Cycle of Fire

XIII. ASTRONOMY; XENOLOGY

THE FLIER that took the geological report to the astronomers also carried Dar Lang Ahn and Nils Kruger back to the Alphard. Dar had followed the summary as far as it went, but he did not see just how astronomy was needed to check on the theories of the rock specialists. His curiosity about all matters allied to the physical sciences had reached a level that few human beings experience after leaving childhood.

He listened carefully as the record of the geologist’s summary was played over by the astronomers, but heard nothing he did not remember from its original utterance. He listened carefully to the conversation of these new scientists and never considered that they might regard his insistent questions as a discourtesy — which, as a matter of fact, most of them did not.

“I am afraid I do not know exactly what you mean when you say that Arren may have ‘captured’ Theer and Abyormen,” Dar would ask at one point.

“I think young Kruger explained something of Newton’s laws to you,” was the beginning of the answer.

“Normally, any two bodies attract each other according to definite law, and that attraction, plus the ordinary fact of inertia — the thing that keeps a stone traveling after it leaves the hand that throws it — results in definite, predictable motions of those bodies, such as the Alphard around your planet at this moment. By ‘capture’ we simply imply that originally Theer did not travel around Arren, but had its own path through space, and this path carried it close to Arren. The star’s attractive forces changed the paths so that now they travel around each other.”

“That seems clear enough. But I gathered that some of you found fault with this idea?”

“Plenty of fault. Capture doesn’t ordinarily occur; it calls, as a rule, for very special circumstances.”

“Why? If this force varies with distance as you say, I should think that all that would be needed would be for the two objects to get close enough together. In fact, I don’t see why Theer and Arren haven’t fallen into each other long ago, if what you say is right.”

“Good point. The trouble is, as two objects fall toward each other their speed increases — you can see that. Unless they are aimed exactly right to start with they won’t collide, and unless they collide they’ll start going apart again, slowing down just as fast as they picked up speed before. The outbound path will be shaped just like the inbound one, so you won’t see them spiraling together. Here, I’ll show you.”

Since the Alphard was in free fall, demonstration of the point was easy enough. Two electrically charged pith balls in the evacuated air lock behaved in a manner that made the whole affair quite clear to the curious Abyormenite.

“Then how could a capture ever take place?” he asked when his instructor had re-entered the main part of the ship and doffed his space suit. “I suppose it’s possible some way or you wouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

“It’s possible — just. If a third object is present, moving exactly the right way with respect to the others, things may turn out just right, though the probability of such an event is not awfully high; and if I’d let air into the lock a moment ago its friction would have caused the pith balls to spiral together.”

“I suppose the idea is that some of the other stars in this group served as the third body.”

“I hate to depend on such an idea, because they’re pretty far apart, but that may account for the situation.”

“At any rate it is possible that this sort of thing may account for the beginning of the hot times on Abyormen.”

“Possible. I’d not like to say more.” The Abyormenite had to be content with that — for the time being.

Naturally it did not take very many answers involving the terms “perhaps” and “probably” to start Dar pondering on the “how-do-you-know” type of question. Up to a point the astronomers bore with him even then, but eventually they suggested as tactfully as possible that he have Kruger teach him a little elementary algebra.

It never occurred to Dar to be hurt. He was mildly annoyed at himself for not thinking of this before, since so many of his previous questions had involved bits of mathematics in their answers. He went gaily off to find Kruger, who no longer accompanied him everywhere since his great improvement in English.

Dar failed to notice the slight dismay that his request caused his human friend; he settled down and wanted to learn algebra at once. Kruger did his best, but was not the world’s best teacher. He might have done better had he not been obsessed with a fear that this sort of thing was likely to destroy Dar’s interest in science.

He need not have worried. Most people who suffer in mathematics do so because they treat it as something to be memorized, and memorization held no terrors for Dar Lang Ahn. Perhaps for that reason he was extremely slow in grasping the basic idea of algebra as a problem-solving tool; he could learn all the rules but, faced with a problem, had precisely the same trouble as so many high-school freshmen. However, it was Kruger rather than Dar who eventually sought relief from this task.

Finding a new subject to interest Dar was not difficult, but for private reasons Kruger felt that it should be a non-mathematical one this time. He shared the common belief about biology’s being such a subject, and decided that it was about time to find out what the life scientists had learned about Abyormen.

It turned out that this team had been trying for some time to solve the problem of examining the only ‘hot’ life form available — one of the Teachers in the volcano-warmed refuges. The individual at the geyser village was still not exactly cooperative, but they felt that they knew him better than any of the others; it was this being who had been selected to play host to a televison-equipped robot which the Alphard’s engineers had improvised. Dar, seeing this device, was immediately off on a new track, and Kruger was faced with explaining television and remote control. He was still trying when everyone went aboard the landing boat with the robot.

Actually Dar felt he had a fairly clear picture of what the apparatus did, and he was beginning to get a very good idea of his chances of learning how it was done. He listened while Kruger talked to the Teacher on the boat’s radio during the landing, but made no comments of his own.

“We would appreciate it if you would allow our robot to enter your retreat. We are sure it can stand the conditions.”

“Why should I do this? What good will it do either of us?”

“You have seen us, and must have formed some of your opinions as a result. Don’t you think we might modify some of our beliefs after seeing you? After all, you have claimed many times that we do not understand you, since we do not agree with your views about the spreading of knowledge. It seems to me that you would be willing to do anything which will increase our understanding.”

“How do you know I have ever seen you? I told you that I knew of no substance which would keep our environments apart and which could also be seen through.”

“Then you didn’t tell the whole truth — you have a television device of some sort. You saw clearly enough to ask about those iron belt buckles that Dar wears.”

“Very well. But how sure can I be that your seeing me will bring you strange people to your right minds?”

“I cannot tell; how can I promise what we’ll conclude from evidence we don’t yet possess? In any case you can learn more of us.”

“I have no particular interest in learning more about you.”

“You did when you were asking me all those questions a few years back.”

“I learned what I needed to know then.”

“Many of the people are learning about our science, not just Dar Lang Ahn. There were scores of them watching while we investigated a cave far to the south.”

“There seems little I can do to stop it.”

“But if you will also learn from us, you could at least have some idea of what the others are finding out; and you would be able to exercise some control over what your own people learn when their time of living arrives.”

Dar was a trifle confused by this argument; he did not entirely understand what the boy was trying to do and understood even less the mental operations of the distant Teacher. He did not know whether or not to be surprised when this argument seemed to convince the creature, but he could tell that Kruger was satisfied with the result.

The robot, small though it was, was too big to go through the trap at the place where Dar and Kruger had talked to the Teacher. At the latter’s direction, the flier was landed near the crater in which the two travelers had been trapped for so long and the machine carried to the building in which they had found the generators. The men returned to the flier, where they all gathered around the television screen tuned to the robot’s transmitter.

“What next?” one of the men asked the Teacher.

“Send your machine down the ramp.” The operator complied; the little box rolled on its caterpillar treads down the slippery surface. The light grew dimmer as the bottom of the ramp was approached, and a bulb on the top of the robot was lighted to permit them to see.

“Along the corridor. Make no turns; there are other passages.” The machine advanced. The corridor was long and apparently led deep into the mountain; it was some time before the way was blocked by a fairly solid door.

“Wait.” They obeyed, and after a short time the door opened.

“Come quickly.” The robot rolled on through and the door swung shut behind it. “Keep on; there are no more branches. I will come to meet your machine, but will travel slowly, as I have to bring my radio with me. I am still near the village.”

“You need not go to the trouble of traveling unless you would rather the robot did not see that part of your station,” replied one of the biologists. “The machine can make the trip without anyone’s being bothered.”

“Very well. I will wait here, and my companions can talk to you as well.”

There must have been a single long tunnel connecting the passages under the generator building with the area under the village by the geysers. It took a long time to traverse, but eventually the robot reached a point where the corridor suddenly expanded into a large chamber about eight feet high, from which a number of other openings branched. The spokesman, who had learned enough of the Abyormenite language to be independent of Kruger or Dar most of the time, informed the Teacher of the robot’s location and requested further directions.

“You are very close; it will be easier to show you the way. Wait there, and I will be with you in a moment.” The men around the television screen watched intently.

In a few seconds a flicker of motion appeared in one of the openings and every eye fixed instantly on its screened image. Their attention did not waver as the newcomer walked toward the robot.

No one was particularly surprised. All except Dar had had more or less experience on Earth’s exploring vessels, and had seen a wide variety of creatures turn out to be both intelligent and cultured.

This one was like nothing the Abyormenite had ever seen in his life. A melon-shaped body was supported on six limbs, so thick at the bases that they merged into each other but tapering nearly to points where they reached the floor. The human observers thought of an unusually fat-bodied starfish walking on the ends of its arms rather than spread out flat. In the light from the robot the upper third of the body appeared deep red to human eyes, with a stripe of the same color extending down to the end of each appendage; the rest was black. There were no visible eyes, ears, or similar items of equipment on the body, except for a spot at the very top which might have been anything from a closed mouth to a color peculiarity. Dar had no way of judging the size of the creature rom its televised image; the operator of the robot, judging its distance with the usual focusing lights, found that it was about Dar’s height and estimated that it must weigh eighty or ninety pounds.

“I take it you see me.” Dar got a distinct impression that the creature’s tone was reflecting irony. There was no room for any doubt concerning this thing’s identity, for the voice now coming from the robot’s pick-up was the same that they had been hearing all along. “If you will have your machine follow me we will be able to relax while you find out what you wish to know.” Without turning, the creature retraced its steps, and the robot followed. A short corridor led into a room about five feet high, very similar to one of those which Dar and Kruger had examined in the city. Dar watched eagerly, expecting to learn the uses of the various puzzling installations.

Some of them became obvious immediately. Three of the dome-shaped objects were occupied by creatures similar to their guide, their bodies centered on top and the six limbs draped down the side grooves. The guide himself went on to the end of the room and settled himself in one of the “wash-bowls,” his limbs spread radially in all directions. It was not possible to tell from appearances that the creatures were examining the robot but there seemed little doubt that they were.

The guide, from his “couch,” resumed the conversation.

“Here we are. Could you perhaps give us a more concrete idea of what you expect to learn by seeing us, and why that knowledge will make you more sympathetic with our ideas?”

“We hope to learn how you live, what you eat, what your abilities and limitations both physical and mental may be, and as much as possible about your connection with the ‘cold’ people who are your children and ancestors. With that knowledge, we may understand better why you object to the spread of technical knowledge on this world. At the moment I must confess that your attitude reminds us of certain historical groups on our own world, and every time in the past that such a group has managed to curtail or control the spread of knowledge the result has been extremely unfortunate. If the people of Abyormen are so different from us that this result should not be expected we’d like to know it.”

“How have the people who have seen you at your work reacted to all this new information?”

“They are almost without exception interested. One at least has learned a good deal, and convinced us that your people are at least as intelligent as ours.”

“I suppose you mean Dar Lang Ahn. No doubt he is planning to expand the refuges of his Teachers or construct a flying machine like yours?”

“He has made no mention of it, but you may ask him. He is here with us.”

Dar was startled at this turn of the conversation, but spoke without hesitation.

“Of course I had not thought of such a thing. I have not learned enough for either task in any case.”

“There is something else I trust you have not learned from these creatures, which your friend Kruger has taught me. However, what you have learned yourself will soon be of little importance.”

“Of course.” Dar became silent and the conversation’s subject changed.

“I suppose you control this machine by some modification of radio,” one of the beings on the dome-shaped “chairs” remarked. The biologist admitted that this was so. “What sort of waves do you use, that are effective through so much rock? The set with which we have been talking to you has a broadcasting antenna on the surface.”

“I cannot give that information in detail myself,” replied the biologist, “as it is not: my field of knowledge. The robot has an antenna, but it is not very noticeable; if you examine its body closely you will find a coil of wire wound many times about the upper part, just below the turret that carries the eye.” The questioner arose from his seat and walked toward the machine on all six limbs; Dar noticed that it betrayed none of the clumsiness or difficulty with motion so often showed, especially in the last few years, by his own Teachers. Arrived at the robot, the being stood on four of the legs and used the other two to grope over its surface. A bundle of small tendrils, which evidently served the purpose of fingers, became visible at the tip of each limb during this process.

“I can feel the coil,” it said after a moment, “though it is too small — at least: in its individual wires — to see.”

“I’m afraid the light is not very well located for that purpose,” replied the biologist. “We did not consider its use except for our own convenience.”

“What? You mean there is a light on this machine, too? When you started to speak I thought you referred to ours. If you will bring the robot over to it perhaps I can see a little better, but I doubt it; as I said, the wires are very fine.”

The biologists all saw what the trouble was, in general; the speaker said in a resigned tone, “Yes, there is a light on the robot, at the very top, a small cylinder which you can probably feel even if you can’t see it. Where is the one to which you were referring?”

“There.” Another limb left the floor and gestured. Dar Lang Ahn, following the indication, saw only the pipe-and-nozzle arrangement which Kruger had described as a gas light.

“You mean that pipe?” asked the biologist. Kruger hastily explained his idea, speaking a split-second before Dar would have.

“But if it’s a gas jet why isn’t it lighted?” was the objection.

“Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a hydrogen flame that doesn’t show up in the light from our robot.” Instantly the operator cut the light in question, but nothing was visible on the screen and he immediately restored it. During the brief exchange the Teacher had affirmed that the pipe in question was indeed what he meant.

“Apparently we see by different kinds of light,” the biologist said. “Were you aware of that? Your ‘cold’ people are a little different from us in that respect, but we are nearly enough alike to use the same lighting devices, so you must differ from them, too.”

“We knew that they could see smaller objects than we, but did not know the reason. We did not know that there were different kinds of light.”

“You are not aware that the waves your radio uses are the same, except for length, as those used for seeing?”

“Ridiculous! Radio waves travel too rapidly for the speed to be measured, if they take any time at all for transit. The waves of sight, if they are waves, travel little faster than those of sound.”

“Oh-ho-o-o.” The human speaker was buried in thought for a moment. Then he asked, “Could you explain how that light of yours works?”

“It is simply a steam jet, expanding through a nozzle of a particular shape. It would be very difficult to describe the shape, at least in words that we both know.”

“Never mind; you have told me enough. What I fail to understand now is how you could possibly know anything about the suns; you certainly can’t ‘see’ them.”

“Of course not; they can only be felt.”

Dar Lang Ahn had been left behind some sentences before, and in hasty whispers the boy tried to explain what was going on.

“The ‘hot’ people don’t see the way we do at all; it’s even worse than the difference between you and me. We at least see by the same general kind of light — electromagnetic waves. From what this one says, they use some form of sound — very high frequency, I guess, since he said something about its traveling a little faster than ‘ordinary’ sound.”

“But how could anyone see with sound?”

“I suppose you could see, after a fashion, with anything that traveled in a straight line, and sound will do that if nothing interferes with it. The very short sound waves-ultrasonics — are better than the ones we talk with in that respect. Of course, they wouldn’t show anything that was very small; he said the wires were too fine to see, you remember.”

The two brought their attention back to the radio conversation — at least, Kruger did. Dar, as usual, had something new to think about.

“You must have done some rather careful thinking yourselves to have deduced as much about this planetary system as you have,” the biologist was saying, “since you can only detect objects outside Abyormen’s atmosphere if they are radiating enough heat to feel.”

“The picture I gave to your Nils Kruger was only one of several theories,” the being replied calmly.

“It happens to be about right, as far as it goes. But if you can do that sort: of thing with scientific reasoning why are you so prejudiced against it?”

“I wish you would stop reiterating that question. To answer it, however, what good does it do us? Are we any better off for knowing that Abyormen goes around Theer and Theer around Arren? I admit that sort of knowledge is harmless, since it cannot lead to dangerous activity, but it is a waste of time.”

“In other words you divide scientific knowledge into two classes — useless items and dangerous ones.”

“Practically. There is an occasional exception; the person who invented these lights did some good, of course. However, it is necessary to examine each new item of knowledge to make sure that it will not be dangerous.”

“I begin to see your viewpoint. I take it, then, that you do not mind our wasting our time by finding things out about you.”

“I don’t care what you do with your time. Ask your question.”

The scientists complied, and gradually Dar Lang Ahn began to understand the sort of beings his ancestors had been — and his children would be.

Their cities were scattered all over Abyormen, but they were invariably in volcanic areas where a few of their inhabitants could retreat underground and survive through the time of cold, so none of Dar’s generation ever went near them — the fire taboo took care of that. It seemed likely, though the Teacher never admitted it in so many words, that the taboo was another example of influence of the “hot” Teachers over the “cold” ones. No such prohibition existed for the “hot” race, who lived and died where they chose; hence, metal articles such as Dar’s belt buckles might be, and often were, found in or near low-temperature cities at the start of the “cold” life cycle. Like Dar’s generation the others took great pains to insure the transmission of knowledge from one cycle to the next, though they depended less on books than on the memory of their Teachers. When Dar interrupted the questioning to ask why it would not be better for the knowledge to go from “hot” to “cold” and back to “hot” again, thus permitting both races to help in its development, the Teacher pointed out patiently that it would be virtually impossible to control the spread of information if this were done.

They were fairly competent electricians and excellent civil engineers. Their chemistry seemed good, surprisingly enough to a race whose chemists depended heavily on sight. Astronomy, naturally, was almost nonexistent and the deeper branches of physics quite beyond them so far. They had radioactive elements, of course, but had not the faintest idea of the cause of their behavior.

Many of the human questions puzzled Dar, of course, and in some cases this was not due to his ignorance of human science. As nearly as he could tell, the men were trying to find out how these Teachers felt about Dar’s own people — that is, whether they liked them, respected them, hated them as necessary inferiors, or simply regarded them as a minor but important nuisance. Dar remembered that one of the beings present had claimed friendship with him on the basis of blood relationship, though he could not for the life of him see how such relationship had been determined.

This question also occurred to the biologist, who had been one of those listening in during the interception of Kruger’s first radio conversation with the Teacher and had later asked for a translation of it. Rather to Dar’s surprise the Teacher had an answer.

“We arrange for the circumstances, or at least the location, of many of our ancestors’ deaths. In a short time the people of this village will be ordered to the crater where Dar and Kruger were trapped for a time; there we can observe the death and the beginning of the new lives, and can keep track of who is who’s offspring. We also arrange to die ourselves at preselected places when the cold season is about to start, and try to learn from the ‘cold’ Teachers the various places at which their new groups at the beginning of their time of living to catch the people are captured — they go out into the wilds in hunting new people, who are nothing more than wild animals at the time.”

“I should think they would miss some.”

“They do, as nearly as we can tell. Every now and then a member of our race turns up, or sometimes even a small group of them, whose parent must have survived the whole cold season as a wild animal; at least, we have no record of him.”

“Don’t you know how many children a given person will have?”

“It is quite impossible to tell, depending on things such as his individual weight.”

“But that doesn’t seem to vary much.”

“During normal life, no, but at the time of dying one may have gone for very long periods without food, or on the other hand have eaten very heavily and very recently — all according to the opportunities. Also it is impossible to tell whether any of the young children have been eaten by wild animals before they are caught, in the case of Dar Lang Ahn’s people, since they do not take proper care of them as we do.”

“I see.” So did Dar. Good though his memory was it contained little of his brief existence before being “caught,” but what little there was fitted in with what the Teacher said. He wondered why his own Teachers did not take precautions like those — and then realized that they had no chance; either the “hot” people would have to cooperate, which they seemed unwilling to do, or his own race would have to keep a group of the others under control during the hot period, as this creature did with his villagers during the cold. This seemed difficult, to put it mildly; the other race had got far enough ahead technically to have pretty complete control of the situation. Dar began to suspect strongly that this Teacher had not been frank; there were reasons other than his personal disapproval of science behind his objections to the introduction of human knowledge.

That thought grew in his mind as the conversation went on, and gave birth to others. It was Dar Lang Ahn, after the robot had started back to the flier, who made the suggestion that some of the other Teachers in their volcanically warmed retreats be contacted and questioned; and even Kruger, who knew him better than any other human being ever would, did not realize just what he was trying to find out.