It was all right, of course. A man runs into some strange things when he wanders out in space, but when he runs into them he can usually dodge them or disregard them and here I could do neither.
I had to do something to help this creature out, although for the life of me I couldn’t figure just how I could help him much. I could pick him up and lug him back to where the others waited, but once I’d got him there he’d be no better off than he was right here. But I couldn’t turn about and walk away and simply leave him there. He at least deserved the courtesy of someone demonstrating that they cared what happened to him.
From the time I had seen the ship and had realized that it was newly crashed, the idea had arisen, of course, that aboard it I might find food and water and perhaps other articles that the four of us could use. But now, I admitted, the entire thing was a complete and total washout. I couldn’t help this creature and he was no help to us and the whole thing wound up as just another headache and being stuck with him.
“I can’t offer you much,” I told him. “There are four of us, myself and three others. We have no food or water- absolutely nothing.”
“How got you here?” he asked.
I tried to tell him how we had gotten there and as I groped and stumbled for a way to say it, I figured that I was just wasting my time. After all, what did it really matter how we had gotten there? But he seemed to understand.
“Ah, so,” he said.
“So you can see how little we can do for you,” I said. “But you would essay to carry me to this place where the others are encamped?”
“Yes, I could do that.”
“You would not mind?”
“Not at all,” I told him, “if you’d like it that way.”
I did mind, of course. It would be no small chore to wrestle him across the sand dunes. But I couldn’t quite see myself assessing the situation and saying the hell with it and then walking out on him.
“I would like it very much,” the creature said. “Other life is comfort and aloneness is not good. Also in numbers may lie strength. One can never tell.”
“By the way,” I said, “my name is Mike. I am from a planet called the Earth, out in the Carina Cygnus arm.”
“Mike,” he said, trying it out, hooting the name so it sounded like anything but Mike. “Is good. Rolls easy on the vocal cords. The locale of your planet is a puzzle to me. The terms I’ve never heard. The position of mine means nothing to you, too. And my name? My name is complicated matter involving identity framework that is of no consequence to people but my own. Please, you pick a name for me. You can call me what you want. Short and simple, please.”
It had been a little crazy, of course, to get started on this matter of our names. The funny thing about it was that I’d not intended to. It was something that had just come out of me, almost instinctively. I had been somewhat surprised when I’d heard myself telling him my name. But now that it had been done, it did make the situation a bit more comfortable. We no longer were two alien beings that had stumbled across one another’s paths. It gave each of us, it seemed, a greater measure of identity.
“How about Hoot?” I asked. And I could have kicked myself the minute I had said it. For it was not the best name in the world and he would have had every reason for resenting it. But he didn’t seem to. He waved his tentacles around in a snaky sort of way and repeated the name several times.
“Is good,” he finally said. “Is excellent for creature such as me.”
“Hello, Mike,” he said.
“Hello, Hoot,” I told him.
I slung the rifle on my shoulder and got my feet well planted and reached down to get both arms around him. Finally I managed to hoist him to the other shoulder. He was heavier than he looked and his body was so rounded that it was hard to get a grip on him. But I finally got him settled and well-balanced and started up the dune.
I didn’t try to go straight up, but slanted at an angle. With my feet sinking to the ankles with every step I took and the sand sliding under me, and fighting for every inch of progress, it was just as bad, or worse, than I had thought it would prove to be.
But I finally reached the crest and collapsed as easily as I could, letting Hoot down gently then just lying there and panting.
“I cause much trouble, Mike,” said Hoot. “I tax your strength, exceeding.”
“Let me get my breath,” I said. “It’s just a little farther.”
I rolled over on my back and stared up at the sky. The stars glittered back at me. Straight overhead was a big blue giant that looked like a flashing jewel and a little to one side was a dull coal of a star, a red supergiant, perhaps. And a million others-as if someone had sat down and figured out how to fill the sky with stars and had come up with a pattern.
“Where is this place, Hoot?” I asked. “Where in the galaxy?”
“It’s a globular cluster,” he said. “I thought you knew that.”
And that made sense, I ‘thought. For the planet we had landed on, the one that great fool of a Smith had led us to, had been well above the galactic plane, out in space beyond the main body of the galaxy-out in globular duster country.
“Is your home here,” I asked.
“No. Far away,” he said, and the way he said it, I asked him nothing more. If he didn’t want to talk about where he’d come from, it was all right with me. He might be on the lam, he might be a refugee, or he might have been banished as an undesirable. All of these things happened. Space was full of wanderers who could not go home again.
