Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

Instantly he was interrupted.

“Not that way, stranger!”

“But is not that where your Teachers are?”

“In a little place like that? Certainly not. They talk there, it is true, but they wish to see you and your fire-maker. Come this way.” The speaker started to retrace the path by which they had come to the village and the prisoners followed him. The rest of the population trailed along.

A well-marked path wound among the hot springs. The captives followed it toward an unusually large pool near the side of the clearing away from the now distant sea. Apparently this one overflowed more frequently than the others or else had a greater supply of mineral in whatever subterranean source it sprang from, for its edge was nearly three feet high. The water within the rim steamed and bubbled furiously.

The area around the pool was clear except at one point, where an object that looked like a detached lump of travertine projected from the rim. It was dome-shaped except for the flattened top and was about as high as the rim and perhaps five feet in diameter. Its surface was mostly smooth, but there were a number of deep pits scattered around its sides.

Kruger would not have looked at it twice, except for the fact that they were stopped in front of it and the entire population of the village gathered around. This caused the boy to examine the outcrop more closely and he decided that someone had done a rather skillful bit of masonry. Presumably the Teachers were inside; the small holes must serve as spy-ports and ventilators. No entrance was visible. Perhaps it was inside the pool rim, where he could not see, or even some distance away and connected by a tunnel. He was not surprised to hear a voice come from the mound of stone.

“Who are you?” The question was not ambiguous; the grammatical arrangements of the language left no doubt that Kruger was the one addressed. For an instant the boy was not sure how to answer, then he decided simply to tell the truth.

“I am Nils Kruger, pilot-cadet of the cruiser Alphard .” He had to translate the nouns into similes in the Abyormenite language but was reasonably satisfied with the job. The next question made him wonder whether he was doing the right thing, however.

“When do you die?”

Kruger found himself at a slight loss for an answer to this question. It seemed to be nothing but a simple, straightforward one about how long he had to live, but he found himself unable to answer it.

“I do not know,” was the only response he could give. This led to a silence from the stone at least as long as the one his own hesitation had caused. With the next words the hidden speaker gave the impression of one who has shelved, for the time at least, a puzzling subject.

“You are supposed to be able to make fire. Do so.” Kruger, completely at a loss as to where he stood with the invisible questioner, obeyed. There was no difficulty to the job; the wood was dry and Arren furnished all the radiation the little battery needed. The snap of the high-tension sparks sent the nearer villagers back in momentary alarm, though to Kruger it sounded much like Dar’s crossbow. The shavings caught instantly and sixty seconds later a very respectable little fire was blazing on the stone a few yards from the rock shelter of the Teachers. Throughout the operation questions had kept coming and Kruger had been answering them: why the wood had to be small at first, why he had chosen wood that was dry, and what was the source of the sparks. The answering was extremely difficult. Kruger faced roughly the same problem as would a high-school student asked to give a lecture on high-school-level physics or chemistry in French after perhaps a year’s study of the language. As a result he was still trying to improvise signs and words when the fire burned out.

The creature within the rock shelter finally satisfied himself on fires — or, more probably, on what Kruger knew about them — and proceeded to a matter which seemed to interest him more.

“Are you from another world traveling about Theer, or from one circling Arren?”

Dar simply did not understand, but Kruger understood much too well. He was thunderstruck, after the usual fashion of human beings who find their pet theories suddenly untenable.

“Witch-doctor my eye!” he muttered under his breath, but was able to think of no coherent answer for the moment.

“What was that?” Kruger had forgotten for a moment that hyper-acute hearing seemed rather common on this world.

“An expression of surprise, in my own language,” he answered hastily. “I do not think I understood your question.”

“I think you did.” Unhuman though the accents were Kruger had a sudden picture of a stern schoolmaster on the other side of the barrier, and decided that he might as well continue his policy of frankness.

“No, I do not come from Arren; I do not even know whether it has any planets, and Theer has no others.” The listener accepted the new word without comment; its meaning must have been obvious enough from context. “My home world travels about a sun much fainter than Arren, but much brighter than Theer, whose distance from this system I cannot give in your language.”

“Then there are other suns?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come here?”

“We were exploring — learning what other worlds and their suns were like.”

“Why are you alone?”

Kruger related in detail the accident that had dropped his space-suited form into a mud pot, the natural conclusion of his friends that he had perished, and his survival by means of a fortuitous tree root.

“When will your people return?”

“I do not expect them back at all. They had no reason to believe this world had inhabitants; the cities of Dar’s people, which he has told me about, were not seen, and the village of these people of yours could not possibly have been detected. In any case the ship was on a survey trip which would last for quite a number of your years, and it might be fully as long after it returned home before the data on this system was even examined. Even then there will be no particular reason to come back; there is much to do a great deal closer to home.”

“Then to your people you are dead already.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Do you know how your flying vessels work?” Kruger hesitated at this question, then remembered that he had described himself already as a pilot cadet.

“I know the forces and technology involved, yes.”

“Then why have you not tried to build one and return to your world?”

“Knowledge and ability are two different things. I know how this world came into being, but couldn’t do the job myself.”

“Why are you with this one you call Dar?”

“I met him. Two people can get along better than one. Also, I was looking for a place on this world cool enough for a human being, and he said something about an ice cap to which he was going. That was enough for me.”

“What would you do about others of his kind if you met them at this ice cap?”

“Endeavor to get along with them, I suppose. In a way, they’d be the only people I’d have; I’d treat them as mine, if they’d allow it.” There was a pause after this answer, as though the hidden Teachers were conferring or considering. Then the questions resumed, but this time were directed at Dar Lang Ahn.

In reply, he stated that he was a pilot, normally assigned to the route between the city of Kwarr and the Ice Ramparts. The questioners asked for the location of the city, which Dar had to describe in great detail. He and Kruger both wondered whether the Teachers were really ignorant of it, or testing Dar’s veracity.

No suggestion was made that Dar was not a native of the planet, and as the questioning went on Kruger grew more and more puzzled. It was some time before it occurred to him that since Dar was obviously of the same species as these people they must also be from another world. Why they were living as near-savages on this one was a mystery, but perhaps they had been marooned through damage to their ship. That would account for the questions about his own ability to build a space flier. In fact, for a moment it seemed to account for everything except why the “Teachers” remained in concealment.