Cycle of Fire

III. PEDAGOGY

THE MUD GEYSER, and several others, had been left miles behind, but an occasional lava outcrop still kept Dar following Kruger’s lead. The direction of travel was still to the northeast — the boy had made no attempt to change that — but in some subtle fashion the relationship between the two had changed.

For one thing the inevitable mistrust that they had felt at the beginning was just as inevitably fading. Another change, less logical in origin, was due to the almost comical misunderstanding which had resulted in Dar’s firm conviction that Kruger was a native of the little-known volcanic areas of Abyormen, while Kruger himself was just as sure that Dar Lang Ahn did not belong on the planet at all. As a result Dar was constantly looking to Kruger for advice. If he shot a new type of animal — new, that is, to him — he would wait for the boy’s verdict before eating it. Naturally quite a lot of perfectly good meat was wasted, since Kruger was in no hurry to risk his health and life testing new types of food.

At last, however, Dar killed a creature of the same type as the one the human being had tried when they first entered the jungle. The pilot did not even ask questions about this one; he borrowed the knife and set to work. Kruger looked at his portion with some distaste when it finally came.

He did not like raw meat, though it had certainly not harmed him the other time. On that occasion he had not suggested stopping to make a fire, since Dar was the moral leader of the association and his idea of a meal was apparently to eat on the spot whatever could not be carried and nibble at the rest as he went along. Now, however, with matters waiting on Kruger’s advice and opinions, he chose to cook his meal.

He had salvaged all the material from his space suit which seemed likely to be of use and which was not too awkward to carry. While a fire-lighter is in no sense normal space-suit equipment, he had improvised one from the tiny sun-battery and a coil and condenser from the radio. He used it now, to the utter fascination of Dar Lang Ahn. Satisfied that its spark was still good he went looking for dry fuel.

This is not too common in a rain forest, but Kruger had had plenty of practice locating it before he had reached the lava field. Dar, utterly ignorant of what he wanted, simply followed and watched, munching his own share of the meat as he did so. He was interested in a detached sort of way, feeling that possibly whatever was going on might be worth recording but that he wouldn’t bet on it.

The detached attitude vanished as he felt the first wave of heat from Kruger’s fire. He dropped his meat and sprang to the place where his crossbow was lying, snatching up the weapon as though his life depended on his speed. He made no sound, and Kruger, whose attention was focused on building up his fire, did not see what was going on. A struggle that quite literally involved his own life went on behind his back completely without his knowledge.

Dar had actually started to cock his bow when he stopped, one eye on his work and one on the preoccupied human being. For long moments he thought, wavering from one viewpoint to its opposite. Fire was the prime horror of Dar Lang Ahn’s life; he had grown up with a terror of it. His people never used it, but lightning or accidental concentration of Arren’s rays sometimes caused a blaze. The Teachers and the books had agreed in their endless admonitions to avoid it. It was the end of all life — was the end that would be taken by his own life, naturally, but that was not due for several years yet. Since reaching the edge of the lava field and thereby coming once more within reach of ample food and water, Dar had put his expectation of premature death out of his mind and it was quite a shock to have it brought back so suddenly.

Still, the giant did not seem to have Dar Lang Ahn in mind. Perhaps the fire was merely a part of Kruger’s personal and private business, having nothing to do with Dar at all. After all, that would be a rather likely need for someone native to the neighborhood of a volcano. With this thought in his mind Dar relaxed enough to put the crossbow down, though he did not wander very far from the place where he laid it.

He continued to watch the human being, though his attitude bore no resemblance to the lackadaisical one he had shown while the firewood was being gathered. Mentally he was taking notes; the Teachers at the Ice Ramparts would be wanting to put this in a book, beyond all question.

The strange creature had first built his fire up until it was burning quite strongly, then he permitted it to die down until the flames had practically disappeared. A great deal of heat was still being radiated, however, and when it had reached what appeared to be a satisfactory state Kruger startled his companion still more by deliberately exposing his meat to it.

Dar knew that the boy was hungry; he had already formed a fairly exact idea of how much food a human being needed. Why the strange being should proceed to ruin his meal, then, was a mystery of the first order.

When Kruger completed his weird ritual by consuming the meat and then proceeded to extinguish the fire, Dar had long passed his capacity for further surprise. Seeing that the matter was finished he simply rose to his feet and resumed the journey, a sorely puzzled being.

As a matter of fact the notion that the ceremony was over was decidedly erroneous, though it was an error shared by both Dar and Kruger. The latter received the first intimations of the mistake within an hour after completing the meal, and shortly after the first twinges he was rolling helplessly on the ground. Dar, who had seen such symptoms among his own people but could imagine no cause for them this time, could think of nothing to do that might be helpful. Intermittently for more than an hour the cramps continued, giving Kruger just time between attacks to wonder whether he had made his final error in judgment. Eventually his outraged stomach returned the cause of the disturbance and, after a few more admonitory twinges, left him in peace. It was some time, however, before he was really able to give his mind to the problem of why meat which was perfectly wholesome raw should change in such a drastic manner when cooked. Could the smoke given off by the fire have anything to do with it? Perhaps something like the creosote that preserved smoked meat at home — but it would take a well-equipped organic chemistry lab to graduate any of his hypotheses to the theory class. The observed fact was enough for him now — slightly too much, in fact.

The rains had ceased at the usual time after the reappearance of Theer in the south and the temperature was rising again. Each time the red star made another of its odd loops through the sky Kruger wondered whether he would be able to stand the next one. Long months ago he had realized that he could not, at least in the midlatitudes where he had been at the time. On that part of the planet the loops were entirely above the horizon — Theer never set at all. It did, however, vary enormously in apparent size; it was merely Kruger’s misfortune that its greatest apparent diameter, and with it the highest temperature of this sweat-box of a planet, occurred while it was at nearly the farthest north point of its loop. The misfortune lay in the fact that, from where he had been left, the loop itself was in the southern half of the sky and to get any part of it below the horizon was obviously best accomplished by going north. There had been, of course, the question of whether he could go far enough north; his knowledge of the geography of this world was confined to his memory of what he had seen during the landing orbit. That wasn’t much. Still, there had seemed to be nothing to do but take the chance.

He was still not far enough north to be completely out of the red sun’s reach, but there seemed a good chance that he might make it. It was now above the horizon for about eight days of its eighteen-day period, if Kruger’s watch could still be trusted. He would have been quite happy if the question of Alcyone, which Dar Lang Ahn called Arren, were not forcing itself more and more prominently into his mind. It was all very well to turn a red dwarf sun from a permanent nuisance into an intermittent one, but the advantages tended to disappear when at the same time a blue giant changed from a periodic trouble into a constant fixture. With this matter steadily in the front of his mind Kruger was doing his utmost to get such concepts as temperature into their common language so that he could find out from his companion whether or not there was a spot on the planet which a human being would consider comfortable.

Dar’s language was, very slowly, becoming less of a nightmare. As a result a picture was gradually building up in Kruger’s mind of the goal that lay ahead of them.

Apparently Dar also wanted a cool place. That information was received by Kruger with unconcealed glee. A catch might lie in what constituted Dar’s concept of “cool,” but at least he seemed willing to apply the opposite adjectives to their present environment, which was an encouraging sign. Another was the pilot’s persistent attempt to describe something which seemed, in the face of all probabilities, to be ice.

Kruger found this theory completely beyond belief at first and kept pestering his companion for a more careful description. However, Dar stuck to his terminology, and finally it occurred to his listener that perhaps the space ship which had brought Dar to Abyormen might be their goal. That should certainly have ice available, at least artificially.

There was the matter of the ocean in their path, whose existence he had gathered earlier. As the boy was not yet sure whether an actual ocean or simply a large lake was involved, he asked whether it would be possible to walk around it. The emphasis which Dar placed on his attempt to express the impossibility of such a move convinced him that “ocean” must be the right word.

It was only at this point that Kruger thought of the possibility of maps. Granting that he had no artistic talent, he should still be able to make a sufficiently good plan of their route together from the lava field to their present position for Dar to grasp what he was trying to do; that would get the word “map” across, and from there on the drawing problem would be Dar Lang Ahn’s.

This meant interrupting their journey while the map was drawn, but the effort was an unqualified success. Not only did Dar understand the word and the request that followed its transmission, but he proved to be an excellent cartographer — a natural result of years in the air, since he tended to think of a map as an aerial picture anyway. He made sketch after sketch, clarifying the entire route they were to follow and displaying tremendous knowledge of the planet as a whole.

They were to proceed on their present northeast course until they reached the sea. That was not the closest way to the coast, but it brought them to a point at which a chain of islands stretched across to another continental mass. Getting across the ocean, they would head back along the coast to the left. Kruger assumed that this would be west, but actually it was east; he was already much closer than he realized to Abyormen’s north pole, and would pass it before reaching the coast. Dar did not indicate this on his map. They would travel along the new coast for a considerable distance and then head inland. Their journey appeared to terminate shortly thereafter. Dar indicated a vast area with a satisfied air, said, “Ice!” and sat back as though he had completed a great work. Kruger did not feel quite so happy. He indicated the area the other had just drawn.

“You mean — it’s somewhere in this region? Here? or here?”

“Right here.” Dar indicated the point at which he had already terminated their course line.

“But what do you mean by the ice all over this place? You can’t have ships covering half the planet.”

“I don’t understand ‘ships.’ Ice is all over.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Dar had had enough language trouble by this time not to feel particularly exasperated at Kruger’s slowness; he proceeded to draw more maps. These were circular, and it quickly became evident that they were views of the whole planet from different directions. His ability to draw such charts was strictly in accord with Kruger’s ideas about his origin, so the boy did not feel any surprise from this source. The details did bother him, however.

“You mean that there really is a very big area covered with ice.”

“Two of them.” Dar indicated his charts. Kruger frowned. Ice caps are noticeable features from space, and he had certainly seen none during the landing. Of course, he was not a trained observer, and had been paying more attention to the behavior of the pilot during the landing maneuver; and Abyormen’s atmosphere has its share of clouds. He could quite possibly have missed them for any of those reasons. There was certainly no chance of their having been on the dark side of the planet; at the time of the landing the world’s position with respect to the suns was such that there was no dark side.

At any rate the presence of a glacial area was extremely encouraging, particularly right now. The jungle did afford some protection from the approaching Theer which had been lacking on the lava desert, but the higher humidity pretty well offset this advantage. Kruger did not dare discard any more of his clothing because of the ultraviolet light coming from Arren.

As it turned out, he simply had to stop traveling for about fifty hours about the time of Theer’s closest approach — the time for which Dar had a phrase in his language, which Kruger naturally translated as “summer.” They camped by a stream which the boy hoped would not go dry while they remained, built a shelter whose thatched roof was meant to provide shade and was also kept wet to provide some evaporational cooling, and settled down to wait. Theer’s crimson disk, partly visible through the trees, swelled slowly as it moved eastward and slightly higher; continued to swell as it arched across the top of its path and back toward the horizon which Kruger still considered the southeastern one, though his proximity to the pole had made it more like northeast; reached its maximum size, and began visibly to shrink once more before it finally disappeared. It had swung through fully a third of its apparent loop in the sky in only fifty hours, for which Kruger was duly thankful. With its disappearance the journey was resumed.

“Just how sure are you that we are heading toward the part of the coast nearest the island chain?” This question was finally understood.

“I can’t be positive, but we’re somewhere near right. I’ve flown over this route a lot.”

“You can’t be using landmarks, though; we couldn’t see anything much smaller than a mountain with all this jungle, and there haven’t been any mountains. Couldn’t we be working to one side or the other?”

“It is possible but doesn’t matter greatly. There are low hills — volcanic cones — along the coast and you can climb one of those if we don’t see any islands from the shore.” Kruger skipped for the moment the question of why he should be the one to do the climbing.

“But suppose even from a hilltop we can’t see any of the island chain. Which way should we travel? Wouldn’t it be better to strike for the coast now, so that there’ll be no doubt of the direction after we get there?”

“But I don’t know the route you suggest.”

“You don’t know this one, either; you’ve never walked it before. If your maps are right there’s no chance of getting lost, and much less chance than otherwise of wasting time once we reach the coast.”

Dar Lang Ahn pondered this bit of wisdom for a few moments and then agreed unreservedly. The course was changed accordingly. All went on as before. It did occur afterward to Dar that perhaps Kruger had been motivated by a desire to get back into a volcanic region sooner.

There were still several hundred miles to go, though Kruger was not sure of this — scale had been one feature left in considerable doubt on Dar’s maps. A novelist of the nineteenth century could have made much of every mile of it; the way was made difficult by all the natural characteristics of a rain forest. Undergrowth and swamps delayed them; dangerous animals threatened them; time seemed to stretch onward endlessly and unchangingly. An occasional lava outcrop, usually heavily eroded, served to ease travel for a few miles, but the jungle always returned.

Very gradually, as they advanced, the portion of Theer’s loop above the horizon diminished from the eight days near the mudpots to seven, and then to six. Simultaneously the tilt of Arren’s diurnal circle changed. On the lava field it had been higher in the south than in the north; now the blue star held nearly even altitude all around the horizon. It was this observation which forced on Kruger’s attention the fact that they must be very close to Abyormen’s north pole. That, in a way, was good, but in another it bothered him. If they were practically at the pole, where was this ice cap? Or, since Dar stuck to his claim that it was across an ocean in the direction they were traveling, why wasn’t it at the pole? Kruger was sure that his problem could be solved in minutes by anyone with the training, but a sixteen-year-old cadet whose planned career involves piloting interstellar vessels simply doesn’t get that kind of education.

In any case he was still not absolutely sure that he was interested in the ice cap itself; it seemed likely that Dar’s people had simply landed their ship at its edge and Dar was using it as a reference point. The boy was not quite sure what he should do when he got to the ship, but there was no doubt in his mind about the advisability of going there.

All through the long journey the speed and clarity of their conversation improved. The language used was a hodge-podge of the two native tongues involved, but it contained a far larger proportion of Dar’s words. This was deliberate on Kruger’s part; when he did meet others of Dar’s race he wanted to be able to speak to them without needing Dar as an interpreter. Before the pair reached the coast they were talking quite freely, though reiteration and sign language were still frequently necessary; but the basic misunderstanding was still present and seemed less likely than ever to be cleared up. The trouble now was that misunderstandings frequently went unrecognized; each party thought he had expressed himself clearly, or understood perfectly, as the case might be, when actually the thought received was very different from that transmitted. An example of this occurred one day when the question of possible rescue by some of Dar’s people had arisen.

“You say that a good many of your people make the same trip in gliders that you were making when you crashed,” remarked Kruger. “Mightn’t it be a good idea, when we get to the point on the coast that’s back under your regular route, to light a smudge fire to attract their attention? We might be saved an awful lot of walking.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see how attracting their attention would help us, even if you could make a big enough fire to be seen.”

“Wouldn’t they come down and rescue us?”

“Well — yes, I suppose so. I’m afraid I don’t want to reach the Ramparts quite that quickly, though.”

In this case, it is possible that the matter might have been cleared up if Kruger had pursued the conversation a little farther, but he had heard Dar speak of the Ramparts earlier and had gathered an impression that when he spoke of the ice region in that way it carried a religious significance which the little pilot was reluctant to discuss. Presumably these trips, then, were scheduled in a fashion which called for Dar’s presence only at certain times. Even mishaps such as those the pilot had suffered had their place in the program. This was a far-fetched idea, of course, but it fitted with many of the things Dar Lang Ahn had said and Kruger did not want to offend his little companion. Therefore the subject of the conversation was changed, and Dar assumed that he had explained what would happen, if by some mischance one of his friends were to examine the neighborhood of a fire closely and find Dar Lang Ahn beside it.

“What will you do after getting to the ice?” was Kruger’s next question. If that was getting into a dangerous subject he assumed Dar could simply skip any matters he didn’t want to discuss.

“There are a few years to go,” the other replied calmly. “Twenty-two, if I remember the date correctly. If there is a glider available I suppose I will continue my regular work. If not, then whatever the Teachers say.”

Kruger had come to interpret the word “year” as a cycle of the red sun; therefore the time Dar had mentioned was about thirteen months. Before he could ask another question the native put one of his own.

“What will you do? Will you actually come all the way to the ice and face the Teachers? I rather thought that you might be planning to stay at the coast when we get there.”

“I think it will be more comfortable for me to go on with you as long as you’ll let me. They’re your people, of course; if you don’t want me to see them, that’s up to you.”

“I very much want you but wasn’t sure how you’d face the idea.”

“Why should it bother me? I am in worse need of help than you are, and perhaps your Teachers will be willing to give me the assistance I would like. I suppose your group is busy, if you expect to go right back to work, but I can wait. Perhaps after the time you mention is up they’ll be free to give me a hand. I’ll be willing to do what I can for you folks in the meantime.”

Dar did not answer this at once; by the time Kruger knew him well enough to have realized what a shock his words must have caused he had forgotten the details of the conversation. In all likelihood he never did realize Dar’s feelings at that moment. The answer was as noncommittal a one as the little pilot could manage at the time.

“I’m sure something can be worked out.”

The basic misunderstanding was more firmly entrenched than ever, at least on one side.

Nevertheless a personal friendship was growing between the two. At any rate Kruger will swear to this; he knows how he felt about Dar, and has some pretty good evidence on how the alien felt about him. One piece of that evidence came during the journey, at the time they reached the coast — which they finally did, with several of the twenty-two “years” Dar had mentioned used up on the way.

The jungle had thinned somewhat, and patches of lava and volcanic ash were exposed in greater numbers. Evidently the local volcanoes had been active fairly recently as geological phenomena go. There was a great deal more climbing than there had been for some hundreds of miles. None of the elevations was more than a few hundred feet high, but they were frequently fairly steep, the angle of repose for loose volcanic ash is of the order of thirty degrees. Remembering what Dar had said earlier, Kruger suspected that they would come in sight of the sea before very long, but it took him by surprise just the same.

They had reached the brow of one of the hills, apparently just like all the others, when they came to a clearing larger than most which gave them their first real view ahead for many miles. There was plenty to see.

Two fairly large volcanic cones, nearly a thousand feet in height, lay on either side of their course to the north. Between these sparkled a field of intense blue that could only be the body df water they had sought so long. Even this, however, did not claim much of the attention of either traveler. Instead, they both spent several minutes staring at the area between them and the sea-a region nestling in the cleft between the volcanoes and spreading part way up their slopes. Then they turned to each other almost simultaneously and asked, “Your people?”