Arthur Zirul - Final Exam

“According to the Medical Department they’re from outer space,” Andrews explained as he sketched leaping flames on his pad. “They also appear willing to communicate. In fact, Major Flacs, our head psychiatrist, and his staff, have been interrogating them for an hour. We found out that there were four other groups, besides their own, that landed.”

“Holy smoke!” Conner exclaimed. “Have you heard anything about the others?”

“Yes, I’ve just received a message from Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. We picked up another group of three in Wiamea, Kauai.”

“Have any trouble?”

“No, not much. Luckily there was a sheriff and a couple of deputies to hold the crowd back. The things seemed amiable enough, just wanted information. Seems they wanted to know how to get to Owl’s Head Park in Brooklyn.”

“Of all places,” Conner observed with a slight chuckle.

“They’re being flown here now,” Andrews said as he continued his doodling.

“Well, you don’t sound exactly hysterical about it.”

“I’m not. These creatures seem to have an extremely advanced scientific background. Judging from the effects of their sidearms at Gravesend, I can only guess at what their heavier weapons might be capable of. It’s obvious that a government could make excellent use of any information they might care to offer.”

“So?”

“So,” Andrews drew a mushrooming atom-bomb plume, “we have two of those teams. Three others have landed elsewhere on this planet… I was just wondering where, that’s all.”

As Conner had said, the newspapers had the story and they had no in-tendon of letting it go. Glaring headlines from coast to coast shouted the news that “mysterious saucer monsters” had been captured after a “titanic struggle” with the army in Brooklyn, and were being held for questioning by the state department. All that the army and the state department could do after the news had leaked out was to sit tight and await developments. The first signs of the approaching diplomatic storm came the next morning when a crowd of couriers arrived at the state department, with sealed messages, from practically every embassy in Washington. The sum and substance of a typical message was an offer of scientific assistance, from the embassy’s mother country, in the interrogation of the aliens. There was also a thinly veiled demand—if the assistance was not desired—for a representative to be present at every questioning session.

News photographers waited impatiently outside the Russian Embassy in order to photograph the courier they expected to leave with a message for the state department. No one was more surprised than the state department when no message was forthcoming. When there was still no message the second day, the conclusion reached by the state department was an obvious one.

“They must have one or more of the teams,” Halwit, the secretary of state, said as he stared vacantly out of his office window.

Stevans, his assistant, nodded. “That is probably why they are keeping out of the public eye right now. I imagine that they will be around later in an attempt to bargain—

trade information for information.

“I think you’re right.” Halwit frowned as he lit a cigarette. “From what we’ve been able to learn about the six we have, I’d say that they are the most important members of the crew. A point in our favor when it comes to trading information.”

“Why should we trade?” Stevans asked archly.

“Have to,” Halwit blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling, “no telling what they can find out. I think we’ll have to arrange a meeting wherein we can question all members of the crew that were found, including the Russian ones, under U.N. supervision.”

“Supposing they won’t agree to it?” Stevans asked.

“Then we’d better start worrying,” Halwit said as he carefully released another smoke ring.

Cakna, Druit, and Drul were near the point of exhaustion. They had been questioned, probed, and examined for forty-eight hours with barely a let-up. If nothing else, the relentless questioning had resulted in a limited vocabulary which at least allowed for some degree of sensible communication, via the blackboard in the examination room. The language was a group of pictographs based on elementary physical laws. It gave both the Soviets and the aliens a dictionary of several dozen picture words consisting of such terms as: up, down; near, far; light, heavy, et cetera.

“What sort of unfeeling savages are these?” Cakna asked angrily, during a lull in the questioning. “We’ve already told them how we happened to be here, and how important it is for us to get to rendezvous as soon as possible, and what do they do? They question us for time-unit upon time-unit until I feel as if I’ve just been pulled out of a combustion chamber. Besides that, they haven’t even offered us any food. What do they think we eat? Questions?”

“Cakna is right,” Druit admitted grudgingly. “These creatures are, beyond a doubt, savages. But this advanced culture they evidently possess—it just doesn’t jive with their barbarian personalities. I simply don’t understand it.”

“There is something gravely wrong on this planet,” Drul said. “I have never, in all my experience, come up against anything quite so freakish in a socio-cultural pattern as this one. Perhaps Babla could explain it; I can’t. A seventh level culture coupled with a second-level, savage, personality make-up—frankly, it frightens me.

“Well,” said Cakna, changing the subject, “it’s all well and good theorizing about alien races, but I’m slowly starving to death. Let’s try to get some food out of these things before I start chewing on them!! ”

After attracting the Russians’ attention by waving his tentacles, Cakna tried pointing at the toothed orifice in the middle of his round body to indicate that he wanted food. When it was evident that the Soviets didn’t understand what he meant, he tried using the pictograph vocabulary to convey his meaning. The closest he could get to “eat” with the limited number of words at his disposal was to draw the symbols for “I live,” and “I absorb.” The Russians seemed to understand what he wanted then, and in a little while a wide variety of food and drink was set before the three.

“Are you sure they understood you?” Druit asked Cakna in an incredulous tone as he gazed at the fantastic spread of smoked fishes, caviars, vodka, and sweetmeats. “You don’t suppose they actually eat this garbage, do you?”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that,” Drul said as he nibbled testily at a candied pear. “They’re basically hydrocarbon life, as we are. This stuff may not be appetizing, but I think it’s digestible. I suggest we eat what we can, who knows when we’ll be fed again.”

The three aliens picked cautiously at each dish, trying to keep from gagging as they swallowed some particularly obnoxious tidbit. After a few minutes Druit took a sip of the vodka.

“WOW!” he shouted, as he quivered a tentacle. “Mail from home! I guess booze is booze anywhere!”

As he joyfully raised the bottle to his mouth again, Drul stopped him with a quick tentacle.

“Take it easy, Druit; we’ve got to keep our wits about us, save that stuff for later.”

Even as he spoke, the Russians wheeled in a huge, new blackboard, and one of them began to sketch furiously. He drew a large circle which he labeled with the pictograph for “Earth.” Then he sketched a finned cigar, which he evidently meant to portray a spaceship, about two feet from the Earth circle. He labeled the spaceship with the symbol that represented the three aliens. He drew a dotted line from the spaceship to Earth, and then redrew the spaceship, complete with the alien symbol, sitting atop the Earth circle. He chalked an arrow from the aliens’ spaceship to a vacant space on the circle, about six inches to the right. At the point of the arrow he quickly drew another finned cigar, and labeled that one with the symbol for Earthmen. Then he drew a dotted line, which he started at the new “Earthmen” spaceship, and ran it till it went clear off the blackboard. With a great gesture he then lettered the pictographs that meant: “Earthmen, down”; “Aliens, up”; “Earthmen, up.” The last two symbols he circled for emphasis. At that point he stood aside and looked questioningly at the aliens.