by the nervous system. In practice, the feebleness of the signals and their low rate of information transmission make them elusive, hard to detect and measure. Our prehuman ancestors went in for more reliable senses, like vision and hearing. What telepathic transceiving we do is marginal at best. But explorers have found extraterrestrial species that got an evolutionary advantage from developing the system further, in their particular environments. I imagine such species could include one which gets comparatively little direct sunlight-in fact, appears to hide from broad day. It could even become so able in this regard that, at short range, it can pick up man’s weak emissions and make man’s primitive sensitivities resonate to its own strong sendings.”
“That would account for a lot, wouldn’t it?” Barbro said faintly.
“I’ve now screened our car by a jamming field,” Sherrinford told her, “but it reaches only a few meters past the chassis. Beyond, a scout of theirs might get a warning from your thoughts, if you knew precisely what I’m trying to do. I have a well-trained subconscious which sees to it that I think about this in French when I’m outside. Communication has to be structured to be intelligible, you see, and that’s a different enough structure from English. But English is the only human language on Roland, and surely the Old Folk have learned it.”
She nodded. He had told her his general plan, which was too obvious to conceal. The problem was to make contact with the aliens, if they existed. Hitherto, they had only revealed themselves, at rare intervals, to one or a few backwoodsmen at a time. An ability to generate hallucinations would help them in that. They would stay clear of any large, perhaps unmanageable expedition which might pass through their territory. But two people, braving all prohibitions, shouldn’t look too formidable to approach. And… this would be the first human team which not only worked on the assumption that the Outlings were real but possessed the resources of modern, off-planet police technology.
Nothing happened at that camp. Sherrinford said he hadn’t expected it would. The Old Folk seemed cautious this near to any settlement. In their own lands they must be bolder.
And by the following “night,” the vehicle had gone well into yonder country. When Sherrinford stopped the engine in a meadow and the car settled down, silence rolled in like a wave.
They stepped out. She cooked a meal on the glower while he gathered wood, that they might later cheer themselves with a campfire. Frequently he glanced at his wrist. It bore no watch-instead, a radio-controlled dial, to tell what the instruments in the bus might register.
Who needed a watch here? Slow constellations wheeled beyond glimmering aurora. The moon Alde stood above a snowpeak, turning it argent, though this place lay at a goodly height. The rest of the mountains were hidden by the forest that crowded around. Its trees were mostly shiverleaf and feathery white plumablanca, ghostly amidst their shadows. A few firethorns glowed, clustered dim lanterns, and the underbrush was heavy and smelled sweet. You could see surprisingly far through the blue dusk. Somewhere nearby, a brook sang and a bird fluted.
“Lovely here,” Sherrinford said. They had risen from their supper and not yet sat down again or kindled their fire.
“But strange,” Barbro answered as low. “I wonder if it’s really meant for us. If we can really hope to possess it.”
His pipestem gestured at the stars. “Man’s gone to stranger places than this.”
“Has he? I… oh, I suppose it’s just something left over from my outway childhood, but do you know, when I’m under them I can’t think of the stars as balls of gas, whose energies have been measured, whose planets have been walked on by prosaic feet. No, they’re small and cold and magical; our lives are bound to them; after we die, they whisper to us in our graves.” Barbro glanced downward. “I realize that’s nonsense.”
She could see in the twilight how his face grew tight. “Not at all,” he said. “Emotionally, physics may be a worse nonsense. And in the end, you know, after a sufficient number of generations, thought follows feeling. Man is not at heart rational. He could stop believing the stories of science if those no longer felt right.”
He paused. “That ballad which didn’t get finished in the house,” he said, not looking at her. “Why did it affect you so?”
“I couldn’t stand hearing them, well, praised. Or that’s how it seemed. Sorry for the fuss.”
“I gather the ballad is typical of a large class.”
“Well, I never thought to add them up. Cultural anthropology is something we don’t have time for on Roland, or more likely it hasn’t occurred to us, with everything else there is to do. But—now you mention it, yes, I’m surprised at how many songs and stories have the Arvid motif in them.”
“Could you bear to recite it?”
She mustered the will to laugh. “Why, I can do better than that if you want. Let me get my multilyre and I’ll perform.”
She omitted the hypnotic chorus line, though, when the notes rang out, except at the end. He watched her where she stood against moon and aurora.
She laid the lyre aside. A wind rustled leaves. After a long quietness Sherrinford said, “And tales of this kind are part of everyone’s life in the outway?”
“Well, you could put it thus,” Barbro replied. “Though they’re not all full of supernatural doings. Some are about love or heroism. Traditional themes.”
“I don’t think your particular tradition has arisen of itself.” His tone was bleak. “In fact, I think many of your songs and stories were not composed by human beings.”
He snapped his lips shut and would say no more on the subject. They went early to bed.
Hours later, an alarm roused them.
The buzzing was soft, but it brought them instantly alert. They slept in gripsuits, to be prepared for emergencies. Sky-glow lit them through the canopy. Sherrinford swung out of his bunk, slipped shoes on feet and clipped gun holster to belt. “Stay inside,” he commanded.
“What’s here?” Her pulse thuttered.
He squinted at the dials of his instruments and checked them against the luminous telltale on his wrist. “Three animals,” he counted. “Not wild ones happening by. A large one, homeothermic, to judge from the infrared,
