English.”
Lhin fumbled clumsily, trying to pin down the individual sounds to then’ meanings and remember them. “No sahffy Enlhis. No who came here. You—” He ran out of words and drew nearer, making motions toward Slim’s head, then his own. Surprisingly, Slim got it.
“He means he knows what we’re thinking, I guess. Telepathy.”
“Yeah? Marshies claim they can do it among themselves, but I never saw one read a human mind. They claim we don’t open up right. Maybe this Ream monkey’s lying to you.”
“I doubt it. Take another look at the radioactivity meter in the viability tester—men wouldn’t come here and go home without spreading the good word. Anyway, his name isn’t Ream. Lean comes closer to the sound he made, though we’ll never get it right.” He half sent a thought to Lhin, who dutifully pronounced his name again. “See? His liquid isn’t… it’s a glottal stop. And he makqb the final consonant a labial, though it sounds something like our dental. We can’t make sounds like that. Wonder how intelligent he is.”
He turned back into the ship before Lhin could puzzle out some kind of answer, and was out a moment later with a small bundle under his arm. “Space English code book,” he explained to Fats. “Same as they used to teach the Martians English a century ago.”
Then to Lhin: “Here are the six hundred most useful words of our language, organized, so it’ll beat waiting for you to pick them up bit by bit. You look at the diagrammed pictures while I say and think the word. Now. One —w-uh-nn; two—tuh-ooo. Getting it?”
Fats watched them for a while, half-amused, then grew tired of it. “Okay, Slim, you mollycoddle the native a while and see what you learn. I’m going over to the walls and investigate that radioactive stuff until you’re ready to start repairs. Wish radios weren’t so darned limited in these freighters and we could get a call through.”
He wandered off, but Lhin and Slim were hardly aware of it. They were going through the difficult task of organizing a means of communication, with almost no common background, which should have been worse than impossible in terms of hours. Yet, strange as the word associations and sounds were, and odd as their organization into meaningful groups, they were still only speech, after all. And Lhin had grown into life with a highly complex speech as natural to nun as breathing.
He twisted his lips over the sounds and nailed the meanings down in his mind, one by one, indelibly.
Fats finally found them in Lhin’s cave, tracing them by the sound of their voices, and sat down to watch, as an adult might watch a child playing with a dog. He bore Lhin no ill will, but neither could he regard the Moon man as anything but some clever animal, like the Martians or the primitives of Venus; if Slim enjoyed treating them as equals, let him have his way for the time.
Lhin was vaguely conscious of those thoughts and others more disturbing, but he was too wrapped up in the new experience of having some living mind to communicate with, after nearly a century of being alone with himself. And there were more important things. He wriggled his tail, spread his arms, and fought over the Earth sounds, while Slim followed as best he could.
Finally the Earth man nodded. “I think I get it. All of them died off except you, and you don’t like the idea of coming to a dead end. Umm. I wouldn’t either. So now you hope these Great Ones of yours—we call ’em God— have sent us down here to fix things up. How?”
Lhin beamed, his face contorting into a furrowed grimace of pleasure before he realized Slim misinterpreted the gesture. Slim meant well. Once he knew what was needed, perhaps he Would even give the copper gladly, since the old records showed that the third world was richest of all in minerals.
“Nra is needed. Life comes from making many simple things one not-simple thing—air, drink stuff, eat stuff, all that I have, so I live. But to begin the new life, Nra is needed. It makes things begin. The seed has no life—with Nra it lives. But I have no word.”
He waited impatiently while Slim digested that. “Sort of a vitamin or hormone, something like Vitamin E6, eh? Maybe we could make it, but—”
Lhin nodded. Surely the Great Ones were kind. His hearty were warm as he thought of the many seeds carefully wrapped and stored that could be made to grow with the needed copper. And now the Earth man was willing to help. A little longer and all would be well.
“No need to make/’ he piped happily. “Simple stuff. The seed or I can make it, in us. But we, need Nra to make it. See.” He pulped a handful of rock from the basket lying near, chewed it carefully, and indicated that it was being changed inside him.
Fats awoke to greater attention. “Do that again, monkey!”
Lhin obliged, curious to note that they apparently ate nothing other life had not prepared for them. “Darn. Rocks—just plain rocks—and he eats them. Has he got a craw like a bird, Slim?”
“He digests them. If you’ve read of those half-plant, half-animal things the Martians came from, you’ll know what his metabolism’s like. Look, Lhin, I take it you mean an element. Sodium, calcium, chlorine? No, I guess you’d have all those. Iodine, maybe? Hmmm.” He went over a couple of dozen he could imagine having anything to do with life, but copper was not among them, by accident, and a slow fear crept up into the Lunarite’s thoughts. This strange barrier to communication—would it ruin all?
He groped for the answer—and relaxed. Of course, though no common word existed, the element itself was common in structure. Hurriedly, he flipped the pages of the code book to a blank one and reached for the Earth man’s pencil. Then, as Slim and Fats stared curiously, he began sketching in the atomic structure of copper, particle by particle, from the center out, as the master physicists of his race had discovered it to be.
It meant nothing to them. Slim handed the paper back, shaking his head. “Fella, if I’m right in thinking that’s a picture of some atom, we’ve got a lot to learn back on earth.
Fats twistecf his lips. “If that’s an atom, I’m a fried egg. Come on, Slim, it’s sleepy time and you’ve fooled away half a day. Anyhow, I want to talk that radioactive business over with you. It’s so strong it’d cook us in half an hour if we weren’t wearing these portable nullifiers—yet the monkey seems to thrive on it. I got an idea.”
Slim came back from his brown study and stared at his watch. “Darn it! Look, Lhin, don’t give up yet, we’ll talk all this over tomorrow again. But Fats is right; it’s time for us to sleep. So long, fella.”
Lhin nodded a temporary farewell in his own tongue and slumped back on his rough bed. Outside, he heard Fats extolling a scheme of some kind for getting out the radioactives with Lhin’s help, somehow, and Slim’s protesting voice. But he paid no attention. The atomic structure had been right, he knew, but they were only groping toward it in their science, and their minds knew too little of the subject to enable them to grasp his pictures.
Chemical formulae? Reactions that would eliminate others, one by one? If they were chemists, perhaps, but even Slim knew too little for that. Yet, obviously, unless there was no copper on Earth, there was an answer somewhere. Surely the Great Ones whom they called God would never answer generations of faithful prayer with a mockery! There was an answer, and while they slept, he would find it, though he had to search through every record roll for clues.
Hours later he was trudging across the plain toward the ship, hope high again. The answer, once found, was simple. All elements formed themselves into families and classes. Slim had mentioned sodium, and copper was related in the more primitive tables, such as Earth might use. More important, its atomic number was twenty-nine by theory elementary enough for any race that could build rockets.
The locks were open, and he slipped through both, the wavering half-formed thoughts of the men leading him to them unerringly. Once hi their presence, he stopped, wondering about their habits. Already he had learned that what held true for his people was not necessarily the rule with them, and they might not approve of his arousing a sleeper. Finally, torn between politeness and impatience, he squatted on the metal floor, clutching the record roll, his nostrils sampling the metals around him. Copper was not there; but he hadn’t expected so rare an element, though there were others here that he failed completely to recognize and guessed were among the heavy ones almost lacking on the moon.
Fats gurgled and scrimmaged around with his arms, yawned, sat up, still half asleep. His thoughts were full of some Earth person of the female element which Lhin had noted was missing in these two, and what he’d do “when he got rich.” Lhin was highly interested in the thought pictures until he realized that it would be best not to intrude on these obviously secret things. He withdrew his mind just as the man noted him.
Fats was never at his best while waking up. He came to his feet with a bellow and grabbed for something. “Why, you sneaking little monkey! Trying to slip up and cut our—”
Lhin squealed and avoided the blow that would have left him a shapeless blob, uncertain of how he had
