Cycle of Fire

by Hal Clement

  The seasonal changes as described by the Teacher in the distant village of the geysers had been going on, apparently, for just a trifle under six million years according to one worker’s theory, or a trifle over ten million according to another’s. The two schools of thought were about evenly divided, the first basing its figures on the assumption that the long year had always had its present length of about sixty-five terrestrial years, the second insisting that the seasonal period must have been more or less steadily decreasing in length. This group had no suggestions for explaining such a phenomenon but stuck to their interpretation of the data. Dar Lang Ahn was fascinated; it was the first time that he had realized that positive knowledge did not always result at once from scientific investigation.

  It remained for the leader of the party to sum up the geological situation over the first meal after Dar and Kruger had returned.

  “This seems to be the story of this planet, according to present evidence,” he said. “It originated about as long ago as Earth, give or take a billion years, and as far as we can tell in the same manner. It passed through the usual stage of cooling, and eventually water was able to condense. Its primary atmosphere was probably retained a trifle better than Earth’s, since the velocity of escape here is over twenty per cent higher. Life started, probably spontaneously in the usual manner but possibly from adventitious spores, and developed on a path comparable to that of the other planets with which we are familiar — that is, it drastically modified the primary atmosphere until it became more or less like that of Earth.

  During this period, which lasted for most of the planet’s existence, the tremendous climatic changes now associated with its sun’s periodic passage close to Alcyone do not seem to have been occurring; at least, no evidence whatever has been found to suggest they were, and a number of very significant facts indicate the contrary. For example, in some of the fossil beds great numbers of shellfish and other creatures of apparently identical species but widely differing size are found, without any layering which would suggest that the smaller ones died earlier. It would seem from such facts that the life of Abyormen, at that time, was normal from our point of view in its reproductive habits — creatures were born, grew old, and died pretty much at random.

  “Life evolved to the stage of air-breathing vertebrates under these conditions, the characteristic types produced all being six-limbed. There is no evidence that intelligent beings evolved.

  “Then somewhere between five and ten million years ago, the tremendous temperature changes produced by Alcyone began to occur and virtually all the life of the planet was wiped out. Either a few simple forms survived and gave rise to the present species, which get around the climate situation in the way we now know, or more spores arrived, or a totally new generation of life took place.

  “We still know very little about these last few million years; it seems the consensus that we should actually drain this lake and conduct major excavations in its bed to find remains of the life of this period. However, we do know that at the moment the general life of the planet exists under a form of alternating generations which enable it to survive in two widely different environments. Are there any additions or corrections to this summary?”

  “Just a comment; astronomical help is urgently needed,” came a voice.

  “I agree. I have been recording this little speech and will send the tape up to the Alphard as soon as possible.”

  The meal ended with no further contributions to science.

  “What do you think of it, Dar?” Kruger asked later. “Does this go very badly against what your Teachers have told you?”

  “It doesn’t conflict at all; they never told us anything about such possibilities. Knowing what the Teachers are, now, I can suppose that is because they never thought of them themselves.”

  “Isn’t there some chance of your Teachers’ objecting to your telling all this? Or, if they don’t object, at least some of the ‘hot’ Teachers will.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I think our own Teachers will be as interested as I am, and I have come to the conclusion that all the other Teachers know about our doings is what our own report to them by radio. The others couldn’t live anywhere near the Ice Ramparts.”

  “Not even underground?”

  “A long way down, maybe, but they still couldn’t watch very closely. For one thing, didn’t that one at the geyser village mention that there was no way for you to see him or him to see you, since no barrier that would keep you both safe could be seen through?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. But if he depends on reports from your Teachers, why couldn’t they have just said they had killed me, instead of actually trying to carry out his orders?”

  “Well, if that ever occurred to them they probably thought that the reason he wanted you killed was of such a nature that he was bound to detect the results if you weren’t. If my people did learn a lot of your science right afterward, for example, it would be quite hard to hide.”

  “I suppose so. Still, I’d certainly take a chance rather than kill a friend.”

  “Perhaps they weren’t sure how much of a friend you were. Remember, they hadn’t been with you as long as I, and — well, you do have some rather odd characteristics, you know. I can understand that ‘hot’ Teacher’s feeling that way.”

  “I suppose so. We know each other pretty well now, but we still find each other queer at times. It doesn’t bother me any more, though.”

  “Nor me.” The two looked at each other with a more nearly complete understanding, in that moment, than they had ever achieved before or were to attain later.

  XIII. ASTRONOMY; XENOLOGY

  THE FLIER that took the geological report to the astronomers also carried Dar Lang Ahn and Nils Kruger back to the Alphard. Dar had followed the summary as far as it went, but he did not see just how astronomy was needed to check on the theories of the rock specialists. His curiosity about all matters allied to the physical sciences had reached a level that few human beings experience after leaving childhood.

  He listened carefully as the record of the geologist’s summary was played over by the astronomers, but heard nothing he did not remember from its original utterance. He listened carefully to the conversation of these new scientists and never considered that they might regard his insistent questions as a discourtesy — which, as a matter of fact, most of them did not.

  “I am afraid I do not know exactly what you mean when you say that Arren may have ‘captured’ Theer and Abyormen,” Dar would ask at one point.

  “I think young Kruger explained something of Newton’s laws to you,” was the beginning of the answer.

  “Normally, any two bodies attract each other according to definite law, and that attraction, plus the ordinary fact of inertia — the thing that keeps a stone traveling after it leaves the hand that throws it — results in definite, predictable motions of those bodies, such as the Alphard around your planet at this moment. By ‘capture’ we simply imply that originally Theer did not travel around Arren, but had its own path through space, and this path carried it close to Arren. The star’s attractive forces changed the paths so that now they travel around each other.”

  “That seems clear enough. But I gathered that some of you found fault with this idea?”

  “Plenty of fault. Capture doesn’t ordinarily occur; it calls, as a rule, for very special circumstances.”

  “Why? If this force varies with distance as you say, I should think that all that would be needed would be for the two objects to get close enough together. In fact, I don’t see why Theer and Arren haven’t fallen into each other long ago, if what you say is right.”

  “Good point. The trouble is, as two objects fall toward each other their speed increases — you can see that. Unless they are aimed exactly right to start with they won’t collide, and unless they collide they’ll start going apart again, slowing down just as fast as they picked up speed before. The outbound path will be shaped just like the
inbound one, so you won’t see them spiraling together. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Since the Alphard was in free fall, demonstration of the point was easy enough. Two electrically charged pith balls in the evacuated air lock behaved in a manner that made the whole affair quite clear to the curious Abyormenite.

  “Then how could a capture ever take place?” he asked when his instructor had re-entered the main part of the ship and doffed his space suit. “I suppose it’s possible some way or you wouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

  “It’s possible — just. If a third object is present, moving exactly the right way with respect to the others, things may turn out just right, though the probability of such an event is not awfully high; and if I’d let air into the lock a moment ago its friction would have caused the pith balls to spiral together.”

  “I suppose the idea is that some of the other stars in this group served as the third body.”

  “I hate to depend on such an idea, because they’re pretty far apart, but that may account for the situation.”

  “At any rate it is possible that this sort of thing may account for the beginning of the hot times on Abyormen.”

  “Possible. I’d not like to say more.” The Abyormenite had to be content with that — for the time being.

  Naturally it did not take very many answers involving the terms “perhaps” and “probably” to start Dar pondering on the “how-do-you-know” type of question. Up to a point the astronomers bore with him even then, but eventually they suggested as tactfully as possible that he have Kruger teach him a little elementary algebra.

  It never occurred to Dar to be hurt. He was mildly annoyed at himself for not thinking of this before, since so many of his previous questions had involved bits of mathematics in their answers. He went gaily off to find Kruger, who no longer accompanied him everywhere since his great improvement in English.

  Dar failed to notice the slight dismay that his request caused his human friend; he settled down and wanted to learn algebra at once. Kruger did his best, but was not the world’s best teacher. He might have done better had he not been obsessed with a fear that this sort of thing was likely to destroy Dar’s interest in science.

  He need not have worried. Most people who suffer in mathematics do so because they treat it as something to be memorized, and memorization held no terrors for Dar Lang Ahn. Perhaps for that reason he was extremely slow in grasping the basic idea of algebra as a problem-solving tool; he could learn all the rules but, faced with a problem, had precisely the same trouble as so many high-school freshmen. However, it was Kruger rather than Dar who eventually sought relief from this task.

  Finding a new subject to interest Dar was not difficult, but for private reasons Kruger felt that it should be a non-mathematical one this time. He shared the common belief about biology’s being such a subject, and decided that it was about time to find out what the life scientists had learned about Abyormen.

  It turned out that this team had been trying for some time to solve the problem of examining the only ‘hot’ life form available — one of the Teachers in the volcano-warmed refuges. The individual at the geyser village was still not exactly cooperative, but they felt that they knew him better than any of the others; it was this being who had been selected to play host to a televison-equipped robot which the Alphard’s engineers had improvised. Dar, seeing this device, was immediately off on a new track, and Kruger was faced with explaining television and remote control. He was still trying when everyone went aboard the landing boat with the robot.

  Actually Dar felt he had a fairly clear picture of what the apparatus did, and he was beginning to get a very good idea of his chances of learning how it was done. He listened while Kruger talked to the Teacher on the boat’s radio during the landing, but made no comments of his own.

  “We would appreciate it if you would allow our robot to enter your retreat. We are sure it can stand the conditions.”

  “Why should I do this? What good will it do either of us?”

  “You have seen us, and must have formed some of your opinions as a result. Don’t you think we might modify some of our beliefs after seeing you? After all, you have claimed many times that we do not understand you, since we do not agree with your views about the spreading of knowledge. It seems to me that you would be willing to do anything which will increase our understanding.”

  “How do you know I have ever seen you? I told you that I knew of no substance which would keep our environments apart and which could also be seen through.”

  “Then you didn’t tell the whole truth — you have a television device of some sort. You saw clearly enough to ask about those iron belt buckles that Dar wears.”

  “Very well. But how sure can I be that your seeing me will bring you strange people to your right minds?”

  “I cannot tell; how can I promise what we’ll conclude from evidence we don’t yet possess? In any case you can learn more of us.”

  “I have no particular interest in learning more about you.”

  “You did when you were asking me all those questions a few years back.”

  “I learned what I needed to know then.”

  “Many of the people are learning about our science, not just Dar Lang Ahn. There were scores of them watching while we investigated a cave far to the south.”

  “There seems little I can do to stop it.”

  “But if you will also learn from us, you could at least have some idea of what the others are finding out; and you would be able to exercise some control over what your own people learn when their time of living arrives.”

  Dar was a trifle confused by this argument; he did not entirely understand what the boy was trying to do and understood even less the mental operations of the distant Teacher. He did not know whether or not to be surprised when this argument seemed to convince the creature, but he could tell that Kruger was satisfied with the result.

  The robot, small though it was, was too big to go through the trap at the place where Dar and Kruger had talked to the Teacher. At the latter’s direction, the flier was landed near the crater in which the two travelers had been trapped for so long and the machine carried to the building in which they had found the generators. The men returned to the flier, where they all gathered around the television screen tuned to the robot’s transmitter.

  “What next?” one of the men asked the Teacher.

  “Send your machine down the ramp.” The operator complied; the little box rolled on its caterpillar treads down the slippery surface. The light grew dimmer as the bottom of the ramp was approached, and a bulb on the top of the robot was lighted to permit them to see.

  “Along the corridor. Make no turns; there are other passages.” The machine advanced. The corridor was long and apparently led deep into the mountain; it was some time before the way was blocked by a fairly solid door.

  “Wait.” They obeyed, and after a short time the door opened.

  “Come quickly.” The robot rolled on through and the door swung shut behind it. “Keep on; there are no more branches. I will come to meet your machine, but will travel slowly, as I have to bring my radio with me. I am still near the village.”

  “You need not go to the trouble of traveling unless you would rather the robot did not see that part of your station,” replied one of the biologists. “The machine can make the trip without anyone’s being bothered.”

  “Very well. I will wait here, and my companions can talk to you as well.”

  There must have been a single long tunnel connecting the passages under the generator building with the area under the village by the geysers. It took a long time to traverse, but eventually the robot reached a point where the corridor suddenly expanded into a large chamber about eight feet high, from which a number of other openings branched. The spokesman, who had learned enough of the Abyormenite language to be independent of Kruger or Dar most of the time, informed the Teacher of the robot’s location and requested further directions.


  “You are very close; it will be easier to show you the way. Wait there, and I will be with you in a moment.” The men around the television screen watched intently.

  In a few seconds a flicker of motion appeared in one of the openings and every eye fixed instantly on its screened image. Their attention did not waver as the newcomer walked toward the robot.

  No one was particularly surprised. All except Dar had had more or less experience on Earth’s exploring vessels, and had seen a wide variety of creatures turn out to be both intelligent and cultured.

  This one was like nothing the Abyormenite had ever seen in his life. A melon-shaped body was supported on six limbs, so thick at the bases that they merged into each other but tapering nearly to points where they reached the floor. The human observers thought of an unusually fat-bodied starfish walking on the ends of its arms rather than spread out flat. In the light from the robot the upper third of the body appeared deep red to human eyes, with a stripe of the same color extending down to the end of each appendage; the rest was black. There were no visible eyes, ears, or similar items of equipment on the body, except for a spot at the very top which might have been anything from a closed mouth to a color peculiarity. Dar had no way of judging the size of the creature rom its televised image; the operator of the robot, judging its distance with the usual focusing lights, found that it was about Dar’s height and estimated that it must weigh eighty or ninety pounds.

  “I take it you see me.” Dar got a distinct impression that the creature’s tone was reflecting irony. There was no room for any doubt concerning this thing’s identity, for the voice now coming from the robot’s pick-up was the same that they had been hearing all along. “If you will have your machine follow me we will be able to relax while you find out what you wish to know.” Without turning, the creature retraced its steps, and the robot followed. A short corridor led into a room about five feet high, very similar to one of those which Dar and Kruger had examined in the city. Dar watched eagerly, expecting to learn the uses of the various puzzling installations.