Second Wave - 8

Chapter 8

Since the door to the room was now open, courtesy of our two, furry friends, I stuck my head out to look around. The room was one of several, semi-free-standing, cube-shaped structures that were spaced regularly around one of the aliens' clear domes. I could see a large planet with a visible ring system in profile against the sky. Although not as well-defined as those of Saturn, the rings were still spectacular.

From the view, I judged that we were, as I'd thought we'd be, on Oberon, one of Uranus' moons. The Pug-bears had a base on this moon that was isolated when we destroyed the matter transporter network a few years ago. Their main base on Titan had suffered a huge atomic explosion caused by the stored nuclear bombs we had set off. The explosion had destroyed the base and the resulting damage to the transporters had blown up the one on Oberon. The aliens had now recovered from the damage and were starting to mount their second attack.

As I turned my attention to the dome and the surrounding area, I saw no Pug-bears and none of the Pugs. I looked inquiringly at the Sunnys and they seemed to understand the import of my glance. The talkative one hastened to assure me that we were in no immediate danger. The Great Ones, he informed me, were in another series of domes on the far side of the moon. There was only a single transporter that went from their domes to the Sunnys' habitat dome and that one was isolated from our present location physically, in case there was another mishap.

It looked as if the Pug-bears were taking no chances with their last base. My informant's energy field practically radiated candor, so I told the others not to worry and that we should try to find out what the Sunnys knew about the overall situation. What followed was a very informative mental conversation, punctuated by their unusual language usage in occasional attempts at clarification.

The little creatures were quite sharp, easily as quick on the uptake as a human, and probably smarter in some ways. They were, unfortunately, totally pacifistic, having no more ability to defend themselves than a baby. They started by giving me an abbreviated history of their race. The mental flow was a little easier to understand, not being constrained by their improbable speech.

The talkative one narrated, “We developed space flight a long time ago.”

“What do you mean by 'a long time'?” I interrupted.

We had a little trouble communicating regarding time. Their measure of time differed from mine. They understood the idea of measuring it by the rotations of a planet around a sun, but they didn't like that method, arguing that it was too variable from solar system to solar system. Instead, they measured by the time it took light to go a set distance. I thought that might be variable also, depending as it did on the distance. They had some kind of concept about it that they couldn't quite make me understand. I got the conversation back on track by the tactic of simply agreeing that it was a long time ago.

The one without the box sent, “Our people are good at working with things. We're technologically oriented and when we developed space travel, we set out to explore the stars. We had some initial success. We explored five solar systems that held planets compatible with our form of life. We set up colonies on these planets, being careful not to interfere with the local ecology, although none of the planets had much on them by way of native life. We eventually had large populations on each of the planets and we engaged in trade back and forth. Each of the planets had its own specialty in manufacturing and agriculture, so our trade was very useful and benefited everyone. This was a golden age for us and we thought that we'd continue gradually spreading out as our populations grew.”

“We also found several planets that weren't at all attractive. Some had carbon-based, oxygen-breathing life, but it was antagonistic to us in one way or another. We left those planets alone to develop on their own. Other planets had poisonous gasses or too heavy gravity and then there were the ones that had silicon-based life forms. We can't survive on silicon-based planets. It takes too much life-support and costs too much, so we just cataloged those planets and left them alone.”

“One of the first planets we explored was very near our beautiful home star. It orbited a dim red dwarf sun and was the home of the Pugs.”

The Pugs were biologically different from the Sunnys due to their use of silicon in their skeletal systems. That was something that I already knew, but what I didn't know was that Pugs had an early iron-age society with a grave scarcity of resources. They were violent and fought with edged weapons for both food and breeding rights; a fact that made the pacifistic Sunnys very uncomfortable.

The Pugs had been locked in this conflict-based mode for what the Sunnys described as a long time. They didn't like change and the other part of their problem was that they didn't live very long; only about twelve of our years. They died before they'd had much of an opportunity to learn anything beyond how to kill each other and to breed. With such a short generation span and their antipathy to change, they showed no signs of developing further along the road toward a civilization with which the Sunnys could co-exist. The peace-loving Sunnys had taken a brief look at the Pugs' violence-ridden society and quickly left.

“When we left the Pugs' system, we placed an orbiting beacon in a solar orbit. It warned against landing on their planet. We wanted to warn other exploring Sunnys and any other intelligent species that might happen by to stay strictly away. We didn't think the Pugs would ever know that the warning sign was there.”

I interrupted at this point, wondering if Earth had been quarantined by them at some point in the past, but they assured me that we were relatively new to their experience. They'd been on Earth briefly about three centuries ago based on their description of our lifestyle and culture of the time. They'd stayed long enough to recognize that, although we were violent and not highly advanced, we had the potential to both advance and become a species that would be compatible with them.

They had been most impressed by our literature and seemed to have some knowledge of poets of the period, mentioning, in particular, John Donne – a fact which seemed to square with their having been in Scotland long enough to be known as Wraiths. Our poetry had appealed to their sense of spirit and as a result, they felt they recognized some underlying aspect of our make-up that resonated with their conception of a potentially good neighbor.

“Everything was good for us. We had a trade network and our ships were gradually exploring the surrounding stars. Then disaster struck. We landed an expedition on the Great Ones' planet. It looked safe. There was no civilization that we could see, only animals. We thought that the dominant life form (the Pug-bears – to use my name for them) was simply a dangerous beast. Up until that time, we had never considered that there could be such a thing as mental control. We had previously researched thought transmission, but we had no genetic talent for it and, as a result, we discounted it as a potential problem.”

I resolved to learn from their oversight. I, too, might have some blind spots in my mind that could be exploited in a totally unfamiliar situation. I'd have to be more careful in the future. The Ancient-One had almost caught me, but I hadn't realized the existential danger on the level that the Sunnys had faced.

“We thought the Great Ones were animals that posed no more danger to us than any other predatory, oxygen-breathing, carbon-based life form. We were wrong. The carnivorous Great Ones evolved in a highly competitive environment where there was little prey. They laid eggs that hatched into their immature form (the things I called 'spiders') and they left the little ones to fend for themselves. It was 'eat or die' for them and somehow they evolved a powerful mental ability to emotionally control prey.”

I could see how it would be easier to simply cause a prey animal to freeze into immobility than to chase it down. The Pug-bears had taken that ability to a fine edge and apparently had no problem dominating the defenseless Sunnys. The feral Pug-bears simply ate the Sunnys they captured. However, there was a complicating factor. The Pug-bears' planet also had another form of life; a non-motile creature that filled the role of a symbiont to the Pug-bears.

“This creature has a complex life cycle that involves laying eggs that hatch into small worms. The worms go through several phases and end up as parasites to a small, ecologically unimportant herbivore. When they could catch it, the Great Ones would eat that creature. They eat anything they can capture and the herbivore, while not plentiful, was just another meal to them.”

“When they consume the parasite-infested herbivore, the parasite sometimes migrates into the Great One's brain. Once there, it blends its circulatory and nervous systems with those of its host and then increases in size, effectively becoming an ancillary brain for the Great One. This blended brain gives them a different level of mentation and they become far more intelligent. This only happens rarely, so the Great Ones are normally a feral, unintelligent species with only a few, sporadically occurring, intelligent members.”

“The intelligent ones are driven towards dominance since their intelligence simply magnifies their feral nature and gives them a huge sense of ego. Before our arrival, the few intelligent ones had used their advantage to control as much territory and breeding rights as possible. The older ones were respected, due to their survival abilities and were given some deference by the younger, intelligent ones, as long as they could still fight. Those that become too weak to fight are soon killed.”

“Our expedition had the ill luck to encounter one of these 'smart' Great Ones. It immediately saw the potential that our technology offered. It recruited other intelligent ones and they forced us to help their species. They read our minds and understood that there were many planets available and they want to conquer as many as possible. Even the weakest of them wants to control its own planet.”

“We were mentally controlled and driven to research the symbiont's life cycle. We eventually were able to bypass the intermediate steps that involved the herbivore and we learned how to compress the symbiont eggs into wafers containing thousands of eggs. When the feral Great Ones eat the wafers, one in about ten thousand of the eggs develops into a mature symbiont, thus conferring intelligence upon the Great One. Part of our duty to them is to make sure there are more and more intelligent ones. The feral ones won't eat the eggs voluntarily. They have no conception of the change the symbiont will instill. We have the Pugs capture them and feed them only on the egg wafers until the infection takes hold. Once the young ones gain intelligence, the old ones mentally instruct them.”

In this laborious fashion, the Pug-bears had built up a sort of society. The normal life of a Pug-bear was violent and they were likely to die from any number of natural causes as they matured. They naturally equated success with longevity and recognized intelligence as an important advantage. They valued experience as a key component of leadership and, to the small degree they cooperated, they appointed the oldest to be their leaders. These leaders had conceived a plan to use the Sunnys’ technology and ability to manipulate tools to expand to other planets.

“Technology and tool use were totally unknown to the Great Ones prior to our arrival,” the other Sunny added.

I had been attacked by the one that called itself 'Ancient-One' and I also knew that the more immature ones had only a modicum of psychic ability. Until they developed a high level of intelligence, they weren't able to communicate or dominate humans. It seemed that we were more naturally immune to the feral Pug-bears low power commands than the less fortunate Sunnys. Even a young, feral Pug-bear could freeze a Sunny.

The first step for the Pug-bears was to take over the planet of the Pugs. They'd found out about the Pugs from the Sunnys and had immediately realized that these fierce creatures could be molded into their slaves. The Pugs would make good soldiers and provide the Pug-bears with an unquestioning slave that could use hand-held weapons, something that the Sunnys were constitutionally incapable of doing.

“We tried to escape the Great Ones, but, just as we can't fight physically, we can't fight them mentally. We just aren't mentally constructed that way. We are completely trapped and we ended up yielding all five of our colonized planets to the control of the Great Ones. They also took our beautiful, home planet! We have been prisoners, no, slaves for the past two centuries. The only possible thing was for us to aid the Great Ones' expansion plans and wait for some miracle. We hope that you humans could be that miracle.”

The Pug-bears had seemed unstoppable. They'd successfully taken over fourteen planets in twelve different solar systems. Of the fourteen invaded planets, five had held civilizations of various degrees of development. The Pug-bears and Pugs used the Sunnys' spacecraft and their knowledge of quantum physics. The Sunnys had eventually developed the matter transporters for short-range travel. With the spacecraft and transporters as their modes of travel, they had access to other planets. The initial lack of FTL travel didn't bother them, since they didn't think of extended travel time as an obstacle to their plans.

They'd also forced the Sunnys to develop weapons. The Sunnys couldn't use them, of course, but the Pugs could. The Pug-bears had no manipulative ability and they preferred to kill with their poison claws or jaws, but they rapidly saw the utility in weapons.

I was familiar with the splinter-guns, the antimatter rifles and bombs, and the electro-bolt shooting weapon. There were also some varieties of projectile shooting weapons, similar to human arms that were developed for the Pugs' use. With the development of the splinter-guns and the anti-matter weapons, the projectile shooters had been abandoned.

These constituted the entire armory developed by the Sunnys. The Pug-bears saw no reason to force the Sunnys to create any additional types of weapons since these had proven to be enough to destroy the five civilizations they'd encountered. The other nine planets they invaded only had animal life that was easily dominated. The Pug-bears found some of these planets to be paradise for them, since there were few Pug-bears and plenty of prey, giving them lots of room for expansion.

I asked the Sunnys if there were any natural pathogens or toxins on any planets that could cause the Pug-bears a problem. Their answer was complex, but, in their experience, there was nothing to worry about on other planets other than chemical toxins. The native viruses and single-celled life forms couldn't attack a non-native life form.

This surprised me until one of them explained. We tend to think of a virus as an elementary, not-very-evolved particle on the edge of life. In fact, our viruses are highly specialized to attack the creatures with which they evolved. Given an alien life form that the virus had never before encountered, it was less than a one in a trillion chance that the virus would find something in the alien's physical makeup that it could exploit. H. G. Wells' common-cold defense would never work in real life.

“We thought the Great Ones had met their match on one planet. They invaded a jungle planet that we believed contained only animals. There were no signs of civilization that showed up in our initial survey. Once the Great Ones established a beachhead on the planet, they met implacable resistance.”

They always used the same technique in their invasions. They'd send a robotic probe to establish a transporter on the surface. The large, interstellar spaceships were unable to land and the Pug-bears didn't care for the idea of physically landing in shuttles. If the civilization being invaded used electronics, they would use an EMP to destroy the target's communications.

I knew from my past experience with their first invasion and from the Ancient-One that the symbiont would die when it passed through a transporter unless it was in egg form, but I didn't know why. The Pug-bears recognized that their source of intelligence would disappear when they transported, so they normally just sent young, feral ones through the matter transmitters. They directed the Pugs to ship the symbiont egg wafers to the planet for feeding to the feral Pug-bears on the surface. This strategy, although cumbersome, eventually created enough intelligent Pug-bears to dominate the local environment.

The Sunnys explained, “The transporter technology limits the usable distance, not because the quantum waves can't travel farther, but because the transporter mechanism is susceptible to interference. It sometimes interpolates other waves into the signal. This is a function of the distance the signal has to travel; the distance between the two stations. When the distorted waveform reaches the destination transporter, it reassembles the signal to create the transported item and the result can be very unfortunate. The creature that tries to travel too far often comes out as a real mess; not a mutant, but just too distorted to live. Short distances like those found in a solar system are not a problem, except for the symbionts. They are extremely sensitive to even small distortions of their energy wave structure and even a short transporter jump will kill them.”

An intelligent Pug-bear wouldn't travel through a transporter under normal circumstances. I'd seen them do it, however, and realized that they would sacrifice their symbiont if the circumstances were important enough.

“The fifteenth planet that the Great Ones attempted to invade turned out to be the home of an animal that was far more fierce than any they'd previously encountered. Even more dangerous than the Great Ones themselves. The animal was intelligent to some unknown degree. Although it had no visible signs of civilization, the members of its species would organize and work together to set elaborate ambushes for the Great Ones and the Pugs. Given the general lack of intelligence of the newly arrived Pug-bears, the ambushes were very successful.”

The armed Pugs had also been outclassed. Some of their weapons were adequate to combat the enemy, but generally, they were killed before they even became aware that any danger was near. Stealth and cunning seemed to be the winning combination and neither were the natural attributes of either the Pugs or the feral Pug-bears.

I asked, “Why don't the intelligent Pug-bears come to the planetary surface in shuttles? I can understand why not transporters, but why not fly down?”

The answer was that they did, but they never went anywhere in force. There just weren't enough intelligent ones to go around. Instead, they relied on growing symbionts on the invaded planetary surface. There might be only one or two intelligent, older individuals on any planet at any one time.

The Sunnys resumed their history, “They made us leave that planet and we abandoned it except for an observation station. We left it orbiting the world, just in case the denizens developed some ability to strike back or to get into space.”

So far, the Sunny observers and the Pug warriors had seen no activity that would indicate any technological advances made by the inhabitants of that planet.

This was a lot of information to absorb and it nearly exhausted me to find it out. It was made worse by the speed of the transmission. The actual 'conversation' only took a few minutes; thought is faster than speech, after all. My human companions were getting restless and I had to pause a few times to ask them to restrain themselves. Ted and Frank finally stretched out on the floor and closed their eyes. Erin just kept watching me, somewhat suspiciously as the Sunnys brought me up to the present situation. It was very interesting.