Читать книгу Boarding Party - Robert F. Young - Страница 5

The fey Mr. Young continues his scholarly researches in the scientific origins of our myth and legend with this tale of an agile—and avaricious—one-man

(Translator’s note: The original of the following report was recently acquired by the Terran Industrial Library through the Interstellar Historical Exchange Society, into whose illustrious fold the member nations of the Terran Economic Bloc have at last been admitted. The narrative is of primary interest to the library officials because it provides unequivocal proof that, long before the Interstellar Economic Community took official cognizance of our existence, several articles of Community Commerce found their way into our culture. To the layman, however, the narrative is of primary interest because it provides an intriguing parallel to a narrative of an altogether different nature.)

TO: Interstellar Nurseries, Frimm 4

FROM: Captain of the Greenship Uxurient Urtz 2

SUBJECT (s): (1) Why the Uxurient put in to an out-of-bounds system during the Frimm 4-Urtz 2 run; (2) how a boarding party of one gained the greendeck and made off with a Uterium 5 snirk bird, a toy friddle-fork, and two containers of yellow trading disks; (3) why the Uxurient’s flexible ship-to-ground capillary tube is ten exids shorter than it used to be.

(1)

Why the Uxurient put in to an Out-of-Bounds System during the Frimm 4-Urtz 2 Run

Two light-cycles out from Frimm 4, the first shoots of the yumquat trees broke through the greendeck precisely on schedule. A little over a light-cycle farther out I noticed during one of my periodic inspections that the young leaves were beginning to turn yellow, and subsequent tests of several greendeck soil samples revealed an acute deficiency of mineral elements D-2 and Z-1, plus an advanced aridity. I immediately retired to the greenship’s subdeck, where I found the contents of the soil-solution vat to be at a shockingly low level. An analysis of the contents indicated a near-total absence of mineral elements D-2 and Z-1.

Further investigations have since convinced me that the responsibility for this critical shortage rests upon the shoulders of none other than Ur-Lon-Ho-Lee, Interstellar Nurseries’ senior shipping clerk, but at the time, the yumquat-tree shipment pre-empted my attention to the exclusion of all other matters. If the trees were to be allowed to shoot up at the usual accelerated growth rate and were to be delivered in satisfactory sapling stage to the Urtz 2 customer who had ordered them, I had but one course of action open to me: to put in to the nearest system, find a planet with a soil rich in moisture and rich in mineral elements D-2 and Z-1, and replenish the soil-solution vat by means of the Uxurient’s ship-to-ground capillary tube. Fortunately, there happened to be a system in the vicinity of the Uxurient’s present position, but unfortunately it happened to be one of the many systems that are out-of-bounds to Interstellar Economic Community ships. Before coming to a decision, then, I had to weigh the importance of my mission against the risk of causing “a substantial interference in the normal evolution of an extra-Community culture” —a possibility that is always present when a Community ship is forced to enter an out-of-bounds system. I decided that it was my responsibility both to the customer and to the company to run this risk, and proceeded to put in to the system at once.