although there was no longer a drinking problem owing to the numerous brooks they crossed. Kruger had already found out that rain could be expected quite regularly this far north for a hundred hours or so before and perhaps half as long after the rising of the red sun. Where he had started his journey, much farther south, this star was in the sky all the time while the blue one followed a rising and setting pattern of its own; there the weather was much less predictable.
The rain he was expecting had not arrived, however, when he noticed that something seemed to have attracted Dar’s attention. Kruger knew his companion could hear, though he was still unsure of the location of his ears, so he began to listen himself. At first nothing but the usual forest sounds were detectable — leaves and branches moving in the wind, the scurrying of thousands of tiny living things, the occasional drip of water from leaves, which never seemed to cease no matter how long a time had passed since it had rained — but Dar changed course a trifle; certainly he must hear something. They had gone another half-mile before it began to register on Kruger’s ears.
When it finally did he stopped with an exclamation. Dar Lang Ahn swiveled one eye back toward him and stopped too. He knew as little of human facial expressions as Kruger knew of his, but even so he recognized the change of skin color that the sound produced in the boy’s features.
“What?” Dar uttered the sound they had come to agree upon as a general interrogative.
“I think we’d better stay away from that.”
“What?” It was a repetition of the former question, not the more specific interrogative which would have suggested understanding of Kruger’s words.
“It sounds like …” The boy stopped; there were simply no available words. He fell back on signs. Unfortunately his first gesture was back in the direction from which they had come, and Dar took it to mean that Kruger had encountered this thing, whatever it was, before they had met. He was right but he did not grasp his companion’s extreme reluctance to meet it again. After a few moments’ silent regard of the boy’s signals he gave it up and started on his way once more.
“Stop!” This was another word on which they had managed to agree, and Dar obeyed, wondering. They were far from the lava field; was it possible that this creature knew something about jungle that Dar himself didn’t? The sound was strange to the native, of course; that was why he wanted to investigate it. Was the giant actually afraid of it? If so, some thought was indicated. If whatever was making this sound could harm Kruger it was more than likely to be able to do as much to Dar. On the other hand perhaps it was merely a matter of dislike. In that case Dar would be passing up a chance for knowledge which might prove worthwhile material for a book. The question seemed to lie, then, between a risk of losing what books he had and one of failing to improve them. The risk of life involved meant nothing, of course, but both the other points were serious.
Perhaps he could get a better measure of the risk by seeing how far Kruger was prepared to go to keep them from this phenomenon. With this thought in mind Dar Lang Ahn deliberately turned once more and again started walking toward the irregular, dull, “Plop, plop, plop,” that was now coming clearly through the trees.
Kruger was in a quandary. He had never dreamed of having to impress his opinions on Dar by force; he was not sure what the result of trying it would be. In any case he did not want to do anything that might give rise to enmity or even any more distrust than could be helped. In the circumstances he did the only thing that was left. Dar, rolling an eye back toward the human being, saw him start to follow and proceeded on his way assured that there was no real danger. He increased his speed, so far as the undergrowth rendered that possible. In a few minutes the vegetation cleared enough so that real walking could take the place of the laborious pushing aside of branches and vines. To Dar, this was a help; to Kruger, a confirmation of a fact that the increasing sound had already proved.
“Dar! Stop!” The native obeyed, wondering what had happened to change the situation; then he watched in surprise while Kruger forged past him and took up the lead. With his own equivalent of a shrug, he followed. The human being was going more slowly than he would have liked but perhaps there was a reason for it.
There was. In another hundred yards the undergrowth vanished, and at almost the same point the trees stopped. In front of them lay a bare, smooth-surfaced clearing nearly fifty yards across.
To Dar, this was simply a spot in which travel was easy; he would almost certainly have plunged on into the open, eager to get across and resume his journey toward the source of the mysterious sound. However, he was stopped. For the first time in their relationship Kruger not only touched him but blocked his path firmly with an arm more than strong enough to do the job. Dar looked at his companion in surprise, then his eyes traveled on about the clearing. His efforts to force his way past his big companion ceased and both eyes focused on the center of the open space.
The source of the sound was there. The clearing, for the most part, seemed to be floored with some smooth, hard material, but the center was in a constant state of motion — a great cauldron of liquid, sticky mud, heaving upward every few seconds to give birth to a great bubble which burst with the “plop” they had been hearing and released a cloud of vapor that drifted lazily away.
Kruger let his companion look for a minute or two; then, repeating his word to “Stop!” he went back on their trail a few paces. Rocks are not ordinarily easy to find on a jungle floor, but they were still close enough to the big flow for occasional outcrops of lava to be present. He found one of these, with a good deal of effort knocked off a fair-sized corner, brought it back, and tossed it out onto the apparently hard surface. The crust of dried mud gave, and the lava boulder vanished with a splash.
“I don’t like these places,” Kruger said firmly, indifferent to the fact that Dar could not understand him. “I went through one myself a few months ago and when I got out by working back up the tree root that had stopped my sinking — and incidentally knocked me out for quite a while — I found my name carved on the tree with several remarks about what a nice young fellow I’d been. I don’t blame them for leaving me; they have every reason to suppose I’m still sinking. Living through it once, though, doesn’t mean I’m going to try it again; my space suit is a long, long walk from here!”
Dar said nothing but promised himself to heed the advice of his friend as long as they were anywhere near the big fellow’s native volcanic region. This was certainly something for the book!
III. PEDAGOGY
THE MUD GEYSER, and several others, had been left miles behind, but an occasional lava outcrop still kept Dar following Kruger’s lead. The direction of travel was still to the northeast — the boy had made no attempt to change that — but in some subtle fashion the relationship between the two had changed.
For one thing the inevitable mistrust that they had felt at the beginning was just as inevitably fading. Another change, less logical in origin, was due to the almost comical misunderstanding which had resulted in Dar’s firm conviction that Kruger was a native of the little-known volcanic areas of Abyormen, while Kruger himself was just as sure that Dar Lang Ahn did not belong on the planet at all. As a result Dar was constantly looking to Kruger for advice. If he shot a new type of animal — new, that is, to him — he would wait for the boy’s verdict before eating it. Naturally quite a lot of perfectly good meat was wasted, since Kruger was in no hurry to risk his health and life testing new types of food.
At last, however, Dar killed a creature of the same type as the one the human being had tried when they first entered the jungle. The pilot did not even ask questions about this one; he borrowed the knife and set to work. Kruger looked at his portion with some distaste when it finally came.
He did not like raw meat, though it had certainly not harmed him the other time. On that occasion he had not suggested stopping to make a fire, since Dar was the moral leader of the association and his idea of a meal was apparently to eat on the spot whatever could not be carried and nibble at the rest as he went along. Now, however, with matters waiting on Kruger’s advice and opinions, he chose to cook his meal.
He had salvaged all the material from his space suit which seemed likely to be of use and which was not too awkward to carry. While a fire-lighter is in no sense normal space-suit equipment, he had improvised one from the tiny sun-battery and a coil and condenser from the radio. He used it now, to the utter fascination of Dar Lang Ahn. Satisfied that its spark was still good he went looking for dry fuel.
This is not too common in a rain forest, but Kruger had had plenty of practice locating it before he had reached the lava field. Dar, utterly ignorant of what he wanted, simply followed and watched, munching his own
