Alien Emergencies - James White [22]
“But I did not intend to give a lecture on Kelgians,” he continued. “I did intend to discuss briefly the formation of what is now called the Galactic Federation…”
On the briefing screen behind him there appeared suddenly a three-dimensional representation of the galactic double spiral with its major stellar features and the edge of a neighboring galaxy, shown at distances that were not to scale. As they watched and listened a short, bright line of yellow light appeared near the rim, then another and another—the links between Earth and the early Earth-seeded colonies, and the systems of Orligia and Nidia, which were the first extraterrestrial cultures to be contacted. Another cluster of yellow lines appeared, the worlds colonized or contacted by Traltha.
Several decades had passed before the worlds available to the Orligians, Nidians, Tralthans and Earth-humans were made available to each other. (Beings tended to be suspicious in those days, on one occasion even to the point of war.) But time as well as distance was being compressed on this representation.
The tracery of golden lines grew more rapidly as contact, then commerce, was established with the highly advanced and stable cultures of Kelgia, Illensa, Hudlar, Melf and, if any, their associated colonies. Visually it did not seem to be an orderly progression. The lines darted inwards to the galactic center, doubled back to the rim, seesawed between zenith and nadir, and even made a jump across intergalactic space to link up with the Ian worlds—although in that instance it had been the Ians who had done the initial traveling. When the lines connected the worlds of the Galactic Federation, the planets known to contain intelligent and, in their own sometimes peculiar fashions, technically and philosophically advanced life, the result was an untidy yellow scribble resembling a cross between a DNA molecule and a bramble bush.
“…Only a tiny fraction of the Galaxy has been explored by us or by any of the other races within the Federation,” O’Mara continued, “and we are in the position of a man who has friends in far countries but has no idea of who is living in the next street. The reason for this is that travelers tend to meet more often than people who stay at home, especially when the travelers exchange addresses and visits regularly…”
Providing there were no major distorting influences en route and the exact co-ordinates of the destination were known, it was virtually as easy to travel through subspace to a neighboring solar system as to one at the other end of the Galaxy. But one had first to find an inhabited solar system before its coordinates could be logged, and that was proving to be no easy task.
Very, very slowly, a few of the smaller blank areas in the star charts were being mapped and surveyed, but with little success. When the survey scoutships turned up a star with planets, it was a rare find—even rarer when the planets included one harboring life. And if one of the native life-forms was intelligent, jubilation, not unmixed with concern over what might be a possible threat to the Pax Galactica, swept the worlds of the Federation. Then the Cultural Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps were sent to perform the tricky, time-consuming and often dangerous job of establishing contact in depth.
The Cultural Contact people were the elite of the Monitor Corps, a small group of specialists in e-t communications, philosophy and psychology. Although small, the group was not, regrettably, overworked…
“…During the past twenty years,” O’Mara went on, “they have initiated First Contact procedure on three occasions, all of which resulted in the species concerned joining the Federation. I will not bore you with details of the number of survey operations mounted and the