Murray Leinster (10 page)
Authors: The Best of Murray Leinster (1976)
He ran out of the room and downstairs. I knew what he was after. He used to read those popular science magazines, and they always have a star map in them, telling amateur astronomers where to find planets and comets and such. He had one of them in the locator-car. He’d gone after it
I waited. The clamp hung down. There was a dead man in the next room. Presently I figured maybe they’d get tired of waiting, so I tore a leaf out of my little black book and drew the clamp, and then another picture. It was a stick-man running downstairs. Then I drew him taking something out of a car, and then running upstairs again. I put it in the clamp and gave it a shove and it was pulled up and vanished. And they understood all right. The clamp came down again, empty, and it waited.
I was looking at the picture of the girl when I heard Mort on his way upstairs again.
‘1 got it!’ he panted. ‘Here’s this magazine and I’ve opened to the star map for this month. They’ll realize we got sense and we’ll leam plenty!’
He tied a string about the magazine where it was already opened, and put it in the clamp. He shoved it, and it went up. Mort stood there, staring feverishly, figuring what he was going to ask next The star map stayed up there. The clamp didn’t come down. Nothing happened.
Then the ring of light went out. And it stayed out.
Mort tore out most of his hair when the thing stayed that way. He might have gone off his nut if a smart scientist from a
research foundation hadn’t talked confidentially to both of us a few days later.
‘Nobody in the world coulda done better,’ said that guy comfortingly. ‘They were trying time travel, and the math is tricky. They wanted to find out if they’d gone into the future or the past. You told them with that star map - neither - and they went away. There’s nothing here they wanted. We’re like cave men, to them. Nothing we could say would interest
?
em. You did all right.’
Mort said:
E
But - listen! Where did they come from? And that dead guy—’
‘What does it matter where they came from?’ asked the guy from the foundation. ‘A parallel time track most likely, where they got started up the ladder say fifty thousand years before us. But the important thing is what we get out of it. And we get plenty. Those gadgets. That dead man - we know he got killed because he didn’t wear an insulated suit when he came through that ring. Since he didn’t, he lived only five minutes. But when
we
go barging around in time we’ll know how to do it.’
I’d been listening, and I butted in:
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘you think we’re going to do that sort of thing too? You guess we’ll go - well - to where those guys came from?’
‘Why not?’ says the guy from the foundation. ‘In a thousand years?’
It was ten days after the whole business began. I’d had a lot of time to think.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘when you get set and you want somebody to wear an insulated suit, you let me know, huh?
I grinned, but I’ve still got that picture the dead guy had on him. It’s a picture of a swell kid. A damed sweet kid. And somehow I don’t feel like grinning when I think of it. I wouldn’t mind trying to find that kid to give her back her picture and tell her I’m sorry about the guy.
Monsters. A story written more than 25 years ago. At that time plot teas still usually considered of more importance than character development, particularly in an alien; it would take Hal Clement
(Needle, Iceworld, A Matter of Gravity)
to force SF readers to accept that aliens, too, were only human. Nevertheless, the degree of identification with the narrator of the following story is considerable, bearing in mind that he/she/it is literally a veritable B.E.M.!
I,
Sard,
make report to the Shadi during Peace Tides. I have made a journey of experiment suggested by the scientist Morpt after discussing with me an Object fallen into Honda from the Surface. I fear that my report will not be accepted as true. I therefore await the consensus on my sanity, offering this report to be judged science or delirium as the Shadi may elect____
I was present when the Object fell. At the moment I was in communication with the scientist Morpt as he meditated upon the facts of the universe. He was rather drowsy, and his mind was more conscientious than inspiring as he reflected - for the benefit of us, his students - upon the evidence of the Caluphian theory of the universe, that it is a shell of solid matter filled with water, which being naturally repelled from the centre, acquires pressure, and that we, the Shadi, live in the region of greatest pressure. He almost dozed off as he reflected for our instruction that this theory accounts for all known physical phenomena, except the existence of the substance gas, which is neither solid nor liquid and is found only in our swim-bladders. For this reason, it is commonly assumed to be our immortal part, rising to the center of the universe when our bodies are consumed, and there exists forever.
As he meditated, I recalled the Morpt exercises by which a part of this gas may be ejected from a Shadi body and kept in an inverted receptacle while the body forms a new supply in the swim-bladder. I waited anxiously for Morpt’s trenchant reasoning which denies that a substance - however rare and singular - which can be kept in a receptacle or replaced by the body can constitute its vital essence.
These experiments of Morpt’s have caused great disturbances among scientific circles.
At the moment, however, he was merely a drowsy instructor, sleepily thinking a lecture he had thought a hundred times before. He was a litde annoyed by a sharp rock sticking into his seventh tentacle, which was not quite uncomfortable enough to make him stir.
I lay in my cave, attending anxiously. Then, abruptly, I was aware that something was descending from above. The instinct of our race to block out thought-transference and seize food before any one else can know of it, operated instantly. I flowed out of my cave and swept to the space below the Object. I raised my tentacles to snatch it. The whole process was automatic - mind-block on, spatial sensation extended to the fullest, full focused reception of mental images turned upon the sinking Object to foresee its efforts to escape so that I could anticipate them - but every Shadi knows what one does by pure instinct when a moving thing comes within one’s ken.
There were two causes for my behavior after that automatic reaction, however. One was that I had fed, and lately. The other was that I received mental images from within the Object which were startlingly tuned to the subject of Morpt’s lecture and my own thoughts of the moment. As my first tentacle swooped upon the descending thing, instead of thoughts of fright or batde, I intercepted the message of an entity, cogitating despairingly, to another.
‘My dear, we will never see the Surface again,’ it was thinking.
And I received a dazzling impression of what the Surface was like. Since I shall describe the Surface later, I omit a description of the mental picture I then received. But it gave me to pause, I believe fortunately. For one thing, had I swept the Object into my maw as instinct impelled, I believe I would have had trouble digesting it. The Object, as I soon discovered, was made of that rare, solid substance which only appears in the form of artifacts. One such specimen has been repeatedly described by Glor. It is about half the length of a Shadi’s body, hollow, pointed at one end, with one of its sides curiously flat with strangely shaped excrescences, openings, and two shafts and one hollow tube sticking out of it.
As I said, the Object was made of this rare solid material. My spatial sense immediately told me that it was hollow. Further, that it was filled with gas! And then I received conflicting mental images which told me that there were two living creatures within it! Let me repeat - there were two living entities within the Object, and they lived in gas instead of water!
I was stunned. For a long time I was not really aware of anything at all save the thoughts of the creatures within the Object. I held the Object firmly between two of my tentacles, dazed by the impossible facts I faced. I was most incautious. I could have been killed and consumed in the interval of my bewilderment. But I came to myself and returned swiftly to my cave, carrying the Object with me. As I did so, I was aware of startled thoughts.
‘We’ve hit bottom - no! Something has seized us. It must be monstrous in size. It will soon be over, now….’
Not in answer, but separately, the other entity thought only emotional things I cannot describe. I do not understand them at all. They represent a psychology so alien to ours that there is no way to express them. I can only say that the second entity was in complete despair, and therefore desired intensely to be clasped firmly in the other entity’s two tentacles. This would constitute complete helplessness, but it was what the second creature craved. I report the matter with no attempt to explain it.
‘While flowing into my cave, I knocked the Object against the top of the opening. It was a sharp blow. I had again an impression of despair.
‘This is it!’ the first creature thought, and looked with dread for an inpouring of water into the gas-filled Object.
Since the psychology of these creatures is so completely inexplicable, I merely summarize the few mental images I received during the next short period which served to explain the history of the Object.
To begin with, it had been a scientific experiment. The Object was created to contain the gas in which the creatures lived, and to allow the gas to be lowered into the regions of pressure. The creatures themselves were of the same species, but different in a fashion for which we have no thought. One thought of itself as ‘man’, the other as ‘woman’. They did not fear each other. They had accompanied the Object for the purpose of recording their observations in regions of pressure. To make their observations, the Object was suspended by a long tentacle from an artifact like the one of Glor’s description.
When they had observed, they were to have been returned to the artifact. Then the gas was to be released, and they would rejoin their fellows. The fact that two creatures could remain together with safety for both is strange enough. But their thoughts told me that forty or fifty others of the same species awaited then on the artifact, all equally devoid of the instinct to feed upon each other.
This appears impossible, of course, and I merely report the thought-images I received. However, while at the full length of the tentacle which held it, the tentacle broke. The Object therefore sank down into the regions of pressure in which we Shadi live. As it neared solidity, I reached up and grasped it and miraculously did not swallow it. I could have done so with ease.
When, in my cave, I had attended for some time to the thoughts coming from within the Object, I tried to communicate. First, of course, I attempted to paralyze the creatures with fear. They did not seem to be aware of the presence of mind. I then attempted, more gently, to converse with them.
But they seemed to be devoid of the receptive faculty. They are rational creatures, but even with no mind-block up, they are completely unaware of the thoughts of others. In fact, their thoughts were plainly secret from each other.
I tried to understand all this, and failed. At long last a proper humility came to me, and I sent out a mental call to Morpt. He was still drowsily detailing the consequences of the Caluph theory - that in the center of the universe the gas which has escaped from the swim-bladders of dead Shadi has gathered to form a vast bubble, and that the border between the central bubble and the water is the legendary Surface.
Legends of the Surface are well-known. Morpt reflected, in sleepy irony, that if gas is the immortal part of Shadi, then since two Shadi who see each other instantly fight to the death, the bubble at the center of the universe must be the scene of magnificent combat. But his irony was lost upon me. I interrupted to tell him of the Object and what I had already learned from it.
I immediately felt other minds crowd me. All of Morpt’s pupils were instandy alert. I blanked out my mind with more than usual care - to avoid giving any clue to the whereabouts of my cave - and served science to the best of my ability. I told, freely, everything I knew.
Under other conditions, I would have been proud of the furor I created. It seemed that every Shadi in the Honda joined the discussion. Many, of course, said that I lied. But I was fed, and filled with curiosity. I did not reveal my whereabouts to those challengers. I waited. Even Morpt tried to taunt me into an incautious revelation and went into a typical Shadi rage when he failed. But Morpt is experienced and huge. I could not hope to be the one to live did we meet each other outside of the Peace Tides.
Once I had proved I could not be lured out, however, Morpt discussed the matter dispassionately and in the end suggested the journey from which I have just returned. If, despite my caution where other Shadi were concerned - all of Morpt’s pupils will recognize the challenging irony with which he thought this - if, despite my caution, I was not afraid to serve science, he advised me to carry the Object back to the Heights. From the creatures within it I should receive directions. From their kind I had my strength and ferocity as protections. From the Heights, themselves, Morpt urged his exercises as the only possible safeguards.
As I knew, said Morpt, the gas in our swim-bladders expands as pressure lessens. Normally, we have muscles which control it so that we can float in pursuit of our prey or sink to solidity at will. But he told me that as I neared the Heights I would find the pressure growing so small that in theory even my muscles would be unable to control the gas. Under such conditions I must use the Morpt exercises and release a portion of it. Then I could descend again.