There Won't Be War

More time passed, and quite a few light years sped by, when a flash of green light from the instrumentation readout telltale told the duty officer that they were near-ing the source of the signal.

He got up and went to the captain’s quarters in the quickest way, by express elevator and pneumo tube.

Vargas was in deep sleep when a hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Hmmmf?”

“Planet ahead, sir.”

“Call me for the next one.”

“I think you’d better check this out, sir.” Vargas got out of bed grumpily and followed the man down to the Communications Area.

“Something is coming through,” the operator of the Intelligence Detector said.

General Vargas looked over his shoulder. “What’ve you got there, son?”

“I think it’s an intelligent bleep,” the operator said.

General Vargas blinked several times, but the concept did not come clear. He glared at the operator, sucking his lips angrily until the operator hastily said, “What I’m saying, sir, is that our forward-scanning intelligence-seeking beam has picked up a trace. This may be nothing, of course, but it’s possible that our pattern-matching program has found an intelligent pattern which, of course, argues the presence of intelligent life.”

“You mean/’ Vargas said, “that we are about to discover our first intelligent race out in the galaxy?”

“That is probably the case, sir.”

“Great,” Vargas said, and announced to his crew and soldiers that they should wake up and stand by.

The planet from which the signal had come was a pretty place with an oxygen atmosphere and plenty of water and trees and sunshine. If you wanted some nice-looking real estate, this planet could be a good investment, except that it was a long commute back to Earth. But this was not at all what Vargas and his men had been looking for. The various drone probes sent out from Earth in the last century had already found plenty of real estate. Robot mining in the asteroids had already dropped the price of minerals to unprecedented lows. Even gold was now commonly referred to as yellow tooth-filling material. What the Earthmen wanted was people to conquer, not just another real estate subdivision in deep space.

The Earth ship went into orbit around the planet. General Vargas ordered down an investigation team, backed up by a battle group, it in turn backed up by the might of the ship, to find the intelligent creatures on this planet, which in the planetary catalogue was called Mazzi 32410A.

A quick aerial survey showed no cities, no towns, not even a hamlet. More detailed aerial surveys failed to show the presence of pastoral hunters or primitive farmers. Not even barefooted fruit gatherers could be found. Yet still the intelligence probe on the ship continued to produce its monotonous beep, sure and unmistakable sign that intelligent life was lurking somewhere around. Vargas put Colonel John Vanderlash in charge of the landing party.

* * *

Colonel John Vanderlash brought along a portable version of the Intelligence Detector, for it seemed possible that the inhabitants of this planet had concealed themselves in underground cities.

The portable intelligence beam projector was mounted on an eight-wheeled vehicle capable of going almost anywhere. A signal was soon picked up. Vanderlash, a small man with big shoulders and a pockmarked face, directed his driver to follow it. The crew of the eight-wheeler stood to their guns, since intelligent beings were known to be dangerous. The were ready to retaliate at the first sign of hostile intent, or even sooner.

They followed the beam signal into an enormous cave. As they moved deeper into it, the signal grew stronger, until it approximated Intelligence Level 5.3, the equivalent of a man thinking about doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. The driver of the foremost assault vehicle shifted to a lower gear. The vehicle crept forward slowly, Colonel Vanderlash standing in the prow. He figured the intelligent beings had to be around here somewhere, probably just around the corner ...

Then the operator announced that the signal was fading.

“Stop!” Vanderlash said. “We’ve lost them! Back up!”

The vehicle backed. The signal came back to strength.

“Stop here!” Vanderlash said, and the eight-wheeler skidded to a stop. They were in the middle of the signal’s field of maximum strength.

The men stared around them, fingers on triggers, breaths bated.

“Doesn’t anyone see anything?” Vanderlash asked.

There was a low mutter of denial among the men. One of them said, “Ain’t nothin’ here but them moths, sir.”

“Moths?” Vanderlash said. “Moths? Where!”

“Right ahead of us, sir,” the driver said.

Vanderlash looked at the moths dancing in the vehicle’s yellow headlight beam. There were a lot of them. They darted and flashed and turned and cavorted and twirled and sashayed and dodged and danced and fluttered and crepusculated and do-si-doed.

There was a pattern to their movements. As Vanderlash watched, a thought came to him.

“Point the intelligence beam at them,” he said.