by Eando Binder
“What’s that?” Merry was asking curiously.
Hillory told of the saucerman’s skeleton and began unfurling the crinkly scroll. When one full side was exposed, they could see it was covered with strange symbols and markings all of which had been embossed on the metal itself. There had been no ink or dye to fade away through long stretches of time.
“Did the dead pilot come to earth,” puzzled Hillory, “to deliver this message—if that’s what it is?”
Merry peered closely and extended her finger to an “emblem” at the top. “Thule, it looks like three long bones crossing one another.”
“Hmm,” said Hillory. “Reminds me of something else…some other symbol or emblem on earth…but I can’t place it.”
“What does the message say?” asked Merry innocently.
Hillory gave her a withering look. “This language, if it is a language, was devised on a planet maybe a hundred or a thousand light-years away. It would have no slightest connection with any language on earth. And you expect me to translate it on the spot. What am I, a super-genius?”
“Yes, you are,” said the girl sincerely. “But what I meant was just that I was wondering what it said, not for you to tell me. Do you think anybody could ever decipher it?”
‘I wonder,” said Hillory. “But Serendipity Labs can try. If they all look it over, some clues may come up allowing us to crack even a nonearthly code or language.”
With some trepidation, he eyed the steep side of the ravine they would now have to climb. “Well, let’s go.”
Merry paused and froze, without turning. “Thule! I hear a noise behind us…footsteps!”
They both whirled, gasping. The alien’s skeletonized body was emerging from under the wrecked saucer. It straightened up and creakingly moved toward them, its bony arms raising and stretching toward them.
“It came alive!” screamed Merry, “as if it wants the scroll back that you took…” She ended in a bubbling moan of terror.
Hillory looked dumbly at the scroll in his hand. Could it really be that? He grabbed the girl’s hand and started desperately to scramble up the slope. But their feet slipped under loose rubble.
Hillory caught a whiff of the horrible stench close behind him, and then a bony hand seized the scroll and wrested it from his hand.
“It’s impossible,” Hillory breathed. “An alien’s skeleton could no more move than a human’s fleshless bones.”
“Maybe not,” moaned Merry, eyes wide as if viewing a nightmare, “but it’s running away with the scroll.”
Hillory galvanized into action. He picked up a boulder as big as a football, brought it up over his head, then heaved it with all his power. The stone caught the ambling skeleton squarely in the back. There was a multiple cracking sound and the whole bony structure flew apart, scattering pieces for ten yards. The scroll dropped to the ground.
Hillory ran and snatched it up, then began pulling the girl up the slope. She kept glancing back at the pile of bones. “How could a lifeless skeleton move?” she moaned several times. “It’s like witchcraft….”
“Shut up,” panted Hillory, as they laboriously crawled up the ravine’s steep slope. “Forget it. The important thing is we’ve got the scroll.”
Reaching the top of the slope at last, they looked back, perspiring and gulping air into their heaving lungs. After one last look at the wrecked flying saucer and the scattered bone structure in the ravine, they turned toward their motorcycle, leaning against a tree.
And then the motorcycle moved, by itself.
Turning white, both Hillory and the girl stood in paralyzed astonishment. The engine had not started but still the motorcycle, as if imbued with a life of its own, gathered speed and came straight for them.
“No chance to run, or get behind a tree,” gasped Merry, with only seconds to go before the impact.
“I’ve got an idea,” rasped Hillory, at the same time hurling the scroll aside to land at the foot of a massive tree trunk. The motorcycle immediately swerved toward the scroll, starting to slow down. But its momentum was too great to be checked in that short space. There was a thud as the cycle’s front tire struck the tree trunk, and the vehicle bounced back several yards, to topple and lie inert. It did not move anymore.
“Quick,” said Hillory, “follow me, Merry. The cycle’s undamaged.” After kicking the motor to life, Hillory gunned it away with Merry clinging behind him.
“Do you think,” screeched Merry above the wind’s roar, “that it was the dead alien’s…uh…spirit that animated his skeleton and then our motorcycle?”
“An interesting theory,” returned Hillory, “except that it sounds like sheer metaphysical rot. Maybe we’ll solve that weird mystery sometime, but the main thing is to tackle this scroll—a message, perhaps from some faraway world. The biggest thing since…well, for a long, long time.”
* * * *
“Hen scratching,” grunted Argyle. “Hieroglyphics. But we don’t have an interstellar Rosetta Stone. Impossible to translate.”
He handed the foil sheet to Dr. Cheng. It passed down the line. They were all assembled in the computer lab. One after another the Serendipity scientists looked over the “writing” and shrugged.
“No slightest clue to tie it in with the meaning of the symbols or words,” declared Dr. Chumley.
Hillory swung on the computers master. “Barton, can Brains decipher it?”
“How would I program it to Brains?” Barton asked dubiously. “If we knew what one letter or number was, it might be a hook allowing Brains to crack the rest.”
“But you said you had been ‘training’ Brains to cook up new projects or discoveries of his own,” said Hillory. “Why not just run it through the computer without any instructions?”
“Say, it’s worth a try,” mused Barton, stroking his blond handlebar mustache. Suddenly he snatched up the foil sheet and inserted it into the scanning slot. Then he simply flipped over the main toggle switch marked “Analyze.”
“I’ll have to temporarily switch off work on the other projects we fed into Brains,” he said apologetically to his colleagues. “He may need all his capacities to handle this brain-buster.”
The others nodded, some reluctantly, and Barton flipped over other studs to the off position. Now the computer’s banks of lights began to blink on at a furious pace, and every tape in the system began spinning.
Barton whistled, looking at the central gauges. “Brains never met anything like this before. He’s turning on every analyzing circuit he’s got, searching every memory bank, and pouring in every transistorized unit. He’s putting on full steam.”
They fidgeted for the next half-hour. Dr. Clyde waved at the waiting scientists. “The rest of you might as well get back to your labs. We’ll inform you when and if Brains gives the answer.”
The others were glad to go, leaving only Clyde, Barton, the girl, and Hillory to fidget more time away.
Clyde turned his soft blue eyes on Hillory. “As if we didn’t already have enough king-size research headaches here, you had to bring in a mind-cracking riddle from outer space.” His voice sounded half-annoyed.
Hillory paused in his jerky pacing of the room. “If you found a chunk of gold one yard across, would you ignore it or bring it in as a vast treasure?”
“Please,” Clyde hastened to assure him. “I wasn’t blaming you for this, Hillory.” A sudden thought struck him. “Hmm. If it is a message from another world, and if Brains can translate it, think of the prestige and glory Serendipity Labs would gain. International honors…Nobel prizes…science service medals….”
“Forget it,” broke in Barton, shattering Clyde’s bubble. “Brains just gave his answer.”
Barton had read a coded tape, but now he flipped a replay switch and the computer’s artificial voice boomed out. “The sheet bears markings suggesting a message, but no such language is known on earth. No characteristics of language structure remotely similar to earth’s system of worded thoughts. Th
e scroll’s symbols are untranslatable.”
As if to punctuate his pronouncement, Brains flipped the metal-foil sheet out of the reject slot. It thudded to the floor.
Barton picked it up slowly and handed it mutely to Hillory. Hillory stared at it, biting his lips.
“Can’t you feed it back into Brains with some sort of programming, like try comparing it with every known dead language….”
“Obviously,” returned Barton scathingly, “Brains already did that. He also used every system of code-breaking known to the FBI, CIA, Interpol, and what have you. We originally poured that basic data into his memory banks along with the Encyclopedia Britannica, every major science book written, the essence of all philosophy, religion, and politics. Then he was also fed….”
“Never mind,” said Hillory wearily, jerking up his hand. “You’re saying that if Brains can’t chew it apart, nobody else on earth can.”
“Right,” nodded Barton. “Sorry, old man.”
Hillory turned away with the metal scroll, his tall gaunt body stooped in disappointment. Merry followed him, sympathy in her face.
* * * *
“It’s 3 a.m.” yawned Merry, tossing another scribbled page aside to join the heap on the floor. “I’ve filled three notebooks, boiled up four pots of coffee, and worn out six pencils, not to mention my fingers. And I’ve got the world’s worst case of writer’s cramp.”
Hillory mumbled something. For hours he had dictated, trying one or another approach at substituting earth words in the scroll and working from there. The serendipity method, blind groping, in the hopes of stumbling on the golden key.
“How can you hope to beat a computer?” said Merry, rather sharply. “Aren’t you overestimating your own brain-power?”
“Brains doesn’t operate on serendipity,” said Hillory. “He starts from some logical premise and builds up an orderly structure of analysis, all neat and correct. He doesn’t know how to put square-peg facts into round-hole receptacles and come up with something fantastic and unknown. But the ‘scatter-brained’ human mind has the unique ability—or curse, perhaps—to think irrationally. The road, sometimes, to the serendipity pot-of-gold.”
He lapsed into a brooding silence, staring at the scroll intently. “But I swear,” he began again, “that there is something just beyond my reach in these mouse tracks. A clue, a key, an insight…if I could only grab hold of it.”
He picked up a magnifying glass and peered at alien symbols. “Some of them are tiny drawings it seems. One of them looks like a mountain. It makes me think of something….”
His leaning chair slammed to the floor. “By the blue gods,” he hissed, “suppose it’s not dealing with a language or words, but with coordinates, degrees, areas, distances, and locations?”
He bent over with his magnifying glass again. “One symbol is repeated over and over again, not like the common letter ‘e’ in language, but more like…aha…degrees!”
He jerked around toward Merry. “What if it’s a map?”
Chapter 3
“Dragging a man out of bed at 6 a.m. is sheer effrontery,” grumbled Jim Barton. He forced open his sleepy eyes to glare at Hillory as he came out of his dormitory room tucking his shirt in his trousers. “In plain words it stinks.”
“You won’t complain when you hear about this,” said Hillory, waving the rolled-up metal sheet. “I’ve had an inspiration. It’s not a message per se. It’s a map.”
“Map?” Barton looked blank, stroking his somewhat crumpled mustache to even it out.
Hillory went on eagerly, jerking the words out. “Yes. Or rather, a chart. I want Brains to analyze it from that viewpoint.”
They reached the computer room, and Hillory spread the metal sheet flat. “If you look closely, you can see faint lines we didn’t notice before. They look like geographical configurations that might exist right here on earth. Here, use this.”
He handed Barton a magnifying glass.
“Hm,” said Barton, squinting through it. “Does look somewhat like cartography. You may have hit the jackpot. I’ll program Brains to make like it deals with degrees, radii, great circles, and areas.”
Sleepiness forgotten, he began energetically to tap a keyboard that translated worded instructions into computerese. “This’ll take some time,” he flung over his shoulder. “Rustle up some Java.”
Hillory nodded and ambled down the hall to the kitchen. Nobody was on duty so he had to poke around in the cabinets for a jar of freeze dried coffee, to which he added boiling hot water in two mugs. He brought them steaming to where Barton still pecked at his keys, pausing at times in thought.
“There’s a glitch in this,” he mused, between gulps of the scalding coffee. “The makers of this map didn’t happen to go to school on earth, so why would they have a circle divided into 360 degrees? It could be 250 or 600 or anything. Hmm, I’ll have to tell Brains to look for the pi value first and deduce the system of degrees. Same with linear dimensions and distances, assuming this map refers to earth. Brains will have to do some tall interpreting.”
“But if the chart is based on earthly topography,” put in Hillory, “Brains will have some basis of comparison with our measurements.”
“That’s the big white hope,” admitted Barton, jabbing at keys steadily. “A language with no common reference points was hopeless. But a set of directions to physical places right here on earth’s surface immediately brings in common denominators.”
He turned with his finger poised over a red button. “Now feed the alien chart into the slot.”
Hillory obeyed and Barton jabbed the button. Lights began to blink as Brains accepted its new assignment. Barton flipped the voice feed-out.
“Do you reject the problem, stated in new terms?”
“No. It could be solvable.”
“Could be? What kind of an answer is that?” Barton was puzzled. Brains had always before stated things in unqualified yeses and no’s. “Listen, Brains, is it affirmative or negative that you will solve it?”
“Probably affirmative,” came back in mechanical tones.
“First time I knew Brains to be cautious,” said Barton in an aside to Hillory. “Guess it hinges on whether he can successfully pin down any point on earth with the alien designations.”
To Brains he said, “How long will this brain buster take you?”
The computer had a built-in timer that revealed in advance how long any problem would take to be solved. The answer flashed on a lighted screen—5 HOURS, 7 MINUTES, 23 SECONDS.
“Whew. Want some aspirin?” asked Barton.
“No comment.”
Barton turned to Hillory with widened eyes. “Brains never took that long to crack any other mental nut. It’s equivalent to a scientist saying a lab experiment will take him forty years.”
“Five hours,” grunted Hillory, obviously impatient. He threw himself into a chair. “May as well get some rest, I suppose. I’ve been up all night. But I won’t be able to sleep, I know.” Ten seconds later he was snoring. Barton grinned, checked the circuits, then sprawled in another chair with a deep sigh.
The computer labored away silently, its blinking lights accelerating into a frenzied sequence as it wrestled with the knottiest problem any cybernetic device on earth had ever been given.
Something nudged Hillory’s sleeping brain, warning him to wake up. Opening his eyes he saw a huge naked man standing over Barton and pulling a rope tight around his neck. Only stifled gasps came from Barton as his face purpled and his eyes bulged. His flailing arms and legs began to go limp.
Hillory stared in horror, as if in a nightmare. Then, snapping wide awake, he hurled his lanky form forward, catching the nude assailant around the legs and throwing him to the floor. This loosened the rope around Barton’s neck and his lungs heaved in air.
The naked man quickly leaped to his feet and turned on Hillory, grabbing him around the middle with two arms and squeezing powerfully. Hillory’s breath wheezed out as his lungs
caved in. But then he put both hands under the man’s chin and shoved violently, breaking his bear-hug hold.
Hillory then slammed his big fist into the naked man’s face with all the power of his boxing champ days in college. Without any expression or sound, the man fell flat and lay still.
Allen Chumley s fat face poked in the door. “All right. Which of you jokers swiped one of my androids?” Then his eyes popped as he saw Hillory reviving Barton and the nude form sprawled on the floor.
“Your android came in here and tried to strangle Barton, then finish me off,” grunted Hillory.
“But that’s impossible,” gurgled Chumley, rushing to kneel at the android’s side and rubbing his wrists anxiously. “Petunia here wouldn’t hurt a fly. His rudimentary cortex can only handle simple orders, and I didn’t order him to attack you.”
Barton had recovered and was rubbing his neck tenderly. “Maybe not, but that hunk of lab-made meat turned killer. You’d better have him destroyed, Chumley.”
“No, he’s harmless,” muttered Hillory.
“Harmless?” blazed Barton angrily. “After he nearly choked me to death?”
“It wasn’t him,” Hillory went on. He pointed to Chumley who was leading the android, now docile, by the hand out of the door. “It was something else that….” Hillory pondered how he could explain and began again.
“Barton!” Hillory was interrupted as Dr. Clyde rushed in, concern all over his face. “I just saw Chumley in the hall and heard of that weird attack by the android. Are you all right?”
Barton rubbed his neck with a grimace. “Yes, just some bruised skin. But I’ll always know how it feels to be hanged on the scaffold.”
“Go to the infirmary at once,” said Clyde. “You must be checked by the doctor.”
“Forget it, I’m all right,” insisted Barton, lighting a cigar. But his hands were trembling now, from the reaction to his unsettling experience.
