphere, and gone was every last molecule of life.

The Eye showed them a ball of dead gray matter. Shadowed indentations marked the depressions where oceans once had been; and, covering the devastated world, were thousands upon thousands of bomb craters, like pockmarks on the face of someone dead of an exotic and ravaging disease.

Even to the Captain, veteran of many Prevention programs, the sight was humbling.

The first mate said, "This is a great moment, sir. I feel a sense of almost personal accomplishment."

"Personal?" The Captain's gaze did not swerve from the Eye. "How so?"

"Ever since I was a child," replied the young officer, "I was intrigued by the very word Prevention and by its significance. Even as a youngster, I recognized how important it was to prevent malignant life-forms from spreading their hostile kind throughout the galaxy. I read the accounts of Prevention bombings of many worlds and I had a keen interest in one particular story."

"What story was that?" the Captain asked, politely.

"The story of our many reconnaissance trips to this little moon. I read about the first trips, ages ago, when it was only asteaming jungle full of giant lizards, and about the subsequent trips, at aeon-intervals, for the purpose of watching the development of life here. And finally, not so long ago, I followed the reports of the last reconnaissance flight: the reports that told us of these creatures' dangerously close approach to space travel." The first mate beamed. "That decided me. I had to be part of this Prevention program! It was the happiest day of my life when I was accepted. With the exception of this day, of course!"

"You're happy then?" The Captain turned away from the Eye for the first time.

"Oh, yes, sir!"

"How nice for you." His tone was dry as sand.

"Aren't you, sir?"

"Happy?" the Captain asked grimly.

"I wonder just how long it's been since

I've been happy. Since I was about your age, I suppose."

The first mate was embarrassed and could say nothing.

"But don't mind me, mister. You're happy, Good. And I'm just a disappointed old-timer who has lost the talent for being happy. Don't listen to me." He turned to look again at the Eye. The dead world seemed to look back at him.

"Millions of individuals with their hopes and dreams," he said softly. "The product of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization Dust."

"But, sir," the first mate hastened to point out, "they were malignant."

"Of course," the Captain agreed.

"Malignant. I was forgetting. And how do we know that? I forget just how we know that."

The first mate was not sure if the Captain was serious or was making sport of him. "Why," he floundered, "our observations, sir. We watched them slaughter each other in their incessant wars."

"Ah, yes. But, if memory serves me, the history of our own kind tells of primitive wars – long ago when our civilization was still in its infancy. Isn't that so?"

"Well, yes sir.. but that, as you say, was long ago, and we have progressed beyond such barbarism."

"So we have." The Captain pointed to the scarred globe centered in the Eye. "We survived long enough to outgrow war. No one came from the other end of the galaxy to bomb us out of existence."

"No, sir." The younger officer found the conversation becoming uncomfortable.

"Do you follow me?"

"I can't say that I do, sir."

The Captain grunted. "Never mind. It's useless to follow this line of thinking through to its end. It would be a bit too logical for the Association, I'm afraid. They wouldn't like it at all." The Captain suddenly laughed. "Why, if itweren't for Prevention, we'd be out of a job, eh?"

"That's right, sir!" He joined the Captain in laughterSSD and felt much more comfortable.

"And now: let's go home."

The first mate nimbly leaped to the microphone and barked orders to the robot pilots. Anti-acceleration forces came into play, nullifying the feeling of motion within the ship. In a few moments, the two officers – the only living beings aboard the immense, robot-crewed vessel – experienced a strange vertigo, felt their eyes go out of focus, and heard in their ears an indescribable sound that seemed to be made up of wind and bells and cavernous roaring. When it was over, they knew the ship had passed onto a dimensional plane that would subtract several million light-years from their return voyage and reduce it to a matter of mere months. Their location in space remained the same (the position of the blasted world in the Eye told them that), but the change would be apparent when the ship began to move.

The first mate gave the command: "Embark!"

And in the Eye, the dead moon and its larger companion dwindled to specks, as if hurled from a colossal catapult.

As the ship built up speed, the Eye became useless, for it showed them only a black maw, white-streaked by the stars they were passing. The Captain switched it off. "Come back to my cabin, mister," he said. "It will be some time before we hit port and we may as well use up our ration of liquor, bad as it is."

They walked leisurely to the Captain's cabin. The liquor flowed down their throats.

"Sir," the first mate said, "do you think there will ever be intelligent life on that larger world?"

The Captain looked at him. "You're the student – not I. But yes, I think it's likely. The big planet is thickly vegetated and seems to be a larger version of what its moon was ages ago. The moon was smaller, solidified faster, supported life sooner – sentient life, capable of space travel. I see no reason why the big one shouldn't follow the same pattern. It's logical, isn't it?"

"Yes..." the first mate was so preoccupied that he forgot to add his usual "sir." He said, "Then we should initiate reconnaissance flights. It may be a threat to the galaxy!"

"I'm sure the Association has though! of that already, lad. Don't you imagine?"

"I suppose so." And, snapping back to reality, he quickly added, "Yes, sir, I suppose they have."

The Captain drained his chalice and filled it again while his first mate still nursed his portion. "Intelligent life ..." he pondered. "You've set me thinking, young fellow. Suppose that large world does breed intelligent creatures. Suppose they develop a science and build Eyes of sorts to study the skies. Suppose they take a close look at their moon. Now, what do you suppose they'll make of that bomb-pitted, airless dead thing? How will they explain away its unnatural condition?"

"I never thought of that, sir. I haven't the faintest idea." The first mate's tentacle gripped the chalice more tightly as he finished his drink.

"Oh no, Charlie, don't tell me!" wailed Bates. "Not another one of those!"

"Yep," Charlie perched himself on his city editor's desk. "Another one."

"Throw it away," Bates groaned. "We just can't run another flying saucer story."

"This one is a little different. A South American Indian claims he saw a big gold saucer dropping smaller gold gizmos to the ground. An old woman in Ireland says the same thing. And so does a schoolgirl right here in New York. Always the same – big golden saucer, little golden spheres."

"You trying to tell me it was laying golden eggs? Like the goose in the fairy tale?"

"So they tell me."

The city editor shook his head and chuckled. "Well, it's kind of colorful, at that, Write it up,Charlie, from the whimsy angle. Keep it light and funny. If we run out of fillers, we may be able to use it in – –"

But he never finished the sentence.