by William Tenn
Could it be? So early and so easy? He drew the screen away from the built-in Geiger on his chest. The clacking grew louder. He turned slowly until the flashlight on his head revealed a half-dozen microscopic crystals floating a few inches from one wall.
Contra-uranium! The most compact superfuel discovered by a galaxy-exploring humanity, a fuel that required no refining since, by its very nature, it could occur only in the pure state. It was a fuel for whose powerful uses every engine and atomic converter on every spaceship built in the past sixty years had been designed.
But six crystals weren't very much. The lifeboat might barely manage a take-off on that much Q, later to fall into the hydrofluoric sea.
"Still," Donelli soliloquized, "it's right heartening to find some so near the surface. I'll get an inerted lead container from the ship and scoop it up. But maybe those crystals have a family further back."
The crystals didn't, but someone or something else did.
Four large, chest-high balls of green, veined thickly with black and pink lines, throbbed upon the ground at the rear of the cave. Eggs? If not eggs, what were they?
—|—
Donelli skirted them warily, even though he saw no opening in any of them. They were anchored to the ground, but they were unlike any plants he had seen in nine years of planet-jumping. They looked harmless, but—
The back of the cave divided into two tunnels which were higher and wider than their parent hollow. Smooth all around, Donelli might have taken them for the burrows of an immense worm, had he not noticed the regularly spaced wood-like beams crossed upon each other at intervals in both shafts. The tunnels extended a good distance ahead, then curved sharply down and away from each other.
This was mining, this was engineering! Primitive, but effective!
Donelli hated to use up power in his helmet-transmitter, but he might run into trouble and it was essential that the three scientists learn of even the small amount of Q in the cave. After all, the creatures who built these tunnels might not know enough chemistry to appreciate his inedibility before they sampled him.
He turned on his headset. "Donelli to ship! Good news: I've found enough Q to keep us breathing until after this atmosphere burns through our Grojen shielding. We'll be able to sit around in our spacesuits for at least three days after the ship is eaten out from under us. Nice? You'll see the crystals about halfway into the cave. And don't forget to use an inerted lead container when you pick them up."
"Where are you going, Jake?" He recognized Helena's voice.
"Couple of tunnels at the rear of the cave here have regulation cross-supports. That's why we didn't see any cities when we came down. The smart babies on this world live underground. I'm going to try to talk them into a reciprocal trade treaty—if we have anything they want to reciprocate with."
"Wait a minute, Donelli," Blaine shouted breathlessly. "If you meet any intelligent aliens, it's more than possible they won't understand Universal Gesture-Diagram. This is an unexplored fluorine-breathing world. I'm an experienced archaeologist and I'll be able to communicate with them. Let me join you."
Donelli hesitated. Blaine was smart, but he sometimes fumbled.
Helena came back on. "I'd suggest you take him up on it," her steady voice said. "Archibald Blaine may get switches confused with buttons, but he's one of the few men in the galaxy who knows all nine of Ogilvie's Basic Language-Patterns. If these miners of yours don't respond to an Ogilvie Pattern—well, they just don't belong in our universe!"
As Donelli still hesitated, she developed her point. "Look, Jake, you're our commander and we accept your orders because you know how to cuddle a control board and we don't. But a good commander should use his personnel correctly and, when it comes to dealing with unknown extraterrestrials, Blaine and I have training that you've been too busy to acquire. You're a spaceman; we're scientists. We'll help you get your Q, then we'll take orders from you on how to use it."
A pause. "All right, Blaine. I'll be moving up the right-hand tunnel. And Helena—see that his spacesuit is all buttoned up before he leaves the ship? He can catch an awful cold in that yellow air."
The squat, pale spacehand took a firm grip on his sound pistol and walked delicately into the shaft. The ground here was of a firmer consistency than that on the surface: it supported his weight without either chipping or sagging. That was good. Nothing could come at him through the walls without his detecting it first.
He ducked under a cross-beam, his light momentarily pointing down. When he straightened again, he saw he had company.
At the far end of the tunnel, where it slanted down, several long, segmented beings were moving slowly toward him. There was only the faintest rustle in his headphones as they approached.
Donelli noticed with relief that only one of them had a weapon, a crude hand-ax without a handle. Come to think of it, though, an ax-head thrust forcefully might penetrate not his suit but—what was more dangerous—the Grojen shielding, leaving the metal exposed to the corrosive atmosphere. Not so good. But they didn't seem hostile.
—|—
As they arrived within a few feet of him, their speed decreased almost to immobility, but their three pairs of three-clawed limbs pushed them to his side. Then they stopped, and the long, thin, hairy appendages on their heads brushed against his suit inquiringly and without fear. Their toothless mouths opened and made low gobbling sounds to each other.
They evidently had a language. Donelli saw the flat membrane on their backs that was obviously an ear, but he looked in vain for eyes. Of course, living underground in darkness, they were blind. A fat lot of help Universal Gesture-Diagram would be, even if they could understand it.
Something about the sectioned length of the bodies stretching behind them, something about their rich ivory color, was familiar. Donelli's mind tugged at his memory.
A terrific crash sounded in his ear phones. The three burrowers stiffened around him. Donelli turned and swore.
Blaine had entered the tunnel and smashed into one of the cross-beams. He was stepping over the fallen log now. His spacesuit seemed undented, but his self-confidence had not fared so well. Also a little bubble of earth formed over the area which had rested on the beam end.
The natives had rubbed their head filaments upon the ground as if examining its intentions. Now, before Donelli could get started, they scampered down the tunnel toward the fallen support. Working in perfect coordination, without any apparent orders, they quickly lifted and inserted it in its former position. Then they began brushing against Blaine.
"Deep space, Doc," Donelli moaned as he came up.
"Sh-h-h—quiet!" The archaeologist had bent over the nearest burrower and was clicking his metal-enclosed fingers in an odd rhythm over its ear patch. The animal curved away for a moment, then began a low, hesitant gobbling to the same rhythm as the finger-clicks.
"Can—can you talk to it?" Donelli found it difficult to see the old man as anything but a doddering ineffectual.
"Ogilvie Pattern Five. Knew it. Knew it! Those three-clawed feet and the sharp curve of the ax. Like to investigate the material of the ax—noticed the pointed tip right off. Had to be an Ogilvie Five language. Can I talk to it? Of course! Just need a minute or two to establish the facets of the pattern."
The spaceman's respect for the academic life grew rapidly as he saw the other two aliens edge under the metallic hand and commence gobbling in turn.
They were joining the conversation, or the attempt at one. Blaine began to stroke the side of one of the creatures with his other hand. The gobbling acquired a note of surprise, became staccato.
"Amazing!" Blaine said after a while. 'They mine everything, and completely refuse to discuss the existence of surface phenomena. Most unusual, even for an Ogilvie Five. Do you know where they get their supporting beams? From the roots of plants. At least, that's what they seem to be from their description. But—and this is what the Galactic Archaeological Society will consider significant—they c
annot seem to grasp the concept of plant blossoms. They know only of the roots and the base of the stem. Their social life, now, is strangely obscure for so elementary a culture. But perhaps it might better be termed simple? Consider the facts—"
"You consider them," Donelli invited. "I'm thinking of the Q we need. All this spacesuit power drain is cutting so many hours off our total breathing time. Find out what they'd consider a good trade and ask them to move up into the cave ahead so that I can show them what contra-uranium looks like. We'll supply them with inerted lead containers for picking up the stuff. How far do their tunnels run?"
"All around the planet, I gather. Under the sea and under the continents in a crossing, branching network. I don't anticipate any difficulty. Being the dominant intelligent life-form of the planet, and not particularly carnivorous, they're really quite friendly."
Blaine's fingers clicked questioningly at the nearest alien and he stroked its side with short and long rolls of his hand. The creature seemed confused and gobbled to its companions. Then it moved back. Blaine clicked and stroked once more.
"What's the matter, Doc? They look angry now."
"My suggestion of the cave. It's evidently under the strongest of taboos. These are barbarians, you understand, just emerging into a religious culture-matrix, and a powerful taboo takes precedence over instinct. Then, too, living in the tunnels, they are probably agoraphobic—"
"Look out! They're trying to pull some fancy stuff!"
One of the aliens had scuttled under Blaine's feet. The archaeologist tottered, crashed to the ground. The other two burrowers grasped his long arms between their claws. Blaine struggled and rolled desperately, looking like a confused elephant attacked by jackals.
"Donelli," he gasped, "I can't talk to them while they're holding my arms. They're—they're carrying me!"
The pair of burrowers were dragging the old man's body down the tunnel with gentle but insistent tugs. "Don't worry, Doc. They won't get by me. That must have been one powerful taboo you broke when you mentioned the cave."
As Donelli advanced to meet the group, the alien who had upset the archaeologist scurried ahead to confront him. A forward claw held the small ax-head well back for a thrust.
"Look, fella," Donelli said placatingly. "We don't want any trouble with you, but we aren't carrying too much power right now, and the Doc's suit would run down in no time if you took him any deeper. Now why don't you act business-like and let us show you what we need?"
He knew his words carried no meaning in themselves, but he had had enough experience of unusual organisms to know that a gentle attitude frequently carried the conviction of its gentleness.
Not here, though. The claw snapped forward suddenly and the ax-head spun toward his visored face with unexpected velocity. Donelli jerked his head to one side and felt the pointed tip of the weapon scratch the side of his helmet. The slight buzzing in his right ear was replaced by an empty roaring: that meant the ear phone had gone dead, which in turn meant the Grojen shielding had been chipped off, leaving the hydrofluoric vapors free to eat through the metal.
"This is no good. I guess I'll have to—" The burrower had retrieved the ax in a lightning scamper and had it poised for another throw. As Donelli brought his supersonic up, he marveled at the creature's excellent aim despite its lack of vision. That long, hairy filament waving from the top of its head evidently served to locate his movements better than the finest radarplex on the latest spaceships.
Just before he blasted, he managed to slip the intensity rod on the top of the tube down to nonlethal pitch. The directional beam of high-frequency sound tore down at the burrower and caught it with the claw coming around again. It stopped in mid-throw, stumbled backwards, and finally collapsed into unconsciousness upon the orange ground. The ax-head rolled out of its opened claw.
Blaine protested with a grunt as he was dropped by the other two. They ran up to the fallen burrower and edged around his body insistently. Donelli held his supersonic ready for further developments.
What happened took him completely by surprise.
In a series of movements so rapid that he could hardly follow it visually, one of the aliens snatched up the ax-head while the other lifted the creature Donelli had blasted to its back. They rolled up the slope of the tunnel and scurried past him on either side, the fluorine atmosphere almost crackling with their passage. By the time the spaceman had whirled, they were gone down the far end of the shaft where it dipped into the interior of the planet.
"They sure can hurry when they feel they have to," Donelli commented as he helped the older man to his feet. "Which is what I have to do if I want to get back to the ship before I start sneezing hydrofluoric acid."
While they sped as rapidly as the heavy suits would permit up the tunnel and through the cave, Blaine wheezed an explanation: "They were quite friendly until I mentioned the cave. There seems to be so much sacredness connected with it in their minds that my mere invitation to go there reduced me from an object of great interest to one of the most abysmal disgust. They were indifferent to any wants of ours in reference to the place. Any suggestion of taking them along is enough to precipitate a violent attack."
Donelli wondered if he were imagining the smarting sensation in his eyes. Had fluorine started to seep in already? Fortunately, they were at the mouth of the cave.
"Not so nice," he said. "The Q around here isn't enough to make our ship give out with a healthy cough, and we'll need their help to get any more. But we can't tell them what we want unless they go to the cave with us. Besides, after this fracas, they may be a trifle hard to meet. Why were they carrying you away?"
"To sacrifice me to some primitive deity as a placative measure, possibly. Remember they are in the early stages of barbarism. The only reason we weren't attacked immediately is because they are easily the dominant life-form of this world and are confident of their ability to cope with strange creatures. Then again, they might have wanted to investigate me—to dissect me—to examine my potentialities as food."
They rang the airlock signal and clambered in.
—|—
Hastily Donelli stripped off his spacesuit. There was a thin scar on the metal of the helmet where the Grojen shielding had been scratched away and HF vapor eaten in. A little longer out there and he would have been most definitely dead.
"Hullo!" For the first time, he noticed that almost one-third of the cabin was taken up by a great transparent cage, one corner of which was occupied by a relaxed red creature with folded black wings. "When did the vampire kid arrive?"
"Ten minutes ago," Helen Naxos replied. She was adjusting a temperature-pressure gauge at the side of the cage. "And he—she—it—didn't arrive: I carried it inside. After Dr. Blaine left, I went over the island with the telescanner and noticed this thing flying in from the sea. It went right to those purple flowers and began cutting off sections of the petals and putting them in a sort of glider made out of vines and branches that it was towing. The things obviously cultivate vegetation. That patch out there is one of their gardens."
"Imagine!" the archaeologist breathed. "Another civilization in embryo—avian, this time. An avian culture would hardly build cities. But this is a culture where the glider comes before the wheel."
"So you put on a spacesuit and went out to get it." Donelli shook his head. "You shouldn't have done that, Helena. That creature might have packed a wallop."
"Yes, I considered the possibility. But I didn't know if you two were going to hit anything important, and this winged thing looked like it might prove to be the link between us and this world. Its ability to fly, in particular, while we are grounded could prove valuable. It was fairly quiet when I approached, neither scared nor angry, so I tried the little Ogilvie I know—Pattern One. Didn't work."
"Of course not," Dr. Blaine told her positively. "This is obviously Ogilvie Language-Pattern Three. Consider the hinged wings, the primitive glider you mentioned, the husbandry of flowers. It has to be an O
gilvie Three."
"Well, I didn't know that, Dr. Blaine. And it wouldn't have helped me much if I had. Ogilvie is a little too rich for a poor female biologist's blood. At any rate, after communication broke down—or never got started—this thing ignored me and prepared to fly away with its loaded glider. I squeezed some supersonic at it—low-power, of course—brought it down and came in to ask Dr. Ibn Yussuf's advice on how to build a compartment that would permit us to keep it in the ship without killing it by oxygen poisoning."
"Must have used up an awful lot of Q, Helena! I notice you have pretty elaborate temperature and pressure controls as well as HF humidifiers and in-grav studs. And that loudspeaker system is wasteful."
Dr. Ibn Yussuf groaned up in his bunk and called across the cabin. "It does reduce our supply of contra-uranium to the danger point, Donelli, but, under the circumstances, we thought we were justified. Our only hope is to get aid from the inhabitants of this planet, and we can't get aid unless we can hold them long enough to explain our position and wants to them."
"You have something there," Donelli admitted. "I should have made a stab at bringing back one of those specimens we ran into, not that it would have done much good from the way they acted. Hope you have more luck with this avian character. Treat him—her—it—lovingly, for he—she—it's—our last chance."
Then he and Blaine told her about the burrowers.
"I wish I had been with you," she exclaimed. "Think of it: two barbaric civilizations—one on the surface and the other in the tunnels—developing in complete unconsciousness of each other on the same planet! The burrowers know nothing of the avians, do they, Dr. Blaine?"
"Absolutely nothing. They even refuse to discuss the matter. Surface life is a completely alien concept to them. Their agoraphobia—fear of open places—probably has much to do with their reluctance to accompany us to the cave or even the tunnel entrance. Agoraphobia—Hm-m-m. Then these winged creatures might well be claustrophobic! That would be a catastrophe! We'll find out in a moment. It's opening its eyes. Where is that loudspeaker arrangement?"