To Each His Own

By JACK SHARKEY

A world ideal for life will have life on it—but don't expect ideal life!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

On September the 24th, 1965, the Venusian spaceship Investigator floated gently to Earth in Times Square.

The sleek metal belly of the ship touched feather-light upon the asphalt "X" of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stubby stabilizing legs extended from ports along the sides of the hull, bracing the ship's mass against dangerous rolling, leaving it hulking there like some metallic beetle at rest.

The sun was almost directly overhead, sending yellow-gold serpentine glints wriggling on the gleaming surface of the ship. After the very slight thumping as the ship settled into place, there was no sound throughout the nearby streets of New York.

Absent was the noise of traffic, the hubbub of voices, the hurry-scurry of pedestrians. Nothing but heavy oppressive silence everywhere outside the body of the ship. No apprehensive eye appeared at a window to stare at the visitor from the nearest planet. No telephone was picked up in nervous haste to warn the authorities of the possible menace to the peoples of Earth. Just the silence and the dancing sunlight.

Inside the spaceship, there was swift, practiced activity.

The Venusians were a picked, trained crew. This, the first contact with the third planet, called for quick reaction, accurate evaluation, and competent decision.

Each of the five aboard had a job to do immediately upon landing. With no conversation, they were all at their tasks. It was an operation they'd practiced many times over, back at their home base on Venus. They were sick of the thing even before being sent to Earth. But their training had paid well, for now their motions were automatic, each separate action swift, sure and precise.

Gwann, the pilot, his heavy-lidded eyes narrowed with the intensity of concentration, checked and re-checked his instruments and gauges. His nimble three-digited hands, with their long, flat palms, flickered from button to switch to dial. He locked the stabilizing legs into position, once each leg had made its contact securely with the surface outside. He dampered the power of the interplanetary drive, leaving its deadly emanations at a low, and therefore safe, degree of pulsation. He checked the release valves of the individual skimmers, making certain at the same time that, should the atmosphere outside be hostile to Venusian breathing, the tanks were filled and the cockpit seals were tight and break-free.

Drog, the navigator, used compass, ruler and stylus upon the scant, almost rudimentary Earth map, to determine the exact point of contact with the third planet. Venusian telescopes were able to see—very indistinctly—continental outlines at the twenty-million-mile distance to their neighbor planet. But the foggy overhang that shrouded their home planet had made sharp topographical drawing well-nigh impossible.

Volval, as Drog passed him the information, relayed the findings by light-beam back to their home base. The geographical location, coded into the tight beam, sped outward from the surface of Earth toward Venus, where it would not be received for at least a minute and a half. Volval, having transmitted the data, waited impatiently while the Venusian biochemist tested the outside surface against their leaving the ship.

Jorik, the biochemist, revolved the small metal "cage" with its quivering, burbling Venusian life-forms on it back into the space over his work-table. The animals seemed unharmed by their exposure to the alien planet, but he began more definitive tests upon the samplings of atmosphere and soil and vegetation brought back by a tiny robo-skimmer that had searched throughout a three-mile radius of the ship immediately after the landing, and had returned by homing beam to its tiny access port in the thick metal side of the ship.

While Volval waited in increasing irritation, and Jorik ran his tests, Klendro, the most expendable member of the expedition, studied his speech over and over, his three-valved heart squirting its watery blood through his tiny, hairlike arteries and veins.

Klendro was almost a social outcast with these others, these real spacemen, though his job, he felt, was the most important. Klendro was the Venusian ambassador to the governments of Earth. He went over his speech again, hoping that the Earth broadcasts picked up now and then on Venus had been accurate enough for the Venusian linguists to write him a speech that wouldn't embarrass the Earth people by its inane misuses of their tongue.

Broadcasts had indicated that the major powers on Earth were the United States—whatever those were—of America and Soviet Russia. The Russian broadcasts, however, being nothing more than a series of eulogies declaring the happiness of life in Russia, had been too lacking in breadth to give the linguists much to work on. They had therefore chosen English as the tongue in which Klendro was to make his speech.

He lifted the scroll once more and began reading his speech half aloud, having a bit of trouble, as usual, in controlling the square-tipped surface of his tongue in forming the unfamiliar syllables.

"Pipple of Arth," he said, slowly and with much effort, "it is with grett plazzer that we mek this, tha farst contact with arr nebber planet. We are from tha second planet from yer—or mebbe Uh shudd seh arr—sun. Tha planet you knaw as Venus. We feel that we can share with arr nebber planet the froots of arr—of arr—" Klendro braced himself, then forced out awkwardly, "moot-yoo-ull sa-yan-tific ri-sarch...."

He refolded the long coil of the scroll and stuffed it into his belt-sack. Well, he told himself, for better or worse, I've got to give this speech. He wished he were anywhere but here.

Some of the broadcasts had indicated a certain belligerency in the inhabitants of this alien planet. He wondered, with a kind of sick fright, if he would ever have the opportunity to deliver the speech, even badly. Some of the more esoteric phrasings of the Earth broadcasts had eluded the interpretations of the Venusian linguists. One of the more recurrent phrases was a "slug in the guts." They were not sure exactly what this entailed, but, from the context, the linguists were certain that it was something dire, possibly fatal.

Klendro was a very unhappy Venusian.

"Volval!" Klendro heard Drog cry out. "Did you send that stuff?"

"Yes," the light-beam operator called back. "I'm waiting on Jorik now."

"All set here," called Jorik, coming into Volval's compartment, followed by Gwann. "The atmosphere is breathable. A little heavy on the oxygen and light on the carbon dioxide, but that was expected before we took off. If we take deep inhales and periodic radiation, we should be all right."

"Fine," said Gwann, the pilot and leader, as Klendro came into the room with the others. "Better keep your guns loose in their holsters, though. You know what they've told us about the Earthmen."

"Hot-headed." Volval nodded.

"Will we take the skimmers?" asked Jorik. "Or do you think the Earthmen would prefer being met without the barrier-screens around us?"

"They'd prefer it, all right!" said Drog. "However, in my opinion—"