The clicking voice sounded: "I isn"t know English." "Then-uh-then why do you speak English?"
"You speak English," explained the mystery, logically enough.
"I don"t mean why. I mean how!"
But Pat had overcome a part of her terrified astonishment, and her quick mind perceived a clue.
"Ham," she whispered tensely, "it uses the words we use. It gets the meaning from us!
"I get the meaning from you," confirmed the thing un-grammatically.
Light dawned on Ham. "Lord!" he gasped. "Then it"s up to us to give it a vocabulary."
"You speak, I speak," suggested the creature.
"Sure! See, Pat? We can say just anything." He paused. "Let"s see-" "When in the course of human events it-"
"Shut up!" snapped Pat. "Yankee! You"re on Crown ter-ritory now. To be or not to be; that is the question-""
Ham grinned and was silent. When she had exhausted her memory, he took up the task: "Once upon a time there were three bears-"
And so it went. Suddenly the situation struck him as fan-tastically ridiculous-there was Pat carefully relating the story of Little Red Riding Hood to a humorless monstrosity of the night side of Venus! The girl cast him a perplexed glance as he roared into a gale of laughter.
"Tell him the one about the traveling man and the farmer"s daughter!" he said, choking. "See if you can get a smile from him!" She joined his laughter. "But it"s really a serious matter," she concluded. "Imagine it, Ham! Intelligent life on the dark side! Or are you intelligent?" she asked suddenly of the thing on the ice.
"I am intelligent," it a.s.sured her. "I am intelligently intelli-gent."
"At least you"re a marvelous linguist," said the girl. "Did you ever hear of learning English in half an hour, Ham? Think of that!" Apparently her fear of the creature had vanished.
"Well, let"s make use of it," suggested Ham. "What"s your name, friend?"
There was no reply.
"Of course," put in Pat. "He can"t tell us his name until we give it to him in English, and we can"t do that because-Oh, well, let"s call him Oscar, then. That"ll serve."
"Good enough. Oscar, what are you, anyway?"
"Human, I"m a man."
"Eh? I"ll be d.a.m.ned if you are!"
"Those are the words you"ve given me. To me I am a man to you."
"Wait a moment. "To me I am-" I see, Pat. He means that the only words we have for what he considers himself are words like man and human. Well, what are your people, then?"
"People."
"I mean your race. What race do you belong to?" "Human."
"Ow!" groaned Ham. "You try, Pat."
"Oscar," said the girl, "you"re human. Are you a mammal?" "To me man is a mammal to you."
"Oh, good heavens!" She tried again. "Oscar, how does your race reproduce?"
"I have not the words."
"Are you born?"
The queer face, or faceless body, of the creature changed slightly. Heavier lids dropped over the semitransparent ones that shielded its many eyes; it was almost as if the thing frowned in concentration.
"We are not born," he clicked."Then-seeds, spores, parthenogenesis? Or fissure?" "Spores," shrilled the mystery, "and fissure."
"But-"
She paused, nonplussed. In the momentary silence came the mocking hoot of a triops far to their left, and both turned involuntarily, stared, and recoiled aghast. At the very extremity of their beam one of the laughing demons had seized and was bearing away what was beyond doubt one of the creatures of the caves. And to add to the horror, all the rest squatted in utter indifference before their burrows.
"Oscar!" Pat screamed. "They got one of you!"
She broke off suddenly at the crack of Ham"s revolver, but it was a futile shot.
"O-oh!"
she gasped. "The devils! They got one!" There was no comment at all from the creature before them. "Oscar," she cried, "don"t you care? They murdered one of you! Don"t you understand?"
"Yes."
"But-doesn"t it affect you at all?" The creatures had come, somehow, to hold a sort of human sympathy in Pat"s mind. They could talk; they were more than beasts. "Don"t you care at all?"
"No."
"But what are those devils to you? What do they do that you let them murder you?"
"They eat us," said Oscar placidly.
"Oh!" gasped Pat in horror. "But-but why don"t-"
She broke off; the creature was backing slowly and methodically into its burrow.
"Wait!" she cried. "They can"t come here! Our lights-" The clicking voice drifted out: "It is cold. I go because of the cold."
There was silence.
It was colder. The gusty underwind moaned more steadily now, and glancing along the ridge, Pat saw that every one of the cave creatures was slipping like Oscar into his burrow. She turned a helpless gaze on Ham.
"Did I-dream this?" she whispered.
"Then both of us dreamed it, Pat." He took her arm and drew her back toward the rocket, whose round ports glowed an invitation through the dusk.
But once in the warm interior, with her clumsy outer garments removed, Pat drew her dainty legs under her, lighted a cigarette, and fell to more rational consideration of the mystery.
"There"s something we don"t understand about this, Ham. Did you sense anything queer about Oscar"s mind?" "It"s a devilishly quick one!"
"Yes; he"s intelligent enough. Intelligence of the human level, or even"-she hesitated-"above the human. But it isn"t a human mind. It"s different, somehow-alien, strange. I can"t quite express what I felt, but did you notice Oscar never asked a question? Not one!"
"Why-he didn"t, did he? That"s queer!"
"It"s darn queer. Any human intelligence, meeting another thinking form of life, would ask plenty of questions. We did." She blew a thoughtful puff of smoke. "And that isn"t all. That-that indifference of his when the triops attacked his fellow-was that human, or even earthly? I"
ve seen a hunting spider s.n.a.t.c.h one fly from a swarm of them without dis turbing the rest, but could that happen to intelligent creatures? It couldn"t; not even to brains as undeveloped as those in a herd of deer, or a flock of sparrows. Kill one and you frighen all."
"That"s true, Pat. They"re d.a.m.n queer ducks, these fellow citizens of Oscar"s. Queer animals."
"Animals? Don"t tell me you didn"t notice, Ham!" "Notice what?"
"Oscar"s no animal. He"s a plant-a warm-blooded, mobile vegetable! All the time we were talking to him he was rooting around below him with his-well, his root. And those things that looked like legs-they were pods. He didn"t walk on them; he dragged himself on his root. And what"s more he-"
"What"s more?"
"What"s more, Ham, those pods were the same sort as the ones that the triops threw at us in the canyon of the Mountains of Eternity, the ones that choked and smothered us so-"
"The ones that laid you out so cold, you mean."
"Anyway, I had wits enough to notice them!" she retorted, flushing. "But there"s part of the mystery,Ham. Oscar"s mind is a vegetable mind!" She paused, puffing her cigarette as he packed his pipe.
"Do you suppose," she asked suddenly, "that the presence of Oscar and his crew represents a menace to human occup-ancy of Venus? I know they"re dark-side creatures, but what if mines are discovered here? What if there turns out to be a field for commercial exploitation? Humans can"t live indefinitely away from sunlight, I know, but there might be a need for temporary colonies here, and what then?"
"Well, what then?" rejoined Ham.
"Yes; what then? Is there room on the same planet for two intelligent races? Won"t there be a conflict of interests sooner or later?"
"What of it?" he grunted. "Those things are primitive, Pat. They live in caves, without culture, without weapons. They"re no danger to man."
"But they"re magnificently intelligent. How do you know that these we"ve seen aren"t just a barbaric tribe and that somewhere on the vastness of the dark side there isn"t a vegetable civilization? You know civilization isn"t the personal prerogative of mankind, because look at the mighty decadent culture on Mars and the dead remnants on t.i.tan. Man has simply happened to have the strongest brand of it, al least so far."
"That"s true enough, Pat," he agreed. "But if Oscar"s fellows aren"t any more pugnacious than they were toward that murderous triops, then they aren"t much of a menace."
She shuddered. "I can"t understand that at all. I wonder if-" She paused, frowning.
"If what?"
"I-don"t know. I had an idea-a rather horrible idea." She looked up suddenly. "Ham, tomorrow I"m going to find out exactly how intelligent Oscar really is. Exactly how in-telligent-if I can."
There were certain difficulties, however. When Ham and Pat approached the ice ridge, plodding across the fantastic terrain, they found themselves in utter perplexity as to which of the row of caves was the one before which they had stood in conversation with Oscar. In the glittering reflections from their lamps each opening appeared exactly like every other, and the creatures at their mouths stared at them with lidded eyes in which there was no readable expression.
"Well," said Pat in puzzlement, "we"ll just have to try. You there, are you Oscar?"
The clicking voice sounded: "Yes."
"I don"t believe it," objected Ham. "He was over more to the right. Hey! Are you Oscar?"
Another voice clicked: "Yes."
"You can"t both be Oscar!"
Pat"s choice responded: "We are all Oscar."
"Oh, never mind," cut in Pat, forestalling Ham"s protests. "Apparently what one knows they all know, so it doesn"t make any difference which we choose. Oscar, you said yes-terday you were intelligent. Are you more intelligent than I am?"
"Yes. Much more intelligent.
"Rah!" snickered Ham. "Take that, Pat!"
She sniffed. "Well, that puts him miles above you. Yankee! Oscar, do you ever lie?"
Opaque lips dropped over translucent ones. "Lie," repeated the shrill voice. "Lie. No. There is no need."
"Well, do you-" She broke off suddenly at the sound of a dull pop. "What"s that? Ohl Look, Ham, one of his pods burst!" She drew back.
A sharply pungent odor a.s.sailed them, reminiscent of that dangerous hour in the canyon, but not strong enough this time to set Ham choking or send the girl reeling into uncon-sciousness. Sharp, acrid, and yet not entirely unpleasant.
"What"s that for, Oscar?"
"It is so we-" The voice cut short.
"Reproduce?" suggested Pat.
"Yes. Reproduce. The wind carries our spores to each other. We live where the wind is not steady.""But yesterday you said fissure was your method."
"Yes. The spores lodge against our bodies and there is a-" Again the voice died.
"A fertilization?" suggested the girl.
"No."
"Well, a-I know! An irritation!" ayes."
"That causes a tumorous growth?"
"Yes. When the growth is complete, we split."
"Ugh!" snorted Ham. "A tumor!"
"Shut up!" snapped the girl. "That"s all a baby is-a nor-mal tumor."