And then a quavering, hooting voice answered. At first it was just a noise, then, as I wrestled with the noise, I knew it to be a word, a single hooted question.
“Friend?” had been the word, “Friend,” I answered.
“In need am I of friend,” the hooting voice said. “Please to advance in safety. I do not carry weapon.”
“I do,” I said, a little grimly.
“Of it, there is no need,” said the thing down in the shadows. “I am trapped and helpless.”
“That is your ship up there?”
“Ship?”
“Your conveyance.”
“Truly so, dear friend. It have come apart. It is inoperative.”
“I’m coming down,” I told it. “I’ll have my weapon on you. One move out of you...”
“Come then,” the hooter croaked. “No move out of me. I shall lie supine.”
I came to my feet and went across the top of that dune as quickly as I could and plunging down the other slope, crouched to present as small a target as was possible. I kept the rifle trained on that shadowed area from which the voice came.
I slid into the trough and crouched there, bending low to sight up its length. Then I saw it, a hump of blackness lying very still.
“All right,” I called. “Move toward me now.”
The hump heaved and wallowed, then lay still again, “Move,” it said, “I cannot.”
“OK, then. Lie still. Do not move at all.”
I ran forward and stopped. The hump lay still. It did not even twitch.
I moved closer, watching it intently. Now I could see it better. From the front of its head a nest of tentacles sprouted, now lying limply on the ground. From its rather massive head, if the tentacle-bearing portion of it actually was its head, its body tapered back, four feet or so, and ended in a bluntness. It seemed to have no feet or arms. With those tentacles, perhaps, it had no need of arms. It wore no clothing, upon its body was no sign of any sort of harness. The tentacles grasped no tool or weapon.
“What is your trouble?” I asked. “What can I do for you?”
The tentacles lifted, undulating like a basketful of snakes. The hoarse voice came out of a mouth which the tentacles surrounded.
“My legs are short,” it said. “I sink. They do not carry me. With them I only churn up sand. I dig with them a deeper pit beneath me.”
Two of the tentacles, with eyes attached to their tips, were aimed directly at me. They looked me up and down.
“I can hoist you out of there.”
“It would be a useless gesture,” the creature said. “I’d bog down again.”
The tentacles which served as eye-stalks moved up and down, measuring me.
“You are large,” it croaked; “Have you also strength?”
“You mean to carry you?”
“Only to a place,” the creature said, “where there is firmness under me.”
“I don’t know of such a place,” I said.
“You do not know... Then you are not a native of this planet.”
“I am not,” I said. “I had thought, perhaps, that you...
“Of this planet, sir?” it asked. “No self-respecting member of my race would deign to defecate upon such a planet.”
I squatted down to face him.
“How about the ship?” I asked. “If I could get you back up the dune to it...”
“It would not help,” he told me. “There is nothing there.”
“But there must be. Food and water...”
And I was, I must admit, considerably interested in the water.
“No need of it,” he said. “I travel in my second self and I need no food or water. Slight protection from the openness of space and a little heat so my living tissues come to no great harm.”
For the love of God, I asked myself, what was going on? He was in his second self and while I wondered what it might be all about, I was hesitant to ask. I knew how these things went. First surprise or horror or amazement that there could exist a species so ignorant or so inefficient that it did not have the concept, the stammering attempt to explain the basics of it, followed by a dissertation on the advantages of the concept and the pity that was felt for ones who did not have it Either that or the entire thing was taboo and not to be spoken of and an insult to even hint at what it might entail.
And that business about his living tissues. As if there might be more to him than simply living tissues.
