Through him Greel watched: watched with the rat’s ears and with his nose.
The fire was talking.
There were two scents, alike but not the same. And there were two voices. Just as there had been two fires. The bright things that had burned Greel’s eyes were living creatures of some sort.
Greel listened. The sounds H’ssig heard so clearly were words. A language of some sort. Greel was sure of that. He knew the difference between the roars and grunts of animals and the patterns of speech.
But the fire things were talking in a language he did not know. The sounds meant no more to him than to H’ssig who relayed them.
He concentrated on the scent. It was strange, unlike anything he had encountered before. But somehow it felt like a man-scent, though it could not be that.
Greel thought. An almost man-scent. And words. Could it be that the fire things were men? They would be strange men, much unlike the People. But the taletellers sung of men in ancient times that had strange powers and forms. Might not these be such men? Here, in the Oldest Tunnels, where the legends said the Old Ones had created the People—might not such men still dwell here?
Yes.
Greel stirred. He moved slowly from where he lay, raising himself to a crouching position to squint at the curve ahead. A silent snap brought H’ssig back to safety from the fiery tunnel beyond the curve.
There was one way to make sure, Creel thought. Trembling, he reached out cautiously with his mind.
Von der Stadt had adapted to Earth’s gravity a lot more successfully than Ciffonetto. He reached the floor of the tunnel quickly, and waited impatiently while his companion climbed down from the platform.
Ciffonetto let himself drop the last foot or so, and landed with a thud. He looked up at the platform apprehensively. “I just hope I can make it back up,” he said.
Von der Stadt shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to explore all the tunnels.”
“Yes,” said Ciffonetto, shifting his gaze from the platform to look around him. “And I still do. Down here, in these tunnels, are the answers we’re seeking.”
“That’s your theory, anyway,” Von der Stadt said. He looked in both directions, chose one at random, and moved forward, his flashlight beam spearing out before him. Ciffonetto followed a half-step behind.
The tunnel they entered was long, straight, and empty.
“Tell me,” Von der Stadt said in an offhand manner as they walked, “even if your survivors did make it through the war in shelters, wouldn’t they have been forced to surface eventually to survive? I mean—how could anyone actually live down here?” He looked around the tunnel with obvious distaste.
“Have you been taking lessons from Nagel or something?” Ciffonetto replied. “I’ve heard that so often I’m sick of it. I admit it would be difficult. But not impossible. At first, there would be access to large stores of canned goods. A lot of that stuff was kept in basements. You could get to it by tunnelling. Later, you could raise food. There are plants that will grow without light. And there would be insects and boring animals too, I imagine.”
“A diet of bugs and mushrooms. It doesn’t sound too healthy to me.”
Ciffonetto stopped suddenly, not bothering to reply. “Look there,” he said, pointing with his flashlight.
The beam played over a jagged break in the tunnel wall. It looked as though someone had smashed through the stone a long time ago.
Von der Stadt’s flash joined Ciffonetto’s to light the area better. There was a passage descending from the break. Ciffonetto moved towards it with a start.
“What the hell do you say to this, Von der Stadt?” he asked, grinning. He stuck head and flashlight into the crude tunnel, but re-emerged quickly.
“Not much there,” he said. “The passage is caved in after a few feet. But still, it confirms what I’ve been saying.”
Von der Stadt looked vaguely uneasy. His free hand drifted to the holstered pistol at his side. “I don’t know,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” said Ciffonetto, triumphantly. “Neither does Nagel. Men have lived down here. They may still live here. We’ve got to organize a more efficient search of the whole underground system.”
He paused, his mind flickering back to Von der Stadt’s argument of a few seconds earlier. “As for your bugs and mushrooms, men can learn to live on a lot of things. Men adapt. If men survived the war—and this says they did—then they survived the aftermath, I’ll wager.”
“Maybe,” Von der Stadt said. “I can’t see what you are so hot on discovering survivors for anyway, though. I mean, the expedition is important and all that. We’ve got to re-establish spaceflight, and this is a good test for our new hardware. And I guess you scientists can pick up some good stuff for the museums. But humans? What did Earth ever get us besides the Great Famine?”
Ciffonetto smiled tolerantly. “It’s because of the Great Famine that we want to find humans,” he said. He paused. “We’ve got enough to entice even Nagel now. Let’s head back.”
He started walking back in the direction they had come, and resumed talking. “The Great Famine was an unavoidable result of the war on Earth,” he said. “When supplies stopped coming, there was absolutely no way to keep all the people in the lunar colony alive. Ninety per cent starved.
“Luna could be made self-sufficient, but only with a very small population. That’s what happened. The population adjusted itself. But we recycled our air and our water, grew foods in hydroponic tanks. We struggled, but we survived. And began to rebuild.
“But we lost a lot. Too many people died. Our genetic pool was terribly small, and not too diverse. The colony had never had a lot of racial diversity to begin with.
“That hasn’t helped. Population actually declined for a long time after we had the physical resources to support more people. The idea of inbreeding didn’t go over. Now population’s going up again, but slowly. We’re stagnant, Von der Stadt. It’s taken us nearly five centuries to get space travel going again, for example. And we still haven’t duplicated many of the things they had back on Earth before the disaster.”
Von der Stadt frowned. “Stagnant’s a strong word,” he said. “I think we’ve done pretty good.”
Ciffonetto dismissed the comment with a wave of his flashlight. “Pretty good,” he said. “Not good enough. We’re not going anywhere. There’s so damn few changes, so little in the way of new ideas. We need fresh viewpoints, fresh genetic stock. We need the stimulation of contact with a foreign culture.
“Survivors would give us that. After all Earth’s been through, they’d have to have changed in some ways. And they’d be proof that human life can still flourish on Earth. That’s crucial if we’re going to establish a colony here.”
The last point was tacked on almost as an afterthought, but caught Von der Stadt’s approval. He nodded gravely.
They had reached the station again. Ciffonetto headed straight for the platform. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get back to base. I can’t wait to see Nagel’s face drop when I tell him what we’ve found.”
They were men.
Greel was almost sure of it. The texture of their minds was curious, but manlike. Greel was a strong mind- mingler. He knew the coarse, dim feel of an animal’s mind, the obscene shadows that were the thoughts of the worm-things. And he knew the minds of men. They were men.
Yet there was a strangeness. Mind-mingling was true communication only with a mind-brother. But always it was a sharing with other men. A dark and murky sharing, full of clouds and flavours and smells and emotions. But a sharing.
Here there was no sharing. Here it was like mind-mingling with a lower animal. Touch, feel, stroke, savour— all that a strong mind-mingler could do with an animal. But never would he feel a response. Men and mind-brothers responded; animals did not.
These men did not respond. These strange fire-men had minds that were silent and crippled.
In the darkness of the tunnel, Greel straightened from his crouch. The fire had faded suddenly from the wall. The men were going away, down the tunnel away from him. The fire went with them.
He edged forward slowly, H’ssig at his side, spear in hand. Distance made mind-mingling difficult. He must keep them in range. He must find out more. He was a scout. He had a duty.
His mind crept out again, to taste the flavour of the other minds. He had to be sure.
