The Mission

by Arthur Tofte

The two figures descended warily from the tiny scout ship.

They knew their descent through the atmosphere had created a meteor-like streak of brilliant light. They hoped that the valley where they had landed was well enough hidden to conceal them and their craft.

The two looked at each other grimly. They were unhappy with their mission, and with the orders that brought them to this strange, gloomy planet.

“I know what our duty is,” the older and taller of the two said in the sibilant language of his race, “even though I can’t agree with what we are expected to do.”

The other nodded agreement with the thought.

The leader handed his companion a small bundle he had brought out of the ship with him. “Here, you carry it for awhile. I’ll lead the way.”

He looked up into the night sky as though trying to catch a glimpse of the great mother ship that had brought them to this troubled, savage place. Mother ship indeed!

He peered anxiously at the dark knuckles of hills surrounding them. He pointed. “According to the instructions the Watchers gave us, the settlement is that way.”

The two plodded slowly up the long slope of the hill.

Suddenly the leader held out his arm for the other to stop.

“Strange beasts ahead!” he said. Using a shielded light-beam, he flashed it at a group of white, rather round animals that stood silently in their way.

For only a moment the creatures stared at the light and then scurried off with little bounds.

“They don’t appear to be dangerous,” the younger stranger said as he moved his burden from one arm to the other.

The ground, they found, was hard and dry under their feet. Vegetation was thin and brittle. Overhead the stars sparkled with the sharp intensity that comes on a cold, cloudless night.

As they approached the sleeping village, they proceeded with increased caution. Occasionally small animals ran out to sniff and bark softly at them.

After they had passed several stone huts and a cave entrance or two, the leader murmured, “As the Watchers said, these people are indeed very primitive. They live in caves and stone hovels. I doubt if they know how to work metals. Almost certainly they have no written language. A truly sub-civilization—possibly like our own two or three thousand generations ago.”

A single torch light gleamed ahead of them. Making their way through the stone rubble next to the path, they came to a wooden shed, half open to the night sky. Carefully and in secret they watched from the side.

A male and a female were in the shed. The woman, quite young and obviously in the final stages of exhaustion, held out a naked baby for the man to hold while she wrapped cloths around it.

This was what they had been told by the Watchers they would find—a native child being born.

From their vantage point, the two strangers saw the young mother sink with a sigh to the floor. The man carefully placed the child next to her. Then, he too lowered himself to the dirt floor. In a matter of moments both were asleep.

Quietly the tall visitor went over to look down at the newborn child. Its mouth was moving soundlessly and its tiny fingers groped futilely at the empty air.

He reached for the bundle his companion had brought so carefully from the ship and opened it. He lifted out the naked baby it contained. It too was a newborn.

In the time of half a dozen heartbeats, he had exchanged the two infants, even switching their covering cloths. As the two turned to leave, the strangers looked back for a last look at the sleeping man and his wife. And they peered for the last time at the child they had brought with them and were now leaving in this primitive place.

Hurriedly, their mission completed, they headed back toward their ship. The leader carried the infant they had stolen.

“Our Watchers were right,” he said once they were away from the village. “The people on this planet are extremely primitive. And yet they appear to be more like us in appearance than those of any other planet we have ever studied.”

“Yes,” the other replied, “our scientists should be pleased with getting this fine, healthy specimen.”

“What makes me feel badly is that we had to leave one of our own in its place.”

“Of course you know it has always been our policy never to let the natives of any planet know we have visited them.

That’s why we had to wait for one of our women on the mother ship to give birth so we would have a newborn to put in place of the one we took.”

“But that child of ours back there, won’t he be different from the natives when he grows up? After all, he has thousands of generations of our advanced civilization behind him.”

“Yes, I suppose he will be different. It would be interesting to come back when he is grown to see how he has developed in this primitive life.”

As they reached their ship and started to climb up, the leader turned to his companion. “What was the name of that village? It was listed by our Watchers.”

The other replied. “It is called Bethlehem.”