It was nearly a mile and a half away, and he could make out no details; but he was certain it was no bird. The irregularity caused by Ken’s dangling form gave just a suggestion of oddness at that distance. Detailed or not, however, Roger never thought of doubting what it was; and with a whoop that might or might not reach his sister’s ears for all he cared at the moment, he headed downhill at a breakneck pace.
For a short time he made excellent speed, the irregularity of the rocks offering no obstacle that his alert eyes and active muscles could not overcome without trouble. Then he reached the forest, and was slowed considerably. For a short distance he kept up the furious effort with which he had started; then realizing that he had at least one hill to cross and another to climb, he eased off a little.
He had wet feet, thoroughly scratched legs, and a decided shortness of wind when he reached the hilltop toward which the torpedo had seemed to be descending, some three quarters of an hour later. He had seen no sign of Edith — he had, in fact, completely forgotten her. She might have come back to mind as he paused at the top of the small mountain to gain his breath and look around for the object of his search; but as it happened, the torpedo was in sight, only a short distance down the other side. So was Sallman Ken.
Roger had seen pictures of the tremendous pressure suits which have from time to time been constructed for deep-sea exploration. The sight of Ken, therefore, did not astonish him too much — certainly less than the sight of a Sarrian without armor would have done. The suit the scientist was wearing humanized his appearance considerably, since a human being would not have had to be too greatly distorted to get into it.
The legs, for engineering reasons, had only a single “knee,” corresponding to the upper joint of the Sarrian limb; the body was about human size, and cylindrical in shape; there were only two upper limbs. These were more flexible than a human being would have needed in a similar suit, but they at least gave no indication that the creature wearing them was controlling them with two tentacles each. The handlers at their extremities were natural enough, though more complicated than the claw-like devices the boy had seen in the diving suit pictures.
At his distance, he could not see clearly through the transparent ports in the helmet; and so for some moments he failed to realize just how unhuman the wearer of the clumsy garment was.
For perhaps half a minute, Roger simply stared; then he unloosed the yell which interrupted Ken’s “embarkation.” The scientist’s attention had been completely taken up with this task, and he had not seen Roger at all before the cry; after it, he saw nothing else. He himself was not facing the direction from which the sound had come, but one of the transparent ports in his helmet was; and he was much too interested to devote attention to anything like turning the armor, after his first look at the being charging downhill toward him. He simply stood, watching with the one eye he could bring to bear. It never occurred to him for an instant that the creature might be hostile.
Roger never thought of the possibility either. His mind resembled that of Ken much too closely, in spite of the overwhelming physical differences. They simply stood facing each other — Ken finally did swing his armor around, so he could use both eyes — and silently absorbed all the details their respective optics could pick out. Each had an advantage — Roger in the fact that the light was normal for him, Ken in that the boy was not concealed in a couple of hundred pounds of metal. Roger could see the Sarrian’s face now, and his attention was taken up completely with the great, widespread, independently movable eyes, the blank where a nose should have been, and the broad, thin-lipped, surprisingly human mouth. The silence stretched out.
It was interrupted by Feth, whose anxiety had been increasing with each second that passed after Roger’s call.
“What’s happened? Is anything wrong? Are you all right, Ken?” The scientist found his voice.
“Perfectly all right. We have company, as I suppose you guessed.” He began to describe Roger as completely as possible, and was interrupted within a minute by the mechanic.
“It can’t be done. We’ll get a television set or a camera down there if I have to invent a whole new system. Never mind describing the thing — see if you can talk to it!”
Roger had heard none of this, since Feth had not energized the speaker in the torpedo. This oversight he now rectified, and Ken’s next words reached the boy clearly.
“What in the Galaxy can I say? Suppose this one has heard about our mistake the other night — suppose it’s even the same one? If I use the word ‘Gold’ it’ll either run or start fighting. I’m not afraid of it, but that certainly wouldn’t help the process of getting acquainted.”
“Well, you’ve just used the word. How did he take it? I have the main speaker on.” Ken, who had had no means of knowing that fact, cast a startled glance at Roger.
The boy, of course, had understood just the one word “Gold.” He probably would have missed that, except for the fact that Ken had accentuated it as one does a foreign word; but as it was, he thought that the previous conversation had been addressed to him. He had not distinguished the two voices, and all the sounds had come from the torpedo still poised just above Ken’s head.
“I don’t want any of your gold — not if it’s like the last batch!” Again only one word was understood by the listener. Ken grew hopeful Maybe this creature hadn’t heard, or maybe they had completely misinterpreted the sounds he and Feth had heard during the atmosphere test.
“Gold? “he asked.
“NO!” Roger shook his head negatively and backed away as he gave the emphatic answer. The first gesture meant nothing to the watching Sarrian, but the second seemed clear enough.
“Did you get that last sound of his on record, Feth? Judging by his actions, that’s the negative in their language. No gold!” he addressed the last two words after a brief pause. Roger relaxed visibly, but still spoke emphatically.
“No gold, no platinum, — I have no tobacco.” He spread empty hands and turned out his pockets, giving the Sarrian scientist a clue he had been waiting for on just how much of his covering was artificial.
“Point to things and name them!” Feth cut in from above. “How else can you learn a language? This chatter sounds as silly as anything I’ve ever heard!”
“All right — only remember, I can see as well as hear. That makes a bit of difference. If you expect any results, keep quiet; how’s this thing going to tell who’s talking? It all comes from the same loudspeaker. I’ll call you when I want to hear from you.” Feth gave no answer to this very sound point, and after waiting a minute Ken began to follow the mechanic’s suggestion.
Since Roger had been thinking of exactly the same thing, he caught on at once, and thereby gave the Sarrian a higher opinion of human intelligence than his conversations with Laj Drai had caused him to hold previously. The English words for rock, tree, bush, mountain, cloud, and the numbers up to ten were learned in short order. A few verbs were managed easily enough. At this point operations seemed likely to be suspended, and Roger was rather relieved to have the subject changed by a distant hail.
“My gosh! I forgot all about Edie! She must think I fell off a cliff or something!” He turned in the direction from which the faint voice seemed to be coming, and put all the strength of his lungs into an answering hail. His sister heard it and responded; and ten or fifteen minutes of lung strain brought her to the scene. She seemed a little dubious about approaching Ken at all closely, to Roger’s surprise.
“What’s the matter with you? He just wants to talk, as far as I can see.”
“Haven’t you got burned again?”
“No; why should I?”
“Can’t you feel the heat?”
Oddly enough, Roger hadn’t. He had never come closer than about fifteen feet to the scientist. The radiation from the armor was easily detectable at that distance without being uncomfortable, but he simply had not noticed it in the press of other interests. For Edith, whose strongest impression of the aliens had been derived from her brother’s experience of a few nights before, it was the most prominent characteristic of the thing standing before them.
With the matter brought to his notice, Roger approached the alien more closely, and extended a cautious hand toward the metal. He stopped it more than a foot away.
“My gosh, he certainly
“Maybe. I’d like to know how it can live when it’s that hot, though. So would Dad. He ought to be here anyway. Had I better go tell him, while you keep the thing here?”
“I don’t know how I’d keep it. Besides, it would be awful late by the time he got here. Let’s try to make a
