“Ah, commodore,” he exclaimed, bubbling with enthusiasm, “a most remarkable discovery, most remarkable! Nine species of insect life, none really extraordinary in structure, but all afflicted with an amazing lassitude. If this phenomenon is common to all native insects, it would appear that local metabolism is—”
“Write it down for the record,” advised Leigh, patting him on the shoulder. He hastened to the signals room. “Anything special from Ogilvy?”
“No, commodore. All his messages have been repeats of his first ones. He is now most of the way back and due to arrive here in about an hour.”
“Send him to me immediately he returns.”
“As you order, sir.”
Ogilvy appeared in the promised time. He was a lanky, lean-faced individual given to irritating grins. Entering the room he held hands behind his back, hung his head and spoke with mock shame.
“Commodore, I have a confession to make.”
“So I see from the act you’re putting on. What is it?”
“I landed, without permission, right in the main square of the biggest city I could find.”
Leigh raised his eyebrows. “And what happened?”
“They gathered around and stared at me.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, sir, it took them twenty minutes to see me and assemble, by which time the ones farther away were still coming. I couldn’t wait any longer to discover what they’d do next. I estimated that if they fetched some rope and tied down my landing gear they’d have the job finished about a year next Christmas.”
“Humph! Were things the same everywhere else?”
“Yes, sir. I passed over more than two hundred towns and villages, reached extreme range of twelve-fifty miles. Conditions remained consistent.” He gave his grin, continued, “I noticed a couple of items that might interest you.”
“What were those?”
“The Waitabits converse with their mouths but make no detectable noises. The ’copter has a supersonic converter known as Bat-ears which is used for blind flying. I tuned its receiver across its full range when in the middle of that crowd but didn’t pick up a squeak. So they’re not talking high above us. I don’t see how they can be subsonic either. It must be something else.”
“I’ve had a one-sided conversation with them myself,” Leigh informed. “It may be that we’re overlooking the obvious while seeking the obscure.”
Ogilvy blinked and asked, “How d’you mean, sir?”
“They’re not necessarily employing some unique faculty such as we cannot imagine. It is quite possible that they communicate visually. They gaze into each other’s gullets and read the waggling palps. Something like you semaphoring with your tonsils.” He dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. “And what’s your other item?”
“No birds,” replied Ogilvy. “You’d think that where insects exist there would also be birds or at least things somewhat birdlike. The only airborne creature I saw was a kind of membrane-winged lizard that flaps just enough to launch itself, then glides to wherever it’s going. On Earth it couldn’t catch a weary gnat.”
“Did you make a record of it?”
“No, sir. The last magazine was in the camera and I didn’t want to waste strip. I didn’t know if anything more important might turn up later.”
“All right.”
Leigh watched the other depart, picked up the phone, said to Shallom, “If those ’copter reels prove sharp enough for long-range beaming, you’d better run off an extra copy for the signals room. Have them boost it to Sector Nine for relay to Earth.”
As he put down the phone Romero entered looking desperate.
“Commodore, could you get the instrument mechs to concoct a phenakistoscope with a revolution-counter attached?”
“We can make anything, positively anything,” chimed in Pascoe from near the port. “Given enough centuries in which to do it.”
Ignoring the interruption, Leigh asked, “What do you want it for?”
“Hoffnagle and Nolan think we could use it to measure the precise optical register of those sluggards outside. If we can find out at what minimum speed they see pictures merge into motion it would be a great help.”
“Wouldn’t the ship’s movie projector serve the same purpose?”
“It isn’t sufficiently variable,” Romero objected. “Besides, we can’t operate it independently of our own power supply. A phenakistoscope can be carried around and cranked by hand.”
“This becomes more fascinating every moment,” Pascoe interjected. “It can be cranked. Add a few more details and I’ll start to get a hazy idea of what the darned thing is.”
Taking no notice of that either, Leigh got through to Shallom again, put the matter to him.
“Holy Moses!” ejaculated Shallom. “The things we get asked for! Who thought up that one?” A pause, followed by, “It will take two days.”
“Two days,” Leigh repeated to Romero.
The other looked aghast.
“What’s eating you?” asked Pascoe. “Two days to get started measuring visual retention is mighty fast in this world. You’re on Eterna now. Adapt, boy, adapt!”
Leigh eyed Pascoe carefully and said, “Becoming rather pernickety this last hour or two, aren’t you?”
“Not yet. I have several dregs of patience left. When the last of them has trickled away you can lock me in the brig because I’ll be nuts.”
“Don’t worry. We’re about to have some action.”
“Haha!” said Pascoe disrespectfully.
“We’ll drag out the patrol wagon, go to town and have a look around in the middle of them.”
“About time, too,” Pascoe endorsed.
The armoured, eight-seater car rumbled down the ramp on heavy caterpillars, squatted in the clover. Only a short, flared nozzle in its bonnet and another in its tail revealed the presence of button-controlled snort-guns. The boxed lens on its roof belonged to an automatic camera.
The metal whip atop the box was a radio antenna.
They could have used the helicopter which was capable of carrying four men with equipment but, once landed, that machine would be of little good for touring the streets.
Leigh shared the front seat with Lieutenant Harding and the duty driver. Behind him were two of Harding’s troop and Pascoe. At back sat the radio operator and the snort gunner.
Walterson, Garside and all the other specialists remained with the ship.
Rolling forward, they passed the circle of Waitabits who were now sitting cross-legged on the turf and staring at a Keen chart which Nolan was exhibiting with an air of complete frustration. Nearby, Hoffnagle was masticating his nails while trying to decide how much of the lesson was being absorbed and how much missed. Not one of this bunch showed the slightest surprise when the car charged down the steep bluff and clattered by them.
With jerks and heaves the car crossed the lines behind the stalled train, gained the road. Here the surface proved excellent, the running smooth.
The artery would have done justice to a Terran racing-track. Before they had gone five miles they encountered an alien using it for exactly that.
This one half-sat, half-reclined in a long, narrow, low-slung single-seater that had “hot-rod” written all over it. He came along like a maniac, face strained, eyes popping, hands clinging firmly to the wheel. According to the photoelectric telltale on the patrol wagon’s instrument board he roared past them at fifty-two and a quarter miles per hour. Since the speedometer on the same board recorded precisely fifty, it meant that the other was going all out at a harrowing two and a quarter.
Twisting his head to gaze through the rear window, Pascoe said, “As a sociologist I’ll tell you something authoritatively; some of this crowd are downright reckless. If that lunatic is headed for the city now about thirty miles away he’ll make it in as little as twelve hours.” Then he frowned, became serious as he added, “Seeing that their reactions are in keeping with their motions, one bein
g as tedious as the other, it wouldn’t surprise me if they have traffic problems comparable with those of any other world.”
Nobody got a chance to comment on that. The entire eight bowed in unison as the brakes went on. They were entering the suburbs with pedestrians, cars and trolleys littering the streets. After that it was strictly bottom-gear work; the driver had to learn a completely new technique and it wasn’t easy.
Crimson-faced people in the same sexless attire ambled across the roads in a manner suggesting that for two pins they’d lie down and go to sleep. Some moved faster than others but the most nimble ones among the lot were an obstacle for an inordinate while. Not one halted and gaped at the invading vehicle as it trundled by, but most of them stopped and took on a baffled expression by the time they’d been left a mile behind.
To Leigh and his companions there was a strong temptation to correlate slowness with stupidity. They resisted it. Evidence to the contrary was strong enough not to be denied.
The streets were level, straight and well-made, complete with sidewalks, gulleys and drains. No buildings rose higher than sixty feet but all were solidly built and far from primitive. Cars were not numerous by Terran standards but had the appearance of engineering jobs of no mean order.
The street-trolleys were small, sun-powered, languidly efficient and bore two dozen passengers apiece.
For a few minutes they halted near a building in course of construction, maintained attention upon a worker laying a brick, estimated that the job required twenty minutes. Three bricks per hour.
Doing some fast figuring, Leigh said, “Taking their days and nights as six months apiece and assuming they put in the equivalent of an eight-hour day, that fellow is laying something over a thousand bricks per hour.” He pursed his lips, gave a brief whistle. “I know of no life form capable of building half as fast. Even on Earth it takes a robot to equal it.”
The others considered that aspect of the matter in silence. The patrol wagon moved on, reached a square in which was a civic car-park containing some forty machines. The sight was irresistible. Driving straight in past two uniformed attendants they lined their vehicle neatly at the end of a row. The attendants’ eyeballs started edging around.
Leigh spoke to the driver, radio man and gunner. “You three stay here. If anyone interferes, pick him up, put him down a hundred yards away and leave him to try all over again. If they show signs of getting organized to blow you sky-high, just move the wagon to the other end of the park. When they catch you up, move back here.”
“Where are you going?” inquired Harding.
“Over there.” He pointed toward an official-looking building. “To save time I’d like you, your men and Pascoe to try the other places. Take one apiece, go inside, see if you can learn anything worth picking up.” He glanced at his watch. “Be back promptly at three. No dallying. The laggard will be left to take a nine-mile walk.”
Starting off, he found an attendant twenty yards away and moving toward him with owl-eyes wide. Going boldly up to him, he took the book of tickets from an unresisting hand, tore one off, pressed the book back into crimson fingers, added a silver button by way of payment and passed on. He derived amused satisfaction from that honest gesture. By the time he’d crossed the square and entered the building the recipient had got around to examining the button.
At three they returned to find chaos in the square and no sign of the patrol wagon in the park. A series of brief wails on its siren drew them to a side street where it was waiting by the kerb.
“Slow as they may be, they can get places given long enough,” said the driver. “They started creeping around us in such numbers that we looked like being hemmed in for keeps. We wouldn’t have been able to get out without running over fifty of them. I beat it while there was still a gap to drive through.” He pointed through the windshield. “Now they’re making for here. The tortoise chasing the hare.”
One of Harding’s men, a grizzled veteran of several space-campaigns, remarked, “It’s easier to cope when you’re up against guppies that are hostile and fighting mad. You just shoot your way out.” He grunted a few times. “Here, if you sit around too long you’ve got to let yourself be trapped or else run over them in cold blood. That’s not my idea of how to do things.” Another grunt. “Hell of a planet. The fellow who found it ought to be made to live here.”
“Find anything in your building?” Leigh asked him.
“Yes, a dozen cops.”
“What?”
“Cops,” repeated the other. “It was a police station. I could tell because they all had the same uniforms, all carried duralumin bludgeons. And there were faces on the wall with queer printing beneath. I can’t recognize one face from another. They are all alike to me. But something told me those features hadn’t been stuck to the wall to commemorate saintliness.”
“Did they show any antagonism toward you?”
“They didn’t get the chance,” he said with open contempt. “I just kept shifting around looking at things and that had them foxed.”
“My building was a honey,” informed Pascoe. “A telephone exchange.”
Leigh twisted around to stare at him. “So they are supersonic speakers after all?”
“No. They use scanners and three-inch visi-screens. If I’ve looked down one squirming gizzard, I’ve looked down twenty. What’s more, a speaker sometimes removes his palps from the screen and substitutes a sort of slow-motion display of deaf-and-dumb talk with his fingers. I have a vague idea that some of those digital acrobatics represent vitriolic cussing.”
The driver put in nervously, “If we squat here much longer the road will be blocked both ends.”
“Then let’s get out while there’s time.”
“Back to the ship, sir?”
“Not yet. Wander around and see if you can find an industrial area.”
The car rolled forward, went cautiously past a bunch of oncoming pedestrians, avoided the crowded square by trundling down another side street.
Lying back in comfort, Pascoe held his hands together over his stomach and inquired interestedly, “I suppose none of you happened to find himself in a fire station?” Nobody had.
“That’s what I’d give a thousand credits to see,” he said. “A couple of pumps and a hook-and-ladder squad bursting out to deal with a conflagration a mile away. The speed of combustion is no less on this world than on our own. It’s a wonder to me the town hasn’t burned down a dozen times.”
“Perhaps it has,” offered Harding. “Perhaps they’re used to it. You can get accustomed to anything in the long run.”
“In the long run,” agreed Pascoe. “Here it’s long enough to vanish into the mists of time. And it’s anything but a run.”
He glanced at Leigh. “What did you walk into?”
“A public library.”
“That’s the place to dig up information. How much did you get?”
“One item only,” Leigh admitted with reluctance. “Their printed language is ideographic and employs at least three thousand characters.”
“There’s a big help,” said Pascoe, casting an appealing glance heavenward. “Any competent linguist or trained communicator should be able to learn it from them. Put Hoffnagle on the job. He’s the youngest among us and all he needs is a couple of thousand years.”
The radio burped, winked its red eye, and the operator switched it on. Shallom’s voice came through.
“Commodore, an important-looking specimen has just arrived in what he probably thinks of as a racing car. It may be that he’s a bigwig appointed to make contact with us. That’s only our guess but we’re trying to get confirmation of it. I thought you’d like to know.”
“How’s progress with him?”
“No better than with the others. Possibly he’s the smartest boy in college. Nevertheless, Nolan estimates it will take most of a month to convince him that Mary had a little lamb.”
“Well, keep trying. We’ll be returning shortly.” The r
eceiver cut off and Leigh added to the others, “That sounds like the road-hog we passed on the way here.” He nudged the driver, pointed leftward. “That looks like a sizeable factory. Stop outside while I inspect it.”
He entered unopposed, came out after a few minutes, told them, “It’s a combined flour-mill, processing and packaging plant. They’re grinding up a mountain of nut-kernels, probably from surrounding forests. They’ve a pair of big engines down in the basement that beat me. Never seen anything like them. I think I’ll get Bentley to come and look them over. He’s the expert on power supplies.”
“Big place for a mill, isn’t it?” ventured Harding.
“They’re converting the flour into about twenty forms. I took a lick at some of it.”
“What did it taste like?”
“Bill-sticker’s paste.” He nudged the driver again. “There’s another joint.” Then to Harding, “You come with me.”
Five minutes later they returned and said, “Boots, shoes and slippers. And they’re making them fast.”
“Fast?” echoed Pascoe, twitching his eyebrows.
“Faster than they can follow the process themselves. The whole layout is fully automatic and self-arresting if anything goes wrong. Not quite as good as we’ve got on Earth but not so far behind, either.” Leigh sat with pursed lips, musing as he gazed through the windshield. “I’m going back to the ship. You fellows can come for further exploration if you wish.”
None of them registered enthusiasm.
There was a signal waiting on the desk, decoded and typed.
C.O. Flame to C.O. Thunderer. Atmosphere Pulok analysed good in fact healthy. So instruments insist. Noses say has abominable stench beyond bearing. Should be named Puke. Proceeding Arlington Port 88.137 unless summoned by you. Mallory.
Reading it over Leigh’s shoulder, Pascoe commented, “That Boydell character has a flair for picking ugly ones right out of the sky. Why doesn’t someone choke him to death?”
“Four hundred twenty-one recorded in there,” reminded Leigh, tapping his big chart book. “And about two-thirds of them come under the heading of ugly ones.”
“It would save a lot of grief if the scouts ignored those and reported only the dumps worth having.”
The Time Traveller's Almanac Page 107
