Hal Clement - Cycle of Fire

Dar had actually started to cock his bow when he stopped, one eye on his work and one on the preoccupied human being. For long moments he thought, wavering from one viewpoint to its opposite. Fire was the prime horror of Dar Lang Ahn’s life; he had grown up with a terror of it. His people never used it, but lightning or accidental concentration of Arren’s rays sometimes caused a blaze. The Teachers and the books had agreed in their endless admonitions to avoid it. It was the end of all life — was the end that would be taken by his own life, naturally, but that was not due for several years yet. Since reaching the edge of the lava field and thereby coming once more within reach of ample food and water, Dar had put his expectation of premature death out of his mind and it was quite a shock to have it brought back so suddenly.

Still, the giant did not seem to have Dar Lang Ahn in mind. Perhaps the fire was merely a part of Kruger’s personal and private business, having nothing to do with Dar at all. After all, that would be a rather likely need for someone native to the neighborhood of a volcano. With this thought in his mind Dar relaxed enough to put the crossbow down, though he did not wander very far from the place where he laid it.

He continued to watch the human being, though his attitude bore no resemblance to the lackadaisical one he had shown while the firewood was being gathered. Mentally he was taking notes; the Teachers at the Ice Ramparts would be wanting to put this in a book, beyond all question.

The strange creature had first built his fire up until it was burning quite strongly, then he permitted it to die down until the flames had practically disappeared. A great deal of heat was still being radiated, however, and when it had reached what appeared to be a satisfactory state Kruger startled his companion still more by deliberately exposing his meat to it.

Dar knew that the boy was hungry; he had already formed a fairly exact idea of how much food a human being needed. Why the strange being should proceed to ruin his meal, then, was a mystery of the first order.

When Kruger completed his weird ritual by consuming the meat and then proceeded to extinguish the fire, Dar had long passed his capacity for further surprise. Seeing that the matter was finished he simply rose to his feet and resumed the journey, a sorely puzzled being.

As a matter of fact the notion that the ceremony was over was decidedly erroneous, though it was an error shared by both Dar and Kruger. The latter received the first intimations of the mistake within an hour after completing the meal, and shortly after the first twinges he was rolling helplessly on the ground. Dar, who had seen such symptoms among his own people but could imagine no cause for them this time, could think of nothing to do that might be helpful. Intermittently for more than an hour the cramps continued, giving Kruger just time between attacks to wonder whether he had made his final error in judgment. Eventually his outraged stomach returned the cause of the disturbance and, after a few more admonitory twinges, left him in peace. It was some time, however, before he was really able to give his mind to the problem of why meat which was perfectly wholesome raw should change in such a drastic manner when cooked. Could the smoke given off by the fire have anything to do with it? Perhaps something like the creosote that preserved smoked meat at home — but it would take a well-equipped organic chemistry lab to graduate any of his hypotheses to the theory class. The observed fact was enough for him now — slightly too much, in fact.

The rains had ceased at the usual time after the reappearance of Theer in the south and the temperature was rising again. Each time the red star made another of its odd loops through the sky Kruger wondered whether he would be able to stand the next one. Long months ago he had realized that he could not, at least in the midlatitudes where he had been at the time. On that part of the planet the loops were entirely above the horizon — Theer never set at all. It did, however, vary enormously in apparent size; it was merely Kruger’s misfortune that its greatest apparent diameter, and with it the highest temperature of this sweat-box of a planet, occurred while it was at nearly the farthest north point of its loop. The misfortune lay in the fact that, from where he had been left, the loop itself was in the southern half of the sky and to get any part of it below the horizon was obviously best accomplished by going north. There had been, of course, the question of whether he could go far enough north; his knowledge of the geography of this world was confined to his memory of what he had seen during the landing orbit. That wasn’t much. Still, there had seemed to be nothing to do but take the chance.

He was still not far enough north to be completely out of the red sun’s reach, but there seemed a good chance that he might make it. It was now above the horizon for about eight days of its eighteen-day period, if Kruger’s watch could still be trusted. He would have been quite happy if the question of Alcyone, which Dar Lang Ahn called Arren, were not forcing itself more and more prominently into his mind. It was all very well to turn a red dwarf sun from a permanent nuisance into an intermittent one, but the advantages tended to disappear when at the same time a blue giant changed from a periodic trouble into a constant fixture. With this matter steadily in the front of his mind Kruger was doing his utmost to get such concepts as temperature into their common language so that he could find out from his companion whether or not there was a spot on the planet which a human being would consider comfortable.

Dar’s language was, very slowly, becoming less of a nightmare. As a result a picture was gradually building up in Kruger’s mind of the goal that lay ahead of them.

Apparently Dar also wanted a cool place. That information was received by Kruger with unconcealed glee. A catch might lie in what constituted Dar’s concept of “cool,” but at least he seemed willing to apply the opposite adjectives to their present environment, which was an encouraging sign. Another was the pilot’s persistent attempt to describe something which seemed, in the face of all probabilities, to be ice.

Kruger found this theory completely beyond belief at first and kept pestering his companion for a more careful description. However, Dar stuck to his terminology, and finally it occurred to his listener that perhaps the space ship which had brought Dar to Abyormen might be their goal. That should certainly have ice available, at least artificially.

There was the matter of the ocean in their path, whose existence he had gathered earlier. As the boy was not yet sure whether an actual ocean or simply a large lake was involved, he asked whether it would be possible to walk around it. The emphasis which Dar placed on his attempt to express the impossibility of such a move convinced him that “ocean” must be the right word.

It was only at this point that Kruger thought of the possibility of maps. Granting that he had no artistic talent, he should still be able to make a sufficiently good plan of their route together from the lava field to their present position for Dar to grasp what he was trying to do; that would get the word “map” across, and from there on the drawing problem would be Dar Lang Ahn’s.

This meant interrupting their journey while the map was drawn, but the effort was an unqualified success. Not only did Dar understand the word and the request that followed its transmission, but he proved to be an excellent cartographer — a natural result of years in the air, since he tended to think of a map as an aerial picture anyway. He made sketch after sketch, clarifying the entire route they were to follow and displaying tremendous knowledge of the planet as a whole.