by Hal Clement
It chanced that Boss himself was asleep when Kirk showed up the next morning, and the ports were still sealed. The man threw a stone at the air-lock door, and examined the ship more closely while he waited for something to happen. The Sun had just cleared the tree and was shining directly on the bow of the vessel. This time, Kirk found that he could see a little through the control-room ports—a few glimpses of boards, covered with dials and levers, the latter oddly shaped to conform to the peculiar “hands” of the operators. He was not close enough to the ship to obtain a very wide vision angle through the ports, and he had to move around to see the various parts of the chamber. While he was thus improving his knowledge, his eye caught a flash of reflected sunlight from the beveled edge of the air-lock door, and he turned to see who or what was emerging.
The sound of the stone Kirk had thrown had echoed through the main corridor and reached the “ears” of a party of engineers in the wardroom below. These individuals had interrupted a form of amusement startlingly similar to contract bridge, in which they were engaged, and one had gone to inform Boss. The latter cursed him, told him to rouse Talker, and went back to sleep.
It was Talker, therefore, followed by some of the more curious engineers, who emerged from the lock. Kirk was able to recognize the herald by his antennae, but could discern no difference between the other members of the group. The meeting adjourned, at Talker’s direction, to a spot in the gully, in front of the ship, which bore a large and exceptionally smooth area of sun-dried clay, and lessons began. Talker had brought the appropriate materials with him, and had planned to take notes in his own form of “writing”; but he delegated this task to a member of the audience, and gave his full attention to the delicate matter of guiding the choice of words in the proper direction.
This task was no sinecure, since Talker was still extremely uncertain as to the precise nature of words. The meaning covered by a single word in English some-times requires several in another language; the reverse is also true. Talker had learned the symbol that indicated the ship; he discovered later, to his confusion, that there exist such things as synonyms, other words that mean the same thing. He never did discover the variety of objects that could have been meant by “ship.” Kirk saw these sources of difficulty almost from the beginning, and went to considerable trouble to avoid them.
Each written word, to Talker, was a complete unit; it is doubtful if he ever discovered that they were made of twenty-six simple marks, in various combinations. Obviously this fact complicated his task enormously, but there was nothing to be done about it. To explain the individual letters would have been tantamount to teaching the verbal language; and months, or even years, would have been necessary to teach Talker’s auditory organs to recognize the innumerable fine distinctions of pitch and overtone to be found in a single sentence.
The details of the weeks that were taken up in the learning would be of interest to psychologists and semanticists, but would extend the present narrative to an unjustifiable length. There were several short interruptions when Kirk had to forage for food, and once he, was forced to absent himself for nearly a week, in order to turn in his parasite report at the nearest center of civilization. He told no one of his find in the forest, and returned thereto as quickly as he could. He found the aliens impatiently waiting for him, and the herald at once returned to the task. Kirk had long since perceived that some tremendous anxiety was behind Talker’s insistence, but no amount of effort served to make clear any details.
September and Kirk’s patience were drawing to an end by the time that exchange of ideas had progressed to a point where it could be called conversation. Talker wrote with considerable facility, using a pencil and pages from Kirk’s notebooks; the man spoke aloud, since he had discovered that this apparently resulted in a sharper mental image of the words. To him, the herald’s need was less urgent than the satisfaction of his own curiosity; he asked, so far as Talker’s rapidly increasing vocabulary would permit, questions designed to fill that want. He learned something of the physical and sociological nature of the alien’s home world—not too much, for Talker had other ideas than the telling of his life story, and Boss became suspicious and almost aggressive when informed of the nature of the Earthman’s curiosity. He could conceive of only one use to which such information could possibly be turned.
Kirk finally accepted the inevitable, and permitted Talker to run the conversation in his own fashion, hoping to get a few words of his own into the discussion when the herald’s “urgent business” was completed. Talker had kept the man ignorant of Boss’ attitude, justly fearing detrimental effects on Kirk’s willingness to cooperate.
The attempts at explanation, however, seemed as futile as the first words had been. Talker’s premonition of the futility of drawings and diagrams was amply justified; not only were the conventions used in drawing by the engineers of his people utterly different from those of Earth, but it is far from certain that the atoms and molecules the aliens tried to draw were the same objects that a terrestrial chemist would have envisioned. It must be remembered that the “atoms” of physics and of chemistry, used by members of the same race, differ to an embarrassing extent; those conceived in the minds of Talker’s people would have been simply unrecognizable, even had Kirk possessed any knowledge of chemistry.
The supply of the requisite arsenic was completely exhausted, so that no samples were available; in any case, Kirk’s lack of chemical knowledge would undoubtedly have rendered then valueless.
“There is no use in trying to make your needs known in this manner,” the human being finally stated. “The only way in which I am at all likely to hit upon the proper word is for you to describe the more common characteristics of the substance, and the uses to which you put it. Your pictures convey no meaning.”
“But what characteristics are you likely to recognize?” asked Talker, on the paper. “My engineers have been striving to do that very thing, since we started.”
“They have sought to describe its chemical nature,” responded Kirk. “That means nothing to me in any case, for I am not a chemist. What I must know are things like the appearance of the stuff, the appearance of the things that can be made from it, and the reasons you need it so badly. You have not told me enough about yourselves; if I met a party of my own kind stranded on an uninhabited land, I would naturally know many of the things of which they might stand in need, but there is no such guide for me in this case. Tell me why you are here, on a world for which you are so obviously unfitted; tell me why you left your own world, and why you cannot leave this one. Such things will guide me, as could nothing else you might do.”
“You are probably right, man. My captain forbade me to divulge such knowledge to you, but I see no other way to make clear our need.”
“Why should the commander forbid my learning of you?” asked Kirk. “I see no harm which could result; and I have certainly been frank enough with you and your people. Mothman, I have considered you as being friendly, without seeking evidence of the fact; but I think it would be well for you to tell me much about yourselves, and tell it quickly, before any more efforts are made to supply your wants.”
Kirk’s voice had suddenly grown hard and toneless, though the aliens could neither appreciate nor interpret the fact. It had come as an abrupt shock to the man, the idea that the helpless-seeming creatures before him could have any motive that might augur ill to humanity, and with it came a realization of the delicacy and importance of his own position. Were these beings using him as a tool, to obtain knowledge of humanity’s weaknesses, and to supply themselves with means to assault the race? Unbelievable as it may seem, the thought of such a possibility had not entered his head until that moment; and with its entrance, a new man looked forth at the aliens from Kirk’s eyes—a man in whom the last trace of credulity had suddenly vanished, who had lost the simple curiosity that motivated the student of a few minutes before, a man possessed and driven by a suspicion of something which he himself could not
fully imagine. The doubts that had failed to appear until now were making up for lost time, and were reinforced by the uncomfortable emotion that accompanies the realization that, through no act or idea of one’s own, one has barely been diverted from the commission of a fatal blunder.
Talker realized his own error before the Earthman had finished speaking, and wasted no time in endeavoring to repair it. His ignorance of human psychology was an almost insuperable obstacle in this attempt.
“We need the substance which I am trying to describe, far more urgently than we can say,” he wrote. “It was the commander’s idea, and my own, that it would be a fatal waste of time to allow the conversation to move to other topics, which I can well understand must interest you greatly. Had we learned where it might be found, there would have been no objection to answering any questions you might ask, while we were obtaining it; but we cannot remain here very long, in any case. You must have noticed—indeed your words have shown that you have noticed—how uncomfortable we are on this planet.
Nearly half of us, now, are disabled from fractured limbs and strained tendons, fighting your terrible gravity; we live at all only through the use of a drug, and too much of that will eventually prove as dangerous as the condition it is meant to counteract.”
“Is your vessel disabled, then?” asked Kirk.
“No, there is no mechanical trouble, and its power is drawn from the matter around it in space. We could travel indefinitely. However, before we dare return to a region where our enemies may locate us, we need a large store of—the material we seek.”
“Have you no friends in that neighborhood, to whom you could have fled, instead of making such a long voyage to this solar system?”
“The voyage was not long—perhaps four hundred of your days. Our ship is powerful, and we used full acceleration until your Sun showed its nearness by increasing rapidly in brilliance. We would have risked—did risk, since we had no idea of the distance—a much longer flight, to get away from that system. We had a ruler, but the captain decided we would do better on our own, and now there is no armed vessel within the orbit of the outermost planet that would not fire on us at sight.”
“It would seem that you lack ammunition, then, and possibly weapons.” Kirk proceeded to make clear the difference in meaning between the words, using his rifle as an example.
“Weapons we have; it is the ammunition we lack,” affirmed Talker. “I see how your rifle works; ours are similar, throwing a projectile by means of explosives. We have already manufactured the explosives from organic materials we found here; but the element we use in our projectiles is lacking.”
“It would, I suppose, be a metal, such as that from which my bullets, or possibly the gun, are made,” decided Kirk. “I know where these substances may be found, but you have not yet convinced me that my people can trust you with them. Why, if you are an outlaw in your own system as you claim, do you wish to return at all? You could not, so far as I can see, hope for security there, even with weapons at your disposal.”
“I do not understand your question,” was the reply. “Where else would we go? And what do you mean by `security’? Our lot would be better than before, for we would not have to render up the greater portion of what we obtain to our ruler—we can keep it ourselves. There are many uninhabited portions of our world where we can make a base and live in ease.”
“Something tells me that your way of life is different from ours,” remarked Kirk dryly. “What is the metal you seek?” He wanted to know this for the sake of the knowledge; he had as yet no intention of helping the mothmen to obtain the substance. He wished that Talker’s pencil could convey some idea of what the herald was really thinking. Writing, by one who barely knows a language, is not an extraordinarily efficient method of conveying emotions. “If you will show me one of your weapons, it may help,” the man added as an afterthought.
Talker, naturally, had suspicions of his own arising from this suggestion. Unlike Boss, however, he was not blinded by them; and remembering that he had already divulged probably the most important characteristic of the weapons—the fact that they were projectile throwers—he answered after a moment, “Come, then, and see.”
It was characteristic of the herald that he tendered the invitation without consulting Boss, or even mentioning to Kirk the objections that the commander would probably raise. He had a contempt, born of long experience, for the captain’s resolution, and it never occurred to Talker to doubt his own ability to override any objections. His confidence was justified. If Boss had possessed a heart, instead of a system of valves and muscle rings along the full length of his arterial and-venous systems, he would probably have had heart failure when Talker coolly announced his intention of displaying the ship’s armament to the Earthling; he was still sputtering half-formed thought waves as he followed the pair toward the air lock. Talker had merely explained the reason for his action, and acted; Boss would never have admitted, even to himself, that he considered Talker’s opinion superior to his own, but he invariably accepted it as though it were. He was firmly convinced that his own genius was responsible for their successes to date, and Talker saw no reason to disillusion him.
Kirk learned little from the ships guns, though the sighting apparatus would have given an artilleryman hours of ecstasy. The weapons themselves were simply ordinary-looking small-caliber, smooth-bore cannon, but with extremely ingenious mountings which permitted them to be loaded, aimed, and fired without losing air from the ship. The turret rooms were divided by bulkheads into two parts, one containing the gun and auxiliary mechanisms, and the other, to Kirk’s surprise, piled high with metal cylinders that could be nothing but projectiles. He picked up one of these, and found it to be open at one end, with an empty hollow taking up most of its interior. Talker, who had made explanations from time to time, began to write again.
“We need material to manufacture the filling of that projectile,” were his words. “Empty, it is useless for any purpose whatsoever.”
“And when it is full—” asked Kirk.
“The shell penetrates the walls of a ship, leaving only a small hole which is promptly sealed by the material between the inner and outer hulls. The projectile is ruptured by a small explosive charge, and its contents evaporate, releasing an odorless gas which takes care of the crew. The ship can then be towed to a planet and looted without opposition and without danger—if you can reach a habitable world unseen.”
“Why can you not use an explosive charge which will open a large hole in the hull, and do your looting in space?” asked the man.
“Air extends only a short distance outward from each world,” explained Talker, his respect for the Earth-man’s knowledge dropping about fifty points, “so it is impossible to leave a ship or change ships while in space. An explosive shell, also, would probably destroy much of the interior, since the hull of a ship is far stronger than the inner partitions, and we want what is inside as nearly intact as possible.”
Kirk waited rather impatiently for the herald to finish scrawling this message, and snapped, “Of course, I know about the airlessness of space; who doesn’t? But have you no protective garment that will permit you to carry air and move about more or less freely, outside a ship?”
“Many attempts have been made to devise such a suit,” was the answer, “but as yet there is nothing which can be trusted to permit all our limbs to move freely, carry air to our breathing orifices, and possess air-tight joints and fastenings. I can see that there might be very little difficulty in designing such a garment for your simply constructed body, but Nature built us with too many appendages.”
Kirk said nothing as he half-crawled down the low corridor to the air lock, but he did a lot of thinking. He was reasonably sure that most of his cerebral operations were indecipherable to the alien, though it was chiefly mental laziness which kept him from making any particular effort to couch his thoughts in nonvisual terms—such an effort would have been a distinct bar to constructive thinki
ng, in any case. The herald’s story, while strange from Kirk’s Earthly point of view, was certainly not impossible; the conditions of life he had described had, in large measure, existed on Earth at various times, as the Earthling well knew. Kirk had gained considerable appreciation of Talker’s rather cynical character, and had been somewhat amused at the unconscious egotism displayed by the herald.
The Sun was low in the west when the group emerged from the air lock, and a stiff northeast wind made its presence felt at the top of the bank, out of the shelter of the hull. Kirk looked at the sky and forest for a few minutes, and then turned to Talker.
“I will return to my camp now, and eat. You have given all the help you can, I guess. I will try to solve the problem tonight. I can make no promise of success, and, even if I do discover what your chemical is, there is the possibility that I will still fear to trust you with it. Your people are peculiar, to me; I don’t pretend to understand half of your customs or ideas of propriety, and my first consideration must be the safety of my own kind.
“Whatever happens, I cannot remain much longer in the territory. You may not be acquainted with the seasonal changes of this planet, but you must have noticed the drop in temperature that has been evident at night the last week or two. We are located almost upon the Arctic Circle”—Kirk pictured mentally just what he meant—“and I could not live very far into the winter with my outfit. I should have returned to my own country several weeks ago.”
“I cannot control your actions, even if I wished to do so,” answered Talker. “I can but hope for the best—an unusual situation, all around, for me.”
Kirk grinned at the herald’s wry humor, turned, and strode away in the direction of his camp—he had not moved it closer to the ship, because of the better water supply at its original location. As he walked, the grin melted quickly from his features, to be replaced by the blank expression which, for him, indicated thought. He had no idea of what he should do; as he had told the herald, the man’s first consideration was his own kind, but he wanted to believe and trust in the alien, whom he had come to like.