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Ultimate Life

by ALBERT de PINA and HENRY HASSE

People tend to think of things in the terms of the familiar. When a layman speaks of "life on

other worlds" he actually means something recognizably human. But the facts indicate that

intelligence in one form or another may be found everywhere. The humble ant has a complex

social structure, including extreme specialization of types for certain functions; it tends its

"milk-producing cattle" and even organizes and conducts real wars. Yet no beginning has

been made by man at communicating with the ants. Our chances of recognizing intelligent life

on another world, particularly in alien guise, is remote. Our chances of communicating with

them are fainter still. An intergalactic alien, then, might be forgiven if he needed a lot of

convincing before he was certain that man fulfilled his own definition of intelligence.

BOLIVAR rested the nozzle and hose connected to the insecticide cylinder on the bright, blue-green

grass. He raised his head and gazed at the sky as he wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of

the synthetic silk shirt he wore; it was an all-purpose material, easy to produce and marvelously

long-wearing.

A short distance away, Gus stopped too, and the acrid, blinding fumes of the chemical swirled about

them as it was dispersed by a slight breeze which gently swayed the stand of chestnut-like trees in the

background.

"So we've sterilized this section," Gus grinned, as he spat with accuracy at an inch-long varihued worm

which had been laboriously crawling toward him. The strong tobacco juice stopped the insect in its track;

it writhed, curled and lay still.

"It'll stay lousy for a week." Bolivar stooped down and began to coil nozzle and hose, then carried it

back to the portable cylinder.

From the clump of trees, the sound of a gong reverberated through the vast stillness. After the

overcrowded cacaphony of Earth, this virgin world, with its immense desolate expanses and primeval

silence, was something they had not become accustomed to.

But this planet had its compensations. No one could suffer from claustrophobia here; the silence would

eventually be conquered by the beneficial insects and harmless birds which the government of Terra had

provided.

In any event, although they were in a sense outcasts, no criminal stigma had been attached to the order

for their relocation.

The surging billions of Terra had achieved a delicate balance where excesses—even emotional

ones—could not be tolerated. It was too dangerous to allow uncontrollable psychological factors to alter

established patterns.

The two thousand families which had finally been relocated on the deserted planet had been carefully

screened for precisely those factors which in the dim past had been considered virtues, but which in the

highly sophisticated and regimented Terran social order, were considered dangerous survivals from

another age.

In short, although the word was never used, they were classified as Class A. atavisms.

When Bolivar arrived at the plastic prefabricated dwelling which was his home, Stella had supper on the

table. He kissed her warmly, tenderly, for the wonder and ecstasy of their honeymoon still lingered,

touching even the loneliness of this new world with the miracle of its happiness.

It was a simple, frugal meal of Terran vegetables and proteinates which had the taste and texture of flesh.

They had to be frugal. The newly planted crops and grains had yet to germinate and be harvested; the

dairy and food animals must be preserved until their multiplication would reach the point where their

consumption was feasible.

And the spaceship which had brought them, along with all the imperatives for colonization had gone, its

dwindling fire becoming a shooting star in the heavens and finally disappearing in the endless void. It left

behind a world of loneliness, but not before it had given these strong, resourceful Terrans the incentive of

creating a new world. The crew of the spaceship might have spared itself the twinges of conscience they

had felt on leaving the colonists behind.

They didn't quite understand, on viewing the desolate expanse of the new planet, that its very primitive

grandeur had not only provided the colonists with a creative challenge—a new incentive—but with

something more which belonged in all truth to another age.

Bolivar sat down at the table and smiled whimsically at the way Stella had managed to find blue flowers

in the forests to decorate the table.

He gazed at her and for a moment it seemed to him as if he were viewing the future, when their plastic

home would be alive with children. The long afternoons would resound the lowing of cattle. There would

be birds nesting in the trees, endlessly bickering, or soaring in streams of song. And the fields, golden

with ripening grain, would sweep in shining waves to the very shores of the one placid ocean.

He remembered his last year on Earth. The stifling monotony of his days as a minor agricultural engineer.

Stifled by the sameness which condemned him with millions of others to a changeless security which

allowed for no promotion just as it regarded as unthinkable any retrogression. The miniscule alcove which

served as his home; the rigidly rationed food, clothing, and necessities—and the crowds, always the

inescapable tidal wave of humanity which suffocated every moment of his life.

"Dreaming of Earth?" Stella inquired gently, and there was a nostalgic expression in her eyes.

He shook his head and smiled. "No, my dear. I was dreaming of what our new world will be like. Think

of it, we can literally build a world to our heart's desire. We'll be not only existing, like on Earth, but living

and growing!"

THEY BEGAN to eat, wrapped in the silence of the lengthening shadows, as the pale yellow sun sank

into the calm blue waters. "I'll be glad when you've finished sterilizing," Stella spoke. "We might have a

garden of our own. It's a wonderful feeling to see growing things. On Earth, all I ever saw from the

windows of the hospital where I worked were the rearing buildings, and the gray-black pavements." She

laughed happily. "I've never even seen a garden. May I have one now?" Bolivar smiled tenderly. Flowers,

fragile things all beauty and color. On Earth only eating things could be grown. But here, a whole planet

awaited a new rebirth—the song of birds; the travail of the harvests; and for the first time the sound of

laughter. "Won't be long now, this whole sector will be cleared of those stubborn pests. The more we try

to sterilize, the deeper they burrow into the ground. It's uncanny the way they put up subsurface

defenses. One would think they had human intelligence!" "Is it so critical?" Stella inquired innocently.

Bolivar shrugged. "It is, if we're to be sure of having crops. They're like politicians ... undermining

everything. This world's like a door to life, Stella. We can't risk having it closed on us."

The Genserians

IT HAD been eons since their lives had been ruled by self-interest, passions, or sentiment.

They were a race so old that all the changes of passion, heartbreak, and adventure had been wrung from

their souls.

Only loneliness remained.

Among the thousands—millions, even of stars, theirs had given birth to a planet that bore life. And that

life was their race. The irony was that except for them, their galaxy was sterile. So they thought!

Alone, in their own eternity of space, they had gradually passed through all the stages of savagery,

barbarism, wars, and finally the beginnings of true civilization. But all of that had been immeasurable ages

ago, until even the memory of past wars had ceased to be a legend, and the legends themselves had

grown dim and ceased to exist.

Throughout millenia, conflict among themselves had become impossible, and violence an impossible

psychological aberration. Even science had ceased to be an adventure.

At first, as the virus of their galactic boredom be- came more and more intense, their starships roamed

the limitless reaches of their galaxy-, searching, always searching for some form of life that might offer the

kinship of intelligence. But it was the irony of their destiny that among the thousands of stars and their

planetary systems, the only forms of life they had found were either so brutish and bestial, or so utterly

alien, that not even their extraordinary science could hasten their evolution toward intelligence.

The Genserians were fated, it seemed, to an eternity of killing time instead of employing it creatively as

the very substance of life lived to its fullest.

More and more their life had become devoid of wonder. Steeped in melancholy and lacking incentive, it

had become a grey transition between birth and extinction. Little by little their literature, their magnificent

arts—even their music—began to sink into the background and to disappear along with innumerable

variations of pleasure they had long since invented.

They could not even pass on to a younger race the treasury of inventions and discoveries which enriched

their world. Thus they were denied that final meaning which lies in parenthood—galactic parenthood was

their lot.

And then, in one of those scout trips to the limits of their galaxy—more to commune with the eternal

melancholy silence of space than anything else—they had discovered the planet Rima. It had suited their

mood, for it was desolate like their minds—barren of intelligent life like their galaxy. And yet, like a

nostalgic reminder of their ancient dreams, it was verdant and aglow with the golden wash of a beneficent

sun.

Varona had commanded the scout ship. The crew, which was not a crew—for any of its members could

have filled any position on the ship except one—had kept up the illusion of its being a flight of

exploration. They were all aware, of course, that it would be as sterile as previous ones. So that when

they landed, it was more to break the monotony of space flight, than to try to confirm any possible hope.

For a moment, as they first breathed the clean fragrant air, and trod fastidiously on the lush grass,

something of the very primitiveness of the uninhabited planet seemed to touch them. They even

speculated what it would be like to begin all over again in this new world, and build it anew. And then

they saw the futility of such an idea. They had become too utterly removed from the realities of

pioneering.

They stood silent, their ten-feet-tall incredibly thin and fragile bodies slightly translucent, scarcely casting a

shadow on the blue-green turf. There were no signs of life. And then, Varona had kicked over a large

clod of soil, revealing the small mouth of a subsurface chamber.

There was life! But to their chagrin, so inconceivably non-Genserian that they did not even betray their

thought-processes. Whatever the fundamental structure of their minds was, there seemed to be no way of

contacting them. But it was intelligent life, there could be no question about that!

To the Genserians, it became an enormous incentive. Here was a challenge, and a promise, and a

confirmation of their hopes.

These subsurface dwellers of a primitive planet, whose soft white bodies were not more than an inch

long, became all of a sudden the center of attention of Genserian culture. Scientists theorized and even

argued for the first time in thousands of orbitemps* concerning the aliens' social structure; for they had

one! (*An orbitemp (pl. orbitemps, or orbitempi) is the time measure it takes for a given planet to make

one revolution around its sun.)

They had vastly more than that, in the complex yet rigid matriarchy which ruled their dark world. It was

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