The trip itself proved unimportant for general reporting. Special aspects of difficulties encountered and overcome will appear on the detailed individual report of Karnim after the return of the expedition. The others, in particular Trubz and Lilil, were largely unaware of these difficulties. To anyone save the specialist in astrogation, the trip seemed nowise different, except in length, from a vacation excursion to one of our own satellites.
The majority theory is apparently vindicated here on this satellite of the third planet. It does not sustain life. According to Halov, specialist in life sciences, it is not a question of cannot, since life of some strange sort might conceivably exist under any conditions save those of a perfect vacuum. But so far as can be ascertained there is no life of any remotely recognizable form upon this satellite.
This globe is dead. It is so dead that one may say the word without fear. The euphemism extinct would be too mild for the absolute and utter deadness here. It is so dead that the thought of death is not terrifying.
Trubz is now working on the psychology of that.
Observation checks the previous calculations that one face of this satellite is always turned toward its world and one always away from it, the period of rotation coinciding exactly with the orbital period. There seems to be no difference in nature between the two sides; but obviously the far side is the proper site for the erection of our temporary dome. If the hypothetical inhabitants of the third planet have progressed to the use of astronomical instruments, we do not wish to give them warning of our approach by establishing ourselves in the full sight of those instruments.
The absence of life on this satellite naturally proved a serious disappointment to Halov, but even more so to Lilil, who felt inspired to improvise a particularly ingenious specimen of his art. Fortunately, the stores of the ship had provided for such an emergency, and the resultant improvisation was one of the greatest triumphs of Lilil’s great career. We are now about to take our first rest after the trip, and our minds are aglow with the charm and beauty of this exquisite work.
Murvin to Falzik:
All right. Report received and very welcome. But can’t you give us more color? Physical description of the satellite—minerals present—exploitation possibilities—anything like that? Some of us are more interested in those than in Trubz’s psychology or even Lilil’s practice of the art.
Falzik to Murvin:
What are you asking for? You know as well as I do the purpose of this expedition: to discover other intelligent forms of life. And you know the double purpose behind that purpose: to verify by comparison the psychological explanation of our race-dominant fear of death (if this were a formal dispatch I’d censor that to “extinction”), and to open up new avenues of creation in the art.
That’s why the personnel of this expedition, save for the astrogator, was chosen for its usefulness if we discover life. Until we do, our talents as specialists are wasted. We don’t know about minerals and topography. Wait for the next expedition’s report on them.
If you want color, our next report should have it. It will come from the third planet itself. We’ve established our temporary base here easily and are blasting off very soon for what our scientists have always maintained is the most probable source of life in this system.
Murvin to Falzik:
All right. And if you find life, I owe you a sarbel dinner at Noku’s.
Falzik to Murvin:
Sarbel for two, please! Though what we’ve found, the Great One only—but go on to the report.
Report of First Interplanetary Exploratory Expedition, presented by Falzik, specialist in reporting:
The site of the Expedition’s landing on the third planet was chosen more or less at random. It is situated on the third in size of the five continents, not far from the shore of the largest ocean. It is approximately indicated by the coordinates — and —[8] in Kubril’s chart of the planet.
In the relatively slow final period of our approach, we were able to observe that the oceans of the third planet are indeed true liquids and not merely beds of molten metal, as has been conjectured by some of our scientists. We were more elated to observe definite signs of intelligent life. We glimpsed many structures which only the most unimaginative materialist could attribute to natural accident, and the fact that these structures tend to cluster together in great numbers indicates an organized and communal civilization.
That at least was our first uplifting emotional reaction, as yet not completely verified. The place of our landing is free of such structures, and of almost everything else. It is as purely arid a desert as the region about Krinavizhd, which in some respects it strongly resembles.
At first we saw no signs of life whatsoever, which is as we could have wished it. An exploratory expedition does not want a welcoming committee, complete with spoken speeches and seven-string sridars. There was a sparse amount of vegetation, apparently in an untended state of nature, but nothing to indicate the presence of animal life until we saw the road.
It was an exceedingly primitive and clumsy road, consisting of little more than a ribbon of space from which the vegetation had been cleared; but it was a sign, and we followed it, to be rewarded shortly by our first glimpse of moving life. This was some form of apodal being, approximately one-fifth of the length of one of us, which glided across the road and disappeared before we could make any attempt at communication.
We continued along the road for some time, suffering severely from the unaccustomed gravity and the heavy atmosphere, but spurred on by the joyous hope of fulfilling the aim of the expedition. Lilil in particular evinced an inspired elation at the hope of finding new subjects for his great compositions.
The sun, markedly closer and hotter here on the third planet, was setting when at last we made our first contact with third-planet life. This being was small, about the length of the first joint of one’s foreleg, covered with fur of pure white, save for the brown dust of the desert, and quadrupedal. It was frisking in a patch of shade, seeming to rejoice in the setting of the sun and the lowering of the temperature. With its forelegs it performed some elaborate and to us incomprehensible ritual with a red ball.
Halov approached it and attracted its attention by a creaking of his wing rudiments. It evinced no fear, but instantly rolled the red ball in his direction. Halov deftly avoided this possible weapon. (We later examined it and found it to be harmless, at least to any form of life known to us; its purpose remains a mystery. Trubz is working on the psychology of it.) He then—optimistically, but to my mind foolishly—began the fifth approach, the one developed for beings of a civilization roughly parallel to our own.
It was a complete failure. The white thing understood nothing of what Halov scratched in the ground, but persisted in trying to wrench from his digits the stick with which he scratched. Halov reluctantly retreated through the approaches down to approach one (designed for beings of the approximate mental level of the Narbian aborigines), but the creature paid no heed to them and insisted upon performing with the moving stick some ritual similar to that which it had practiced with the ball.
By this time we were all weary of these fruitless efforts, so that it came as a marked relief when Lilil announced that he had been inspired to improvise. The exquisite perfection of his art refreshed us and we continued our search with renewed vitality, though not before Halov had examined the corpse of the white creature and determined that it was indubitably similar to the mammals, though many times larger than any form of mammalian life has ever become on our planet.
Some of us thought whimsically of that favorite fantasy of the sciencefiction composers, the outsize mammals who will attack and destroy our race. But we had not yet seen anything.
Murvin to Falzik:
That’s a fine way to end a dispatch. You’ve got me all agog. Has the Monster Mammal King got you in his clutches?
Falzik to Murvin:
Sorry. I didn’t intend to be sensational. It is simply that we’ve been
learning so much here through—well, you can call him the Monster Mammal King, though the fictionists would be disappointed in him—that it’s hard to find time enough for reports. But here is more.
Report of First Interplanetary Exploratory Expedition, presented by Falzik, specialist in reporting:
The sun was almost down when we saw the first intelligent being ever beheld by one of our race outside of our planet. He (for we learned afterward that he was male, and it would be unjust to refer to an intelligent being as it) was lying on the ground in the shade of a structure—a far smaller structure than those we had glimpsed in passing, and apparently in a sad state of dilapidation.
In this posture the fact was not markedly noticeable, but he is a biped. Used as we are on our own planet to many forms of life—octopods (though the Great One be thanked that those terrors are nearly wiped out), ourselves hexapods, and the pesky little mammalian tetrapods—a biped still seems to us something strange and mythical. A logical possibility, but not a likelihood. The length of body of this one is approximately that of a small member of our own race.
He held a container apparently of glass in one foreleg (there must be some other term to use of bipeds, since the front limbs are not used as legs) and was drinking from it when he spied us. He choked on his drink, looked away, then returned his gaze to us and stared for a long time. At last he blinked his eyes, groaned aloud, and hurled the glass container far away.
Halov now advanced toward him. He backed away, reached one forelimb inside the structure, and brought it out clasping a long metal rod, with a handle of some vegetable material. This he pointed at Halov, and a loud noise ensued. At the time some of us thought this was the being’s speech, but now we know it came from the rod, which apparently propelled some form of metal missile against Halov.
The missile, of course, bounced harmlessly off Halov’s armor (he prides himself on keeping in condition), and our specialist in life sciences continued to advance toward the biped, who dropped the rod and leaned back against the structure. For the first time we heard his voice, which is extraordinarily low in pitch. We have not yet fully deciphered his language, but I have, as instructed, been keeping full phonetic transcriptions of his every remark. Trubz has calculated psychologically that the meaning of his remarks must be:
“Ministers of the Great One, be gracious to me!”
The phonetic transcription is as follows:[9]
AND THEY TALK ABOUT PINK ELEPHANTS!
He watched awestruck as Halov, undaunted by his former experience, again went directly into the fifth approach. The stick in Halov’s digit traced a circle in the dirt with rays coming out of it, then pointed up at the setting sun.
The biped moved his head forward and back and spoke again. Trubz’s conjecture here is:
“The great sun, the giver of life.”
Phonetic transcription:
BUGS THAT DRAW PRETTY PICTURES YET!
Then Halov drew a series of concentric ellipses of dotted lines about the figure of the sun. He drew tiny circles on these orbits to indicate the first and second planets, then larger ones to indicate the third and our own. The biped was by now following the drawing with intense absorption.
Halov now pointed to the drawing of the third planet, then to the biped, and back again. The biped once more moved his head forward, apparently as a gesture of agreement. Finally Halov in like manner pointed to the fourth planet, to himself, and back again, and likewise in turn for each of us.
The biped’s face was blank for a moment. Then he himself took a stick and pointed from the fourth planet to Halov, saying, according to Trubz:
“This is really true?”
Transcription:
YOU MEAN YOU’RE MARTIANS?
Halov imitated the head movement of agreement. The biped dropped his stick and gasped out sounds which Trubz is sure were the invocation of the name of a potent deity. Transcription:
ORSON WELLES!
We had all meanwhile been groping with the biped’s thought patterns, though no success had attended our efforts. In the first place, his projection was almost nil; his race is apparently quite unaccustomed to telepathic communication. In the second place, of course, it is next to impossible to read alien thought patterns without some fixed point of reference.
Just as we could never have deciphered the ancient writings of the Khrugs without the discovery of the Burdarno Stone which gave the same inscription in their language and in an antique form of our own, so we could not attempt to decode this biped’s thought patterns until we knew what they were like on a given known subject.
We now began to perceive some of his patterns of the Solar System and for our respective worlds. Halov went on to the second stage of the fifth approach. He took a group of small rocks, isolated one, held up one digit, and drew the figure one in the dirt. The biped seemed puzzled. Then Halov added another rock to the first, held up two digits, and drew the figure two, and so on for three and four. Now the biped seemed enlightened and made his agreement gesture. He also held up one digit and drew a figure beside Halov’s.
His one is the same as ours—a not too surprising fact. Trubz has been working on the psychology of it and has decided that the figure one is probably a simple straight line in any numerical system. His other figures differed markedly from ours, but his intention was clear and we could to some extent follow his patterns.
Using both forelegs, Halov went on to five, six, and seven, with the biped writing down his number likewise. Then Halov held up all his digits and wrote a one followed by the dot which represents zero and is the essence of any mathematical intelligence. This was the crucial moment—did these bipeds know how to calculate or was their numerical system purely primitive?
The biped held up eight digits and wrote a new figure, a conjoined pair of circles. Halov, looking worried, added another rock to his group and wrote down two ones. The biped wrote a circle with a tail to it. Halov added another rock and wrote a one followed by a two. The biped wrote a one followed by a circle.
Then Halov understood. We have always used an octonary system, but our mathematicians have long realized the possibility of others: a system of two, for instance, in which 11 would mean three, a system of four (the folk speech even contains survivals of such a system) in which 11 would mean five. For 11 simply means the first power of the number which is your base, plus one. This system of the bipeds obviously employs a decimal base.
(Trubz has been working on the psychology of this. He explains it by the fact that the bipeds have five digits on each forelimb, or a total of ten, whereas we have four each, a total of eight.)
Halov now beckoned to Karnim, who as astrogator is the best mathematician among us, and asked him to take over. He studied for a moment the biped’s numbers, adjusted his mind rapidly to the (for the layman) hopeless confusion of a decimal system, and went ahead with simple mathematical operations. The biped followed him not unskillfully, while the rest of us concentrated on his thought patterns and began to gather their shape and nature.
The growing darkness bothered the biped before it incommoded Karnim. He rose from his squatting position over the numerals and went into the structure, the interior of which was soon alight. He came back to the doorway anci beckoned us to enter. As we did so, he spoke words which Trubz conjectures to mean:
“Enter my abode and stay in peace, O emissaries from the fourth planet.”
Phonetic transcription:
YOU’LL BE GONE IN THE MORNING, AND WILL I HAVE A HEAD!
Murvin to Falzik:
What a yarn! A planet of intelligent beings! What a future for the art! Maybe I never was sold on this expedition, but I am now. Keep the reports coming. And include as much phonetic transcription as you can—the specialists are working on what you’ve sent and are inclined to doubt some of Trubz’s interpretations. Also tell Trubz to get to work as soon as possible on the psychological problem of extinction. If this being’s a mammal, he should help.
[Several
reports are omitted here, dealing chiefly with the gradually acquired skill of the expedition in reading a portion of the biped’s thought patterns and in speaking a few words of his language.]
Report of First Interplanetary Exploratory Expedition, presented by Falzik, specialist in reporting:
Halov and Trubz agree that we should stay with this man (for such we have by now learned is the name of his race) until we have learned as much from him as we can. He has accepted us now and is almost at ease with us, though the morning after our arrival, for some peculiar reason, he seemed even more surprised to see us than when we first appeared.
We can learn much more from him, now that he is used to us, than we could from the dwellers in the large massed structures, and after we are well versed in his civilization we stand much more chance of being accepted peaceably.
We have been here now for three of the days of this planet, absorbed in our new learning. (All save Lilil, who is fretful because he has not practiced his art for so long. I have occasionally seen him eyeing the man speculatively.) By using a mixture of telepathy, sign language, and speech, we can by now discuss many things, though speech comes with difficulty to one who has used it only on formal and fixed occasions.
For instance, we have learned why this man lives alone, far from his fellows. His speciality is the making of pictures with what he calls a camera, a contrivance which records the effect of differing intensities of light upon a salt of silver—a far more complex method than our means of making pictures with photosensitized elduron, but one producing much the same results. He has taken pictures of us, though he seems doubtful that any other man will ever believe the record of his camera.
At present he is engaged in a series of pictures of aspects of the desert, an undertaking that he seems to regard not as a useful function but as an art of some strange sort. Trubz is working on the psychology of it and says that a reproductive and imitative art is conceivable, but Lilil is scornful of the notion.
The Compleat Boucher Page 59
