Meeting of the Minds
By ROBERT SHECKLEY
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine February 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What mission had the Quedak been given?
Even he couldn't remember any more—but
he refused to die till it was completed!
PART ONE
The Quedak lay on a small hilltop and watched a slender jet of lightdescend through the sky. The feather-tailed jet was golden, andbrighter than the sun. Poised above it was a glistening metallicobject, fabricated rather than natural, hauntingly familiar. The Quedaktried to think what it was.
He couldn't remember. His memories had atrophied with his functions,leaving only scattered fragments of images. He searched among them now,leafing through his brief scraps of ruined cities, dying populations, ablue-water-filled canal, two moons, a spaceship....
That was it. The descending object was a spaceship. There had beenmany of them during the great days of the Quedak.
Those great days were over, buried forever beneath the powdery sands.Only the Quedak remained. He had life and he had a mission to perform.The driving urgency of his mission remained, even after memory andfunction had failed.
As the Quedak watched, the spaceship dipped lower. It wobbled andsidejets kicked out to straighten it. With a gentle explosion of dust,the spaceship settled tail first on the arid plain.
And the Quedak, driven by the imperative Quedak mission, dragged itselfpainfully down from the little hilltop. Every movement was an agony. Ifhe were a selfish creature, the Quedak would have died. But he was notselfish. Quedaks owed a duty to the universe; and that spaceship, afterall the blank years, was a link to other worlds, to planets where theQuedak could live again and give his services to the native fauna.
He crawled, a centimeter at a time, and wondered whether he had thestrength to reach the alien spaceship before it left this dusty, deadplanet.
Captain Jensen of the spaceship Southern Cross was bored sick withMars. He and his men had been here for ten days. They had found noimportant archeological specimens, no tantalizing hints of ancientcities such as the Polaris expedition had discovered at the SouthPole. Here there was nothing but sand, a few weary shrubs, and arolling hill or two. Their biggest find so far had been three potteryshards.
Jensen readjusted his oxygen booster. Over the rise of a hill he sawhis two men returning.
"Anything interesting?" he asked.
"Just this," said engineer Vayne, holding up an inch of corroded bladewithout a handle.
"Better than nothing," Jensen said. "How about you, Wilks?"
The navigator shrugged his shoulders. "Just photographs of thelandscape."
"OK," Jensen said. "Dump everything into the sterilizer and let's getgoing."
Wilks looked mournful. "Captain, one quick sweep to the north mightturn up something really—"
"Not a chance," Jensen said. "Fuel, food, water, everything wascalculated for a ten-day stay. That's three days longer than Polarishad. We're taking off this evening."
The men nodded. They had no reaso