Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  At Edie’s suggestion they split up, she taking the southern slopes on the line back to their home and Roger taking the northern. They agreed to keep to high ground as much as possible, and thus remain in earshot of each other most of the time. There was little point, in the time available, to look for traces in the woods; but it might be possible to sight either burned spots such as Roger had already seen or traces of disturbance in the upper branches of trees while looking from above. At any rate, more territory could be examined. Neither youngster had spent any time debating the question of whether it was better to know about a small area or guess about a large one.

  Neither Roger nor Edith was on the hill where Ken landed at the time of his descent. Nature had arranged that they should be in the neighborhood, but coincidence refused to carry matters farther. However, Nature still had a trick in reserve.

  Roger, until that morning, had taken more or less for granted that any future visits of the torpedo would be at night, as the first had been. His father’s story had changed that idea; and since he had heard it only three or four hours before, he had not given up taking rather frequent looks at the sky. It was not too surprising, therefore, that he saw the descending torpedo.

  It was nearly a mile and a half away, and he could make out no details; but he was certain it was no bird. The irregularity caused by Ken’s dangling form gave just a suggestion of oddness at that distance. Detailed or not, however, Roger never thought of doubting what it was; and with a whoop that might or might not reach his sister’s ears for all he cared at the moment, he headed downhill at a breakneck pace.

  For a short time he made excellent speed, the irregularity of the rocks offering no obstacle that his alert eyes and active muscles could not overcome without trouble. Then he reached the forest, and was slowed considerably. For a short distance he kept up the furious effort with which he had started; then realizing that he had at least one hill to cross and another to climb, he eased off a little.

  He had wet feet, thoroughly scratched legs, and a decided shortness of wind when he reached the hilltop toward which the torpedo had seemed to be descending, some three quarters of an hour later. He had seen no sign of Edith—he had, in fact, completely forgotten her. She might have come back to mind as he paused at the top of the small mountain to gain his breath and look around for the object of his search; but as it happened, the torpedo was in sight, only a short distance down the other side. So was Sallman Ken.

  Roger had seen pictures of the tremendous pressure suits which have from time to time been constructed for deep-sea exploration. The sight of Ken, therefore, did not astonish him too much—certainly less than the sight of a Sarrian without armor would have done. The suit the scientist was wearing humanized his appearance considerably, since a human being would not have had to be too greatly distorted to get into it.

  The legs, for engineering reasons, had only a single “knee,” corresponding to the upper joint of the Sarrian limb; the body was about human size, and cylindrical in shape; there were only two upper limbs. These were more flexible than a human being would have needed in a similar suit, but they at least gave no indication that the creature wearing them was controlling them with two tentacles each. The handlers at their extremities were natural enough, though more complicated than the claw-like devices the boy had seen in the diving suit pictures.

  At his distance, he could not see clearly through the transparent ports in the helmet; and so for some moments he failed to realize just how unhuman the wearer of the clumsy garment was.

  For perhaps half a minute, Roger simply stared; then he unloosed the yell which interrupted Ken’s “embarkation.” The scientist’s attention had been completely taken up with this task, and he had not seen Roger at all before the cry; after it, he saw nothing else. He himself was not facing the direction from which the sound had come, but one of the transparent ports in his helmet was; and he was much too interested to devote attention to anything like turning the armor, after his first look at the being charging downhill toward him. He simply stood, watching with the one eye he could bring to bear. It never occurred to him for an instant that the creature might be hostile.

  Roger never thought of the possibility either. His mind resembled that of Ken much too closely, in spite of the overwhelming physical differences. They simply stood facing each other—Ken finally did swing his armor around, so he could use both eyes—and silently absorbed all the details their respective optics could pick out. Each had an advantage—Roger in the fact that the light was normal for him, Ken in that the boy was not concealed in a couple of hundred pounds of metal. Roger could see the Sarrian’s face now, and his attention was taken up completely with the great, widespread, independently movable eyes, the blank where a nose should have been, and the broad, thin-lipped, surprisingly human mouth. The silence stretched out.

  It was interrupted by Feth, whose anxiety had been increasing with each second that passed after Roger’s call.

  “What’s happened? Is anything wrong? Are you all right, Ken?” The scientist found his voice.

  “Perfectly all right. We have company, as I suppose you guessed.” He began to describe Roger as completely as possible, and was interrupted within a minute by the mechanic.

  “It can’t be done. We’ll get a television set or a camera down there if I have to invent a whole new system. Never mind describing the thing—see if you can talk to it!”

  Roger had heard none of this, since Feth had not energized the speaker in the torpedo. This oversight he now rectified, and Ken’s next words reached the boy clearly.

  “What in the Galaxy can I say? Suppose this one has heard about our mistake the other night—suppose it’s even the same one? If I use the word ‘Gold’ it’ll either run or start fighting. I’m not afraid of it, but that certainly wouldn’t help the process of getting acquainted.”

  “Well, you’ve just used the word. How did he take it? I have the main speaker on.” Ken, who had had no means of knowing that fact, cast a startled glance at Roger.

  The boy, of course, had understood just the one word “Gold.” He probably would have missed that, except for the fact that Ken had accentuated it as one does a foreign word; but as it was, he thought that the previous conversation had been addressed to him. He had not distinguished the two voices, and all the sounds had come from the torpedo still poised just above Ken’s head.

  “I don’t want any of your gold—not if it’s like the last batch!” Again only one word was understood by the listener. Ken grew hopeful Maybe this creature hadn’t heard, or maybe they had completely misinterpreted the sounds he and Feth had heard during the atmosphere test.

  “Gold? “he asked.

  “NO!” Roger shook his head negatively and backed away as he gave the emphatic answer. The first gesture meant nothing to the watching Sarrian, but the second seemed clear enough.

  “Did you get that last sound of his on record, Feth? Judging by his actions, that’s the negative in their language. No gold!” he addressed the last two words after a brief pause. Roger relaxed visibly, but still spoke emphatically.

  “No gold, no platinum,—I have no tobacco.” He spread empty hands and turned out his pockets, giving the Sarrian scientist a clue he had been waiting for on just how much of his covering was artificial.

  “Point to things and name them!” Feth cut in from above. “How else can you learn a language? This chatter sounds as silly as anything I’ve ever heard!”

  “All right—only remember, I can see as well as hear. That makes a bit of difference. If you expect any results, keep quiet; how’s this thing going to tell who’s talking? It all comes from the same loudspeaker. I’ll call you when I want to hear from you.” Feth gave no answer to this very sound point, and after waiting a minute Ken began to follow the mechanic’s suggestion.

  Since Roger had been thinking of exactly the same thing, he caught on at once, and thereby gave the Sarrian a higher opinion of human intelligence than his conversations
with Laj Drai had caused him to hold previously. The English words for rock, tree, bush, mountain, cloud, and the numbers up to ten were learned in short order. A few verbs were managed easily enough. At this point operations seemed likely to be suspended, and Roger was rather relieved to have the subject changed by a distant hail.

  “My gosh! I forgot all about Edie! She must think I fell off a cliff or something!” He turned in the direction from which the faint voice seemed to be coming, and put all the strength of his lungs into an answering hail. His sister heard it and responded; and ten or fifteen minutes of lung strain brought her to the scene. She seemed a little dubious about approaching Ken at all closely, to Roger’s surprise.

  “What’s the matter with you? He just wants to talk, as far as I can see.”

  “Haven’t you got burned again?”

  “No; why should I?”

  “Can’t you feel the heat?”

  Oddly enough, Roger hadn’t. He had never come closer than about fifteen feet to the scientist. The radiation from the armor was easily detectable at that distance without being uncomfortable, but he simply had not noticed it in the press of other interests. For Edith, whose strongest impression of the aliens had been derived from her brother’s experience of a few nights before, it was the most prominent characteristic of the thing standing before them.

  With the matter brought to his notice, Roger approached the alien more closely, and extended a cautious hand toward the metal. He stopped it more than a foot away.

  “My gosh, he certainly is hot. Maybe that’s what caused the trouble—they never thought the gold would burn me. Do you suppose that’s it?”

  “Maybe. I’d like to know how it can live when it’s that hot, though. So would Dad. He ought to be here anyway. Had I better go tell him, while you keep the thing here?”

  “I don’t know how I’d keep it. Besides, it would be awful late by the time he got here. Let’s try to make a date for tomorrow.” He turned back to Ken without waiting for Edie’s rather sensible question, “How?”

  Actually the “how” proved not too difficult. Time is an abstract quantity, but when it is measured by phenomena like the apparent movement of the sun it can be discussed in signs quite clearly enough for practical purposes. Ken understood without difficulty by the time Roger had finished waving his arms that the two natives would return to their present location shortly after sunrise the following day. The scientist was just as glad to break off the interview, since his feet were now quite numb with cold. He resumed the task of fastening himself to the hovering torpedo, and the children, turning back for a last look as they reached the trees, saw the odd-looking assemblage of suit and carrier drifting upward with ever-increasing velocity. They watched until it had dwindled to a speck and vanished; then with one accord they headed for home.

  XV.

  Mr. Wing was not merely interested; he was enthralled by the youngster’s report. He was sensible enough to realize that nothing any of his family had done could possibly be responsible for the aliens’ starting to make personal exploration of the earth, but the fact that they were doing so seemed likely to be very helpful to his plans. The evening meal consisted very largely of conversation, for all attempts to keep the details from any of the family were abandoned. Mrs. Wing, of course, had known everything from the beginning; Roger and Edie had been pretty well briefed that morning; but Billy and Marge lacked both specific information and basic knowledge to appreciate the situation. Their questions tended to break up the general train of thought, but only Roger showed any impatience. Since even he did not dare become openly contemptuous of their ignorance, the general tone of the conversation remained peaceful, and several important decisions were made.

  “It seems to me,” Mr. Wing said, “that these things— maybe we can think of them as people, now that we have some idea what they look like—must at last have some scientists on the job. I can’t even guess at the reason for the delay—”

  “Look at an astronomical photo of the Milky Way some time, and you might guess,” cut in Don.

  “Reason or no reason, the fact itself may be useful. There will be both explorers and apparatus coming down, beyond reasonable doubt; and they must expect to lose a certain amount of the latter. I don’t mean to encourage dishonesty in my offspring, but if we could acquire some of that apparatus long enough to perform dissection I would be very pleased.”

  “I take it you are no longer afraid of scaring them off?” Mrs. Wing stated rather than asked.

  “No. Whether they continue trading or not is out of my hands—it will probably depend on the results that their scientists get. I am not worried; they obviously want tobacco badly, and I doubt very much if it grows on any other planet. I could be surer of my ground, of course, if I knew what they wanted it for. I used to think they smoked it as we do, but this knowledge of their normal temperature makes that sound a trifle unlikely.

  “But back to the original point. Anyone who talks to them from now on might well suggest that another transmitter be brought down, so they can home on this house. I see no point in walking five or six miles out and the same distance back just for a daily conversation. Incidentally, Rog, I’m wondering whether we mightn’t have made a better impression if we’d tried learning their words for things instead of teaching them ours.”

  “Maybe. I didn’t think of that.”

  “How about the trading, Dad?” asked Don. “Are you going to keep it up as usual, or try to get these investigators to take our stuff?” His father considered for a moment.

  “I think we’d better stick to the old routine,” he said finally. “We have no assurance that the traders and scientists are in with each other, and it would be a pity to disappoint our customers. Perhaps, when we go to keep this date tomorrow, you’d better go on to the transmitter and give the signal. You’d better carry a pack of cigarettes with you; normally, of course, they’re two or three days answering, but if they should be in with the science crowd they may be a lot closer at the moment. You’d better be prepared, in case they answer at once.”

  “You mean I’d better stay by the transmitter all day, if necessary?”

  “Well—no, not that. Hang around for a while, and then come back to where we’ll be. We can keep an eye in the right direction in case another torpedo comes down—it can’t be more than a couple of miles in a straight line, so we stand a fair chance of seeing it.”

  “All right. I signal, and everybody talks, with emphasis on suggesting that another communicator be brought down—always supposing either party learns enough of the other’s language to get any such idea across.” Don shifted the subject suddenly. “Say, Dad, I just had an idea. You say it doesn’t always take the same length of time between the signal and the arrival of the torpedo?”

  “That’s right. Never less than two days, never much more than three.”

  “Could you give me any specific signalling dates, with the time of arrival? The more the better. I think I can do something with them.” Mr. Wing thought for a moment.

  “Some, anyway. I can remember those of the last couple of years pretty well, and probably some odd ones from earlier years if I try. What’s your idea?”

  “I’d rather not tell until I’m a little more certain of it. Let’s have what you can recall.”

  With the aid of the family, who were able to supply clues on his dates of absence—a diary kept by Edie was very helpful—about two dozen of the dates were fixed with sufficient accuracy to satisfy Don. He immediately went up to his room, carrying the notes he had taken.

  From that point the conversation drifted by imperceptible degrees into pure fantasy, and by bed-time a number of wonderful pictures had been drawn about the home life of the fiery visitors. Little Margie’s was the most interesting, if the least accurate.

  Sallman Ken, however, was wasting no time on fantasy. He had not yet worked out a really detailed course of action, but certain ideas were gradually taking shape in his mind as he worked.

/>   The moment he entered the Karella and had emerged from his bulky armor, he went into a close conference with Feth. Lee was present at first, even following them to Ken’s quarters where the scientist began; but a glance of understanding passed between Ken and Feth, and the conversation took a remarkably abstruse turn. It had just enough meaning to give the impression that matters of highly advanced physics and chemistry were being covered, in connection with the problem of keeping the seeds—if any—in the soil samples alive and healthy.

  For a few minutes it looked as though Lee were going to stay and take it, but Feth suddenly had the inspiration to ask the pilot’s opinion of occasional matters. After a little of this, Ordon Lee drifted back to his control room. “He’s not stupid,” Feth said, looking after his retreating form, “but he certainly lacks confidence in his education! Now, what did you want to keep from Drai?”

  “It has occurred to me,” Ken said, “that our employer is going to want to hear everything that goes on on Planet Three, as soon as we are in halfway decent communication with the natives. I have some vague ideas about the uses to which those creatures can be put, and I’d rather not have Drai listening in to all our conversations. Since at the moment there’s no way of preventing that, I’d like to know whether it might not be possible to connect me up with the speaker on the torpedo without having everything audible up here as well. It would be best, I suppose, if I could turn your contact on and off at will, so that he’ll hear enough to keep him from getting suspicious.”

  “I suppose it could be done, all right,” the mechanic said slowly. “I’m afraid it would take more work than it’s worth, though. Wouldn’t it be a great deal simpler to take another set down with you in the torpedo? You already have means for tuning both transmitter and receiver in the armor, so you could switch from one set to the other whenever you pleased.”