Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

“I can feel the coil,” it said after a moment, “though it is too small — at least: in its individual wires — to see.”

“I’m afraid the light is not very well located for that purpose,” replied the biologist. “We did not consider its use except for our own convenience.”

“What? You mean there is a light on this machine, too? When you started to speak I thought you referred to ours. If you will bring the robot over to it perhaps I can see a little better, but I doubt it; as I said, the wires are very fine.”

The biologists all saw what the trouble was, in general; the speaker said in a resigned tone, “Yes, there is a light on the robot, at the very top, a small cylinder which you can probably feel even if you can’t see it. Where is the one to which you were referring?”

“There.” Another limb left the floor and gestured. Dar Lang Ahn, following the indication, saw only the pipe-and-nozzle arrangement which Kruger had described as a gas light.

“You mean that pipe?” asked the biologist. Kruger hastily explained his idea, speaking a split-second before Dar would have.

“But if it’s a gas jet why isn’t it lighted?” was the objection.

“Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a hydrogen flame that doesn’t show up in the light from our robot.” Instantly the operator cut the light in question, but nothing was visible on the screen and he immediately restored it. During the brief exchange the Teacher had affirmed that the pipe in question was indeed what he meant.

“Apparently we see by different kinds of light,” the biologist said. “Were you aware of that? Your ‘cold’ people are a little different from us in that respect, but we are nearly enough alike to use the same lighting devices, so you must differ from them, too.”

“We knew that they could see smaller objects than we, but did not know the reason. We did not know that there were different kinds of light.”

“You are not aware that the waves your radio uses are the same, except for length, as those used for seeing?”

“Ridiculous! Radio waves travel too rapidly for the speed to be measured, if they take any time at all for transit. The waves of sight, if they are waves, travel little faster than those of sound.”

“Oh-ho-o-o.” The human speaker was buried in thought for a moment. Then he asked, “Could you explain how that light of yours works?”

“It is simply a steam jet, expanding through a nozzle of a particular shape. It would be very difficult to describe the shape, at least in words that we both know.”

“Never mind; you have told me enough. What I fail to understand now is how you could possibly know anything about the suns; you certainly can’t ‘see’ them.”

“Of course not; they can only be felt.”

Dar Lang Ahn had been left behind some sentences before, and in hasty whispers the boy tried to explain what was going on.

“The ‘hot’ people don’t see the way we do at all; it’s even worse than the difference between you and me. We at least see by the same general kind of light — electromagnetic waves. From what this one says, they use some form of sound — very high frequency, I guess, since he said something about its traveling a little faster than ‘ordinary’ sound.”

“But how could anyone see with sound?”

“I suppose you could see, after a fashion, with anything that traveled in a straight line, and sound will do that if nothing interferes with it. The very short sound waves-ultrasonics — are better than the ones we talk with in that respect. Of course, they wouldn’t show anything that was very small; he said the wires were too fine to see, you remember.”

The two brought their attention back to the radio conversation — at least, Kruger did. Dar, as usual, had something new to think about.

“You must have done some rather careful thinking yourselves to have deduced as much about this planetary system as you have,” the biologist was saying, “since you can only detect objects outside Abyormen’s atmosphere if they are radiating enough heat to feel.”

“The picture I gave to your Nils Kruger was only one of several theories,” the being replied calmly.

“It happens to be about right, as far as it goes. But if you can do that sort: of thing with scientific reasoning why are you so prejudiced against it?”

“I wish you would stop reiterating that question. To answer it, however, what good does it do us? Are we any better off for knowing that Abyormen goes around Theer and Theer around Arren? I admit that sort of knowledge is harmless, since it cannot lead to dangerous activity, but it is a waste of time.”

“In other words you divide scientific knowledge into two classes — useless items and dangerous ones.”

“Practically. There is an occasional exception; the person who invented these lights did some good, of course. However, it is necessary to examine each new item of knowledge to make sure that it will not be dangerous.”

“I begin to see your viewpoint. I take it, then, that you do not mind our wasting our time by finding things out about you.”

“I don’t care what you do with your time. Ask your question.”

The scientists complied, and gradually Dar Lang Ahn began to understand the sort of beings his ancestors had been — and his children would be.

Their cities were scattered all over Abyormen, but they were invariably in volcanic areas where a few of their inhabitants could retreat underground and survive through the time of cold, so none of Dar’s generation ever went near them — the fire taboo took care of that. It seemed likely, though the Teacher never admitted it in so many words, that the taboo was another example of influence of the “hot” Teachers over the “cold” ones. No such prohibition existed for the “hot” race, who lived and died where they chose; hence, metal articles such as Dar’s belt buckles might be, and often were, found in or near low-temperature cities at the start of the “cold” life cycle. Like Dar’s generation the others took great pains to insure the transmission of knowledge from one cycle to the next, though they depended less on books than on the memory of their Teachers. When Dar interrupted the questioning to ask why it would not be better for the knowledge to go from “hot” to “cold” and back to “hot” again, thus permitting both races to help in its development, the Teacher pointed out patiently that it would be virtually impossible to control the spread of information if this were done.

They were fairly competent electricians and excellent civil engineers. Their chemistry seemed good, surprisingly enough to a race whose chemists depended heavily on sight. Astronomy, naturally, was almost nonexistent and the deeper branches of physics quite beyond them so far. They had radioactive elements, of course, but had not the faintest idea of the cause of their behavior.

Many of the human questions puzzled Dar, of course, and in some cases this was not due to his ignorance of human science. As nearly as he could tell, the men were trying to find out how these Teachers felt about Dar’s own people — that is, whether they liked them, respected them, hated them as necessary inferiors, or simply regarded them as a minor but important nuisance. Dar remembered that one of the beings present had claimed friendship with him on the basis of blood relationship, though he could not for the life of him see how such relationship had been determined.

This question also occurred to the biologist, who had been one of those listening in during the interception of Kruger’s first radio conversation with the Teacher and had later asked for a translation of it. Rather to Dar’s surprise the Teacher had an answer.

“We arrange for the circumstances, or at least the location, of many of our ancestors’ deaths. In a short time the people of this village will be ordered to the crater where Dar and Kruger were trapped for a time; there we can observe the death and the beginning of the new lives, and can keep track of who is who’s offspring. We also arrange to die ourselves at preselected places when the cold season is about to start, and try to learn from the ‘cold’ Teachers the various places at which their new groups at the beginning of their time of living to catch the people are captured — they go out into the wilds in hunting new people, who are nothing more than wild animals at the time.”