All Judgment Fled by James White

First published in 1969

All Judgment Fled (the title is taken from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar) is an entertaining first contact novel. An object following an unnatural path is detected in the vicinity of Mars. Two American ships, each with a crew of three, are sent to investigate. They find an alien ship. It doesn't respond to signals, doesn't seem to be doing anything; its purpose is a mystery. Behaving rather foolishly, some crew members enter the ship and, having damaged their space suits in an encounter with violent but seemingly unintelligent aliens, find themselves stranded inside the ship. Oops!

The story is a study in the psychology of first contact. Three different alien species inhabit the ship. The humans must decide which species are intelligent, which are friendly, and why they're here. The six crew members (four astronauts, two in training) are selected more for their ability to survive the trip than for their expertise. The story's primary focus is on McCullough, whose medical background makes him the unofficial expert in the psychology of both humans and aliens. He is occasionally frightened to a state of witlessness -- an understandable and realistic reaction that adds credibility to the story. The task of survival on an alien ship is complicated by the divided reactions of all the people on Earth who are listening to the radio transmissions and who criticize the crew for being unnecessarily violent or insufficiently aggressive, for engaging in too much or too little exploration of the ship, and generally for mucking things up.

A shortcoming of the novel is that the crew members jump to conclusions that seem questionable, if not unlikely, given the scant evidence to support them. Nonetheless, their conclusions advance the plot, which moves along briskly. This isn't by any means a great novel -- at times it even seems a bit silly -- but it's well written and the plot ultimately works: the conflict between the crew and the bureaucrats back on Earth is just as interesting as the conflict between the humans and aliens on the ship.

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