by William Tenn
Helena moved competently to the microphone and tucked a lever past several calibrations. "You may know its Ogilvie Pattern, Doctor, but it takes a biologist to give the sound frequency at which it can hear best!"
—|—
As Blaine began experimental dronings and buzzings into the instrument, the creature inside the transparent cage opened its wings in a series of hinged movements and revealed the whole rich redness of its small body. It crawled under the loudspeaker and spread open a mouth that was slit up and down instead of sideways. The black wings beat slowly as it gained interest, reflecting cheerful yellow streaks in their furrows. The two tentacles under its jaw lost their stiffness and undulated in mounting excitement.
This would take some time. Donelli walked to the telescanner and faced Dr. Douglas Ibn Yussuf.
"Suppose we get this fellow to cooperate. Where's a good place to tell it to look for Q?"
The chemist lay back and considered. "You are familiar with Quentin's theory of our galaxy's origin? That once there were two immense stars which collided—one terrene, the other contra-terrene? That the force of their explosion ripped the essence of space itself and filled it with ricocheting terrene and contra-terrene particles whose recurring violence warped matter out of space to form a galaxy? According to Quentin, the resulting galaxy was composed of terrene stars who are touched every once in a while by contra-terrene particles and go nova. The only exception is contra-uranium, the opposite number of the last element in the normal periodic table, which will not explode as long as it is isolated from the heavy elements near its opposite number on the table. Thus, in a fluorine atmosphere, with a bromide soil and—"
"Look, Doc," Donelli said wearily, "I learned all that in school years ago. Next you'll be telling me that it's thousands of times more powerful than ordinary atomic fuels because of its explosive contra-terrene nature. Why is it that you scientists have to discuss the history of the universe before you give a guy an answer to a simple question even in a crisis like this?"
"Sorry, son. It's difficult to break the habits of an academic lifetime, even in times of a deadly emergency. That's your advantage; you're accustomed to operating against time, while we like to explore a problem thoroughly before attempting a mere hypothesis. Science is a caution-engendering discipline, you see, and—
"All right. I won't digress into a discussion of the scientific attitude. Where would you find contra-uranium on a planet that's been shown to possess it? Near the surface, I'd say, where the lighter elements abound. You've already found some in a cave on this island? That would indicate that it was forced explosively to the surface, the only place it could exist, when the planet was in a formative state. If there is other contra-uranium on this world, there must be other caves like the one here."
Donelli waved him to silence and bent over the telescanner. "Good enough. Deep space, Doc, that was all I wanted to know! Now I'll see how much I can find out before I use up the dregs of our power."
He swept the beam across the sickly sea and up the coastline of the continent until he saw a dark spot in the orange ground. Then, nudging the telebeam into the cave, he saw at last the few shimmering crystals that meant precious Q. He tried other apertures here and there, convincing himself that, while there was little enough in any one cave, the planet as a whole possessed more than they required. The sight of all the unobtainable Q on the telescanner screen made Donelli sweat with exasperation.
He made another discovery. Leading down, in the rear of every cave, was at least one tunnel that denoted the presence of the burrowers.
"If only we could have made them understand," Donelli murmured. "All of our problems now would have been orbital ones."
He rose and turned to see how his shipmates were doing with the winged alien. "Great galaxies, what did you do to it?"
The avian was back in a corner of the fluorine-filled compartment, its hinged black wings completely screening its body from sight. The wings pressed down harshly as if the creature were attempting to shroud itself out of its environment.
Dr. Archibald Blaine, his hands cupped over the microphone, was chuk-chuking urgently, droning repetitiously, humming desperately. No apparent effect. The black wings squeezed tighter into the corner. A fearful, muffled gulping came over the loudspeaker in the wall.
"It was the mention of the cave, again," Helena Naxos explained, her pleasant face betraying worry. "We were doing fine, going from howdy-do's to how've-ye-been's—the girlie was beginning to tell us all about her complicated love life—when Dr. Blaine asked if she had ever been inside the cave. Period. She crawled away and started to make like the cover of a hole."
"They can't do this to us!" Donelli yelled. "This planet is practically crawling with Q which we can't get because we don't have the Q to cross a hydrofluoric acid sea. The only way we can get it is for these babies to haul it over, either underground through tunnels or across the sea. And every time Blaine starts talking about the caves where the Q is lying around, they go neurotic on him. What's the matter with the caves? Why don't they like them? I like the caves!"
"Take it easy, Jake," Helena soothed. "We're up against a basic taboo in two separated cultures. There must be a reason for it. Find the reason and the problem is solved."
"I know. But if we don't find it soon, we'll be nothing but fancy fluorine compounds."
The woman returned to Dr. Blaine. "Is it possible you could reawaken her interest by offering some gift? A superior glider for example, or power-driven flight."
"I'm working on it," he replied testily, withdrawing his mouth from the microphone. "To creatures on the threshold of civilization, however, superstition takes precedence over mechanical innovations. If it's only superstition—that's another thing we don't know. Could it be the contra-uranium crystals they're afraid of?"
Dr. Ibn Yussuf raised himself on his sound arm. "That is doubtful. Their chemical composition contains no elements heavier than barium, according to the spectroscope. Thus no contra-atomic chain reaction would be set off by their bodies coming in contact with the crystals. Perhaps the mere existence of the crystals upsets them."
Blaine frowned. "No. Unlikely. There would have to be a factor intimately related to them in some way. If I could only attract her attention! No matter what I say, she just lies there and gurgles." He went back to his urgent buzzing, frantically using a lifetime of archaeological knowledge.
Donelli looked at the fuel indicators. His lips flattened into a grimace.
"I'll have to go out there and pick up those Q particles in the cave. That cage you built may make that avian comfortable, but it sure drained us dry."
"Wait, I'll go with you," Helena suggested. "Maybe I can discover what makes these fearsome caves so fearsome."
She donned a spacesuit. Donelli, after a rueful glance at his corroded helmet, dragged another metallic garment out of the locker and used its headpiece instead. They both inspected their supersonics carefully. He approved her casual efficiency.
"You know," her voice said into his headphones as they trudged toward the hill, "if Dr. Blaine is able to talk some sense into that creature and we manage to jet to a regular traffic lane and get rescued, he'll make quite a smash before the Galactic Archaeological Society with his two coexisting but unrelated civilizations. I'll get some fair notice myself with the little I've been able to deduce about these creatures biologically without resorting to dissection. Even Ibn Yussuf, bedridden as he is, has been doing some heavy thinking on the chemistry of a bromide soil. And you—well, I imagine you want to get back to a place where you can hurry up and get drunk."
"No."
Her helmet turned toward him in surprise and question.
"No," he continued. "If we get out of this, I'm going to take advantage of the lifeboat law. Heard of it?"
She hadn't. Her eyes glowed intently and curiously behind her visor.
"The lifeboat law's one of the oldest in space. Any spaceman—Able or Ordinary—who, under a given set o
f circumstances, is entitled to assume command of a vessel and successfully brings that vessel to safety may, at his written request, be issued the license of a third officer. It's called the lifeboat law because that's what it usually pertains to. I have the experience. All I need is the ticket."
"Oh. And what would you do as a third officer? Get drunk whenever you left Io?"
"No, I wouldn't. It's hard to explain—maybe you can't understand—but as a third mate, I wouldn't get drunk. An A.B. or an ordinary spaceman, now, there's so much tiresome, unimportant work facing you whenever you leave a port that you just have to get drunk. And the longer you've been in space, the drunker you get. As a third mate, I wouldn't drink at all—except maybe on vacations. As a third mate, I'd be the driest, stiffest guy who ever was poisoned by a second cook. I'd be a terror of a third mate, because that's the way things are."
"Look at that!" Helena had paused with her back to the mouth of the cave.
—|—
Jake Donelli turned and looked back at the ship. Across it, in the grove of fleshy purple flowers, were at least a dozen winged creatures like the one Blaine was attempting to interest in conversation. Far over the sea were many dots that grew larger and resolved into even more of the avians. Some of them towed gliders lightly behind them. Others carried light tubes. Blow-guns?
"Wonder how they knew about Susie," the spaceman mused. "Was it because she didn't come back at the usual time that the posse was organized? Or are they telepathic?"
"A combination, possibly. They certainly seem to know when one of them is in trouble. You wouldn't say they're acting belligerent?"
"Nope. Just flexing what passes for their muscles. They don't know whether we intend to serve Susie fricasseed or boiled. Better duck inside."
The biologist became her crisp self the moment she saw the white worms. "Wish I could tell exactly what it is they're eating. Now suppose I make a loose guess. Yes, it could well be. Jake, where are those other eggs?"
"Other eggs? Back there. Funny kind of eggs."
She slipped ahead of him, her searchlight picking out the chest-high globules. With a muttered exclamation, she bent down and examined one closely. It was slowly splitting along a pink vein. Donelli waited hopefully.
"No." She straightened. "It doesn't add up. Even assuming, as would seem possible, that those small creatures in the front are the live young of the burrowers and these are the eggs of the avians, it still doesn't explain their relative distance from the usual habitat of their parents. If they were the young of each species, the positions should be reversed. With their strong taboos and respective phobias, the avians would not fly so far into the cave, and the burrowers would not crawl so close to the surface. Furthermore, they would inevitably have passed each other at some time and know of each other's existence. Then too, while birth taboos are common among all primitive races, they hardly have the force of the psychoses which seem to affect both species relative to this and other caves. I'd need a good deal of study and many, many careful notes to work this problem out."
"Continuum!" he swore. "This isn't a research paper for some scientific society or other. We're in a hurry. This is a matter of life and death, woman! Can't you put some pressure into your thinking?"
She threw up her arms in their ungainly wrappings helplessly. "I'm sorry, Jake. I'm trying hard, but I just don't have enough facts on which to base an analysis of two separate, unfamiliar societies. I'm not a sociologist; I'm a biologist. So far as these creatures are concerned, I've just reached the threshold."
"That's all we do—stand around on the threshold," Donelli muttered. "Here are these caves, the threshold to our survival if we can get these babies to pick up the Q and bring it to us. The avians fly around the threshold of the underground but won't go in, while the burrowers crawl around the threshold of the surface but won't go further if you give them the place."
"And both races are on the threshold of civilization. I wonder how long they have been there?"
The spaceman slung the inerted lead container to the ground, preparatory to catching up the crystals of contra-uranium.
"What's the matter with them anyway, that they're so afraid of the caves? What do they think will happen to them after they cross the threshold?"
"What—do—they—think—will—happen," Helena repeated slowly. "What are we all afraid of, the fear intrinsic to any living animal? But how—the eggs—why, of course! Of course!"
She bent toward him briefly and Donelli felt his helmet clang.
"Sorry," she said. "I forgot. I tried to kiss you. What beautiful reasoning, Jake!"
"Huh?" He felt absurdly clumsy in his ignorance—and guilty.
"I'll have to work the details out as I go. Dr. Blaine—once I give him your premise—he'll be able to help. Isn't it wonderful how removal of one stone from the pyramid of obscurity sends the whole structure tumbling down? Now, Jake, do you think you could go into those tunnels and fetch me a live but slightly stunned burrower? We'll need one, you know."
"I—I guess I can. Where do you want him?"
"It, Jake, it! Bring it right here to the middle of the cave. I'll be waiting for you. Hurry!"
She ran out of the cave toward the ship. Donelli watched her go, decided he couldn't recall any particularly clever remarks he had made, set his supersonic for its lowest frequency, and moved to the tunnels.
He paused before the intersection. He and Blaine had had their little scrap with the burrowers in the right-hand one, and an elaborate trap might have been set there against their return: accordingly, he chose to walk down the shaft on his left.
It was much like the other shaft. Carefully carved cross-beams were set up at intervals, while the sides were smooth and round. He came to the sharp slope and moved more cautiously. If he slipped into a hole, there was no telling how far he might fall.
The slope became steeper. Donelli's helmet light suddenly exposed another, more complicated intersection ahead in the form of six tunnel entrances. In front of one, two burrowers were chipping the end of a large root out of the tunnel ceiling.
As his search beam hit them, they whirled simultaneously and waved the hairy appendage at him for the barest fraction a second. Then, both sprang for the tunnel entrance in a flick of ivory bodies.
Donelli thought he had missed. He had brought up his weapon just as they leaped. But one fell to the floor, the ax-head dropping. The creature was not completely unconscious, gobbling weakly at him as he approached. Donelli slung it over his shoulder and started back. The creature squirmed limply in his grasp.
There was an odd, insistent patter behind him, a sound of many legs. Pursuit. Well, they wouldn't dare follow him into the cave. He wished the suit weren't so heavy, though. He kept turning his head to look at the empty shaft to the rear. Nasty to be overcome from behind, under the suffocating earth of an alien planet.
Even though the burrower stiffened with fear when he reached the cave, he felt better. The pattering grew louder, stopped, came on slowly.
Helena Naxos and Blaine were squatting near the four large veined balls, the avian, weakly fluttering, between them. They held a supersonic over it. The winged creature had evidently had a dose of sound like that of Donelli's captive. Blaine was speaking persuasively, in that hum-drone language, with little apparent effect.
"Put it right down here, next to the other one," Helena ordered. "With a little time and a little imagination, we may get out of this fix. Too early to tell just yet. Jake, you'll have to act as sort of armed guard at this conference. We mustn't be disturbed. Susie's playmates are too frightened to come in, but they've been making all kinds of fuss since we carried her out of the ship and into the cave."
"I'll take care of it," the spaceman promised.
He gasped with sheer astonishment when he reached the entrance of the cave. The saffron sky was obscured by multitudes of black-winged avians dipping in short angry circles. A swarm of the avians had surrounded the lifeboat and, as he watched, they lift
ed it slightly off the ground in the direction of the sea. This was no attempt to placate a deity, he decided, but sheer vindictiveness—revenge for the unspeakable tortures they imagined the humans were venting on the prisoner.
The supersonic low-power beam rolled them off the ship in a huge stunned mass. Their places were immediately taken by others. Donelli sprayed them off too.
They left the ship alone after that, and came in flying low at him with their blow tubes in their mouths. Jagged darts shrilled nastily all around him. He felt one bounce off his chest and hoped vaguely that they were less effective than the weapons of the burrowers on Grojen shielding. He moved back into the shadow of the cave.
Helena, Dr. Blaine, and the two aliens came up behind him and gathered round the white worms near the entrance.
"Pretty dangerous here," he told them. "These avians of yours are an accurate bunch of snipers."
"No help for it," she replied. "We're getting close. I don't think they'll keep blowing darts after they get a glimpse of Sister Susie. We'll be safe so long as we're near her. Suppose you do something about the other side. Those burrowers are throwing an awful lot of stuff awfully far."
He moved past them toward the rear, noting that both the winged and clawed creatures were no longer under the influence of the supersonics but were listening intently to Dr. Blaine as he alternately hummed at one and clicked at the other. They almost watched Helena gesture to the white worms and their grisly meal and back to them.
At least we've got their interest, Donelli thought grimly.
He began to cough. No mistake this time, there was HF vapor seeping into his suit through some scratch. Fluorine was eating at his lungs. Well, he didn't have time to feel sick.