would do you the least good if you did comprehend it. The best I can say right now is that they are machines for measuring things that cannot be seen or heard or felt or tasted?things you would have to see in operation in other ways for a long time before you could even begin to understand. That is not meant as insult; what I say is almost as true for me, and I have grown up from childhood surrounded by and even using those forces. I do not understand them. I do not expect to understand them before I die; the science we have covers so much knowledge that no one man can even begin to learn all of it, and I must be satisfied with the field I do know?and perhaps add to it what little one man may in a lifetime. “We cannot accept your bargain, Barl, because it is physically impossible to carry out our side of it.” Barlennan could not smile in the human sense, and he carefully refrained from giving his own version of one. He answered as gravely as Lackland had spoken. “You can do your part, Charles, though you do not know it. “When I first started this trip, all the things you have just said were true, and more. I fully intended to find this rocket with your help, and then place the radios where you could see nothing and proceed to dismantle the machine itself, learning all your science in the process. “Slowly I came to realize that all you have said is true. I learned that you were not keeping knowledge from me deliberately when you taught us so quickly and carefully about the laws and techniques used by the glider-makers on that island. I learned it still more surely when you helped Dondragmer make the differential pulley. I was expecting you to bring up those points in your speech just now; why didn’t you? They were good ones. “It was actually when you were teaching us about the gliders that I began to have a slight understanding of what was meant by your term ‘science.’ I realized, before the end of that episode, that a device so simple you people had long since ceased to use it actually called for an understanding of more of the universe’s laws than any of my people realized existed. You said specifically at one point, while apologizing for a lack of exact information, that gliders of that sort had been used by your people more than two hundred years ago. I can guess how much more you know now — guess just enough to let me realize what I can’t know. “But you can still do what I want. You have done a little already, in showing us the differential hoist. I do not understand it, and neither does Dondragmer, who spent much more time with it; but we are both sure it is some sort of relative to the levers we have been using all our lives. We want to start
“For some, yes; they would want to know about other worlds, and people who had used the same way to knowledge they were starting on. Others — well, we have a lot of people who let the rest pull the load for them. If they knew, they wouldn’t bother to do any learning themselves; they’d just ask for anything particular they wanted to know — as I did at first; and they’d never realize you weren’t telling them because you couldn’t. They’d think you were trying to cheat them. I suppose if I told anyone, that sort would find out sooner or later, and — well, I guess it would be better to let them think I’m the genius. Or Don; they’d be more likely to believe it of him.” Rosten’s answer was brief and to the point. “You’ve made a deal.”
20: FLIGHT OF THE BREE
A gleaming skeleton of metal rose eight feet above a flat-topped mound of rock and earth. Mesklinites were busily attacking another row of plates whose upper fastenings had just been laid bare. Others were pushing the freshly removed dirt and pebbles to the edge of the mound. Still others moved back and forth along a well-marked road that led off into the desert, those who approached dragging flat, wheeled carts loaded with supplies, those departing usually hauling similar carts empty. The scene was one of activity; practically everyone seemed to have a definite purpose. There were two radio sets in evidence now, one on the mound where an Earthman was directing the dismantling from his distant vantage point and the other some distance away. Dondragmer was in front of the second set, engaged in animated conversation with the distant being he could not see. The sun still circled endlessly, but was very gradually descending now and swelling very, very slowly. “I am afraid,” the mate said, “that we will have serious trouble checking on what you tell us about the bending of light. Reflection I can understand; the mirrors I made from metal plates of your rocket made that very clear. It is too bad that the device from which you let us take the lens was dropped in the process; we have nothing like your glass, I am afraid.”
“Even a reasonably large piece of the lens will do, Don,” the voice came from the speaker. It was not Lackland’s voice; he was an expert teacher, he had found, but sometimes yielded the microphone to a specialist. “Any piece will bend the light, and even make an image — but wait; that comes later.”Try to find what’s left of that hunk of glass, Don, if your gravity didn’t powder it when the set landed.” Dondragmer turned from the set with a word of agreement; then turned back as he thought of another point. “Perhaps you could tell what this ‘glass’ is made of, and whether it takes very much heat? We have good hot fires, you know. Also there is the material set over the Bowl — ice, I think Charles called it. Would that do?”
“Yes, I know about your fires, though I’m darned if I see how you do burn plants in a hydrogen atmosphere, even with a little meat thrown in. For the rest, ice should certainly do, if you can find any. I don?t know what the sand of your river is made of, but you can try melting it in one of your hottest fires and see what comes out. I certainly don?t guarantee anything, though; I simply say that on Earth and the rest of the worlds I know ordinary sand will make a sort of glass, which is greatly improved with other ingredients. I?m darned if I can see either how to describe those ingredients to you or suggest where they might be found, though.? “Thank you; I will have someone try the fire. In the meantime, I will search for a piece of lens, though I fear the blow when it struck left little usable. We should not have tried to take the device apart near the edge of the mound; the thing you called a ‘barrel’ rolled much too easily.” Once more the mate left the radio, and immediately encountered Barlennan. “It’s about time for your watch to get on the plates,” the captain said. “I’m going down to the river. Is there anything your work needs?” Dondragmer mentioned the suggestion about sand. “You can carry up the little bit I’ll need, I should think, without getting the fire too hot; or did you plan on a full load of other things?”
“No plans; I’m taking the trip mainly for fun. Now that the spring wind has died out and we get breezes in every old direction, a little navigation practice might be useful. What good is a captain who can’t steer his ship?”
“Fair enough. Did the Flyers tell you what this deck of machines was for?”
“They did pretty well, but if I were really convinced about this spacebending business I’d have swallowed it more easily. They finished up with the old line about words not really being enough to describe it. What else beside words can you use, in the name of the Suns?”
“I’ve been wondering myself; I think it’s another aspect of this quantitycode they call mathematics. I like mechanics best myself; you can do something with it from the very beginning.” He waved an arm toward one of the carts and another toward the place where the differential pulley was lying. “It would certainly seem so. We’ll have a lot to take home — and some, I guess, we’d better not be too hasty in spreading about.” He gestured at what he meant, and the mate agreed soberly. “Nothing to keep us from playing with it now, though.” The captain went his way, and Dondragmer looked after him with a mixture of seriousness and amusement, he rather wished that Reejaaren were around; he had never liked the islander, and perhaps now he would be a little less convinced that the
