Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “Melt.” This was demonstrated, when they finally made him understand that the weapon should be used again.

  “Big—little.” Pairs of stones, of cacti, coins and figures, scratched in the dirt, illustrated this contrast.

  Numbers—no difficulty.

  “Ship.” This proved confusing, since the agent had supposed the word man covered any sort of machine.

  Finally, slightly fuller sentences became possible.

  “Fire-metal under ground,” the men tried.

  The agent repeated the statement, leaving them in doubt. More time passed, while and no were explained. Then the same phrase brought a response of “Yes.”

  “Men dig.”

  “Yes—men dig—mountain melt—mountain rise.”

  “Where?” This word took still more time, and was solved, at least, only by a pantomime involving all the men. Here and there were covered in the same act. However, knowing what the question meant did not make it much easier for the agent to answer it.

  He had no maps of the planet, and would have recognized no man-made charts, with the possible exception of a globe, which is not standard equipment on a small field expedition.

  After still more time, the men managed to get a unit of distance across to him, however, and he could use the ion beam for pointing. In this way, he did his best to indicate the locations of the moles.

  “There! Eighty-one miles. Two miles down.” And, in another direction. “There! Fifteen hundred-twelve miles. Eighteen miles down.” He kept this up through the entire list of the forty-five moles he had detected and located.

  The furious note-taking that accompanied his exposition did not mean anything to him, of course, though he deduced correctly the purpose of the magnetic compass one of the listening machines was using. He realized that giving positions to an accuracy of one mile was woefully inadequate for the problem of actually locating the moles.

  But he could do the final close-guiding later, when the native machines approached their targets. He could come to their aid if they did not have detection equipment of their own which would work at that range. Just what possibilities in that direction might be inherent in organic engineering the agent could not guess. At any rate, the natives did not seem to feel greater precision was needed. They made no request for it.

  In fact, they did not seem to want anything more. He had expected to spend a long time explaining the apparatus needed to intercept and derange the moles. But that aspect of the matter did not appear to bother the natives at all. Why, why? It should have bothered them.

  In spite of appearances, the agent was not stupid. The problem of communicating with an intelligence not of his own race had never, as far as he knew, been faced by any of his people. He had tried to treat it as a scientific problem. It was hardly his fault that each phenomenon he encountered had infinitely more possible explanations than ordinary scientific observation, and he could hardly be expected to guess the reason why.

  Even so, he realized it could not be considered a proven fact that the natives had read the proper meaning from his signaling. He actually doubted that they had, in about the way and to about the extent that some mid-nineteenth century human physicists doubted the laws of gravity and conservation of energy. He determined to continue checking as long as possible, to make sure that they were right.

  The human beings, partly as a result of greater experience, partly for certain purely human reasons, also felt that a check was desirable. With their far better local background, they were the first to take action. To them, fire metal, when mentioned in conjunction with a positive test for radioactivity, implied only one kind of fire.

  Man dig was not quite so certain. They apparently could not decide whether the alien being was giving information or advice—whether someone was already digging at the indicated points, or that they should go there themselves to dig. The majority inclined to the latter view.

  To settle the question, one of them took the trench-shovel, which was part of their equipment, and arranged a skit that eventually made clear the difference between the continuative—digging—and the imperative dig!

  While this was going on, another thought occurred to the agent. Since these things had used different words for the machines he was watching and the one he was riding, perhaps man was not quite the right term for the mole-robots he was trying to tell about. He wondered how he could generalize. By the end of the second run-through of the skit he had what he hoped was a solution.

  “Man digging—ship digging,” he said.

  “Digging fire metal?”

  “Man digging fire metal—ship digging fire metal.”

  “Where?”

  He ran through the list of locations again, though somewhat at a loss for the reason it was needed, and was allowed to finish, because, though he did not know it, no one could think of a way to tell him to stop. He felt satisfied when he had finished—there could hardly be any doubt in the minds of his listeners now.

  They were talking to each other again—the reason was now obvious enough. The operators must be in different locations, must be communicating with each other through their machines. He had little doubt of what they were saying, in a general way.

  Which was too bad—in a general way.

  “It’s vague—infernally vague.”

  “I know—but what else can he mean?”

  “Perhaps he’s just telling about some of our own mines, asking what we get out of them or trying to tell us he wants some of it.”

  “But what can ‘flame metal’ mean but fissionables? And what mine of ours did he point out?”

  “I don’t know about all of his locations, but the first one he mentioned—the closest one—certainly fits.”

  “What?”

  “Eighty-one miles, bearing thirty degrees magnetic. That’s as close as you could ask to Anaconda, unless this map is haywire. There are certainly men digging there!”

  “Not two miles down!”

  “They will be, unless we find a substitute for copper.”

  “I still think this thing is telling us about beings of its own kind, who are lifting our fissionables. They could do it easily enough, if they dig the way this one does. I’m for at least calling up there, and finding out whether anyone has thought of drilling test cores under the mine level—and how deep they went. There’s no point walking around here, looking for anything else. We’ve found our fireball, right here”

  The agent was interested but not anxious when the machines turned back to him, and direct communication was brought once more into operation. He was beginning to feel less tense, and confident that everything was going to come out all right if he stuck with it.

  “Eighty-one miles that way. Men digging. Go now.”

  They illustrated the last words, turning away from his ship and starting in the proper direction. The agent could not exactly relax, fitting as he did into the spaces designed for him in his ship, but he felt the appropriate emotion.

  They were getting started on one of the necessary steps, at least. Presumably, the other and more distant ones would be tackled as soon as the news could be spread. These machines moved slowly, but their control impulses apparently did not.

  It occurred to him that, since none of the devices had been left on hand to communicate with him, the natives might be expecting him to appear at the nearest digging site—the one they had mentioned. The more he thought of it, the more likely such an interpretation of their last message seemed. So, with the men barely started on their walk back to the waiting jeep, the Conservationist sent his ship whistling upward on a long slant toward the northeast.

  XIV

  THAT THE multiple answer had puzzled the star-traveler became evident when he dropped back to the ground and went through the entire process a second time. This time, General Eades took over, employing Hal Parsons’ definition—“Rise.”

  Apparently, the switch in words from one member of the party to another troubled the alien, for he dropped gen
tly. Then he rose and hung in the air once more, a few feet above the muddy soil. The general repeated, “Rise,”—and after a few seconds of motionless hovering the alien dropped back to the ground and did not go through the performance a fourth time.

  “I wish our experimental boys would come up with an anti-grav like that,” said the general, in a wistful aside. “It would sure give us the jump on you-know-who. Wonder where he gets all that power from.”

  “You and me both,” murmured Truck MacLaurie. “What a bucking-machine he’d make for practice.”

  Candace giggled, and Hal looked at her, then despairingly at Truck. To give him solace, Candace said, “Just think, honey, the progress we’ve made in the last few hours. Only a little while back, we were nowhere.”

  “I wish I felt it were getting us anywhere,” said the unhappy geologist. “When we started out looking for minerals, I never figured we’d come up against anything like this.”

  The general motioned them to silence, saying, “He’s up to something new. Lordy! Just look at him dig!”

  Candace said, “He’s burrowing! That’s all. What did you expect?”

  Truck cried, “He’s mining!”

  “Will you shut up!” said Hal rudely, as General Eades scowled unhappily at the confusion-potential of another multiple answer. Another howling siren rose from the alien. But it was neither as enduring nor as ear-shattering as his earlier signal.

  “Sorry, honey,” Candace whispered when it was over.

  It became quickly evident that the leadership in the language lesson had been reversed. Evidently having decided he had learned all he could from human demonstration, the visitor was demonstrating on his own, hoping the humans could supply the definitions he sought.

  “I’d give my stars to know what he’s trying to get through,” said the general softly. “It must be important, if he’s come all the way from God knows what star to give it to us.”

  There was another growl from the alien, which all four of them took as a request for silence. From then on, the reverse lesson went on apace. The only difficulty was that the words evidently sought by the visitor, made little sense to his watchers.

  “Man—dig—mountain—rise,” came the message.

  They stared at one another, uncomprehending. Finally, with a shrug, the general bent over awkwardly, hampered as he was by the walkie-talkie, and began scraping a hole in the mud with his fingers.

  “Man dig,” Eades said, as he did so.

  “Mountain rise.”

  There was insistence in the aliens words, which caused all four of his listeners to turn toward the ragged range-crests, which was barely visible now through the rain and mist on the far side of the valley. There was further confusion, when the great, grey globe gave voice to the strange words, “Mountain break—Earth break—man break.”

  Then, came sudden, unexpected, frightening demonstration in action. For the second time since its discovery an opening appeared in the dully gleaming, curved surface of the alien—an opening both smaller and more menacing than the one which had all but led Truck to his doom.

  A snout appeared, swiveled past the watching group, and from it there emerged a darting, Winding ray of light—or heat. It struck the muddy hillside a hundred yards or so away and with frightful, eruptive violence a patch of the soggy soil itself began to bubble and turn, first red, then white-hot. A trickle of fluid, molten material ran slowly down the hillside, and a cloud of white steam rose high in the air. Once more, the sense of intolerable heat was present.

  “My God!” exclaimed a white-lipped Hal Parsons. “He’s set fire to the earth itself!” He picked up the rifle, which he was still carrying, unslung its cover and aimed it at the hull-opening, pushing Candace behind him as he did so.

  “Put that toy away, Parsons,” said the general with grim insistence. “It won’t do a damned bit of good. Do you understand? Put it away.”

  The intolerable ray of heat vanished, and the opening in the alien’s hull disappeared as abruptly as it had opened. The visitor said, slowly, “Man dig—Earth fire—mountain fire.”

  “Let’s have the scintillometer,” the general said to Truck. “It’s a lot better than that Geiger job you’ve been using.”

  “I can work it,” said Hal. Taking the instrument, and adjusting it, he walked over to the rapidly cooling, but still semi-molten spot which the heat-ray had turned to lava. The count ran high and fast as he approached it. Turning back to the general, he said, “No doubt about it—she’s plenty hot.”

  “Got to report this,” said Eades tersely. “He’s trying to get something through, all right—and I don’t like the looks of it. Maybe some of those eggheads sitting around in Butte can give us a clue.”

  It was a lengthy broadcast, relayed through the radio of a helicopter hovering above the clouds. When it was over, the general signed off in disgust.

  “How do you like that?” he said, to no one in particular. “Those broad-beamed boffins want us to carry on.” He cursed, fluently, effectively, and then added, “Sorry, ma’am,” to Candace without turning a grey hair.

  She said, “Maybe we’d better try him on minerals alone.”

  So, the lesson continued, until some of the confusion about various stones and metals, upon the nature of machines, was partially cleared up. Then came the alarming statement, “Yes—men dig—mountain melt—mountain rise.”

  “Is he trying to tell us men are planting volcanoes under us?” Candace asked incredulously.

  “He’s trying to tell us someone or something is,” her husband told her grimly. “Ask him where, General?”

  This led to laborious exchanges, establishing direction and distance units, after which the alien began issuing his information, as to the location of the horrors to come if his warnings were ignored. While this was going on, Parsons took notes, doing his best to write legibly on limp paper. Finally Candace, who had once learned shorthand, took over the job.

  General Eades turned toward her and said, “That seems to be all. Got them?”

  “All forty-five, General,” said Candace. “Want me to read them back to you?”

  “Not yet,” said Eades. “I want to know what he means by men digging volcanoes.”

  The results were not satisfactory, and so the alien went through the entire list again. Then, in desperation, the general got into touch with the higher-ups once more. He talked long and determinedly and with authority. He concluded with, “. . . There’s absolutely no point in walking around here, looking for anything else. We’ve found our fireball, right here.”

  He paused, looked at the impassive facade of the alien inquiringly. “More?” he asked. “Anything more?”

  The voice, so oddly human, so utterly like his own in tone and inflection, replied, “Eighty-one miles that way. Men digging. Go now.”

  “Okay,” said the general. “That’s the message.” And, to the alien, “Eighty-one miles that way. Men digging. Go now.” He motioned to the others to follow, and led the way through the rain toward the jeep.

  “You’re not going to leave him?” Candace asked, incredulously.

  “It may take all of us to get out of this damned valley,” Eades told her. “If what he reported is true—no matter how garbled—our work is at Anaconda. That’s where the nearest trouble is, according to him. We’ll have weasels in here by tomorrow, to do a proper survey job. Complete with scients . . .” Then, with a look of apology, “Sorry, folks, I mean specialists. You’ve done great.”

  “That’s okay, General,” said Truck, in his easy-going drawl.

  The others laughed.

  Candace said, “This probably sounds screwy, but I’m going to miss our globular friend. He was—”

  “Not he—it,” said Parsons. “Why must you give it sex?”

  “Forget about sex,” the general told them, masking a smile. “We’re going to have one sweet job getting out of here.”

  Candace looked back, through the mist and rain and darkness of approachi
ng twilight, and suddenly uttered a cry of alarm. “Look!” she said, grabbing the nearest arm, which happened to belong to the general. “He’s taking off!” They watched, all with mixed emotions, as the alien rose vertically from its hillside bed, and hovered a moment at mountain-top level. Then it suddenly veered, moved swiftly toward the north and disappeared.

  “Well,” said Truck. “Goodby.” And that seemed to sum it up. Before they had the jeep halfway up the pass the rain had stopped, and there was a break of afterglow gold in the western sky.

  XV

  THE MOMENT HE rose above the valley, the Conservationist picked up the radar beams again—the beams that had startled him when he first approached the strange planet. As had happened on the earlier occasion, a few milliseconds served to bring many more of them to bear upon him.

  He was quite evidently being watched on this journey. But he no longer expected these beams to carry intelligent speech. More or less casually, he noted their points of origin. He wondered, for brief moments, whether it might not be worth while to investigate them later, but felt fairly certain that it wouldn’t. He turned his full attention on his goal.

  The crusts of clay had fallen from his eyes as he flew, and he was once again limited to longdistance vision. He could make out the vast, terraced pits of the great copper mine as he approached, but could not distinguish the precise nature of the moving objects within. He did not consider sight a particularly useful or convenient sense anyway, so he settled to the ground, half a mile from the pit’s edge, bored in as he had before, and began probing with seismic detectors and electrical senses.

  He had, of course, already known of the presence of the hole. A fair amount of seismic activity had reached his original landing-spot from this place, enabling him to deduce its shape fairly accurately. Now, however, he realized—and for the first time—the amount of actual work going on. There were many machines of the sort he had already seen, which was hardly surprising. But there were many others as well, and the fact that most of them were metallic in construction startled him considerably.