On A Planet Alien

by Barry N. Malzberg

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact

Synopsis

Folsom's Planet - An Alien land yet so familiar. If the mission were a success, Folsom's planet would bear his name for eternity. The barbarians would be civilized; the planet would join the Federation; the Federation's integrity would be preserved. But Hans Folsom had to be on guard. The aliens were intractable, his crew possibly traitorous. There was an incident during the voyage he couldn't quite remember. And a prophetic runic stone. Had ancient spacemen visited here in the past? Did that explain the strange religions, the ancient ruins, the mysterious runic stone?

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 139

Sample

FLICKER OF HISTORY: Lying on the bleak earth of this blasted planet, listening to the wind filter through the trees, it is possible for one moment in the clinging darkness to believe that it is not impossibly removed, that it is not at the far edge of the universe but that indeed it is Earth itself and this has not been a voyage outward but a voyage in, to some other aspect of familiar terrain … but in the next moment, as Nina comes close against me once more that feeling slides away from me thinly like all illusion and the feeling of alienness seeps in once again. It is not Earth, it is nothing we have ever known: we have voyaged at impossible speed to the heart of the unknown … and still I lie there, looking up at the impenetrable sky, shaking. My legs seem fibers filled with small tremors. She presses harder.

“Come on, Hans,” she says, “stop thinking.” Her voice is tentative but underneath is insistence. “There is nothing to think about.” She begins to stroke at me. “Come here.”

I close my eyes, open them, then roll, clearing that distance between us, drawing her within. There is no flight. She is right; her corporeality makes its own statement: I cannot withdraw from her. Under the rules and terms of the compact she is to be satisfied and I am her coupling: therefore I must satisfy her. Therefore to satisfy her. Slowly I bring my knee up the inner surfaces of her thigh, there is a wicker of contact beneath the cloth that surrounds us, then slowly I roll to cover her all the way, draw my knees up, seeking. In the forest which surrounds us I can hear sounds which might be those of the birds and animals but then again—when this pastoral flight falls away like a garment—it is more likely to be the natives at the rim of the forest, crashing around, peering within. The idea that the natives, not discouraged by our fires, by the walls of insulation which we have placed, might actually be looking within, seeing what Nina and I are doing, fills me with a perverse excitement, a feeling of disconnection and floating to be sure and now the contact between us is no longer so tenuous but indeed wedges hard, wedges harder, and I feel myself beginning to flow within her. Ah! she groans, a scatological little moan, aha, aha! for all the coldness of her exterior she has always taken a simple and basic pleasure in the act of coupling and I turn myself over to the sensations completely, feeling them beginning to waft around me.

We couple. On the floor of the forest we couple. The old graceless motions overwhelm me and momentarily I am no longer a scientist, no longer Hans the Captain (as I refer to myself in interior monologue) but merely a being caught on the pipe of mortality, flinging myself in and out of her spasmodically. Dragging myself to orgasm like a man moving hand-over-hand on piping, there is, near the peak, a sudden moment of hesitation, a superimposed blankness and then once again that image returns: an image of familiarity oozing into all the crevices of consciousness: this planet is not irretrievably alien, Nina and I are not light years from home but indeed the two of us are coupling normally in familiar surroundings. When my orgasm comes it is then on a bright thread of pain: lost, irrevocably lost, a billion years from home only to recover the old sensations which will never, never hurl us back … unless of course most of this is taking place in my mind and not on the terrain of what they will come to call Folsom’s Planet

EXPOSITORY DATA: My name is Hans Folsom. I am the captain of this expedition. The expedition is therefore known as Folsom’s Voyage and the planet will be known, eventually, as Folsom’s Planet. The Bureau is quite consistent in these policies and procedures; the commander of the voyage has the right to impose his name if not his will upon the mission. There is no megalomania in this. It is simple justice. At the cost of enormous risks one is entitled, at least, to a small piece of immortality.

There are four on this Folsom’s Expedition: Folsom himself, vigorous, cheerful, in the flower of his manhood, his mate Nina, who has already been introduced rather abruptly, and Stark and Closter, about whom more will be said presently. You will hear of them presently; they are also mates in a binding arrangement: the strict pairing as approved by the Bureau indicated that there would be no cross-matching involved. For that reason Stark and Closter, despite the fact that they are under my command, stay pretty much to themselves in one area while Nina and I, of course, manage to make our connections in another.

Folsom’s Planet itself is some eighty-three million miles from its sun, that sun (which perhaps shall be known as Folsom’s Star) being located some thirty-seven hundred and twelve light years from the earth. An appalling distance, to be sure, but the explosion of technological sophistication, the postindustrial revolution, so to speak, has resulted in devices which enabled us to make this transversion in a mere three and a half years (I cannot give you the exact calculations since we were asleep for most of the time) and by the time we are to return this may be even further reduced.

Our function is to civilize the natives of Folsom’s Planet after, of course, having made contact with them. Specographic probe of the planet conducted from 2417 through 2429 established the presence on the planet of intelligent life at stage three of sophistication, still bound to the ecology but at the beginnings of a crude technology. Optimistically, this is the best time at which contact should be made with aliens; if they fall below the stage three level, they are apt to be hesitant or unduly hostile, communication is difficult to establish; beyond stage three, clear up to six and seven, often even moving up to eight, paranoia begins to intervene: they are skeptical about the motives of the Federation and often inexcusably hostile.

What does the Federation have to gain by establishing communication, advancing their technology? they want to know.

Exactly why are emissaries being sent from a distant star to give them the intellectual and technological materials to join this Federation?

What, strictly speaking, is in it for them?

This is why all efforts are made to avoid the six and seven civilizations to say nothing of the duller and more pedestrian one’s and two’s: no, the three’s are proper, being at that right area between numb credulity and resistance.

We will spend approximately one year on Folsom’s Planet. After establishing communication with the natives, a task which with sophisticated linguistic devices takes usually no more than a matter of days, we will proceed, through philosophical and technological orientation lectures to place skills in their hands, one by one as if they were implements. By these means they may take their rightful place amidst the races of the stars; having done this, we will leave the planet for the somnolent return journey to the Earth but our narcoticized dreams all the way back will be drenched with the feeling of fulfillment: we will have done our part to civilize the universe, to tame the forces of entropy; we will have placed within the hands of this race the means by which they can acquire skills to match our own … and in due time, when they create their first starship, when they voyage solemnly to the Pit in which the races themselves are gathered, when they enter the Ceremony of Music … when they do this it will not only be a celebration of Folsom’s Planet but of Folsom himself, that skillful voyager who carried forth to them the implements by which they could take their place in the Federation.

At least that was the point and purpose of the voyage; that is, so to speak, the plan, but we are in severe difficulties of a sort which never could have been pondered before our landing and at this time the modus operandi, that simple, pure, elegant, almost compositionally architectured modus operandi which has applied to the settlement of stage three planets since the beginning of process … that modus operandi lies in ruins. My fornicative activities, my glossy ruts with Nina are, in fact, one of the few comforts which I have been able to derive thus far from Folsom’s Planet.

For one thing, we cannot establish any contact with the natives.

And for another, I am not in the least sure that even if we did, they would want any part of the marvelous devices and advances which we can offer them.

From the little information which we can gather, their attitude, in fact, appears to be uniquely hostile.

BRINGING THE GOOD NEWS: Nevertheless, Closter and I, laden with equipment, set to once again op our lumbering walk to the edges of the forest and that point at which the habitats of the natives begin. We are laden with gifts; the standard trinkets, jewelry, intoxicants, ornaments dangle glistening from our belts as we lurch through the belt of trees toward the open spaces.

The air of the planet caresses us as we stride forward, the sensation is as if open palms were rubbing across our cheeks. Always the bucolic, pastoral, enveloping atmosphere of Folsom’s Planet is a surprise; it was selected, of course, for the commodiousness of its environment, for the ability of Earth-type peoples to walk on the terrain without artificial assist of any sort: neither helmet nor support devices of any kind are required. We knew all of this before we embarked, how good the conditions were on Folsom’s Planet that is to say, but even so, it was jolting to emerge from the cramped spaces of the ship to find, after our years of dreams and confinement, this situation. Debarkation is in itself a kind of miracle; this is one of my epigrams.

“Do you see them?” Stark says. He pauses, shades his eyes, gestures toward an opening in the trees where dimly we can see forms moving. “There they are.” He wipes a large hand across his forehead, shakes his head, comes to a halt. “I just don’t know if I can face this again,” he says.

“You’ll face it,” I say grimly enough. Stark is the sociotechnician among us; it is he who is responsible for the alignments between the crew and the natives, the delicate network of interrelationships which will be established; it is also his responsibility to graph and plot out the lines of connection within the natives’ society itself which by implication will make all of their societies visible. So far he has been running into very bad luck—for one thing we have been utterly unable to make any contact with the natives whatsoever—and this bad luck has made him unpleasant, contributed to our own deteroriating relationship.

“You’ll face this exactly the same as we will,” I add and motion toward him to start moving again. His eyes close; his forehead dampens and some aspect of light makes it look like a fist as he moans and moves „ forward once again. “I don’t think you understand, Hans,” he says, “I don’t think you understand the seriousness of this situation.”

“I understand it very well.”

“You couldn’t possibly. No one not in the specialty could. We’ve been unable to establish contact, we’re getting resistance at levels which cannot even be articulated and furthermore, oh …”

He stops. Talking as we have been moving, we break through a clearing, find that we are standing on a small cliff, overlooking a primitive settlement. The natives move amidst huts which are poised on a large square; in that square there is a large smoking pot, a few horses tethered and sleeping and a small, squabbling crowd in the center which might indicate commerce. As they see us they begin to look upwards: all movement in the square stops and from the huts themselves other heads move forward and we walk into the solemn, ungiving stares of forty or fifty of the natives. It is perhaps the unanimity of those stares which has brought the ohfrom Stark’s lips but then again it may be something else; I am utterly unable to understand him. I have never claimed that insight was my strength; I depend instead wholly upon observation.

“Oh,” Stark says again and stands on that cliff, his features wavering as if in the breeze, “oh my, they’re looking again but what are we going to do? There must be some way to reach them.”

His little mouth furrows with concentration, then he steps forward, making a series of gestures, the universal gestures of communication which the Bureau has carefully transcribed. Below there seems to be a sigh; a cast of win. . .