Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Under the circumstances it was a reasonable thing to do—if one could succeed at it. The reactions of such chemicals were undoubtedly rapid enough to permit as speedy action as anyone could desire—at least as fast as careful thought could control. The agent’s race had long since learned the dangers inherent in machines capable of responding to casual, fleeting thoughts and his ship’s pickup-circuits were less sensitive, by far, than they might have been.

  It was obvious why these devices were controlled from a distance, instead of being ridden by their operators, too. There must be some dangerous reactions, indeed, going on inside them. The agent decided it was just as well that his temporary prisoner had merely looked at the inside of his ship, without touching anything, and resolved to take no more such chances.

  At any rate, there should be no more need for that sort of experiment. Language lessons were well under way. He had recorded a good collection of nouns, some verbs the machines had acted out, even an adjective or two. He was puzzled by the tremendous length of some of the signal groups, and suspected them of being descriptions, rather than individual basic words.

  But even that theory had difficulties. The signal which, apparently, stood for the machines themselves, one which should logically have called for a rather long and detailed description, was actually one of the shortest—though even this took several hundred milliseconds to complete. The agent decided that there was no point in trying to deduce grammar rules. He could communicate with memorized symbols, and they would have to suffice.

  Of course, the symbols that could be demonstrated on the spot were hardly adequate to explain the nature of Earth’s danger. The Conservationist had long since decided just what he wished to say in that matter, and was waiting, impatiently, for enough words to let him say it.

  It gradually became evident, however, that if he depended on chance alone to bring them into the lessons he was going to wait a long time. This meant little to him, personally. But the mole robots were not waiting for any instruction to be completed. They were burrowing on. The agent tried to think of some means for leading the lessons in the desired direction.

  This took a good deal of imagination on his part, obvious as his final solution would seem to a human being. The idea of having to learn a language had been utterly strange to him, and he was still amazed at the ingenuity the natives showed, in devising a means for teaching one. It was some time before it occurred to him that he might very well perform some actions, just as they were doing. If he did not follow his own acts with signal groups of his own, these natives might not understand that he wanted theirs. The time had come for a more direct and audacious approach to the entire problem, and at the thought of what he was about to do his spirits soared.

  He did it. He lifted the ship a few feet into the air, settled back to show that he was not actually leaving, and then rose again. He waited, expectantly. “Fly.”

  “Up.”

  “Rise.”

  “Go.

  Each of the watching machines emitted a different signal, virtually simultaneously. Three of them came through very faintly, since the speakers were some distance from the radio. But he was able to correlate each with the lip-motions of its maker. He was not too much troubled by the fact that different signals were used. He was more interested in the evidence that a different individual was controlling each machine. This was a little confusing, in view of his earlier theories. But he stuck grimly to the problem at hand.

  XII

  HAL AND CANDACE Parsons, and Truck MacLaurie were sitting on a relatively mudless patch of earth, within comfortable watching distance of the alien. They had passed the saturation point in their general, rain-soaked misery, and the experience Truck had just been through had unnerved them all to the point where they desperately needed a rest.

  Hal was putting Truck through something of a third degree. He was attempting to draw some specific information out of the athlete’s unscholarly mind as to the precise nature of the alien’s interior. It was proving to be rugged going, and his nerves were not in the best possible shape.

  “Dammit!” he exploded, when Truck proved, for the twentieth time that he had no idea why he had been so suddenly allowed to leave. “The opportunity of the ages, and it has to be given a blockhead with an I.Q. of seventy-seven, who can’t tell what it’s all about!”

  “Lay off him, honey,” said Candace pointedly. “Truck’s no blockhead. He’s a blocking back, amongst other things. He just doesn’t happen to be a scientist.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” Hal ran unsteady fingers through his soaking-wet hair. “Sorry, Truck. It’s just so infernally frustrating.”

  “Somebody’s coming,” said Truck with charitable forbearance, apparently unruffled by the catechism he had just been through. “Over there—look.”

  A muddy, heavily-encumbered figure was approaching them through the rain and mist. Catching sight of them, it waved.

  Truck, rising, advanced along the hillside to meet it, while Hal and Candace rose slowly to their feet. On closer approach, it proved to be a soldier, mud-soaked and carrying a movie-camera slung over one shoulder, and what looked like a scintillometer over the other. Truck had quickly relieved the newcomer of a heavy walkie-talkie.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Parsons?” the soldier said as he came up to them. “I’m General Wallace Eades. I’ve been talking to you upstairs long enough. I finally decided to make the drop myself.”

  “You don’t know how glad we are to see you, General,” said Candace, noting the two mud-dulled silver stars on the collar of his open shirt. “After three days with our friend over there”—she nodded toward the impassive, grey-metal globe—“we were beginning to wonder if we were humans ourselves.”

  General Eades, his blue eyes unusually bright and young and alert in his lined, leathery face looked at the monstrous bulk of the alien and stood for a moment in silent speculation. Then he said, “I was beginning to think it was all a pipe-dream. He’s a big fellow, isn’t he?”

  For the next few minutes, he talked with Hal, letting the geologist brief him on recent events. Then, turning to Truck, “Quite an experience for you, young man. If we get out of this thing in any sort of shape, you’ll be in Hollywood in ten days.”

  “Coach wouldn’t like it,” said the football player. “And I’m no Elvis Presley.”

  General Eades put his head back and laughed. Then he unslung the movie camera and said, “I gather you haven’t made a pictorial record of your friend over there. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be laughed out of the service. I thought you said he only had two eyes. Isn’t that a third? Did you put mud in that one, too?”

  “I’ll be damned!” said Hal. He and Candace regarded one another. They were bewildered, amazed and a little frightened. His lips tightening, Hal said, “He’s full of surprises. Stick around and you’ll find out.”

  “I intend to,” said General Eades. “I’ve been on this thing, ever since the first radar flash came in—four days ago. Haven’t had two hours consecutive sleep since. You’ve got no idea the fuss our friend has kicked up. The army’s got ten thousand men trying to crack this valley, and diplomats and newspaper men are sleeping on billiard tables in Butte—if they’re lucky enough to buy space on one.”

  As he spoke, he walked slowly around the monstrous globe, holding the camera to eye level, shooting it from all sides. Returning, he reappropriated the walkie-talkie from Truck, who had been dutifully standing guard over it.

  “I checked the stuff in your jeep and trailer on the way here from my drop,” General Eades said. “You must have got more than just arm-tired cranking that battery outfit of yours. I haven’t seen one like it since World War Two.”

  “It was the best the department at the University could allow us,” said Hal, a trifle on the defensive.

  Tactfully, Candace put in, “We’re awfully glad you got here, General. We were not only wet—we were lonely for a new face.”

  “Afraid mine’s not e
xactly new,” said Eades. Then, putting the walkie-talkie to work, he said resignedly. “Guess I’d better report, before they send a big drop in, and a few-score G.I.’s get killed. This valley’s full of rocks and potholes, and visibility is nil.”

  “You’re telling us, General!” said Truck.

  The general’s report, via radio, was lengthy but concise. He had yet to complete it when an audition from the alien, mimicking his own voice, caused interference that made intelligible communication impossible. He lowered the set, looked at the others, and nodded toward the grey-metal globe.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” said Hal.

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a new sound—not through the radio, but carried clearly through the open air—smote all their ears. Smote was the word, as it rose in an ear-shattering crescendo that caused them to look at one another in alarm.

  “The thing’s howling like a fire-siren!” cried Candace, clapping her hands to her ears. The others followed suit.

  It continued, for a couple of deafening minutes that all but reduced already quivering nerves to shreds. Then, as suddenly as it had started up, it ceased, and slowly they removed their hands.

  Candace wondered if her eardrums were permanently damaged. She saw Truck hammering the side of his head, like an inexperienced swimmer with water in his ear.

  He said, “If that’s his natural voice, I wonder how he sounds when he’s really worked up.”

  Hal and the general exchanged a significant look. It was Eades who broke the welcome silence. “Maybe he’s right,” he said. “Is that the first time it’s tried communicating—apart from radio mimicry?”

  “That’s right,” Hal told him.

  “Significant,” said General Eades. “Damned significant. I wonder . . . That third eye bothers me. Do you suppose it bothers him?”

  He walked up to the machine, disregarding Candace’s gasp, “Be careful!”

  Gently he scraped the mud from the lens. Nothing happened, but the sound did not return. He said, scowling at the porthole, “The surface looks too flat for close vision.”

  “We had the same thought,” Hal told him. “Still, it can see when it wants to.”

  General Eades walked around the sphere, studied the other two eyes, noted the places where the caked mud had flaked away. “Used to know an optometrist,” he muttered. “Could be, the mud helps to give him closer focus by covering most of the lens.”

  “. . . most of the lens,” said the general, though his lips did not move. Eades started, looked at the others, and instantly pointed to one of his own eyes. He said, “Eye.”

  “Eye,” said the voice from the alien. There was no question now in any of their minds. The alien had clearly discovered some means of direct vocal speech.

  After several more tests, the general walked back to the others, his blue eyes alight with excitement. “That’s it,” he told them. “Our friend made that howl to let us know it had a new means of communication.”

  Hal motioned him to silence, and they waited, breathlessly. But the alien did not repeat the speech or any part of it. The geologist advanced, pointed to himself, and said, “Man.”

  “Man,” said the alien.

  “It understands,” said Hal, his voice almost cracking. “Listen!” He accompanied the words by no pantomime, and the alien was silent.

  “I’ll be damned!” said the general.

  “Eureka!” cried Candace, raising her arms toward the sky.

  “Eureka!” said the voice from the globe.

  “Careful, baby,” Hal told her. “You just gave our friend a bum steer. Don’t gesture unless you’re outlining exactly what you mean.”

  From then on, in the excitement of attaining at least a rudimentary understanding with the thing from space, the little group on the hillside forgot the rain and their physical misery. Time was forgotten too, as they taught it new word meanings, and brought it examples of equipment and local flora in an effort to increase its vocabulary.

  Candace found a bedraggled plant, wiped mud from it and said, “Green,” pressing the stem as she held it up for the alien to see.

  “Green,” came the answer. “Plant—green.”

  “Green,” Candace repeated. “Green through sun.” She pointed skyward. “Green through photosynthesis.”

  “Plant green—through photosynthesis,” came the expected reply. Then, “Plant, man green—both photosynthesis.”

  “Bless me!” cried General Eades. “We’re on the way!”

  Hal spoke up then. “Has it occurred to you, General, that our friend here may have some message to give us? If he has, it may take us a hell of a long time before we can give him the right words to give back to us.”

  Eades stroked his chin. “You were probably right in asking for philologists earlier,” he said unhappily. “We’re a bunch of babes in the woods at this game.”

  There was a long, disconsolate silence. Then Candace broke it, saying bravely, “In any case, we’ve got to keep going. Our friend may have an answer of his own.”

  “I’d give a lot for one good word-man I could count on getting down here alive,” said the general. “I’ll put in a call.”

  But, before he could get the radio in operation, the observant Truck said, “Look! Hey, don’t tell me he’s leaving us now!”

  They stared in horror and utter dismay as the great, grey bulk of the alien rose vertically in the roil of mud already familiar to all but the general. Then they breathed sighs of relief. It hovered, only a few feet above the ground, then settled back, then rose again and remained stationary.

  “He’s trying to signal to us!” cried Candace, her voice shrill with excitement. “He wants us to give him a word for what he’s doing.”

  “Fly!” shouted the general. “Up!” said Candace.

  “Rise!” called Hal Parsons.

  “Go!” yelled Truck MacLaurie.

  They spoke almost simultaneously, but the monster from space seemed confused. He made no answer at all.

  XIII

  THE AGENT dropped back to the ground and went through his actions again. This time only the individual with the radio spoke. The word it used was Rise. This was not the one it had used the other time. To make sure, the agent went through the act still again, and got the same word. Evidently, once their minds were made up, they intended to stick to their decisions. What could he think?

  Then he tried burrowing into the ground, which seemed a useful action to be able to mention. The word given on the radio was dig, though two of the other machines apparently had different ideas once more.

  It did not occur to him that these things might be detecting the by-products of his digging as well as his deliberate attempts to produce sound waves, or that his efforts to focus his third eye lens, a little while before, had actually been the cause of their sudden interest in his ship at that moment. He was much too pleased with himself at this point to entertain such extraneous ideas.

  Having taken over the initiative in the matter of language lessons, he concentrated on the words he wanted, and, within a fairly short time, felt sure that he could get the basic facts of Earth’s danger across to his listeners. After all, only four signal groups were involved in the concept. Satisfied that he had these correctly, he proceeded to use them together. In his progress now he felt the surge of a very personal kind of pride.

  “Man dig—mountain rise.”

  For some unexplained reason the listening machines did not burst into frantic activity at the news. For a moment, he hoped that the controllers had turned to more suitable equipment to cope with the danger, leaving inactive that which they had been using. But he was quickly disabused of that bit of wishful thinking. The machine with the radio began to speak again.

  “Man dig.” It bent over and began to push the loose dirt aside with the flattened ends of its upper struts.

  The agent realized, with some dismay, that its operator must suppose he was merely continuin
g the language lesson. He spoke again, more loudly, the two signal groups which the other seemed to be ignoring.

  “Mountain rise.”

  All the machines looked at the hill across the valley, but nothing constructive seemed likely to come from that. If they waited for that one to rise noticeably, it would be too late to do anything about enlightening them as to the robots. He tried, frantically, to think of other words he had learned, or combinations which would serve his purpose. One seemed promising to him.

  “Mountain break—Earth break—man break.” The verb did not quite fit what was to happen, according to its earlier demonstration, but it did carry an implication of destruction, at least. His audience turned back to the ship, but gave no obvious sign of understanding.

  He thought of another concept which might apply, but no word for it had yet appeared in the lessons. So, to illustrate it, he turned his ship’s weapon on a patch of soil, a hundred yards from the bow. Twenty seconds’ exposure to that needle of intolerable flame reduced the ground which it struck to smoking lava.

  Even before he had finished, the word fire came from one of the watchers. The observer made no comment on the fact that the tube which threw slugs of metal had been leveled at his hull, during most of the performance. He simply made use of the new word.

  “Man dig—Earth fire—mountain fire.”

  One of the machines produced its ionization tube and cautiously approached the patch of cooling slag. This had a slight amount of radioactivity from the beam, and its effect on the tube gave rise to much mutual signaling on the part of the machines. This culminated in a lengthy radio broadcast, not addressed to the agent. Then the language lessons were resumed, with the natives once more taking the initiative.

  “Iron—copper—lead.” Samples were shown individually.

  “Metal.” All the samples were shown together.