Bug-Eyed Monsters

by Bill Pronzini

  Feridur laid talons about the scimitar. His monocle glittered red. “Ssso,” he murmured, “you think that, eh?” Zalakun wriggled backward on his tail. “Oh, no, your awesomeness,” he said hastily. “Not at all. Of course not!”

  “Oh, so you do want to expand your own collection,” purred Feridur. He tested saw edges with a thumb. “Well, well! I say! Maybe you would like to add the skull of your liege lord to the museum, eh, what?”

  “Oh, no, no, Zivar,” said Zalakun, sweating. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “So my skull isn’t good enough for you. Is that it?”

  “No,Zivar! Your skull is a thing of beauty.”

  “I’ll oblige you any time, you know,” said Feridur. “We can go ashore right this moment and have a whack at each other, eh?”

  Zalakun licked rubbery lips. “Uh,” he said. “Well, the fact is—”

  “Ah, I know, I know. Not a drop of sporting blood in the whole clashed ship. Cireat Rastakun! Well, go on, then,

  Yaldazir, talk to the monster. Two of a kind.” Feridur yawned elaborately.

  Ulrica felt embarrassed for the captain. After breathing hard for a while he resumed the conversation with her. “Where is this home of yours, Orumastat?”

  “Somewhere . . . er . . . that way.” Ulrica pointed out the window, past reefs and surf to a steel-gray eastward stretch of sea.

  “Can you not be more precise? What archipelago?”

  “No archipelago,” said the girl. “It is a single island in the middle of an ocean. My people have seen from the air that the part of the world you must come from has many islands and two small continents, so that one is never far from land. But beyond the region where I think we are now, there is almost no land for . . . I don’t know your measures. You could sail steadily for more than fifty of your days before seeing shore again.”

  “I say!” Feridur straightened. “You’re sure, monster?”

  “Not in detail,” Ulrica admitted. “But I do know there is that much water somewhere to the east, ahead of you.”

  “But then . . . Great Kastaklin, captain! I’m glad we found that out! We’re heading straight homeward again!”

  “To be sure,” declared Zalakun, appalled. “Why, after so long a time at sea, one could not even guess at northward or southward drift. One might miss the shore you speak of completely. Even if the wind didn’t fail in so long a voyage. For we could only steam twenty days at most before our oil bunkers were dry.”

  “It would not be that far to my island,” said Ulrica. “Hm-m-m . . . how far?”

  “I am not certain. But no more than, uh, fifteen days.”

  “Fifteen days in open ocean!” gasped Zalakun.

  He sat back, tongue hanging out, speechless with horror.

  Feridur quizzed Ulrica through his monocle. “But I say,” he objected, “what’s the jolly old purpose in living so far away? Eh? It’s unheard of. I mean to say, nobody lives in mid-ocean.”

  “Since we can fly at great speeds, we are not inconvenienced by distance,” replied Ulrica. And colonizing an isolated speck would offend no natives: they didn’t even realize it existed. No sense, though, in giving so pacifistic a reason to this warrior culture.

  “But how do you find your way? Eh? Answer me that. Ha, ha, I’ve bally well got you there!” Feridur wagged a triumphant finger.

  Ulrica decided that there was also no point in describing a radio net involving three small artificial satellites. “We have our methods,” she said in a mysterious tone.

  “By the Iron Reefs,” murmured Zalakun. His tone held awe. “Of course you do! You must, or you couldn’t have found that island in the first place. But to know exactly where you are, even when there’s no land in sight, no current or cloud formations or—Why, that’s a secret sought for as long as there have been ships!”

  “We will gladly provide you with similar means,” said Ulrica. “If, of course, you take us home.”

  “Naturally!” babbled Zalakun. He sprang to his feet, wagging his tail till the air whistled. “Jumping gods, master, what’re a thousand bug-bitten skulls next to a prize like that? Just give us a line, Zivar Orumastat, give us a compass bearing and we’ll hold true on it till you’re home, though the sky fall down!”

  “Ah, nej!” whispered Ulrica. She felt the blood sink from her face.

  “What is it?” asked the captain. He came around the table and offered an arm. She leaned on it, badly in need of support.

  “I just realized . . . I was so busy before that if only occurs to me now . . . I know where the island is,” she said faintly. “But I can’t give you a course. I don’t know where we are!”

  When Ulrica had gone aboard ship, Ardabadur, the carpenter, followed. There he directed a gang of sailors as they unloaded the completed Foucault bob, got it into a boat and ashore. While they carried it onward, he went to the tent where Didymus Mudge was at work.

  He hesitated outside. The Earthling’s operations had been fascinating, but enigmatic and delicate. Ardabadur didn’t want to interrupt. Finally he stuck his head through the flap.

  Mudge stood hunched over his apparatus. In the days since arriving here, he had gotten it to function rather well. Or, more accurately, Ardabadur had. They shared no words, but through gestures, drawings, and crude models Mudge had explained what he needed. Then the ship’s excellent carpenter shop had prepared it for him—after which he tinkered, groaned, and sent it back for revision.

  A ball of cast bronze rolled thunderously down an inclined plane. Mudge watched it while counting the swings of a small pendulum, carefully made from a leather cord and a lead weight in a leveled glass-sided box. When the ball reached ground, Mudge made a note. The Harakuni had paper and pencils. “Which is a mercy,” he said aloud. “But why couldn’t you have brought a clock along?”

  Ardabadur hopped inside and squatted respectfully. Mudge ran a hand through rumpled hair and mopped sweat off his face. “I’m sure you have some chronometry,” he said. “You have probably even measured the length of the day, and its seasonal variation. I know the long twilight confuses things, clouds always hiding the sun . . . but if you averaged enough observations for enough centuries, you could do it. So why didn’t you bring a clock? Knowing this planet’s rotation period, I could have corrected my watch according to your timepiece by simple arithmetic.”

  He tapped the chrono on his wrist. “I think a momentary surge of magnetism must have affected it,” he went on. “It’s antimagnetic, to be sure, but a disintegrating nuclear field can produce overwhelming forces. I suppose I’m lucky to be alive at all. Well, I know from the data book how long from sunrise to sunrise, so theoretically I could use that fact to tell me how fast or slow my watch is. But in practice, the clouds complicate observation too much for anything like accuracy; and I haven’t got a hundred years in which to accumulate enough data for analysis.”

  Ardabadur wagged his tail knowingly, as if he understood English.

  “Of course, time is of no obvious importance to you on shipboard,” said Mudge. “Since you can’t make astronomical sightings, and you don’t even know astronomical phenomena exist, you cannot have invented navigation. You possess an inaccurate little hourglass to tell you when to change watch, and that’s all.”

  He smiled, a weary lopsided grimace. “Well, I’ve gotten around the handicap,” he said. “This makes my one-thousandth observation of time to roll down the plane. After calculation, I should be able to work out a very good correction factor for my watch.” He patted the bulge in one hip pocket. “Do you know, my friend, I owe my life to whoever invented waterproof paper. Without it, the data book would be unreadable. It was a wet journey to this island. And this book compiles—not only the physical and mathematical constants needed anywhere in the universe—but all the information so far gathered about Epstein’s Planet. Its mass, dimensions, orbital elements, rotational period, axial inclination, surface gravity, atmospheric composition, everything—or almost everything. Unfortunately
, such quantities as magnetic deviation have hardly been mapped at all: otherwise I might try using that to locate us. The book does include tide tables, though, not only for Lonesome Landing but for several other selected spots, at which temperature, pelagic salinity, and whatever else occurred to the expeditions, have been measured.”

  He turned toward the exit. “But I am sure you came to show me something,” he said. “Forgive me. I talk too much. However, it has been a very trying week on this island. I am used to talking, the feast of reason and the flow of soul and so on. My mother has always moved in intellectual circles. And then, I am a teacher by profession: basic science in the elementary grades.”

  Ardabadur led the way over the beach. Didymus Mudge continued to chatter. Perhaps he wanted to drown out the surf. Now, with the incoming solar tide, it had grown loud, an undergroundish sinister noise to his landlubber ears. Overhead scudded smoky rainclouds, and lightning flickered, high up in the permanent gray layers. The jungle talked in the wind with a million blue tongues.

  “My mother was very dubious about my coming to Epstein’s Planet,” he said. “I had never been farther than Luna before, and then I had letters of recommendation to people she knows. On the other hand, it was an undeniable opportunity. The scientific and cultural staff here is already of respectable size, and is due for great expansion in the near future, when intensive work begins. The tendency is for married couples to be employed, and they have children, and the children need education. On a four-year contract, I could not only save a very good salary, but make valuable friendships among highly intellectual people. If only my mother could have come too, I would never have hesitated. But no opening was available for her. She finally agreed that I had a duty to my career.”

  Mudge looked around. He saw nothing but drifting sand, tents that snapped in the wind, waves and the alien ship. He leaned close to Ardabadur and hissed: “Frankly, and don’t tell anyone, I thought it was high time I went somewhere by myself. I am thirty years old. After all!” Then, blushing and stammering, he hurried on: “Miss . . . er . . . Major Orumastat isn’t an instructor. Not of children, I mean. She was to organize defensive squads for the exploration teams, in case they meet hostility. Not that we would dream of provoking any such demonstration, I assure you. But—”

  But by that time they had reached the Foucault bob, where a dozen sailors waited for orders. Ardabadur beamed like a picket fence and waved a hand at his creation.

  Mudge examined it with care. It was as he had drawn, a hollow copper ball some one hundred and fifty centimeters across. When filled with sand, its mass would be enormous. A small loop and a very light stiff wire were affixed to the bottom. On top was a larger loop, riveted to ten meters of wire rope. As far as Mudge could see, it had been made with perfect symmetry and should give no trouble.

  He said aloud: “We shall have to wait for calm weather. The wind would cause the pendulum to describe an ellipse today. But according to the data book, this region at this time of year is usually calm, so we can doubtless perform the experiment tomorrow. Let us set it all up now.”

  Ardabadur got his drift and barked orders. His assistants sprang to work. The sphere lay under a tall tree on the beach’s edge which had been stripped of branches. A stout gallowslike crosspiece had been erected on the trunk, thirteen meters above ground. Now a pair of sailors swarmed up and affixed the loose end of the cable, so that the copper ball hung suspended. It swayed and toned in the wind. Mudge was gratified to note that it had little tendency to move in arcs; Ardabadur’s suspension was well designed.

  “Why are you helping me?” he mused aloud. “You have certainly spared no pains on my behalf, though you can have no idea why I want all this work done. Is it curiosity? Or boredom? For this has been a long dull time for you to lie anchored—I suppose on our account, until your captain knows more about us. I prefer to think you feel a genuine friendship and wish to assist a being in distress. Your officers seem to be perfect brutes, but all you common crew-people are very quiet and well-behaved. I am sure you are capable of empathy.”

  “Uru’s kalka kisir,” said the Epsteinian.

  “Oh,” said Mudge.

  Hanging the pendulum took at least an hour. At the end, though, he had it well adjusted. As the bob passed the lowest point of its arc, the cat’s-whisker wire on the bottom traced a thin line in sand which had been smoothed, leveled, and wet down. Now Mudge led the sailors away; they raised the ball again and carried it to another preselected tree. Here the human mounted a ladder, knotted a piece of light rope to the bottom loop, and tied the other end to the bole. The sphere hung four meters above ground, its cable nearly taut, ready to swing when released.

  “Now we fill the globe with sand to make it heavier and thus more stable,” said Mudge, “and then I believe we can, er, call it a day.”

  He demonstrated. The sailors formed a bucket brigade up the ladder and began loading the ball. They had almost completed that task when Ulrica Ormstad appeared.

  Behind her trailed Captain Zalakun and a bemedaled, besworded, bemonocled Epsteinian whom Mudge had not seen before. Ardabadur whistled and fell on his face. The sailors tumbled from the ladder and followed suit. Mudge gaped.

  “Good heavens,” he said.

  “This is Feridur of Beradura,” explained the girl. “He owns this expedition. I mean that almost literally.”

  Her face was tight and anxious. Though the wind blew cool, there was sweat on her wide brow, and an uncharacteristic lock of hair had broken loose to stream over one ear.

  “Mudge,” she said, “we are in trouble.”

  “I know,” he agreed.

  Her temper ripped across. “Don’t get sarcastic with me, you little worm!” she yelled.

  “But I wasn’t . . . I didn’t—” Mudge swallowed. Ulrica was a beautiful sight, he thought. So, however, was a hungry tiger.

  He had had no experience with the modern frontier type of woman. His mother disapproved of them. In his inmost soul he admitted hoping he would meet a young lady on this planet, where no one would jealously interfere, who could become Mrs. Mudge. But someone well-bred and well-read, with civilized ways, please!

  “What have you been doing, anyhow?” snapped Ulrica.

  “I told you,” said Mudge, after husking once or twice. “I have been correcting my watch. I have a correction factor now, or will as soon as I make the calculations from my data, and then we will know exact Greenwich time.” He paused. “I admit that is making no allowance for relativistic laws . . . simultaneity is an approximational concept at best . . . but this is a refinement which the data book does not take into account either. So—”

  “Shut your big mouth before I reach in and pull you inside out!” screamed Ulrica.

  Mudge cowered.

  Ulrica expressed herself richly for several seconds. Mudge would have covered his ears, but was too stunned. He had never heard most of those words. The context, though, made their meaning all too hideously evident. Good heavens! Cultivated society, conversing at tea time in Boston, seemed five hundred light-years away.

  He remembered with a shock that it was five hundred light-years away.

  A part of him gibbered that the spaceship had headed into Virgo, and surely people would not make remarks like this in the region of Virgo.

  Reason came back to him as Ulrica ran down. She put arms akimbo and said grimly: “All right. Why do you want to know Greenwich Market Time? To say your evening prayers?”

  “No,” gulped Mudge. “To locate us. I mean, we have to know where we are, don’t we? the data book says Lonesome Landing is at 47° 32’ 4” N., and the prime meridian has been drawn through it. But we know only that we are somewhere west of there, how far we cannot tell, and have no idea if we are north or south of it. I mean—”

  “You mean,” growled Ulrica, “that you have read chronometric time is necessary for navigation. So you set blindly out to find the time. You gruntbrain! Don’t you know longitude reckoning depends on the
comparison of times? How can we get local noon when we can’t see the sun? How can we get the height of anything, for latitude?”

  She gave the copper ball a green glare. “And what, with your kind permission, is that?”

  “A . . . a Foucault pendulum,” said Mudge. He squared thin shoulders. “It is a classic demonstration of the fact that a planet rotates. A pendulum will hold to its own vibrational plane—in effect, the planet turns beneath it—so that cat whisker will describe a line which gradually turns through a complete circle.”

  Ulrica stood speechless.

  “This project has a secondary value,” continued Mudge with a bit more self-confidence, “in that I am sure these Epsteinians imagine their world to be flat and fixed in space. The pendulum offers a simple proof of its rotation. Therefore they will be more inclined to accept on faith our assertion that the planet is a spheroid, and this in turn will lead them to follow our advice when—”

  “Great,” said Ulrica. “Leaping. Blue. Balls. Of. Radioactive. Muck.”

  Then the blast came. Mudge huddled away from it. The girl raged over his head, like the remote lightning come down to earth.

  “For your blank blank information, Mister Didymus Blank Blank Mudge, I have just been talking to the captain and Feridur. They don’t know which dash deleted asterisk way to steer for the obscenity station. How could they? Without a reasonably accurate vector—distance within a few hundred kilometers, direction within a compass point or less—they could search the double dash four star exclamation point ocean for an anathematized year without coming near Lonesome Blank Blank Landing. And of course they won’t even attempt it. If they cruised obscenely around in any kind of crudely expressed search pattern, they’d lose their own unprintable way and risk never finding land again. If we don’t give them a deep blue bearing and a sulfurous distance estimate, they’re going to up anchor and head for accursed home tomorrow. AND YOU WANT TO GIVE A LECTURE ON COPERNICAN ASTRONOMY!”

  “Oooh,” moaned Ardabadur, trembling.