Hal Clement - Natives of Space

“We can’t get away from this place too soon to suit me,” he commented finally. “A few more weeks and I won’t have a single soldier or engineer fit for action. Why did you pick this ghastly planet as a place to restock, anyway? There are eight others in this system.”

“Yes,” replied Talker sarcastically, “eight others. One so far from the Sun we’d never have noticed it, if our course hadn’t taken us within half a million miles; four almost as cold, the smallest of them four times the size of this world; two with decent gravity, but without air enough to activate a lump of phosophorus — one of them near the Sun and continually facing it with one hemisphere; and one like this one, with air that would have mummified you at the first attempt to breathe. If you want to go to one of the others, all right — maybe it would be a better way to die, at that.”

“All right, forget it — I was just wondering,” answered Boss. “I’m so full of this blasted dope we have to take that I can’t think straight, anyway. But when is that native coming back?”

“I’m not sure he is, just yet. The soldier flew so as to make it appear that he was coming from the other side of the hills; possibly the creature went to make sure his camp had not been molested. In that case, he may not return today; it’s quite a trip for a ground animal, you know.”

“Then what are we waiting here for? If he is very long coming, you won’t be able to stay awake to meet him. You should have told the soldier to stay out until he was sure what the creature was going to do.”

“That would probably have cost us the soldier. You saw the condition he was in when he came back. If you feel energetic, you can send out watchers in relays; but on a day like this, I don’t see how they can keep out of sight — there’s not a cloud in the sky. I was planning to allow a reasonable time for the native to come back from the point where he saw our soldier. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll get a night’s sleep and expect him tomorrow morning.”

“How do you know how long he’ll take? You don’t know the turns and twists in the trail, and you don’t know how fast he walks when he’s going somewhere.”

“I know how long it took him to come from the pass this morning,” answered Talker. “He was near there when the soldier saw him.”

“Well, it’s your idea, but I don’t mind waiting. This sunlight is comfortable.” Boss swung the airlock door wide open, letting the sun shine some distance into the lock chamber, and settled himself on the smooth metal floor. Any long period of inactivity had one inevitable result; for it was necessary to sleep some sixteen hours out of twenty-four to offset the enormous consumption of energy exacted by Earth’s gravity. Boss may have intended to watch, but he was asleep in two minutes.

Talker remained awake longer. He had indulged in less physical activity than anyone else on the ship, and his mind was normally by far the most active. He squatted on the soft carpet of grass, legs spread spiderwise on either side of his body, while the great topaz eyes took in the details of the surroundings.

Numerous living creatures were visible or audible. Birds were everywhere, as were the insects upon which many of them fed; for in August even Alaska knows that summer has been present for quite a while. The insects, naturally, interested Talker. Some of them bore rather close resemblance to himself, except in the matter of size. A few butterflies fluttered near him in erratic circles; he radiated a thought to them, but got no answer. He had expected none; but he continued to think to them, as a man thinks aloud to a dog, until their intoxicated flight carried them away from the neighborhood.

The flowers, too, caught his eye. They were “not much,” as a human florist might have told him, but all were strange to Talker — his home planet had flowers, but they grew in the wilder regions, where it was decidedly unsafe to venture at any time. The only plants allowed in the vicinity of the castlelike fortresses, in which all civilized beings dwelt, were those which were of use in sustaining life. The few vegetables of this variety which bore attractive blooms were too common to be appreciated.

Talker himself was half asleep when he became aware of the man’s approach. Had the alien known more of Earthly conditions, he would have realized, from the fact that the man was audible at all of fifty yards, that he was a city dweller.

Talker folded his wings tight against his streamlined body and watched the opening of the trail.

The native was even more cautious in his approach than he had been the first time; but in spite of this, the two saw each other almost simultaneously. The man had stepped from the forest with his eyes fixed on Boss, asleep in the air lock, and did not see Talker until the shelter of the trees was behind him.

He stopped instantly, rifle halfway to his shoulder; but Talker carefully refrained from moving anything but his eyes until the weapon was lowered again. To his surprise, the gun was not merely lowered, but slung across the man’s back; the man himself took a step or two forward, and stopped about fifteen feet away from the alien.

Talker was wondering just how far he could go without alarming the other into flight. Allen Kirk was wondering exactly the same thing. The human being was on the less comfortable side of the exchange, for he was seeing for the first time a creature who had obviously not originated upon his own planet. He felt uncomfortable, under the unwinking stare of two pairs of eyes — the optical organs of Talker’s kind are lidless, and Kirk had no means of knowing that Boss was alseep — and the uncanny stillness of the two strange beings got on his nerves. In spite of this, Talker was the first to break down the tension.

His antennae had been folded back, unnoticeable against the silver-gray fur of his body. Now they swung forward, expanding into two iridescent plumes as their owner sought to interpret the mental radiations from the human brain.

Kirk was at first startled, then interested. He knew that the antennae of terrestrial moths were strongly suspected of acting as organs of communication, in some cases at least. It was possible, then, that this mothlike entity was interested solely in conversing with him — a possibility made more probable by the fact that neither creature had as yet made a hostile move, so far as the Earthling could tell.

Talker was fortunate in encountering Kirk, instead of a member of one of the several small tribes dwelling in the surrounding territory. Kirk was educated — he had just completed his third year of university study, and was working during the summer recess at plotting the activities of a minor insect pest which was threatening to spread south and west into Canada. He had majored in sociology, and had taken courses in biology, astronomy and psychology — though the last subject had bored him excessively.

He had realized from the first, of course, that the object in the gully was a flying machine of some sort; nothing else could have reached this spot without leaving traces in the surrounding forest.

He had noticed the air-tight construction of the doorway, but subconsciously refused to consider its full implication until he was actually confronted by one of the vessel’s owners, and realized that neither ship nor navigators could possibly have originated on Earth.

With the realization that the being before him wanted to communicate, Kirk bent his thoughts in that direction. He regretted the nearly wasted psychology course; it was practically certain that none of the languages he knew would be of use. Nevertheless, he uttered a few words, to see if they produced any effect; for all he knew, the alien might not be able to hear.