Big Book of Science Fiction (15 page)

He knew, as he caught sight of
the two creatures outside the opened lock of the vessel that his guess had been
wrong. The creatures were bifurcate, like himself, though massive and much
larger, and that meant the third world. He hesitated, watching carefully as
they stared about, apparently keenly enjoying the air around them. Then one
spoke to the other, and his mind shook under a new shock.

The articulation and intonation
were intelligent, but the sounds were a meaningless babble. Speech—that! It
must be, though the words held no meaning. Wait—in the old records. Slha the
Freethinker had touched on some such thought; he had written of remote days
when the Lunarites had had no speech and postulated that they had invented the
sounds and given them arbitrary meaning, and that only by slow ages of use had
they become instinctive in the new-grown infants—had even dared to question
that the Great Ones had ordered speech and sound meanings as the inevitable
complement of intelligence. And now, it seemed, he was right. Lhin groped up
through the fog of his discovery and tightened his thoughts into a beam.

Again, shock struck at him. Their
minds were hard to reach, and once he did find the key and grope forward into
their thoughts, it was apparent that they could not read his! Yet they were
intelligent. But the one on whom his thoughts centered noticed him finally, and
grabbed at the other. The words were still harsh and senseless, but the general
meaning reached the moon man. “Fats, what’s that?”

The other turned and stared at
Lhin’s approach. “Search me. Looks like a scrawny three-foot monkey. Reckon it’s
harmless?”

“Probably, maybe even
intelligent. It’s a cinch no band of political refugees built this
place—nonhuman construction. Hi there!” The one who thought of himself as
Slim—massive though he appeared—turned to the approaching Lunarite. “What and
who are you?”

“Lhin,” he answered, noting
surprised pleasure in Slim’s mind. “Lhin—me are Lhin.”

Fats grunted. “Guess you’re
right, Slim. Seems to savvy you. Wonder who came here and taught him English.”

Lhin fumbled clumsily, trying to
pin down the individual sounds to then’ meanings and remember them. “No sahffy
Enlhis. No who came here. You—” He ran out of words and drew nearer, making
motions toward Slim’s head, then his own. Surprisingly, Slim got it.

“He means he knows what we’re
thinking, I guess. Telepathy.”

“Yeah? Marshies claim they can do
it among themselves, but I never saw one read a human mind. They claim we don’t
open up right. Maybe this Ream monkey’s lying to you.”

“I doubt it. Take another look at
the radioactivity meter in the viability tester—men wouldn’t come here and go
home without spreading the good word. Anyway, his name isn’t Ream. Lean comes
closer to the sound he made, though we’ll never get it right.” He half sent a
thought to Lhin, who dutifully pronounced his name again. “See? His liquid isn’t
. . . it’s a glottal stop. And he makes the final consonant a labial, though it
sounds something like our dental. We can’t make sounds like that. Wonder how
intelligent he is.”

He turned back into the ship
before Lhin could puzzle out some kind of answer, and was out a moment later
with a small bundle under his arm. “Space English code book,” he explained to
Fats. “Same as they used to teach the Martians English a century ago.”

Then to Lhin: “Here are the six
hundred most useful words of our language, organized, so it’ll beat waiting for
you to pick them up bit by bit. You look at the diagrammed pictures while I say
and think the word. Now. One-w-uh-nn; two-tuh-ooo. Getting it?”

Fats watched them for a while,
half-amused, then grew tired of it. “Okay, Slim, you mollycoddle the native a
while and see what you learn. I’m going over to the walls and investigate that
radioactive stuff until you’re ready to start repairs. Wish radios weren’t so
darned limited in these freighters and we could get a call through.”

He wandered off, but Lhin and
Slim were hardly aware of it. They were going through the difficult task of
organizing a means of communication, with almost no common background, which
should have been worse than impossible in terms of hours. Yet, strange as the
word associations and sounds were, and odd as their organization into
meaningful groups, they were still only speech, after all. And Lhin had grown
into life with a highly complex speech as natural to him as breathing.

He twisted his lips over the
sounds and nailed the meanings down in his mind, one by one, indelibly.

Fats finally found them in Lhin’s
cave, tracing them by the sound of their voices, and sat down to watch, as an
adult might watch a child playing with a dog. He bore Lhin no ill will, but
neither could he regard the Moon man as anything but some clever animal, like
the Martians or the primitives of Venus; if Slim enjoyed treating them as
equals, let him have his way for the time.

Lhin was vaguely conscious of
those thoughts and others more disturbing, but he was too wrapped up in the new
experience of having some living mind to communicate with, after nearly a
century of being alone with himself. And there were more important things. He
wriggled his tail, spread his arms, and fought over the Earth sounds, while
Slim followed as best he could.

Finally the Earth man nodded. “I
think I get it. All of them died off except you, and you don’t like the idea of
coming to a dead end. Umm. I wouldn’t either. So now you hope these Great Ones
of yours—we call ‘em God—have sent us down here to fix things up. How?”

Lhin beamed, his face contorting
into a furrowed grimace of pleasure before he realized Slim misinterpreted the
gesture. Slim meant well. Once he knew what was needed, perhaps he would even
give the copper gladly, since the old records showed that the third world was
richest of all in minerals.

“Nra is needed. Life comes from
making many simple things one not-simple thing—air, drink stuff, eat stuff, all
that I have, so I live. But to begin the new life, Nra is needed. It makes
things begin. The seed has no life—with Nra it lives. But I have no word.”

He waited impatiently while Slim
digested that. “Sort of a vitamin or hormone, something like Vitamin E6, eh?
Maybe we could make it, but—”

Lhin nodded. Surely the Great
Ones were kind. His hearty were warm as he thought of the many seeds carefully
wrapped and stored that could be made to grow with the needed copper. And now
the Earth man was willing to help. A little longer and all would be well.

“No need to make,” he piped
happily. “Simple stuff. The seed or I can make it, in us. But we need Nra to
make it. See.” He pulped a handful of rock from the basket lying near, chewed
it carefully, and indicated that it was being changed inside him.

Fats awoke to greater attention. “Do
that again, monkey!”

Lhin obliged, curious to note
that they apparently ate nothing other life had not prepared for them. “Darn.
Rocks—just plain rocks—and he eats them. Has he got a craw like a bird, Slim?”

“He digests them. If you’ve read
of those half-plant, half-animal things the Martians came from, you’ll know
what his metabolism’s like. Look, Lhin, I take it you mean an element. Sodium,
calcium, chlorine? No, I guess you’d have all those. Iodine, maybe? Hmmm.” He
went over a couple of dozen he could imagine having anything to do with life,
but copper was not among them, by accident, and a slow fear crept up into the
Lunarite’s thoughts. This strange barrier to communication—would it ruin all?

He groped for the answer—and
relaxed. Of course, though no common word existed, the element itself was
common in structure. Hurriedly, he flipped the pages of the code book to a
blank one and reached for the Earth man’s pencil. Then, as Slim and Fats stared
curiously, he began sketching in the atomic structure of copper, particle by
particle, from the center out, as the master physicists of his race had
discovered it to be.

It meant nothing to them. Slim
handed the paper back, shaking his head. “Fella, if I’m right in thinking that’s
a picture of some atom, we’ve got a lot to learn back on earth.
Wheeoo
!

Fats twisted his lips. “If that’s
an atom, I’m a fried egg. Come on, Slim, it’s sleepy time and you’ve fooled
away half a day. Anyhow, I want to talk that radioactive business over with
you. It’s so strong it’d cook us in half an hour if we weren’t wearing these
portable nullifiers—yet the monkey seems to thrive on it. I got an idea.”

Slim came back from his brown
study and stared at his watch. “Darn it! Look, Lhin, don’t give up yet, we’ll
talk all this over tomorrow again. But Fats is right; it’s time for us to
sleep. So long, fella.”

Lhin nodded a temporary farewell
in his own tongue and slumped back on his rough bed. Outside, he heard Fats
extolling a scheme of some kind for getting out the radioactives with Lhin’s
help, somehow, and Slim’s protesting voice. But he paid no attention. The
atomic structure had been right, he knew, but they were only groping toward it
in their science, and their minds knew too little of the subject to enable them
to grasp his pictures.

Chemical formulae? Reactions that
would eliminate others, one by one? If they were chemists, perhaps, but even
Slim knew too little for that. Yet, obviously, unless there was no copper on
Earth, there was an answer somewhere. Surely the Great Ones whom they called
God would never answer generations of faithful prayer with a mockery! There was
an answer, and while they slept, he would find it, though he had to search
through every record roll for clues.

Hours later he was trudging
across the plain toward the ship, hope high again. The answer, once found, was
simple. All elements formed themselves into families and classes. Slim had mentioned
sodium, and copper was related in the more primitive tables, such as Earth
might use. More important, its atomic number was twenty-nine by theory
elementary enough for any race that could build rockets.

The locks were open, and he
slipped through both, the wavering half-formed thoughts of the men leading him
to them unerringly. Once in their presence, he stopped, wondering about their
habits. Already he had learned that what held true for his people was not
necessarily the rule with them, and they might not approve of his arousing a
sleeper. Finally, torn between politeness and impatience, he squatted on the
metal floor, clutching the record roll, his nostrils sampling the metals around
him. Copper was not there; but he hadn’t expected so rare an element, though
there were others here that he failed completely to recognize and guessed were
among the heavy ones almost lacking on the moon.

Fats gurgled and scrimmaged
around with his arms, yawned, sat up, still half asleep. His thoughts were full
of some Earth person of the female element which Lhin had noted was missing in
these two, and what he’d do “when he got rich.” Lhin was highly interested in
the thought pictures until he realized that it would be best not to intrude on
these obviously secret things. He withdrew his mind just as the man noted him.

Fats was never at his best while
waking up. He came to his feet with a bellow and grabbed for something. “Why,
you sneaking little monkey! Trying to slip up and cut our—”

Lhin squealed and avoided the
blow that would have left him a shapeless blob, uncertain of how he had
offended, but warned by caution to leave. Physical fear was impossible to
him—too many generations had grown and died with no need of it. But it came as
a numbing shock that these beings would actually kill another intelligent
person. Was life so cheap on Earth?

“Hey! Hey, Fats, stop it!” Slim
had awakened at the sound of the commotion, and a hasty glance showed Lhin that
he was holding the other’s arms. “Lay off, will you? What’s going on?”

But now Fats was fully awake and
calming down. He dropped the metal bar and grinned wryly. “I dunno. I guess he
meant all right, but he was sitting there with that metal thing in his hands,
staring at me, and I figured he meant to cut my throat or something. I’m all
right now. Come on back, monkey; it’s all right.”

Slim let his partner go and
nodded at Lhin. “Sure, come back, fella. Fats has some funny ideas about
non-humans, but he’s a good-hearted egg, on the whole. Be a good doggie and he
won’t kick you—he might even scratch your ears.”