by Hal Clement
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 them 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 ven
ous 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 airlock. 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 ship’s 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 Earthman’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 airlock, 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 thinking, 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 airlock, 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.
It was evident that Talker had not exaggerated the seriousness of his own position. Kirk had seen members of the crew moving painfully about their duties on board the ship, and had seen one of them collapse as the horny exoskeleton of his absurdly thin legs gave way under a body weighing more than three times what it should have. On the other hand, a crew of Earthmen under such conditions would have left long since, weapons or no weapons. Kirk found himself unable to decide whether the stubbornness of these creatures was an admirable trait, or an indication of less worthy natures. It occurred to him, fleetingly, that their idea of a “worthy” trait probably differed widely from his own.
Possibly, if the man decided to refuse aid to the strangers, he could quiet his conscience by comparing them to children refusing to come in out of the rain until mother promised them some candy—but a scientist, working overtime in his laboratory, could be described by the same simile, and Kirk knew it. No, the need was surely real enough to them.
And why should they want to attack mankind? Earth was useless to them, as a dwelling place; if, as they claimed, their own king were against them, only fools would make such an attempt, however armed. And Kirk was not impressed with the gas guns of the aliens—they were, even he could realize, worth absolutely nothing except in the confined space of an ether ship. On the other hand, Talker might have stretched the truth beyond its yielding point; and the “king,” whom he might still be serving, would not need excuses such as the possible utility of a world in order to attack it, unless he differed greatly from Earthly rulers. The chance to extend his dominions would be motive enough.
Well, let that go for a minute. Kirk had arrived at his camp, and prepared a light meal. He ate slowly, still thinking, and washed the few utensils in the same fashion. The Sun had long been gone, and he sought his blankets with the intention of sleeping on the problem.
Sleep refused to come. He would absolutely refuse to consider one angle, and another promptly rose to torment him. What was the gas the aliens used? Kirk was not sure whether or not he regretted his ignorance of chemistry. The train of thought led by imperceptible, but perfectly natural, steps to the idea of insect poisons, his own original job in the territory, and the stock of copper sulphate and arsenate of lead which was stored at the river mouth port, for use the following spring. The idea left his mind as quickly as it had entered; for such materials did not, so far as Kirk knew, form any kind of gas. The job recalled his other occupation, which was still that of acquiring an education. The imminent opening of college presented itself as an addit
ional reason for immediate departure; it was doubtful even now whether he could return to the States in time for registration—unless, he thought with a flicker of amusement, the aliens performed the necessary transportation. And so the trail of thought led itself in a circle, and he was once again considering the matter of the requirements of those on the spaceship.
And then another thought struck him. Let it be granted that the herald had adhered strictly to the truth at all times. He might, then, be a likable individual; he might be a shepherd trying to save the lives of his flock; he might be an officer worthy of respect for his ability and devotion to duty—no matter what he might be in his character, the simple and undeniable fact remained that, by his own admission of past activities and by his declaration of the uses to which he intended to put the weapons he hoped to acquire, he was neither more nor less than a pirate. He had stated plainly that Boss had revolted against the authority of his original ruler; he had tacitly admitted that he himself had concurred in the expression of independence: and he had used the term “outlaw” in describing the ship and its crew.
If Earth were to have any dealings with the herald’s people, they would normally be with the law-abiding section of society. Kirk had no moral right to give assistance to that crew, no matter what his personal feelings might be. For a while, the Earthman pondered the matter, seeking flaws in the argument—seeking them solely because of the friendship he had commenced to feel for Talker, for any sort of decision would be a boon to his tortured mind.
But the fact stood; and eventually Kirk ceased attempting to argue it away, and accepted the simple idea that aiding the strangers would be, legally and morally, an offense against justice. Owning to the natural contrariness of human nature, he now found himself wishing he could help the alien with whom he had conversed so long; but the attainment of a decision had eased the tension in his mind, and at long last the man succeeded in falling asleep. He might have slept even more peacefully had he known a single fact—one of which not even Talker and Boss had dreamed.