ideas were in themselves repellent or disgusting, but because they were uncongenial to my mind. I don’t mean uncongenial to my personality or my idiosyncrasies, to the sum of differences that make up “me,” but uncongenial to the whole biological orientation of my thinking. The differences between protoplasmic and non-protoplasmic life must be enormous.
In the second place, there is a frustration. I said, “I didn’t want to think what I was thinking,” but it would be equally true to say that I couldn’t think it. Hence, I suppose, that sensation of ineffectuality.
And in the third place, there is a great boredom. Frustration often does make one feel bored, I suppose. I couldn’t apprehend my own thoughts. But whenever I finally did, I found them boring. They were so remote, so incomprehensible, that they were uninteresting.
But the thoughts themselves? What were they? I can’t say.
How confused all this is! Well, nothing is more tiresome than to describe the indescribable.
Perhaps it is true that the only creature that could understand the thoughts of a prott would be another prott.
May 10th. Were the “odd thoughts” the results of attempts on the protts’ part to communicate with me? I don’t think so. I believe they were near the ship, but out of “view-shot,” so to speak, and I picked up some of their interpersonal communications accidentally.
I have been devoting a good deal of thought to the problem of communicating with them. It is too bad that there is no way of projecting a visual image of myself onto the exterior of the ship. I have Matheson’s signalling devices, and next time—if there is a next—I shall certainly try them. I have little confidence in devices, however. I feel intuitively that it is going to have to be telepathy or nothing. But if they respond to the basic “Who?” with flight… well, I must think of something else.
Suppose I were to begin the attempt at contact with a “split question.”
“Splits” are hard for any telepath, a lmost impossible for me. But in just that difficulty, my hope of success might lie. After all, I suppose the prott flirted away from the ship at my “Who?” because mental contact with me was painful to them.
Later. Four of them are here now. I tried to split and they went away, but came back. I am going to try something else.
May 11th. It worked. My “three-way split”—something I had only read about in journals, but that I would never have believed myself capable of—was astoundingly effective.
Not at first, though. At my first attempt, the prott darted right out of the viewers. I had a moment of despair. Then, with an almost human effect of hesitation, reluctance, and inclination, they came back. They clustered around the viewer. Once more I sent out my impulse; sweat was running down my back with the effort. And they stayed.
I don’t know what I should have done if they hadn’t. A split is exhausting because, in addition to the three normal axes of the mind, it involves a fourth one, at right angles to all the others. A telepath would know what I mean. But a three-way split is, in the old-fashioned phrase, “lifting yourself up by your boot-straps.” Some experts say it’s impossible. I still have trouble believing I brought it off.
I did, however. There was a sudden rush, a gush, of communication. I’d like to try to get it down now, while it’s still fresh in my mind. But I’m too tired. Even the effort of using the playback is almost beyond me. I’ve got to rest.
Later. I’ve been asleep for four hours. I don’t think I ever slept so soundly. Now I’m almost myself again, except that my hands shake.
I said I wanted to get the communication with the prott down while it was still fresh. Already it has begun to seem a little remote, I suppose becau se the subject matter was inherently alien. But the primary impression I retain of it is the gush, the suddenness. It was like pulling the cork out of a bottle of warm champagne which has been thoroughly shaken up.
In the middle, I had to try to maintain my mental balance in the flood. It was difficult; no wonder the effort left me so tired. But I did learn basic things.
One: identity. The prott are individuals, and though their designations for themselves escape me, they have individual consciousness. This is not a small matter. Some protoplasmic life-forms have only group consciousness. Each of the four prott in my viewer was thoroughly aware of itself as distinct from the others.
Two: difference. The prott were not only aware of identity, they were aware of differences of class between themselves.
And I am of the opinion that these differences correspond to those shown on my photographic plates.
Three: place. The prott are quite clearly conscious that they are here and not somewhere else. This may seem either trivial or so basic as not to be worth bothering with. But there are whole groups of protoplasmic life- forms on Venus whose only cognizance of place is a distinction between “me” and “not-me.”
Four: time. For the prott, time is as it is for us, an irreversible flowing in one direction only. I caught in their thinking a hint of a discrimination between biological (for such a life-form? That is what it seemed) time and something else, I am not sure what.
Beyond these four basic things, I am unsure. I do feel, though it is perhaps over-optimistic of me, that further communication, communication of great interest, is possible. I feel that I may be able to discover what their optimum life conditions and habitat are. I do not despair of discovering how they reproduce themselves.
I have the feeling that there is something they want very much to tell me.
May 13th. Six prott today. According to my photographic record, only one of them was of the opaque solid- nucleus kind. The others all showed the luminous light-tracked mesh.
The communication was difficult. It is exhausting to me physically. I had again that sense of psychic pressure, of urgency, in their sendings. If I only knew what they wanted to “talk” about, it would be so much easier for me.
I have the impression that they have a psychic itch they want me to help them scratch. That’s silly? Yes, I know, yet that is the odd impression I have.
After they were gone, I analyzed my photographs carefully. The knotted light meshes are not identical in individuals. If the patterns are constant for individuals, it would seem that two of the light-mesh kind have been here before.
What do they want to talk about?
May 14th. Today the prott—seven of them—and I communicated about habitat. This much is fairly certain. It would appear—and I think that from now on any statement I make about them is going to have to be heavily qualified—it would appear that they are not necessarily confined to the lightless, heatless depths of space. I can’t be sure about this. But I thought I got the hint of something “solid” in their thinking.
Wild speculation: do they get their energy from stars?
Behind their sendings, I got again the hint of some other more desired communication. Something which at once attracts and—repels? frightens? embarrasses?
Sometimes the humor of my situation comes to me suddenly. An embarrassed prott! But I suppose there’s no reason why not.
All my visitors today were of the knotted network kind.
May 16th. No prott yesterday or today.
May 18th. At last! Three prott! From subsequent analysis of the network patterns, all had been here to interview me before. We began communication about habitat and what, with protoplasm, would be metabolic process, but they did not seem interested. They left soon.
Why do they visit the ship, anyhow? Curiosity? That motive must not be so powerful by now. Because of something they want from me? I imagine so; it is again an awareness of some psychic itch. And that gives me a
