The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Aliens, by Murray Leinster

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Title: The Aliens

Author: Murray Leinster

Illustrator: van Dongen

Release Date: January 1, 2008 [EBook #24104]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's note:

This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction August 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.]

THE ALIENS

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by van Dongen

[Illustration]

_The human race was expanding through the galaxy ... and so, they
knew, were the Aliens. When two expanding empires meet ... war is
inevitable. Or is it ...?_

At 04 hours 10 minutes, ship time, the _Niccola_ was well inside the
Theta Gisol solar system. She had previously secured excellent evidence
that this was not the home of the Plumie civilization. There was no tuned
radiation. There was no evidence of interplanetary travel--rockets would
be more than obvious, and a magnetronic drive had a highly characteristic
radiation-pattern--so the real purpose of the _Niccola's_ voyage would
not be accomplished here. She wouldn't find out where Plumies came from.

There might, though, be one or more of those singular, conical,
hollow-topped cairns sheltering silicon-bronze plates, which constituted
the evidence that Plumies existed. The _Niccola_ went sunward toward the
inner planets to see. Such cairns had been found on conspicuous landmarks
on oxygen-type planets over a range of some twelve hundred light-years.
By the vegetation about them, some were a century old. On the same
evidence, others had been erected only months or weeks or even days
before a human Space Survey ship arrived to discover them. And the
situation was unpromising. It wasn't likely that the galaxy was big
enough to hold two races of rational beings capable of space travel. Back
on ancient Earth, a planet had been too small to hold two races with
tools and fire. Historically,