by Hal Clement
That last, unfinished sentence did much to check the cold anger that was starting to rise in Kirk. In silence, he watched the airlock doors swing open. Through a screen of tangled deadwood, a few houses were visible; but no people appeared to be interested in the ship. How Boss had been able to bring the vessel down unseen so near the town will forever remain unknown.
The two aliens flew over the brush, choosing a moment when no human beings were in sight, and concealed themselves behind bushes fairly close to the nearest houses. Kirk, sitting on the sill of the outer door, could imagine the herald’s sensitive antennae picking up the thought waves of one after another of the unsuspecting townspeople. He would have trouble with some of them, thought Kirk with a grin, as he recalled the three-quarters Indian population of the place and the illiteracy of a large percentage of this group, but how would it be possible to prevent the alien’s looting the minds of Faxon, the poison specialist, or old MacArthur, the storekeeper? Warning them would be easy enough, but useless; the more they tried not to think of what was wanted, the more certain most of them were to do so. If they tried to attack and drive away the aliens, the latter could simply retreat into the ship and study the attackers at will. It looked as though Talker would win after all; or—did it?
A thought struck the man, hazy and ill-defined at first. It had something to do with Indians and illiterates; something he couldn’t quite place, dimly remembered from his psychology study—and then he had it. A grin spread over his face; he leaned back against his pack, and watched the herald as men, women, and children, both white and red, passed within a hundred yards of his hiding place. Once again Kirk pictured the mind-reading “danger”; but it was markedly different from the former picture. He tried to control his thoughts, to make the joke last as long as possible—he wasn’t sure that the herald could read his mind at this range, but why take chances? He tried to think about the subject in French, since he had to think about it; the results were not exactly what he had intended, but the mental pictures were undoubtedly tangled enough to baffle any mind reader. And then the mothmen were winging their way back to the ship.
Kirk moved aside to let them enter, and watched as the pair settled to the airlock floor. Talker made no attempt to write; he simply stood and looked at the Earthman with an expression of hopeless resignation in his very carriage that sent a stab of pity through Kirk’s heart.
The man stared back for a few moments, and then began speaking softly.
“You know, now. I did not think of it until you had gone—but I should have, from what you told me; and you should long since have known from your own observations. When we first learned to communicate with each other, you told me that my thought-wave pattern was different from that of your race, which was natural enough, as you finally realized. You did not carry that reasoning, which told you it was natural, to its logical conclusion: nor did I. Your people all ‘think’ alike—so far as either of us is able to tell what thought is. The patterns you broadcast are mutually intelligible to members of your race, but not to me, because you have received those waves from others of your kind from earliest childhood, and I am a stranger. But my people do not communicate in that fashion; as you have learned, we have organs capable of impressing fine modulations on sound waves, and of detecting these modulations. The activity that occurs in our brains is never directly transmitted to other brains—it is first ‘coded’ and then broadcast.
“The waves you ‘hear’ arise from chemical activity in your nervous systems, activity that accompanies thought. They are—must be—controlled to a vast extent by the structure of the nerve pattern in your brains; a structure which is itself controlled during your growth by the impressed waves from outside, in conjunction with whatever strange process accompanies learning.”
Kirk held out a hand to the herald.
“Look closely at the ends of my fingers. In the skin you will see a complex pattern of ridges and hollows. That pattern, stranger, is unique in me; every one of my people has a similar, but individual, pattern—no two have identical fingerprints. They form the most positive means of identification we possess, although there are more than two billion beings on this planet.
“And yet, friend, I think I am safe in saying that there are many times as many chances that two of us should bear identical fingerprints as there are chances that two human brains should be exactly alike, nerve for nerve. From birth, each brain is isolated, can be reached only through the means of communication natural to us; there is no reason that all should develop alike.
“On that assumption, the tiny currents that pass from nerve to nerve and give rise to the waves that you can sense cannot possibly be the same for any two of us; and so no two sets of ‘thought waves’ could be identical. You learned some of my pattern, and thought that you had the key to communicate with all my kind; but I tell you sincerely that you will have to learn afresh the ‘thought language’ of every new human being with whom you wish to converse. You have just discovered that for yourself.
“These cerebral radiations are not entirely unknown to us. Certain devices, in the nature of extremely sensitive electric detectors, have been able to measure and record them; but the only pattern shared by any significant number of human minds is that characterizing sleep—mental inactivity. The instant the subject wakes, or even has a dream, the ‘alpha pattern’ breaks up into a seemingly disorganized jumble.
“We also know a little concerning direct thought exchange. Some of our scientists have experimented for many years, in the attempt to determine its nature and cause. Many people—not the scientists—assume that it is due to radiations like those recorded by the devices I mentioned; they imagine the possibility of perfecting those machines and using them for communication. They have heard of the experiments in telepathy, but have not bothered to investigate their details.
“The experimenters themselves have pointed out that the phenomena of telepathy and clairvoyance, which seem to be closely connected, are quite inconsistent with the known laws of radiation, such as the inverse square law. I don’t remember all the details, and, anyway, I’m not a physicist; but the best-known of those scientists claim that our present science of physics does not contain the explanation of the experimental results.
“Whatever the true state of affairs may be, I am sure you will never get anything from any human mind but my own. I hate to tantalize you, but if you had not made this attempt to deceive me, my emotions would probably have overcome my common sense sufficiently to force me to help you; even now I am tempted to do so, because I can’t help feeling that your mind contains the roots of curiosity, with which I sympathize—I wouldn’t have pursued my studies this far, otherwise. But I could never trust you, now. My intelligence, such as it is, gave one estimate of your character, and my feelings gave another; and unfortunately for you, your actions showed the intelligence to be at least partially correct. Your character probably isn’t your fault, but I can do nothing about that. My advice to you is to take on supplies and get away from here while some of you are still alive; the fact that you found an inhabited planetary system at the first try suggests that others may not be too hard to locate. I wish you luck, so far as good luck for you doesn’t mean bad for us.”
Allen Kirk turned, swung the pack to his shoulder, and walked away from the spaceship. He was acutely aware, as he went, of the two pairs of yellow eyes gazing after him; but he didn’t dare to look back.
Technical Error
Seven spacesuited human beings stood motionless, at the edge of the little valley. Around them was a bare, jagged plain of basalt, lit sharply by the distant sun and unwavering stars; a dozen miles behind, hidden by the abrupt curvature of the asteroid’s surface, was a half-fused heap of metal that had brought them here; and in front of them, almost at their feet, in the shallow groove scraped by a meteor ages before, was an object which caused more than one of those men to doubt his sanity.
Before them lay the ship whose heat-ruined wreckage had been le
ft behind them only minutes ago—perfectly whole in every part. Seven pairs of eyes swept it from end to end, picking out and recognizing each line. Driving and steering pits at each end; six bulging observation ports around its middle; rows of smaller ports, their transparent panes gleaming, obviously intact, in the sunlight; the silvery, prolate hull itself—all forced themselves on the minds that sought desperately to reject them as impossibilities. The Giansar was gone—they had fled from the threat of its disordered atomic engines, watched it glow and melt and finally cool again, a nearly formless heap of slag. So what was this?
None of them even thought of a sister ship. The Giansar had none. Spaceships are not mass-production articles; only a few hundred exist as yet, and each of those is a specialized, designed-to-order machine. A spaceman of any standing can recognize at a glance, by shape alone, any ship built on Earth—and no other intelligent race but man inhabits Sol’s system.
Grant was the first to throw off the spell. He glanced up at the stars overhead, and figured; then he shook his head.
“We haven’t circled, I’ll swear,” he said after a moment. “We’re a quarter of the way around this world from where we left the ship, if I have allowed right for rotation. Besides, it wasn’t in a valley.”
The tension vanished as though someone had snapped a switch. “That’s right,” grunted Cray, the stocky engine man. “The place was practically flat, except for a lot of spiky rocks. And anyway, no one but a nut could think that was the Giansar, after leaving her the way we did. I wonder who left this buggy here.”
“Why do you assume it has been left?” The query came, in a quiet voice, from Jack Preble, the youngest person present. “It appears uninjured. I see no reason to suppose that the crew is not waiting for us to enter at this moment, if they have seen us.”
Grant shook his head. “That ship might have been here for years—probably has, since none of us can place it. The crew may be there, but, I fear, not alive. It seems unlikely that this craft has been registered in the lifetime of any of us. I doubt that it would have remained here unless it were disabled; but you must all have realized by now that it holds probably our only chance of life. Even if it won’t fly, there may be a transmitter in repair. We had better investigate.”
* * *
The men followed the captain as he took a long, slow leap down the slope. Little enthusiasm showed in the faces behind the helmet masks; even young Preble had accepted the fact that death was almost inevitable. At another time, they might have been eager and curious, even in the face of a spectacle as depressing as a derelict usually is; now they merely followed silently. Here, probably, a similar group of men had, no one knew how long ago, faced a fate identical to theirs; and they were about to see what had befallen those others. No one saw humor in the situation, but a wry smile was twisting more than one face as the group stopped beneath the circular entrance port. More than one thought of the possible irony of their being taken for a rescue crew.
Grant looked at the port, twenty-five feet above their heads. Any of them could easily have jumped to it; but even that effort was not necessary, for a row of niches, eight inches square and two deep, provided a ladder to the rim. It was possible to cling to them even on the lower curve of the hull, for they were deeply grooved around the inside edges. The captain found that his gauntlets could grip easily, and he made his way up the wall of metal, the others watching from below. Arriving at the port, he found that the niches formed a circle around it, and other rows of them extended over the hull in different directions. It was at the entrance, however, that he met the first of the many irregularities.
The others saw him reach the port, and stop as though looking around. Then he traveled entirely around it, stopped again, and began feeling the mirrorlike metal with his gloved hands. Finally he called out:
“Cray, could you come up here, please? If anyone can find the opening mechanism, you should.”
The engineer remained exactly where he was.
“Why should there be any?” he asked. “The only reason we use it on our ships is habit; if the door opens inward, atmospheric pressure will hold it better than any lock. Try pushing; if the inner door is sealed, you shouldn’t have much trouble—the lock chamber will be exhausted, probably.”
Grant got a grip near the edge of the door, and pushed. There was no result. He moved partway around the rim and tried again, with the same lack of success. After testing at several more points, he spoke again:
“No luck. I can’t even tell which side the hinge is on, or even if there is a hinge. Cray, you and a couple of others had better come up and give a hand at pushing; maybe there’s a trace of air in the inner chamber.”
Cray grunted, “If there’s anywhere near an atmosphere’s pressure, it’ll take tons to budge the door—it’s twelve feet across.” But this time he began to climb the hull. Royden, probably the most powerful one present, and a chemist named Stevenson followed him. The four men grouped themselves about the forward edge of the port, their feet braced on the door itself and hands firmly gripping the climbing niches; and all four tensed their bodies and heaved. The door still refused to budge. They rested a moment, and followed Grant to the opposite side of the metal disk.
This time their efforts produced results. The pressure on the other side of the valve must have been only a few millimeters of mercury; enough to give four or five hundred pounds’ resistance to an outside thrust at the edge opposite the hinge. When the door opened a crack, that pressure vanished almost instantly, and the four men shot feet first through the suddenly yawning opening. Grant and Stevenson checked the plunge by catching the edge of the port frame; the other two disappeared into the inner darkness, and an instant later the shock of their impact upon some hard surface was felt by those touching the hull.
The captain and the chemist dropped to the floor of the lock and entered; Preble leaped for the open door, followed by Sorrel and McEachern. All three judged accurately, sailing through the opening, checking their flight against the ceiling, and landing feet down on the floor, where they found the others standing with belt lights in their hands, The sun was on the far side of the ship, and the chamber was lighted dimly by reflection from the rocks outside; but the corridors of the vessel themselves must be dark.
The inner valve of the airlock was open—and had apparently been so from the beginning. Cray and Royden had shot through it, and brought up against the farther wall of a corridor running parallel to the ship’s long axis. They were both visible, standing back to back, sweeping the corridor in both directions with their lights. Grant took a step that carried him over to them, motioning the others to remain where they were, and added his light to those already in action.
To the right, as one entered it, the corridor extended almost to the near end of the ship—the bow, as the men thought of it for no good reason. In another direction, it ran about ten yards and opened into a large chamber which, if this craft resembled the Giansar as closely within as it did without, was probably the control room. At least, it was just about amidships. Smaller doors opened at intervals along the hallway; some were open, the majority were closed. Nothing moved anywhere.
“Come on,” said Grant finally. He walked toward the central room, and paused on the threshold, the others at his heels. The floor they were walking on continued in the form of a catwalk; the chamber they were entering occupied the full interior of the hull at this point. It was brightly lighted, for it was this compartment that possessed the six great view ports, equally spaced around its walls, and the sun shone brightly through these. The men extinguished their own lights. Cray looked about him, and shook his head slowly.
“I still think I must be dreaming, and about to wake up on our own ship,” he remarked. “This looks more and more like home, sweet home.”
Grant frowned. “Not to me,” he replied. “This control layout is the first serious difference I’ve seen. You wouldn’t notice that, of course, spending all your life with the engines. It migh
t be a good idea for you to see if the drive on this ship is enough like ours for you to puzzle out, and whether there’s a chance of repairing it. I’ll look over this board for signs of a transmitter—after all, the Mizar shouldn’t be too far away.”
“Why shouldn’t I be able to understand the drive?” retorted Cray. “It should be like ours, only a little more primitive—depending on how long this boat’s been here.”
Grant shot him an amazed glance. “Do you still think this is a Terrestrial ship, and has been here only a few decades?” he asked.
“Sure. Any evidence otherwise?”
Grant pointed to the floor beneath their feet. All looked down, and for the first time noticed that they left footprints in a thin, even layer of dust that coated the corridor floor.
“That means that the ship held its air for a longer time than I care to think about—long enough not only to reduce the various organic substances on board to dust, but at random currents to distribute it through the open spaces. Yet when we came the air was almost gone—leaked out through the joints and valves, good as they were, so that there was not enough left to resist us when we pushed a twelve-foot piston against its pressure. Point one.”
The finger swung to the control board. “Point two.” He said nothing further, but all could see what he meant.
The center of the control room was occupied by a thick-walled hemisphere—a cup, if you like—swung in gimbals which permitted its flat side always to the uppermost with respect to the ship’s line of net acceleration. The control board occupied the inner surface and upper edge of this cup, all around the circumference; and in the center of the assembly was the pilot’s seat—if it could be called a seat.
It was a dome-shaped structure protruding from the floor about two feet; five broad, deep grooves were spaced equally about its sides, but did not quite reach the top. It looked somewhat like a jelly mold; and the one thing that could be stated definitely about its history was that no human being had ever sat in it. Cray absorbed this evident fact with a gulp, as though he had not chewed it sufficiently.