with lava flows of various ages. Near the ice cap it’s mountainous but not obviously volcanic.”
“Good. We’ve got to map some stratigraphic sequences as soon as possible, if we’re to get any idea of the age of this world. I don’t suppose you saw any fossils near the ice?”
“I was only on the ground near the settlement; I flew over the rest. Dar Lang Ahn, here, could probably help you, though.”
“Would he be willing to?”
“Probably. His curiosity bump is quite prominent. I gave you an idea of what he wants knowledge for — he puts it in books for the next generation, since his own won’t last much longer.” Kruger did not smile as he said this; the prospect of losing Dar was weighing on him more and more heavily as time drew on.
“Would your friend tell us a little more about this alternation-of-generations business?” asked the biologist. “We have animals on Earth that do much the same, though usually the two forms are not adapted to such drastically different environments, but the thing that bothers me right now is the question of these Teachers. When they finally do die, is the result a crop of the alternate-type descendant, or nothing, or what?”
“I don’t know, and neither does Dar Lang Ahn. You’d better ask that ‘hot’ form Teacher I was talking to when you heard me. I don’t even know whether there is one offspring or a number of them in the normal state of affairs.”
“That’s obvious enough — if there were only one, with no other method of reproduction the race would have died off long ago. There must be occasional accidental deaths.”
“Well, the person to ask is the Teacher, anyway. I’ll do it for you when I talk to him.”
“Why do the Teachers keep most of their people in ignorance of this business, anyway?” Another questioner took over.
“You’ll have to ask them. If I were in their place I’d do it to keep the peace, but this one claims that they don’t mind having a definite death date.”
“I’d like to talk to your friend about it.”
“All right. I suspect someone will have to set up a schedule sheet, though.” The questions and answers went on and on, until Kruger gave up trying to stifle his yawns. The commander finally broke up the meeting; but even then the boy did not rest for some time. He proceeded to show Dar Lang Ahn over the
He finally slept, enjoying weightlessness for the first time in many months. He did not notice whether or not Dar was able to sleep in the circumstances, but the native appeared adequately refreshed in the morning, so Kruger assumed that he had. Dar refused to try human foods, insisting he was not hungry, but Kruger consumed a breakfast so huge as to move some of his acquaintances to warn him. The relatively low nourishment value of Abyormenite plants had gradually accustomed him to eating far larger quantities at a meal while he was on the planet.
Hunger satisfied, he reported to the commander, who immediately called another conference, this time of scientists only. It was decided that top priority on Dar’s time should be given the philologists, so that more interpreters would be available as soon as possible. The biologists were advised to take a landing boat and catch some animals of their own; they would have to get most of their knowledge the hard way. Kruger soothed them by promising to help them with the Teacher while Dar was giving language lessons.
The geologists, however, were going to need Dar’s personal assistance. They could, of course, map the whole land surface of Abyormen and start checking likely spots for sedimentary outcrops in person, but the time which would be consumed that way could be put to much better uses. In consequence, Dar was shown colored pictures of the sorts of rock the specialists hoped to find and asked if he knew any places on the planet where they might be found.
Unfortunately he failed to recognize a single picture. The geologists might have given up after exhausting their photographs and gone back to the map plan, but Kruger noticed that one of the pictures was of a sample of travertine virtually identical with the material deposited around the geyser pool. He pointed this out to Dar.
“Your pictures are not very good,” was the response.
Twenty minutes later it had been established that Dar Lang Ahn could see light ranging in wave length from forty-eight hundred Angstroms to just under eighteen thousand — that is, not quite as far to violet as the average human being but more than an octave farther into the infra-red. The color pictures, balancing the three primary shades to make combinations which reproduced what the human eye saw of the original, simply did not duplicate more than half the color range that Dar saw. As he said, the color pictures were no good. The dyes in the film were the wrong colors, in that part of the spectrum.
“No wonder I never did get any of his words for colors,” muttered Kruger disgustedly. The problem was solved by making black and white prints and letting Dar concentrate on texture. Thereafter he was able to identify more than half the pictures and to tell where samples of most of them could be found. After a short geology lesson he even suggested areas of thrust and block-faulting and canyons which exposed strata to depths of hundreds or thousands of feet; the maps he drew were more than sufficient to enable the regions in question to be located. The rock specialists were delighted. So was Dar Lang Ahn, and so was Nils Kruger — the last for reasons of his own.
The boy had resumed radio contact with the Teacher while this was going on and told him everything that had happened. He explained what the visitors wanted in the way of information and offered to trade as much knowledge as the creature wanted. Unfortunately the Teacher still felt that too much scientific knowledge was not good for his people. He would not budge from his point that knowledge would, in time, lead to space travel, and space travel would inevitably lead to disruption of the Abyormenite life cycle, since it was ridiculous to suppose that another planet could match Abyormen’s characteristics.
“But your people don’t have to
“I have showed you, Nils Kruger, that your ignorance of my people led you far astray before. Please believe me when I tell you that you are equally in error to think that leaving this world could help them in any way.” He remained stubborn on that point, and Kruger had to give up.
He reported his failure to Commander Burke and was somewhat surprised at that officer’s answer.
“Aren’t you just as fortunate that he didn’t accept your offer?”
“Why, sir?”
“As I understand it you were virtually promising him any of our technical knowledge in which he might feel an interest. I admit that we are not as security conscious as we were a few generations ago when Earth still had wars, but it’s generally considered inadvisable to be too free with a new race in the matter of potentially destructive techniques until we know them pretty well.”
“But I do know them!”
“I’ll admit that you know Dar Lang Ahn. You have met a few others of his race, a number of his Teachers, and have spoken by radio to a Teacher of what I suppose we’ll have to call the complementary race. I refuse to credit you with ‘knowing’ the people in general, and still claim that you might have been in a rather equivocal position had that creature accepted your offer.”
“But you didn’t object to everyone’s telling Dar all he asked about.”
“For about the same reason that Teacher didn’t object to your telling him.”
“You mean because he’s going to die soon? Won’t you let him go back to the Ice Ramparts before then? He expects to.”
“I suppose he does. I don’t think it will do any harm; he will take no written material, and without that I am sure he could do no damage.”
Kruger checked himself; he had been on the verge of mentioning the native’s memory. He wanted Dar Lang Ahn to learn things. He knew that what the little native was told or shown he would remember, and what he remembered he would tell his Teachers at the Ice Ramparts. The Teacher at the village might object, but there seemed little he could do; Kruger had kept their bargain.
But could that being do something? He had claimed to have influence over the Teachers at the ice cap — enough to make them attempt to murder Kruger against their own wills. Perhaps he could force them to ignore the information Dar brought, or even destroy Dar; that was definitely not part of Kruger’s plan. What was the influence the being possessed, anyway? Could anything be done to reduce or eliminate it? He would have to talk to that Teacher again — and plan the talk very, very carefully indeed. The boy floated motionless for a long time, thinking,
