Quozl by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

Supervisor’s ears crooked ever so slightly. “We reacted the wrong way at first, which is to say we reacted as we should have. That was a mistake, and unnecessary. It was decided rather hastily and on Senses-go-Fade’s advice to retract the alarm in order not to panic the ship, since the majority of colonials will have nothing to do with this matter. They must be prepared to receive the information gradually. A parokim tree grows strong only when care is taken in planting.”
    â€œBut ‘battle stations’? That’s just for tradition’s sake.”
    â€œSome traditions have a way of haunting history.” Everyone turned to Stream-cuts-Through.
    Looks tumbled into a chair. “I still don’t understand.”
    â€œI was present when the analysis was confirmed,” said Burden-carries-Far from nearby. He was as tense as when Looks had entered. “We weren’t out of unshifted space very long. Preliminary surveys were well under way when I entered Command. I had a question which I quickly forgot as the situation became apparent.”
    â€œ What situation?” said an exasperated Looks-at-Charts.
    â€œYou can imagine the reaction among the onboard survey team,” Burden continued with a touch of irony in his voice. “They were as anxious as everyone else to do the tasks for which they had been training all their lives. Instead they found themselves distracted and set to an entirely new work.”
    â€œThey found something unexpected,” Looks said.
    Burden’s ears went absolutely sideways, parallel to the floor. “At first nobody believed the information that was coming in, but they were right there the instant the Sequencer entered Shiraz orbit. Emanations from the surface, mostly in the form of primitive radio waves. Too much to be natural phenomena.”
    â€œAs we enter nightside you can see it with the naked eye,” an obviously troubled Lifts-with-Shout added.
    Looks-at-Charts was uncertain. “See it?”
    â€œLight. From population centers. Urban concentrations.”
    â€œArtificial illumination.” Burden’s ears twisted. “Once we saw that, even the most reluctant conceded the obvious.”
    â€œCould they be Quozl? Another settlement ship gone off course and come to rest here?”
    A senior navigator spoke up from the far side of the room. “Settlement ships don’t go ‘off course.’ Besides, the transmissions are all wrong. There are numerous languages in use down there, and none of them are Quozl.”
    â€œAnd there’s another reason,” the Landing Supervisor mumbled to himself.
    Looks-at-Charts was both anxious and excited. Another intelligence! All the texts insisted that there was no such thing, that the Quozl were alone in the universe and would be so until the end of time. So it fell to the Quozl to fill up the inhabitable worlds with life. That was the Quozl purpose.
    Now it appeared that unless all the signs had been misinterpreted they had company. Or competition.
    His questions came too fast to sort out. All he could manage was, “What are they like?”
    â€œWe don’t know,” said Stream-cuts-Through softly. “Their multitudinous transmissions are verbal only, no visual. But we know that they cannot be like us.”
    â€œHow can we know that?”
    The Landing Supervisor eyed him sharply. “Because they are at war.” All fourteen of the Captain’s fingers were interlocked, tight with tension.
    Looks-at-Charts tried to mull the implications, found too many contradictions not to question further. By now he had remembered who and where he was.
    â€œI apologize for my ignorance and for my unsatisfied mind, but how can we know such a thing if we cannot even see what they look like?”
    Burden explained. “Our instruments are not powerful enough to resolve individual creatures on the surface, but at their best they can detect the