Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories by George O. Smith

Author:George O. Smith [Smith, George O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Collection
Published: 2021-08-13T23:00:00+00:00

* * * *

Huvane said, “He’s locked in air-tight with guards who can be trusted. Now what do we do with him?”

“He will co-operate.”

“By force?”

“No, Huvane. By depriving him of the one thing that Life cannot exist without.”

“Food? Safety?”

Chelan shook his head. “More primitive than these.” He lowered his voice. “He suffers now from being cut off from his kind. Life starts, complaining about the treatment it receives during the miracle of birth and crying for its first breath of air. Life departs gasping for air, with someone listening for the last words, the last message from the dying. Communication, Huvane, is the primary drive of all Life, from plant to animal to man—and if such exists, superman.

“Through communication Life goes on. Communication is the prime requisite to procreation. The firefly signals his mate by night, the human male entices his woman with honeyed words and is not the gift of a jewel a crystalline, enduring statement of his undying affection?”

Chelan dropped his flowery manner and went on in a more casual vein: “Huvane, boil it down to the least attractive form of simplification, no life stands alone. And no viable life goes on without communication, I shall shut off the Terran’s communication.”

“Then he will go rank staring, raving mad.”

“No, for I shall offer him the alternative. Co-operate, or molder in utter blankness.”

Huvane shrugged. “Seems to me that any Terran locked in a duralim cell so far from home the distance means nothing is already cut from communication.”

“Deeper, deeper, Huvane. The brain lies prisoner within a cell of bone. Its contact with the Outside world lies along five channels of sensory communication. Everything that the brain believes about the Universe is the product of sensory information carried inward by sight, touch, sound, taste and smell. From five basic bits of information, knowledge of the Great Truth is formed through logic and self-argument. Everything.”

“But—”

“Oh, now stop. I am not expressing my own singular opinion. I believe a rather great proportion of the things that I was taught, and I was taught through the self-same five sensory channel.”

“Um-m-m.”

“Good. Just plain ‘Um-m-m.’ Now we shall shut off the Terran’s channels of communication until he consents as an alternative. This, Huvane, hasn’t been tried before. It may bring us the final important bit of information.”

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