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It has further occurred to them as a result of this discovery that if all life on this planet is on a carbon basis it may well account for the neglect of this excellent silicate region. It does not, however, account for the immediate and unprovoked hostility of the inhabitants, which is a matter that interests me more at the moment.

Podas states that none of his specimens exhibited intelligence, though the cylindrical object displayed some clear reflexes to external stimuli.

I find it difficult to imagine what a carbonbased intelligence could possibly look like but I expect we shall find out before long. I must admit that I look forward to this event not only with some misgiving, but with a considerable degree of distaste.

Report No. 2. All states and positions: No change. Redoubt completed. No confirmed contact yet with intelligent forms.

Dear Zenn. Soon after the third rising of Sol enabled us to set the furnacelenses to work again we produced enough boltik to finish our redoubt. The last block was fused into place halfway through the diurnal period, which is very short here. I am relieved that it has been completed without interruption. Now that we and our craft have this protection we can face the future with more confidence.

Podas and Eptus have examined more specimens. These confirm their earlier views but add little. So far we have not made contact with an intelligence here. After our earlier experiences we are not seeking it out but are waiting for it to come to us.

As a qualification I should add that Podas thinks we almost contacted an intelligence during the fourth Sol and still may do so. Eptus, however, disagrees with him and on the face of it one would say Eptus was right. What happened was this.

About the middle of the fourth Sol a cloud of dust was seem to the east of us above the long mark referred to in my last. It was soon evident that the creature responsible for the dust was travelling along this mark towards us.

We observed it with increasing amazement because it was clearly to be seen that this creature supported itself upon four disks. Its body was black and shining; at the front were metal appendages which shone like silver.

It moved at a moderate speed but clearly with discomfort since its disk supports transmitted the result of every inequality of the ground surface to its carcass. Eptus deduces from this that it evolved upon some level surface, possibly ice, and is ill adapted to this district.

That its intention was hostile there could be no doubt for it projected strongly against us. Luckily it was either illinformed regarding us or was not capable of serious attack, for it operated upon a quite harmless range. Out of interest we let it come quite close before we turned the beam on it.

When we did we saw with astonishment—and I must admit some consternation—that nothing whatever resulted. We watched it with growing anxiety as it came on, still keeping close to the line. Two more beams were turned on to it, still without effect.

Podas said, "I don't think it can be sentient. It is coming as if we weren't here at all." And indeed it was.

In spite of our defences it continued to come until, without slackening speed in the least, it ran right into the side of the redoubt where the front of it was crushed and some pieces fell off.

We waited some moments, and then when it did not stir again, we left the redoubt to examine it. It appeared to be a composite creature. One part had become detached and projected forward against the wall by the sudden stop.

This we found to bear a generic resemblance to the cylinder spoken of in my last report but was unlike it in that it was covered with detachable teguments. Its forward blunt projection had encountered the side of the redoubt with some force. Possibly this was the cause of its deanimation.

Podas, investigating, found a smaller creatureinside the body of the disked creature and unattached to it. Possibly this is some singular form of parturition natural to this planet. I could not say. It is hard enough in this crazy place to hang on to one's reason, let alone try to apply it to the utterly unreasonable.

Against the idea is the fact that neither of the smaller creatures showed any vestige of disks. Also both of these were covered in teguments which can scarcely be natural—especially in the case of the latter creature, where the tegument seemed designed with the purpose of hampering the hinder limbs — though it may have some other purpose unguessed.

The two creatures were brought into the redoubt for closer examination. The parent or host—for Frinctus has put forward the theory that the two we have may be parasitic upon it—creature was left outside on account of its size.

More careful examination showed that our two new specimens were not identical though the differences are of no great importance. The shortness of the fibres on the blunt projection of one compared with those on the other could easily be due to some kind of accident, for instance.

Podas, who set about opening up the revoltingly squashy body of our first find with scientific lack of disgust that I can only envy, reports that its internal arrangements, while quite incomprehensible to him, are on the same general lines as those of the small cylindrical creature referred to in my last.

Eptus is anxious to open the other for confirmation but Podas is against it. He says that we shall learn nothing more from it than from the other and that furthermore it is not entirely inactive. It inflates and deflates in a most curious rhythmic manner which interests him. As it is Podas' department, the matter rests there for the moment.

Meanwhile, Orkiss, our chief mathematician, who had out of curiosity been examining the supposed parent creature outside, returned to say that in his opinion it is not a creature at all but an artifact. Podas went back with Mm to look at it again and now concurs. Eptus reserves his opinion.

Podas has also tentatively suggested that our second specimen—the one with its nether limbs webbed by the odd tegument—may possibly be the vessel for an intelligence of some sort, since it was inside the artifact. To his Eptus objects strongly.

How, he asks, can any form of intelligence recognizable as such be expected from a sloppy collection of innumerable tubes slung on a hardened lime framework? Further, says he, reason presupposes at least the ability to comprehend a straight line. This type of creature has not a straight line in its makeup.

It is pudgy and squashy and would be almost amorphous but for its framework. Clearly it is not of a nature that could comprehend a straight line—and if it cannot do that it follows that it cannot be capable of mathematical nor, therefore, logical thinking. Which, I must say, sounds to me a very reasonable argument.

Podus replies that there are certainly straight lines in the construction of the artifact outside. Eptus says, if it is an artifact. Podas maintains that it definitely is an artifact and the existence of a creature which is just a sack full of tubes is riot reasonable in itself, let alone that it should generate reason.

And that, for the moment, is how things stand.

Report No. 3. All states and positions (except casualty) —No change. Casualty—one lost.

Little progress to report. One intelligent being of a kind has been discovered. Contact with it is not yet established. The term 'intelligent' is here to be understood technically as being the power to influence reflexes to some extent.

Both ratiocination and perception are so restricted in the specimen observed as to make it appear unlikely that this can be the most advanced form here. The creature is hostile and has caused one casualty—Althis, engineer. Contact with more intelligent forms is still awaited.

Dear Zenn. Too much of the good things of life presents almost as many problems as too little. The temptation of such a wealth of easily assimilable silicates has proved too much for several of our party. A dozen have succumbed to it and indulged in what can only be described as an orgy of gormandizing a little west of our position.

When discovered, they had already created a pit of some size and had increased themselves beyond possibility of their reentering the redoubt. So there they will have to stay and take their chance. I drew the attention of the rest to the result of such intemperance with, I hope, salutary effect. We shall see.

Meanwhile Podas has turned out to be astonishingly justified in some of his deductions. Eptus is a trifle piqued about this and doggedly insists upon applying reason in what seems to me—and to Podas —an unreasonable way.

As I pointed out to him, this is by no means a reasonable planet. After what we have seen of it I, for one, would be by no means surprised to find that two and two make seven by the local rules. To this Eptus obstinately asserts that reason is absolute and universal and therefore must hold good on even the craziest planet. All I can say to that is that it just doesn't look that way from here.

Podas' second specimen—the one taken from the disked artifact—after lying for some time doing nothing perceptible beyond expansion and contraction, then began for no discoverable reason to show signs of reanimation. It moved a little.

Then we observed that small flaps in the tegument —the permanent, not the dispensable tegument —covering the blunt projection were drawn back, uncovering a kind of lenses made, seemingly, of liquid. For a short while no more happened. But it was then that we realized that it did have intelligence of a kind.

We could feel its mind, which had apparently been absent or in some way diffused before, coalescing into some sort of form. Quite suddenly it raised its cylindrical main mass to the vertical on the rounded lower end—where, in this species, there is no tapered projection.

Immediate reflex concern filled its mind at the absence of the detachable teguments Podas had removed when examining it. This concern, however, was quickly replaced by another—an urgent fear of falling. It turned its lenses downward. There was immediate chaos in its mind but the dominant question seemed to be—why did it not drop to the ground some little distance beneath?

Well, why should it? It was supported on a solid block of boltik, which in turn rested on the solid boltik floor. This it presently discovered for itself by sliding one of its slender upper projections over the surface. At this its confusion grew rather than diminished.

Then we made the surprising discovery that its lenses were extraordinarily defective. Their range was so limited that they were quite insensitive not only to boltik but to all our other materials, including ourselves! It had no means of detecting them or us except by touch.

Consequently, what it was now asking itself was how it came to be suspended above the ground in the middle of a desert. It gave a long look at the damaged artifact outside.

It took hold of a part of itself, apparently with the intention of proving its own existence to itself.

Hostility is evidently instinctive to this species. Its weapon is concealed somewhere within it and is projected from an orifice a little below the lenses. It takes the form of a slot or a rough circle according to the force employed. It began to use it now, fortunately on a low power and register which caused us no more than a slight discomfort.

It moved one of its lower projections and found the edge of the block. Thence it felt downward to the floor. Assured by touch that that existed it put down the matching projection—but instead of bring down the other pair of projections, it remained balanced upon two!

At this point Eptus complained that he must be suffering from hallucinations. The creature was so manifestly topheavy that it was against reason for it to remain stable in the position in which he now saw it.

We agreed in principle, but pointed out that we were seeing the same thing, so that we must accept its reality in spite of reason. Eptus declared that Podas must have overlooked a gyroscope somewhere in the tangle of tubes.

The creature remained vertical but stationary for a moment. It then began to make its way, by an ungainly swaying of its weight from one projection to the other, towards the disked artifact.

Not being able to perceive the wall of the redoubt it encountered it somewhat suddenly and with natural surprise. It continued its manifestations of hostility as it felt about the boltik surface in bewilderment. Then, discouraged, it turned back.

It was at that moment that it saw for the first time the other specimen which Podas' investigations had reduced to a rather disorderly condition.

It stopped. Its lenses widened. The slot below them also widened. In that instant we learned how terrible the attack of these creatures can be. Although it could not see us it must have sensed in some way that we were there—we could feel its awareness of danger—so it gave its weapon full power.

By misfortune, I think, rather than by design, it had the range of one of us exactly. Poor Althis, the engineer, was shattered in a twinkling and fell in a pile of dust. Simultaneously a fissure occurred in one of the interior walls of the redoubt.

Luckily the sharp report of Althis' disintegration startled the creature. It ceased the attack momentarily and stood looking round to see whence the sound had come. Before it could renew its attack we took action, holding the creature in such a way that it could not use its weapon.

Podas, with great presence of mind, cast a shape of boltik and cooled it—for we have found that the substance of these creatures calcines at quite low temperatures—and then fitted it to the creature in such a way that it could not open its slot and was thus virtually disarmed.

It is true that this did not pacify it, for it continued to attempt to use its weapon, but its power was reduced to mere nuisance value. When we released it, it struck at us with its upper projections although it could not see us.

In doing so it cut its soft tegument on Eptus and left a smear of its red liquid upon him. The sight of this moving as he moved seemed to worry it a great deal. Finding that its soft members suffered in this way when they encountered us, it desisted and turned its attention to trying to rid itself of Podus' frame in order to attack us again.

This was, of course, far beyond its feeble power and in a short time it began to feel its way round the interior of the redoubts, apparently seeking for a way out and still making suppressed attempts to use its weapon.