The Untouchable Adolescents: Rebellion Is a Youthful Disease

The Untouchable Adolescents by Harlan Ellison - The aliens wouldn't accept help, though their world was about to explode. They were adolescents. Adolescence is the time when you aren't smart enough to ask for help...

The planet Diamore, hung round and gaudy in the view-plates. As colorfully unchanging as it had been every day for the two weeks since the Wallower had plopped out of inverspace near it.

Captain Luther Shreve started violently as the whine of the Stress-Potential banks died away. They had been a constant noisemaker during the past two weeks; their continual dull rhythm had come to seem companionable. Now the keening discordancy was ended, and he knew they had finished estimating the planet in the plates.

He sat very still, staring at the energy dials building their reserves back up. The banks had used much extra power.

He sat very still, waiting for them to bring him the plates. He didn't want to see them. He was a full Captain in the Merchant Arm of the Commercial Navy, and he found the tough outer shell of himself that had formed during thirty years in that service suddenly disintegrating. He was afraid of what those plates would say.

The tube glowed behind him and Teller—slightly overweight, slightly florid, slightly balding and a brilliant Psych Officer—stepped off the plate, into the control room.

Teller slumped onto the copilot's couch, extended the sheaf of plate readings. Luther Shreve tipped his cap back on his head with a practiced thumb and shuffled the plates in silence.

From time to time his pink tongue washed across his lips. Finally he sighed and rubbed weary fingers across the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes and slowly sank back against the cushions.

With eyes still closed, he voiced the final possibility. 'Any room for error?'