Instinct

You can keep a good man down, if you’ve got enough headstart, are alert and persistent ... so long as he limits himself to acting like a good man....
Illustrated by Martinez
t was 047-63-10 when he opened the door. Before his superior could chew him for prepunctuality, Huvane said as the chief looked up and opened his mouth to start:
“Sorry, but you should know. Terra is at it again.”
Chelan’s jaw snapped shut. He passed a hand over his face and asked in a tone of pure exasperation. “The same?” and as Huvane nodded, Chelan went on, “Why can’t they make a mistake and blow themselves out of our hair? How far did they get this time?”
“All the way.”
“And out?”
Huvane sat down shaking his head slowly. “Not yet, but they’re over the hump, you know.” Huvane’s face brightened ever so slightly. “I can’t be criticized for not counting them, chief. But I’ll estimate that there must be at least a couple of hundred atoms of 109 already. And you know that nobody could make 109 if they hadn’t already evolved methods of measuring the properties of individual atoms. So as soon as they find that their boom-sample doesn’t behave like the standard mess out of a bombardment chamber, they won’t rest until they find out why. They’ll find out. Then it’ll be 109, 109, 109 until we’re forced to clobber them again.”
Bitterly Chelan looked up. “I don’t think I need the lecture. I admire their tenacity. I admire their ambition. I admire their blasphemous, consignatory, obscenity attitude of acting as if the Great Creator had concocted the whole glorious Universe for their own playground. Yes,” said the chief wearily, “singly they aren’t bad traits. Boiled down into the self-esteem of a single race, I don’t admire them any more. I’m simply scared.”
“Yeah. Well, we’ve got time.”
“Not much. What’s their space potential this time?”
“Still scragged on the mass-inertia-relativity barrier. Tailburners ... er, chemical reaction engines. Manned and unmanned orbital flights. Half a dozen landings on their sister planet. No,” said Huvane as he saw the chief’s puzzlement, “I don’t mean Number Two ... the one they call Venus this time. I mean their co-orbital companion. The Moon. They still call it that.”