Cycle of Fire

XI. ASTRONOMY; DIPLOMACY

MOST HUMAN beings continue hoping long after any logical excuse for it has died. The man going into battle against impossible odds, the pilot who stays with a blazing airplane to guide it away from a city, the condemned criminal in the death cell — few of them give up while they breathe. Nils Kruger had not entirely relinquished hope of seeing Earth again. He did not, however, expect to be rescued. He had had faint ideas, which he would have admitted himself were illogical, that perhaps by combining Abyormenite technology with his own some sort of ship able to cross the five hundred light years to the solar system might be built. Even after he had gained a fairly accurate idea of the technical limitations of Dar Lang Ahn’s race the thought had not entirely vanished; but unreasonable as he may have been in this respect, he never for an instant supposed that another terrestrial space ship would approach the Pleiades during his lifetime. There was too much else for them to do.

As a result the sound of an unmistakably human voice cutting in on his conversation with a creature who could hardly be less human gave Kruger quite literally the shock of his life. For some moments he was completely unable to speak. Several questions came from the radio, and when these were answered only by Dar Lang Ahn’s rather unfortunate attempts at English the disturbance in the distant space ship was nearly as great as that in the hut.

“That can’t be Kruger — he wouldn’t talk like that, and anyway he’s dead!”

“But where could they have learned English?”

“My year-old kid speaks better English than that!”

“Kruger, is that you or has the philology department gone off the rails?”

“I–I’m here all right, but you shouldn’t do things like that. What ship is that? and how come you were listening in? and what are you doing in the Pleiades anyway?”

“It’s your own ship, the Alphard; this is Donabed. That radio you have is pretty sad; I’m not sure of your voice either. We’ve been here a couple of weeks, and have been picking up and recording all the radio noise we could find in hopes of having some of the language in useful shape when we landed. I’m glad you were too sensible to expect us back; it seems that there’s something about this system that had thrown the astronomers into fits, and they had to come back to look for themselves. Is that radio a native product, or did you make it?”

“Strictly home grown.” Kruger was back in control of himself, though his knees still felt weak. “Just a minute, we have an audience that doesn’t speak English.” Kruger shifted back into the Abyormenite speech and explained to Dar and the Teacher what had happened. “Now, while you’re coming down, will you please explain to me just what is so peculiar about this place from the astronomer’s point of view?”

“I’m not an astrophysicist, but here’s the situation as I understand it,” returned Donabed. “You know the elementary facts about the sources of stellar energy, and that main-sequence stars like the sun and this red dwarf should be able to keep radiating at their present rate for billions of years. However, there are a lot of stars in space which are a lot more luminous than Sol, sometimes by a factor of tens of thousands. Suns like that are using up their hydrogen so rapidly that they should not be able to last more than a few million, or a few tens of millions, of years at the most. Alcyone, like several other stars in the Pleiades, is such a sun.

“So far, that’s all right. The Pleiades cluster is full of nebulous material, and presumably that is still combining to form other stars to add to the hundreds already in the group; but here we run into trouble. They’ve worked out to a fair degree of precision the sort of things that should happen to the condensing clouds. In some circumstances, with a certain amount of angular momentum, you can expect several stars to form, traveling in orbits about each other — a regular binary or multiple star system. In other cases, with less angular momentum, you get most of the mass in one star and the dregs left over forming a planetary system. It’s a little surprising, though not impossible, to get a double or multiple star with planets as well; but to get a star like Alcyone with planets anywhere near it is queer as all get-out! A sun like that is putting out radiation tens of thousands of times as intense as Sol’s; that radiation exerts pressure; and that pressure should easily be sufficient to push out of the neighborhood any solid particles that had any idea of coalescing into planets. That’s one of the things that can be computed and checked experimentally, and it’s hard to get around. For that reason the star-gazers were not too bothered when they found from our data that Alcyone had a red dwarf companion, but when they learned that the companion had a planet they went wild. We had quite a time persuading some of them that we hadn’t made some sort of silly mistake; we had to point out that we’d actually landed on the thing.”

“I’ll say we did!” Kruger muttered.

“You should know. By the way, its name is officially Kruger, if you care.”

“I’m afraid its name is Abyormen, if we follow accepted usage,” replied the boy. “But go on.”

“There’s not much more to tell. They hated like poison to give up their pet theories, and I’ve heard them speculating all the way out here about the possibility of the red sun’s having, been captured by Alcyone after its planet or planets formed, and so on. There’s lots of work to be done, and you can help a lot. I judge you’ve learned a good deal of the local language, and will save our time by acting as an interpreter.”

“Yes, up to a point; somehow whenever I talk to one of these people we get crossed up sooner or later. It may be happening without my even knowing it right now, since I haven’t even seen this fellow I’ve been talking to on the radio.”

“How’s that? Haven’t seen him?”

“No, and haven’t the faintest idea what he looks like. Look, Major, if you’ll come down and get me out of this steam bath I’ll be a lot better able to explain all this and, believe me, it will take quite a bit of explaining.”

“We’re on the way. Will you be coming up alone?” Kruger explained the question briefly to Dar and asked if he would care to go along. The native was a trifle dubious for a moment, then realized that more book material would undoubtedly be involved and agreed to accompany his friend.

“Dar Lang Ahn will come with me,” Kruger reported to Donabed.

“Will he need any special accommodation?”

“I’ve seen him perfectly comfortable on an ice field, and he’s made glider flights of fully two days without bothering to drink, so I don’t think temperature and humidity will bother him. I don’t know about pressure; as you say, it’s higher here.”

“How high does he go on these glider flights?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t any flight instruments, by our standards.”

“Did he ever get up near the top of the usual cumulus clouds?”

“Yes. I’ve been with him. He gets as high as he can whenever he can on long-distance flights.”

“All right. I don’t think terrestrial pressure will hurt him. You’d better explain the risks to him if you can, though, and let him make his own decision.”

Kruger was never actually sure whether Dar completely understood him or not, but he was standing beside Kruger when the Alphard’s landing tender settled into the clearing of the geysers. The Teacher had been informed of what was going on, and the boy had promised to resume contact with him on the ship’s radio equipment as soon as was practical. The hidden being had made no objection, though he must have realized that the move was taking Kruger out of his reach.

The flight back to the Alphard, which was circling safely beyond Abyormen’s atmosphere, was uneventful to all except Dar Lang Ahn. He did not ask a single question while it lasted, but his eyes took in everything there was to see. One peculiarity of his behavior was noticed by most of the human crew. In most cases when a more or less primitive creature is taken for a ride off his planet he spends most of the time looking at the world as seen from outside. Nearly all Dar’s attention, on the other hand, was devoted to the structure and handling of the tender. The only time he looked down for more than a moment at a time was when circular velocity was reached and the tender went weightless. Then he looked back at the surface for nearly a minute and, to the sincere astonishment of all watchers, took the phenomenon in his stride. Apparently he had convinced himself that the falling sensation did not represent an actual fall or, if it did, that the pilots would take care of the situation before it became dangerous. Major Donabed developed a healthy respect for Dar Lang Ahn in that moment; he had experienced too many educated human beings who had become hysterical in like circumstances.

Of course, reflected the boy, Dar is a flyer and gets plenty of brief low-weight jolts when he hits downdrafts or reaches the tops of updrafts, but they never last more than a second or two. The fellow was good; Kruger himself, after nearly an earthly year on the ground, was feeling a trifle queasy.

In due course the monstrous bulk of the Alphard was sighted, approached, and contacted, and the tender eased into the hull through its special lock. The group disembarked and a conference was called at once.

The meeting was held in the ship’s largest lounge, since everyone wanted to hear Kruger’s story. By common consent he made his report first, passing briefly over the way he had escaped death at the time he was abandoned and dwelling on his experiences as they applied to the plants, animals, minerals, and people of Abyormen. The lack of anything resembling fruit, the fact that the stems of many plants were edible but not very nourishing, the chances he had taken to find that they were at least not poisonous, and his determination to leave the hot, volcano-ridden area where he had been left and make his way to the pole, where it might be more comfortable, were woven into a reasonably concise account. Everyone who listened had some question or other when he was finished, however, and it was necessary for the Alphard’s commander to act as chairman.

“You must have had a bit of trouble setting up your direction, when you first started to travel.” This was one of the astronomers.

“It was a bit confusing.” Kruger smiled. “If the red sun had merely kept changing in size it wouldn’t have been bad, but it wobbled back and forth, at the place where I landed, from southeast to southwest and back again, in a way that took me quite a while to get used to. The blue one was easier — Alcyone rises in the east and sets in the west the way things ought to. At least, it does that far from the pole, and it was easy enough to see why it didn’t when I got further north.”

“Right. The red dwarf’s motions are natural enough, if you remember how eccentric the planet’s orbit is. How much does the libration amount to, in your experience? I’ve only seen the planet through about one revolution.”

“I’d say about sixty degrees each side of the mean.”

The astronomer nodded, and yielded the floor. The captain gave the nod to a geologist.

“You say nearly all the country you saw was volcanic?”

“On the continent where you found me, yes. Actually I didn’t cover too much of the planet, remember. The long peninsula I followed north…”

“About three thousand miles,” interjected a photographer.

“Thanks. Its full length was actively volcanic, and the continental region it projected from is largely covered 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 Alphard, answering his little friend’s questions as best he could.

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 stay on other planets; why not just visit, to trade or learn or simply look?”

“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, but at last his expression brightened a trifle. A few moments later he shoved himself into motion against the nearest wall and headed for the communication room.

The Teacher acknowledged the call at once.

“I suppose you have thought of some more arguments why I should favor the spread of your technology?”

“Not exactly,” replied Kruger. “I wanted to ask a question or two. You said that there were four of you Teachers at that city. I’d like to know whether the others share your attitude in this matter.”

“They do.” The answer was prompt and disconcerted the boy a trifle.

“All right. How about the Teachers in the other cities? I assume you have been telling them about all that has been happening.” This time the answer was not so prompt.

“As a matter of fact, we have not. We do not maintain constant communication; simply check with each other every year. If I were to call now they would probably not be listening. It does not matter; there is no doubt how they would feel. After all, we have maintained for many long years the policy of limiting technology for ourselves and making sure that we were the source of knowledge for the others — the radios they have at the Ice Ramparts were made by us, for example; they do not know how to do it.”

“I see.” The cadet was a trifle discouraged but by no means ready to give up. “Then you would not mind our visiting the other cities and contacting your fellow Teachers directly, to put the proposition to them.” He fervently hoped that it would not occur to the other to ask whether the human beings were all in accord on the matter.

“Certainly. You would, of course, explain the situation as you have to me; they would give the same answer.”

Kruger smiled wickedly.

“Yes, we might do that, or we might tell them a slightly different story — say, that your mind has become affected some way, and you had tricked some information out of us and were tired of the sacrifices involved in being a Teacher, and were going to build devices that would keep a larger part of the planet hot and stop your people’s time of dving…”

“I never heard such nonsense in my whole year of life!”

“Of course you haven’t. Neither have your friends in other cities. But how will they know it’s nonsense? Will they dare take the chance?” He paused, but no answer came from the radio. “I still think that there’s no need for your people to fly off into space just because they learn a little physics. Aren’t they as capable of seeing the dangers involved as you are?”

“Wait. I must think.” Silence reigned for many minutes, broken only by a faint crackle of static. Kruger waited tensely.

“You have taught me something, human being.” The Teacher’s voice finally sounded again. “I will not tell you what it is. But Dar Lang Ahn’s Teachers may learn what they can.” He said no more.

Kruger relaxed, with a grin spreading over his face. The plan would work; it couldn’t fail, now.

Dar Lang Ahn would soak up vast quantities of information, enough to fill many books — books which could not possibly be written before the time of dying. Dar Lang Ahn would return to the Ice Ramparts with his knowledge, and he would still be dictating it or writing it himself when the time came to seal the caverns against the rising temperature and changing atmosphere. He would still be inside when that happened, not out in the cities of the “cold” people dying with his fellows. Dar Lang Ahn, by sheer necessity, would become a Teacher; and Nils Kruger would not lose his little friend.