Cycle of Fire

by Hal Clement

  Some of them became obvious immediately. Three of the dome-shaped objects were occupied by creatures similar to their guide, their bodies centered on top and the six limbs draped down the side grooves. The guide himself went on to the end of the room and settled himself in one of the “wash-bowls,” his limbs spread radially in all directions. It was not possible to tell from appearances that the creatures were examining the robot but there seemed little doubt that they were.

  The guide, from his “couch,” resumed the conversation.

  “Here we are. Could you perhaps give us a more concrete idea of what you expect to learn by seeing us, and why that knowledge will make you more sympathetic with our ideas?”

  “We hope to learn how you live, what you eat, what your abilities and limitations both physical and mental may be, and as much as possible about your connection with the ‘cold’ people who are your children and ancestors. With that knowledge, we may understand better why you object to the spread of technical knowledge on this world. At the moment I must confess that your attitude reminds us of certain historical groups on our own world, and every time in the past that such a group has managed to curtail or control the spread of knowledge the result has been extremely unfortunate. If the people of Abyormen are so different from us that this result should not be expected we’d like to know it.”

  “How have the people who have seen you at your work reacted to all this new information?”

  “They are almost without exception interested. One at least has learned a good deal, and convinced us that your people are at least as intelligent as ours.”

  “I suppose you mean Dar Lang Ahn. No doubt he is planning to expand the refuges of his Teachers or construct a flying machine like yours?”

  “He has made no mention of it, but you may ask him. He is here with us.”

  Dar was startled at this turn of the conversation, but spoke without hesitation.

  “Of course I had not thought of such a thing. I have not learned enough for either task in any case.”

  “There is something else I trust you have not learned from these creatures, which your friend Kruger has taught me. However, what you have learned yourself will soon be of little importance.”

  “Of course.” Dar became silent and the conversation’s subject changed.

  “I suppose you control this machine by some modification of radio,” one of the beings on the dome-shaped “chairs” remarked. The biologist admitted that this was so. “What sort of waves do you use, that are effective through so much rock? The set with which we have been talking to you has a broadcasting antenna on the surface.”

  “I cannot give that information in detail myself,” replied the biologist, “as it is not: my field of knowledge. The robot has an antenna, but it is not very noticeable; if you examine its body closely you will find a coil of wire wound many times about the upper part, just below the turret that carries the eye.” The questioner arose from his seat and walked toward the machine on all six limbs; Dar noticed that it betrayed none of the clumsiness or difficulty with motion so often showed, especially in the last few years, by his own Teachers. Arrived at the robot, the being stood on four of the legs and used the other two to grope over its surface. A bundle of small tendrils, which evidently served the purpose of fingers, became visible at the tip of each limb during this process.

  “I can feel the coil,” it said after a moment, “though it is too small — at least: in its individual wires — to see.”

  “I’m afraid the light is not very well located for that purpose,” replied the biologist. “We did not consider its use except for our own convenience.”

  “What? You mean there is a light on this machine, too? When you started to speak I thought you referred to ours. If you will bring the robot over to it perhaps I can see a little better, but I doubt it; as I said, the wires are very fine.”

  The biologists all saw what the trouble was, in general; the speaker said in a resigned tone, “Yes, there is a light on the robot, at the very top, a small cylinder which you can probably feel even if you can’t see it. Where is the one to which you were referring?”

  “There.” Another limb left the floor and gestured. Dar Lang Ahn, following the indication, saw only the pipe-and-nozzle arrangement which Kruger had described as a gas light.

  “You mean that pipe?” asked the biologist. Kruger hastily explained his idea, speaking a split-second before Dar would have.

  “But if it’s a gas jet why isn’t it lighted?” was the objection.

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a hydrogen flame that doesn’t show up in the light from our robot.” Instantly the operator cut the light in question, but nothing was visible on the screen and he immediately restored it. During the brief exchange the Teacher had affirmed that the pipe in question was indeed what he meant.

  “Apparently we see by different kinds of light,” the biologist said. “Were you aware of that? Your ‘cold’ people are a little different from us in that respect, but we are nearly enough alike to use the same lighting devices, so you must differ from them, too.”

  “We knew that they could see smaller objects than we, but did not know the reason. We did not know that there were different kinds of light.”

  “You are not aware that the waves your radio uses are the same, except for length, as those used for seeing?”

  “Ridiculous! Radio waves travel too rapidly for the speed to be measured, if they take any time at all for transit. The waves of sight, if they are waves, travel little faster than those of sound.”

  “Oh-ho-o-o.” The human speaker was buried in thought for a moment. Then he asked, “Could you explain how that light of yours works?”

  “It is simply a steam jet, expanding through a nozzle of a particular shape. It would be very difficult to describe the shape, at least in words that we both know.”

  “Never mind; you have told me enough. What I fail to understand now is how you could possibly know anything about the suns; you certainly can’t ‘see’ them.”

  “Of course not; they can only be felt.”

  Dar Lang Ahn had been left behind some sentences before, and in hasty whispers the boy tried to explain what was going on.

  “The ‘hot’ people don’t see the way we do at all; it’s even worse than the difference between you and me. We at least see by the same general kind of light — electromagnetic waves. From what this one says, they use some form of sound — very high frequency, I guess, since he said something about its traveling a little faster than ‘ordinary’ sound.”

  “But how could anyone see with sound?”

  “I suppose you could see, after a fashion, with anything that traveled in a straight line, and sound will do that if nothing interferes with it. The very short sound waves-ultrasonics — are better than the ones we talk with in that respect. Of course, they wouldn’t show anything that was very small; he said the wires were too fine to see, you remember.”

  The two brought their attention back to the radio conversation — at least, Kruger did. Dar, as usual, had something new to think about.

  “You must have done some rather careful thinking yourselves to have deduced as much about this planetary system as you have,” the biologist was saying, “since you can only detect objects outside Abyormen’s atmosphere if they are radiating enough heat to feel.”

  “The picture I gave to your Nils Kruger was only one of several theories,” the being replied calmly.

  “It happens to be about right, as far as it goes. But if you can do that sort: of thing with scientific reasoning why are you so prejudiced against it?”

  “I wish you would stop reiterating that question. To answer it, however, what good does it do us? Are we any better off for knowing that Abyormen goes around Theer and Theer around Arren? I admit that sort of knowledge is harmless, since it cannot lead to dangerous activity, but it is a waste of time.”

  “In other words you divide scientific knowledge into two classes — useless items an
d dangerous ones.”

  “Practically. There is an occasional exception; the person who invented these lights did some good, of course. However, it is necessary to examine each new item of knowledge to make sure that it will not be dangerous.”

  “I begin to see your viewpoint. I take it, then, that you do not mind our wasting our time by finding things out about you.”

  “I don’t care what you do with your time. Ask your question.”

  The scientists complied, and gradually Dar Lang Ahn began to understand the sort of beings his ancestors had been — and his children would be.

  Their cities were scattered all over Abyormen, but they were invariably in volcanic areas where a few of their inhabitants could retreat underground and survive through the time of cold, so none of Dar’s generation ever went near them — the fire taboo took care of that. It seemed likely, though the Teacher never admitted it in so many words, that the taboo was another example of influence of the “hot” Teachers over the “cold” ones. No such prohibition existed for the “hot” race, who lived and died where they chose; hence, metal articles such as Dar’s belt buckles might be, and often were, found in or near low-temperature cities at the start of the “cold” life cycle. Like Dar’s generation the others took great pains to insure the transmission of knowledge from one cycle to the next, though they depended less on books than on the memory of their Teachers. When Dar interrupted the questioning to ask why it would not be better for the knowledge to go from “hot” to “cold” and back to “hot” again, thus permitting both races to help in its development, the Teacher pointed out patiently that it would be virtually impossible to control the spread of information if this were done.

  They were fairly competent electricians and excellent civil engineers. Their chemistry seemed good, surprisingly enough to a race whose chemists depended heavily on sight. Astronomy, naturally, was almost nonexistent and the deeper branches of physics quite beyond them so far. They had radioactive elements, of course, but had not the faintest idea of the cause of their behavior.

  Many of the human questions puzzled Dar, of course, and in some cases this was not due to his ignorance of human science. As nearly as he could tell, the men were trying to find out how these Teachers felt about Dar’s own people — that is, whether they liked them, respected them, hated them as necessary inferiors, or simply regarded them as a minor but important nuisance. Dar remembered that one of the beings present had claimed friendship with him on the basis of blood relationship, though he could not for the life of him see how such relationship had been determined.

  This question also occurred to the biologist, who had been one of those listening in during the interception of Kruger’s first radio conversation with the Teacher and had later asked for a translation of it. Rather to Dar’s surprise the Teacher had an answer.

  “We arrange for the circumstances, or at least the location, of many of our ancestors’ deaths. In a short time the people of this village will be ordered to the crater where Dar and Kruger were trapped for a time; there we can observe the death and the beginning of the new lives, and can keep track of who is who’s offspring. We also arrange to die ourselves at preselected places when the cold season is about to start, and try to learn from the ‘cold’ Teachers the various places at which their new groups at the beginning of their time of living to catch the people are captured — they go out into the wilds in hunting new people, who are nothing more than wild animals at the time.”

  “I should think they would miss some.”

  “They do, as nearly as we can tell. Every now and then a member of our race turns up, or sometimes even a small group of them, whose parent must have survived the whole cold season as a wild animal; at least, we have no record of him.”

  “Don’t you know how many children a given person will have?”

  “It is quite impossible to tell, depending on things such as his individual weight.”

  “But that doesn’t seem to vary much.”

  “During normal life, no, but at the time of dying one may have gone for very long periods without food, or on the other hand have eaten very heavily and very recently — all according to the opportunities. Also it is impossible to tell whether any of the young children have been eaten by wild animals before they are caught, in the case of Dar Lang Ahn’s people, since they do not take proper care of them as we do.”

  “I see.” So did Dar. Good though his memory was it contained little of his brief existence before being “caught,” but what little there was fitted in with what the Teacher said. He wondered why his own Teachers did not take precautions like those — and then realized that they had no chance; either the “hot” people would have to cooperate, which they seemed unwilling to do, or his own race would have to keep a group of the others under control during the hot period, as this creature did with his villagers during the cold. This seemed difficult, to put it mildly; the other race had got far enough ahead technically to have pretty complete control of the situation. Dar began to suspect strongly that this Teacher had not been frank; there were reasons other than his personal disapproval of science behind his objections to the introduction of human knowledge.

  That thought grew in his mind as the conversation went on, and gave birth to others. It was Dar Lang Ahn, after the robot had started back to the flier, who made the suggestion that some of the other Teachers in their volcanically warmed retreats be contacted and questioned; and even Kruger, who knew him better than any other human being ever would, did not realize just what he was trying to find out.

  XIV. BIOLOGY; SOCIOLOGY

  AGAIN AND again Abyormen swung around its almost cometary orbit, and closer and closer Theer drew to its blazing primary. Abyormen, very slowly, grew hotter. To its natives this was a matter of little moment; the temperature had not yet reached the value which would activate the bacteria whose life processes would load the atmosphere with oxides of nitrogen. Until that happened Dar’s people cared little whether the oceans of their planet were freezing or boiling.

  The temperature did not bother the human scientists, either. Most of them had from the beginning been wearing complex protective garments which virtually air-conditioned them. Nevertheless they knew that more protection would be needed soon. Experiments with the native life, using not only bacteria but animals and plants large enough to be observed directly, had told them what to expect.

  Kruger was more than satisfied with the situation. His friend had evidently become completely absorbed in the business of acquiring knowledge from the human visitors. Kruger could not always keep up with him, but the boy no longer cared much about that. If anything was certain, it was that Dar Lang Ahn had already collected far too much information to relay it all to his Teachers before the end of his normal life span. There would be no alternative to his remaining in the shelter under the ice cap when it was sealed, which meant that he would automatically become a Teacher himself.

  Once or twice the boy’s conscience bothered him a trifle; he wondered whether it would not have been fairer to point out to Dar what all this time spent with the human visitors must necessarily entail. Each time he thought of this, however, he managed to convince himself that the native was old enough to know what he was doing.

  It might have helped had he brought the matter up, just the same.

  While the human scientists could, of course, work even in the hot season of Abyormen, action would be much more awkward. Therefore they were trying to get their basic information before the change occurred. Dar watched everything that went on, as far as possible; Kruger was much less enthusiastic after seeing one of the biological tests.

  This occurred after the chain-reaction effect of heat on the local bacteria had been discovered. A soil sample from the planet had been used to cover the floor of an airtight cage, and several small animals of the sort Dar and Kruger had encountered in the crater had been introduced. Several native plants were growing there as well; the biologists had tried to reproduce the pla
net’s environment in miniature. This done, they proceeded to raise the temperature — gradually, to minimize the chance of thermal shock’s complicating the situation.

  The cage was well enough insulated to prevent steam from condensing on the walls, so it was still possible to see what went on within. Some water, of course, was still liquid, since the boiling of the rest had raised the pressure considerably; and quite suddenly a meter began to climb from the zero position.

  It was simply a galvanometer, but it was mounted in series with a resistor consisting of a tiny, open vial of water inside the cage. The resistance of the liquid was dropping, and no one present doubted the cause. In a few seconds this became evident even to the naked eye, as the atmosphere within the cage took on a faint but unmistakable reddish-brown tint. The bacteria were at work; oxides of nitrogen were forming, acidifying any water that might still be present in liquid form — and doing something much more drastic to the life in the cage.

  The animals had stopped moving, except for an uneasy turning of their heads. Each had drawn a little way from his neighbor, and stopped nibbling on the plants. For several seconds subjects and experimenters alike remained motionless while the suspense mounted.

  Then the largest of the little creatures abruptly collapsed, and within the next thirty seconds the others had followed suit. Kruger stole a sidelong glance at Dar, but his little friend did not notice. He had both eyes fixed on the cage. The boy looked back at the animals, and suddenly felt sick. The tiny creatures were losing shape, melting into featureless puddles of protoplasm. The pools remained separate, even where two of the creatures had collapsed quite close together. A faint stirring motion became visible in the mounds of still-living jelly, and as he saw this Kruger’s stomach failed him. He raced for the outdoors.

  Dar did not seem affected; he remained for the next half hour, which was about the time it took the last of the pools to organize itself into about fifty tiny wormlike things which bore no resemblance whatever to the animal from whose body material they had been formed. These were crawling about the cage, apparently perfectly able to take care of themselves.