Complete Short Fiction, page 117
He watched all four of the machines with minute care. They were now balanced on their support struts. They were neither advancing nor retreating, and the upper members were moving in their usual random fashion. All eyes were still fixed on his ship.
Then he noticed that the pressure-wave assemblies of all four were functioning, although three did not possess any broadcaster whose signal could be modulated. He watched them in fascination. Sometimes—usually, in fact—only one would be generating waves. At others, two, three or all four would be doing so. Even the one with the broadcaster did not always have its main switch closed at such times. Something a little peculiar was definitely occurring.
It had already occurred to the agent that the atmospheric waves carried the control impulses for these machines. Why should the machines themselves be emitting them, however? Receivers should be enough for such machines. Then he recalled another of his passing thoughts, which might serve as an explanation. Perhaps there was only one operator for all of them. And after all, why not? It might be better to think of the whole group as a single machine.
In that case, the pressure waves, traveling among its components, might be coordination signals. They just might be. At any rate, some testing could be done along this line. Whatever limitations he and his ship might have on this world, he could at least set up pressure waves in its atmosphere. Perhaps he could take over actual control of one or more of these assemblies. He had had the idea earlier, in connection with radiowaves, and nothing much had come of it. But there seemed no reason not to try it again with sound. Nothing could surpass the experimental method when it was pursued with one strongly likely probability in mind.
A logical pattern to use would be the one that had been broadcast back to the distant observer a few moments before. It had been connected with a fairly simple, definite series of actions, and he had both heard and seen its production. He tried it, causing his hull to move in the complex pattern his memory had recorded a few seconds before. He tried it a second time.
“The thing’s howling like a fire-siren!”
Just as when he had tried the same test with radio waves, there was no doubt that an effect had been produced, though it was not quite the effect the agent had hoped for. The handling appendages on all four of the things dropped whatever they were holding and snapped toward the upper part of their bodies. Once there, their flattened tips pressed firmly against the sides of the turrets on which their eyes were mounted.
For a monent, none of them produced any waves of its own. Then, the one with the broadcaster began to use it at great length. The agent wondered whether or not to attempt reproduction of the entire pattern it used this time, and decided against it. It was far more likely to be a report than involved in control. He decided to wait and see whether any other action ensued.
What did result might have been foreseen even by one as unfamiliar with mankind as the Conservationist. The machine with the broadcaster began producing more pressure waves, watching the ship as it did so. The agent realized, almost at once, that the controller was also experimenting. He regretted that he could not receive the waves directly, and wondered how he could make the other—or others—understand that their signals should be transmitted electromagnetically.
As a matter of fact, the agent could have detected the sound waves perfectly well, had it occurred to him to extend one of his seismic receptor-rods into the air. A sound wave carries little energy, and only a minute percentage of that little will pass into a solid from a gas. But an instrument capable of detecting the seismic disturbance set up by a walking man a dozen miles away is not going to be bothered by quantitative problems of that magnitude. However, this fact never dawned on the agent. Yet few would deny that he had done very well.
As it happened, no explanation was necessary for the hidden observer. He must have remembered, fairly quickly, that all the signals the agent had imitated had been radioed, and drawn the obvious conclusion. At any rate, the broadcaster was very shortly pressed into service again. A signal would be transmitted by radio, and the agent would promptly repeat it in sound waves.
Since the Conservationist had not the faintest idea of the significance of any of the signals this was not too helpful—but the native had a way around that. A machine advanced to the hull of the ship and scraped the clay from one of its eyes. The particular eye was the most conveniently located one, to the agent’s annoyance. But fortunately it was not the only one through which he could see the things.
Then, an ordered attempt was begun, to provide him with data which would permit him to attach meanings to the various signal groups. Once he had grasped the significance of pointing, matters went merrily on for some time.
They pointed at rocks, mountains, the sun, each other—each had a different signal group, confirming the agent’s earlier assumption that they were not identical devices. But there also seemed to be a general term which took them all in.
He was not quite sure whether this term stood for machines in general, or could be taken as implying that the devices present were part of a single assembly, as he had suspected earlier. While the lessons went on, two of them wandered about the valley seeking new objects to show him. One of these objects proved the spark for a very productive line of thought.
Its shape, when it was brought back and shown to him, was as indescribable as that of many other things he had been shown by them. Its color was bright green and the agent, perceiving a rather wider frequency band than was usable by human eyes, did not see it or think of it as a green object. He narrowed its classification down to a much finer degree.
He did not know the chemical nature of chlorophyll, but he had long since come to associate that particular reflection spectrum with photosynthesis. The thing did not seem to possess much rigidity. Its bulbous extensions sagged away from either side of the point where it was being supported. The handling extention that gripped it seemed to sink slightly into its substance.
He had never seen such a phenomenon elsewhere, and had no thought or symbol from the term pulpy. However, the concept itself rang a bell in his mind, for the machines facing him seemed fabricated from material of a rather similar texture. It was a peculiarity of their aspect that had been bothering him subconsciously ever since he had seen them moving. Now a nagging puzzlement—subconscious frustration was always unpleasant—was lifted from his mind.
The connection was not truly a logical one. Few new ideas have strictly logical connection with pre-existing knowledge. Imagination follows its own paths. Nevertheless, there was a connection, and, from the instant the thought occurred to him, the agent never doubted seriously that he was essentially correct. The natives of this planet did not merely use active carbon compounds as fuel for their machines. They constructed the machines themselves of the same sort of material!
Under the circumstances it was a reasonable thing to do—if one could succeed at it. The reactions of such chemicals were undoubtedly rapid enough to permit as speedy action as anyone could desire—at least as fast as careful thought could control. The agent’s race had long since learned the dangers inherent in machines capable of responding to casual, fleeting thoughts and his ship’s pickup-circuits were less sensitive, by far, than they might have been.
It was obvious why these devices were controlled from a distance, instead of being ridden by their operators, too. There must be some dangerous reactions, indeed, going on inside them. The agent decided it was just as well that his temporary prisoner had merely looked at the inside of his ship, without touching anything, and resolved to take no more such chances.
At any rate, there should be no more need for that sort of experiment. Language lessons were well under way. He had recorded a good collection of nouns, some verbs the machines had acted out, even an adjective or two. He was puzzled by the tremendous length of some of the signal groups, and suspected them of being descriptions, rather than individual basic words.
But even that theory had difficulties. The signal which, apparently, stood for the machines themselves, one which should logically have called for a rather long and detailed description, was actually one of the shortest—though even this took several hundred milliseconds to complete. The agent decided that there was no point in trying to deduce grammar rules. He could communicate with memorized symbols, and they would have to suffice.
Of course, the symbols that could be demonstrated on the spot were hardly adequate to explain the nature of Earth’s danger. The Conservationist had long since decided just what he wished to say in that matter, and was waiting, impatiently, for enough words to let him say it.
It gradually became evident, however, that if he depended on chance alone to bring them into the lessons he was going to wait a long time. This meant little to him, personally. But the mole robots were not waiting for any instruction to be completed. They were burrowing on. The agent tried to think of some means for leading the lessons in the desired direction.
This took a good deal of imagination on his part, obvious as his final solution would seem to a human being. The idea of having to learn a language had been utterly strange to him, and he was still amazed at the ingenuity the natives showed, in devising a means for teaching one. It was some time before it occurred to him that he might very well perform some actions, just as they were doing. If he did not follow his own acts with signal groups of his own, these natives might not understand that he wanted theirs. The time had come for a more direct and audacious approach to the entire problem, and at the thought of what he was about to do his spirits soared.
He did it. He lifted the ship a few feet into the air, settled back to show that he was not actually leaving, and then rose again. He waited, expectantly. “Fly.”
“Up.”
“Rise.”
“Go.
Each of the watching machines emitted a different signal, virtually simultaneously. Three of them came through very faintly, since the speakers were some distance from the radio. But he was able to correlate each with the lip-motions of its maker. He was not too much troubled by the fact that different signals were used. He was more interested in the evidence that a different individual was controlling each machine. This was a little confusing, in view of his earlier theories. But he stuck grimly to the problem at hand.
XII
HAL AND CANDACE Parsons, and Truck MacLaurie were sitting on a relatively mudless patch of earth, within comfortable watching distance of the alien. They had passed the saturation point in their general, rain-soaked misery, and the experience Truck had just been through had unnerved them all to the point where they desperately needed a rest.
Hal was putting Truck through something of a third degree. He was attempting to draw some specific information out of the athlete’s unscholarly mind as to the precise nature of the alien’s interior. It was proving to be rugged going, and his nerves were not in the best possible shape.
“Dammit!” he exploded, when Truck proved, for the twentieth time that he had no idea why he had been so suddenly allowed to leave. “The opportunity of the ages, and it has to be given a blockhead with an I.Q. of seventy-seven, who can’t tell what it’s all about!”
“Lay off him, honey,” said Candace pointedly. “Truck’s no blockhead. He’s a blocking back, amongst other things. He just doesn’t happen to be a scientist.”
“Okay, if you say so.” Hal ran unsteady fingers through his soaking-wet hair. “Sorry, Truck. It’s just so infernally frustrating.”
“Somebody’s coming,” said Truck with charitable forbearance, apparently unruffled by the catechism he had just been through. “Over there—look.”
A muddy, heavily-encumbered figure was approaching them through the rain and mist. Catching sight of them, it waved.
Truck, rising, advanced along the hillside to meet it, while Hal and Candace rose slowly to their feet. On closer approach, it proved to be a soldier, mud-soaked and carrying a movie-camera slung over one shoulder, and what looked like a scintillometer over the other. Truck had quickly relieved the newcomer of a heavy walkie-talkie.
“Mr. and Mrs. Parsons?” the soldier said as he came up to them. “I’m General Wallace Eades. I’ve been talking to you upstairs long enough. I finally decided to make the drop myself.”
“You don’t know how glad we are to see you, General,” said Candace, noting the two mud-dulled silver stars on the collar of his open shirt. “After three days with our friend over there”—she nodded toward the impassive, grey-metal globe—“we were beginning to wonder if we were humans ourselves.”
General Eades, his blue eyes unusually bright and young and alert in his lined, leathery face looked at the monstrous bulk of the alien and stood for a moment in silent speculation. Then he said, “I was beginning to think it was all a pipe-dream. He’s a big fellow, isn’t he?”
For the next few minutes, he talked with Hal, letting the geologist brief him on recent events. Then, turning to Truck, “Quite an experience for you, young man. If we get out of this thing in any sort of shape, you’ll be in Hollywood in ten days.”
“Coach wouldn’t like it,” said the football player. “And I’m no Elvis Presley.”
General Eades put his head back and laughed. Then he unslung the movie camera and said, “I gather you haven’t made a pictorial record of your friend over there. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be laughed out of the service. I thought you said he only had two eyes. Isn’t that a third? Did you put mud in that one, too?”
“I’ll be damned!” said Hal. He and Candace regarded one another. They were bewildered, amazed and a little frightened. His lips tightening, Hal said, “He’s full of surprises. Stick around and you’ll find out.”
“I intend to,” said General Eades. “I’ve been on this thing, ever since the first radar flash came in—four days ago. Haven’t had two hours consecutive sleep since. You’ve got no idea the fuss our friend has kicked up. The army’s got ten thousand men trying to crack this valley, and diplomats and newspaper men are sleeping on billiard tables in Butte—if they’re lucky enough to buy space on one.”
As he spoke, he walked slowly around the monstrous globe, holding the camera to eye level, shooting it from all sides. Returning, he reappropriated the walkie-talkie from Truck, who had been dutifully standing guard over it.
“I checked the stuff in your jeep and trailer on the way here from my drop,” General Eades said. “You must have got more than just arm-tired cranking that battery outfit of yours. I haven’t seen one like it since World War Two.”
“It was the best the department at the University could allow us,” said Hal, a trifle on the defensive.
Tactfully, Candace put in, “We’re awfully glad you got here, General. We were not only wet—we were lonely for a new face.”
“Afraid mine’s not exactly new,” said Eades. Then, putting the walkie-talkie to work, he said resignedly. “Guess I’d better report, before they send a big drop in, and a few-score G.I.’s get killed. This valley’s full of rocks and potholes, and visibility is nil.”
“You’re telling us, General!” said Truck.
The general’s report, via radio, was lengthy but concise. He had yet to complete it when an audition from the alien, mimicking his own voice, caused interference that made intelligible communication impossible. He lowered the set, looked at the others, and nodded toward the grey-metal globe.
“Is that it?” he asked.
“That’s it,” said Hal.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a new sound—not through the radio, but carried clearly through the open air—smote all their ears. Smote was the word, as it rose in an ear-shattering crescendo that caused them to look at one another in alarm.
“The thing’s howling like a fire-siren!” cried Candace, clapping her hands to her ears. The others followed suit.
It continued, for a couple of deafening minutes that all but reduced already quivering nerves to shreds. Then, as suddenly as it had started up, it ceased, and slowly they removed their hands.
Candace wondered if her eardrums were permanently damaged. She saw Truck hammering the side of his head, like an inexperienced swimmer with water in his ear.
He said, “If that’s his natural voice, I wonder how he sounds when he’s really worked up.”
Hal and the general exchanged a significant look. It was Eades who broke the welcome silence. “Maybe he’s right,” he said. “Is that the first time it’s tried communicating—apart from radio mimicry?”
“That’s right,” Hal told him.
“Significant,” said General Eades. “Damned significant. I wonder . . . That third eye bothers me. Do you suppose it bothers him?”
He walked up to the machine, disregarding Candace’s gasp, “Be careful!”
Gently he scraped the mud from the lens. Nothing happened, but the sound did not return. He said, scowling at the porthole, “The surface looks too flat for close vision.”
“We had the same thought,” Hal told him. “Still, it can see when it wants to.”
General Eades walked around the sphere, studied the other two eyes, noted the places where the caked mud had flaked away. “Used to know an optometrist,” he muttered. “Could be, the mud helps to give him closer focus by covering most of the lens.”
“. . . most of the lens,” said the general, though his lips did not move. Eades started, looked at the others, and instantly pointed to one of his own eyes. He said, “Eye.”
“Eye,” said the voice from the alien. There was no question now in any of their minds. The alien had clearly discovered some means of direct vocal speech.
After several more tests, the general walked back to the others, his blue eyes alight with excitement. “That’s it,” he told them. “Our friend made that howl to let us know it had a new means of communication.”
