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                            the ethicators

                           BY WILLARD MARSH

              _They were used to retarded life forms, but
           this was the worst. Yet it is a missionary's duty
            to bring light where there is none, for who can
            tell what devious forms evolution might take?_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The missionaries came out of the planetary system of a star they didn't
call Antares. They called it, naturally enough, The Sun--just as home
was Earth, Terra, or simply The World. And naturally enough, being the
ascendant animal on Earth, they called themselves human beings. They
were looking for extraterrestrial souls to save.

They had no real hope of finding humans like themselves in this
wonderously diversified universe. But it wasn't against all probability
that, in their rumaging, there might not be a humanoid species to whom
they could reach down a helping paw; some emergent cousin with at least
a rudimentary symmetry from snout to tail, and hence a rudimentary soul.

The ship they chose was a compact scout, vaguely resembling the outside
of an orange crate--except that they had no concept of an orange crate
and, being a tesseract, it had no particular outside. It was simply an
expanding cube (and as such, quite roomy) whose "interior" was always
paralleling its "exterior" (or attempting to), in accordance with all
the well-known, basic and irrefutable laws on the subject.

A number of its sides occupied the same place at the same time, giving
a hypothetical spectator the illusion of looking down merging sets of
railway tracks. This, in fact, was its precise method of locomotion.
The inner cube was always having to catch up, caboose-fashion, with
the outer one in time (or space, depending on one's perspective).
And whenever it had done so, it would have arrived with itself--at
approximately wherever in the space-time continuum it had been pointed.

When they felt the jar of the settling geodesics, the crew crowded at
the forward visiplate to see where they were. It was the outskirts of
a G type star system. Silently they watched the innermost planet float
past, scorched and craggy, its sunward side seeming about to relapse to
a molten state.

The Bosun-Colonel turned to the Conductor. "A bit of a disappointment
I'm afraid, sir. Surely with all that heat...?"

"Steady, lad. The last wicket's not been bowled." The Conductor's
whiskers quivered in amusement at his next-in-command's impetuosity.
"You'll notice that we're dropping downward. If the temperature
accordingly continues dropping--"

He couldn't shrug, he wasn't physiologically capable of it, but it was
apparent that he felt they'd soon reach a planet whose climate could
support intelligent life.

If the Bosun-Colonel had any ideas that such directions as up and
down were meaningless in space, he kept them to himself. As the second
planet from its sun hove into view, he switched on the magniscan
eagerly.

"I say, this is more like it. Clouds and all that sort of thing. Should
we have a go at it, sir?"

The Conductor yawned. "Too bloody cloudy for my taste. Too equivocal.
Let's push on," he said languidly. "I have a hunch the third planet
might be just our dish of tea."

Quelling his disappointment, the Bosun-Colonel waited for the third
planet to swim into being. And when it did, blooming like an orchid
in all its greens and moistnesses, he could scarcely contain his
excitement.

"Why, it looks just like Earth," he marveled. "Gad, sir, what a master
stroke of navigation. How did you realize this would be it?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Conductor said modestly. "Things usually have
a habit of occurring in threes. I'm quite a student of numerology, you
know." Then he remembered the Mission and drew himself erect on all his
legs. "You may prepare for landing, Mister," he ordered crisply.

The Bosun-Colonel shifted over to manual and busied himself at the
helm, luffing the square craft down the troughs of air. Gliding over
the vast tropical oceans, he put down at a large land mass above a
shallow warm sea, twenty-five degrees below the northern pole.

Too numbed for comment, the crew stared out at the alien vista. They'd
heard of retarded life forms from other Missionary expeditions--of
planets where the inhabitants, in extreme emergency, had been known
to commit murder. But this was surely the worst, the most vicious
imaginable in the galaxy.

Here, with life freshly up from the sea, freshly launched on the long
climb to maturity and self-realization--was nothing but horror. With so
lush a vegetation, so easily capable of supporting them side by side
in abundance, the monsters were actually feeding on each other. Great
lumbering beasts they were with their bristling hides and huge tails,
charging between the giant tree ferns; gouging living chunks from one
another while razor-toothed birds with scaly wings flapped overhead,
screaming for the remnants. As the sounds of carnage came through the
audio ports, the youngest Oarsman keeled over in a faint.

Even the Conductor was visibly shaken. The Bosun-Colonel turned to him
with a sick expression.

"Surely it's a lost cause, Skipper. Life like this will never have a
soul worth saving."

"Not in its present stage," the Old Man was forced to agree. "Still,
one never knows the devious paths that evolution takes." He considered
the scene for a thoughtful, shuddering interval. "Perhaps in several
thousand millenniums...."

The Bosun-Colonel tried to visualize the possibility of Ethical Life
ever materializing through these swamp mists, but the logic against it
was too insurmountable for the imagination.

"Even so," he conceded, "granting the impossible--whatever shape it
took, the only worthwhile species would still be...." He couldn't bring
himself to say it.

"Meat-eaters," the Conductor supplied grimly.

On hearing this, the Oarsman who had just revived promptly fainted
again.

"It's too deep in the genes," the Conductor continued, "too far
advanced for us to tamper with. All we can hope to do is modify their
moral outlook. So that by the time they achieve star travel, they'll at
least have a basic sense of Fair Play."

Sighing, bowed by responsibilities incommensurate with his
chronological youth, he gave the order wearily. It was snapped down the
chain of command to the Senior Yardbird:

"All paws stand by to lower the Ethics Ray! Step lively, lads--bugger
off, now...."

There was a din of activity as the outer locks were opened and the
bulky mechanism was shipped over the side. It squatted on a cleared
rise of ground in all its complex, softly ticking majesty, waiting for
the First Human to pad within range of its shedding Grace and Uplift.
The work party scrambled back to the ship, anxious to be off this
sinister terrain. Once more the crew gathered at the visiplate as the
planet fell away beneath them, the Ethics Ray winking in the day's last
light like a cornerstone. Or perhaps a tambourine....

       *       *       *       *       *

Night closed down on the raw chaotic world, huge beasts closed in on
the strange star-fallen souvenir. They snuffled over it; then enraged
at discovering it was nothing they could fill their clamoring mindless
stomachs with, attempted to wreck it. They were unsuccessful, for
the Machine had been given an extra heavy coat of shellac and things
to withstand such monkeyshines. And the Machine, in its own finely
calibrated way, ignored its harassers, for they had no resemblance to
the Life it had been tuned to influence.

Days lengthened into decades, eons. The seas came shouldering in to
stand towers tall above the Ethics Ray, lost in the far ooze below.
Then even the seas receded, and the mountains buckled upward in their
place, their arrogant stone faces staring changelessly across the
epochs. Until they too were whittled down by erosion. The ice caps
crept down, crackling and grinding the valleys. The ground stretched
and tossed like a restless sleeper, settled, and the Ethics Ray was
brought to light once more.

As it always had, it continued beaming its particular signal, on
a cosmic ray carrier modulated by a pulse a particular number of
angstroms below infrared. The beasts that blundered within its field
were entirely different now, but they still weren't the Right Ones.
Among them were some shambling pale bipeds, dressed in skins of other
beasts, who clucked over its gleaming exterior and tried to chip it
away for spearheads. In this of course they were unsuccessful.

And then one day the First Human wandered by, paused square in the
path of the beam. His physiology was only approximate, his I.Q. was
regrettably low--but he was Pre-Moral Life, such as it was, on this
planet.

The Ethics Ray made the necessary frequency adjustments, tripped on
full force. The Primitive froze under the bombardment, its germ plasm
shifting in the most minute and subtle dimensions. Then, its mission
fulfilled, the Ethics Ray collapsed into heavy molecules and sank into
the ground. The first convert raced away in fright, having no idea what
had happened. Neither did his billion sons and daughters....

       *       *       *       *       *

Back on the home base, the Conductor reported in at the Ethication of
Primitive Planets office. It was a magnificently imposing building,
as befitting the moral seat of the universe. And the Overseer was an
equally imposing human with ears greyed by service. His congratulations
were unreserved.

"A splendid mission, lad," he said, "and I don't mind
suggesting--strictly entre nous--that it could jolly well result in a
Fleet Conductorship for you."

The Conductor was overwhelmed.

"Now just let me jot down the essentials while they're still fresh in
mind," he continued, pawing through a desk drawer. "Botheration! I seem
to have traded the last of my styluses. Do you happen to have one on
you?"

"With pleasure." The Conductor handed over his monogrammed gold stylus,
receiving in exchange a toy silencemaker.

"My youngster traded it to me this morning," the Overseer chuckled.

He wrote rapidly for several moments, then gave the stylus back. The
Conductor found a weathered paper-weight in his rear pocket, which he
traded him for it. It looked like it might have come from this very
desk at one time. Then with a smart salute, he about-faced.

On the way out, a pair of secretaries paused in their trading of a pelt
brush for a tail-curler to watch him admiringly. As well they might.
Fleet Conductor!

The future Fleet Conductor of a solar system he would never think of
calling Antares paused at the door. In its polished panel he regarded
himself with due appreciation. He had sown the seeds of civilization on
a far-flung planet where, countless light years from now, they would
flower to maturity. Not among the strongest or cleverest species, to
be sure, but among those most worthy of applying First Principles, the
moral law of give and take.

Among those remote cousins of the Conductor himself--who under no
circumstances would ever think of himself as resembling a rather
oversized trader rat.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ethicators, by Willard Marsh
{'title': 'The Ethicators by Willard Marsh', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}