the Dark Light Years (9 page)

"You have been given a rough guide to what we are doing.”

"But you don't seem to have a single one of their words definitely. Why couldn't you tackle what any lay-man would think would be the first steps, like getting them to count, and to name parts of their bodies and yours? Then at least you have something to begin on, rather than a few abstracts like 'Appearing carrying something'.”

Temple looked down at the Purple Emperors on his waistcoat, munched his lips, and then said, "Young man, a layman might indeed think those were the first steps. But my answer to that layman and to you is that such a catalogue is only possible if the enemy - the alien is pre-pared to open up a conversation. These two buggers - I beg your pardon, madam - these two fellows have no interest in communicating with us.”

"Why don't you get a computer on the job?”

"Your questions grow more foolish. You need common-sense on a job like this.
What damned good would a computer be?
It can't think, nor can it differentiate between two almost identical phonemes for us. All we need is time. You can't imagine - nor can your hypothetical layman -the difficulties that beset us, mainly because we are having to think in a realm where man has not had to think before.

Ask yourself this: what is language? And the answer is, human speech. Therefore we aren't just doing research, we "are inventing something new: non-human speech.”

The reporter nodded glumly, Dr. Temple huffed and puffed and sat down, Lattimore rose.
He perched his spectacles on the end of his nose and clasped his hands behind his back.

"
As you know, Doctor, I'm new around here, so I hope you'll appreciate I ask my questions in all innocence. My position is this. I'm a
skeptic
.
I know that we have investigated only three hundred planets in this universe, and I know that leaves a tidy few million to go.
but I still hold that three hundred is a fair sampling. None of them have yielded any form of life half as intelligent as my Siamese cat. This suggests to me that man is unique in the universe.”

"It should be no stronger than a suggestion." Temple said.

" Nor is it. Now, I don't give a row of pins if there is no other form of intelligent life in the universe; man has always been on his own, and that won't worry him. On the other hand, if some other intelligent form of human turns up elsewhere, then I'll welcome it as readily as the next man - provided it behaves itself.

"What sticks in my gullet is when someone brings back this couple of overgrown hogs that wallow in their own filth in a way no self-respecting Earth pig would do. given the option, and insists that we try and prove that they are intelligent people! It's just crazy. You yourself said that these hogs show no interest in trying to communicate with us. Very well. then, isn't that a sign that they have no intelligence? Who in all this room can honestly say they would want these hogs in their own house?”

Uproar broke out again. Everyone turned and argued, not merely with Lattimore, but with each other.

Finally it was Mrs. Warhoonss voice that rode over the rumpus.

"I have a great deal of sympathy with your position, Mr. Lattimore, and I am very glad you have consented to come down and sit in on our meeting. But the brief answer" to you is that, as life takes a multitude of different forms, so we should expect intelligence to take differing forms.

We cannot conceive a differing form of intelligence. We only know that it would widen the boundaries of our thought and understanding in a way that nothing else could. Therefore, when we think we have found such
intelligence
, we must make sure, even if the effort takes us years.”

"That is part of my point, madam," Lattimore said. "If intelligence were there, it would not take us years to detect We should recognize it right away, even if it came disguised as a turnip.”

"How do you account for the space ship on
Clementina
?'" Gerald Bone asked.

"I don't have to account for it! These big hogs should be able to account for it If they built it, then why don't they draw pictures of it when they're given pencils and paper?”

"Because they travel in it doesn't mean to say they built it."' "Can you imagine the lowest dumbest rating on an Earth cruiser getting captured by aliens and then being un-able to draw a picture of his ship when they brought him pencil and paper?”

Brebner asked, "And their language, how do you account for that?”

"
I enjoyed your animal imitations, Mr. Brebner," Lattimore said good-humouredly.
"But frankly, I converse more readily with my cat than you do with those two hogs.”

Ainson spoke for the first time. He spoke sharply, annoyed that a mere interloper should be belittling his discovery.

"
This is all very well, Mr. Lattimore, but you are dismissing too much too easily.
We know the ETA's have certain habits that are unpleasant by our standards.
But they don't behave together like animus; they provide companionship for each other.
They converse. And the space-ship is there, whatever you may say.”

"Maybe the spaceship is there. But what is the
connection
between the hogs and it? We don't know.

They may well be just the livestock that the real space
travelers
took along for food. I don't know; but you don't know either, and you are avoiding the obvious explanation.
Frankly, if I were in charge of this operation, I'd pass a hefty vote of censure on the captain of the Mariestopes and more particularly on his Master Explorer for carrying out such a sloppy piece of investigation on the spot”

At this, there was a sort of ominous and uneasy ground-swell about the room.
Only the reporters began to look a little happier. Sir Mihaly leant forward and explained to Lattimore who Ainson was.

Lattimore pulled a long face.

"Mr. Explorer Ainson, I fear I owe you an apology for having failed to recognize you. If you'd been here before the meeting began, we could have been introduced.”

"Unfortunately, this morning my wife -”

"But I must absolutely stick to what I said. The report on what happened on Clementina is pathetic in its amateurishness. Your stipulated week's
reconnoiter
of the planet was expired when you found these animals beside the spaceship, and rather than depart from schedule you just shot up the majority of them, took a few technishots of the scene, and blasted off. This ship, for all you know, may have been the equivalent of a cattle truck, with the cattle out to wallow, while two miles away in another valley was the real ship, with real bipeds like us, people -just like Mrs. Warhoon says - that we'd give our eyes and eye teeth to communicate with, and vice versa, you can be sure.

"No, I'm sorry. Mr. Ainson. but your committees here are more bogged down than they care to admit, simply because of bad field work on your part.”

Ainson had grown very red. Something ghastly had happened in the room. The feeling had gone against him. Everyone - he knew it without looking at them - everyone was sitting in silent approval of what Lattimore said.

"Any idiot can be wise after the event," he said. "You seem to fail to realize how unprecedented it all was. I -”

"I do realize how unprecedented it all was. I'm saying that it was unprecedented, and that therefore you should have been more thorough. Believe me. Mr. Ainson, I've read photostats of the report on the expedition and I've scrutinized the photographs that were taken, and I have the impression that the whole thing was conducted more like a big game hunt than an official expedition paid for with public money.”

"I was not responsible for the shooting of the six ETA's. A patrol ran into them, coming back to the ship late. It went to investigate the aliens, they attacked and were shot in self-
defense
. You should re-read the reports.”

"These hogs show no sign of being vicious. I don't believe that they attacked the patrol. I think they were trying to run away.”

Ainson looked about for help.

"I appeal to you, Mrs. Warhoon, is it reasonable to try and guess how these aliens behaved in their free state from a glance at their apathetic
behavior
in captivity?”

Mrs. Warboon had formed an immediate admiration for Bryant Lattimore; she liked a strong man.

"What other means have we for judging their
behavior
?" she asked.

"You have the reports, that's what. There is a full account there for you to study.”

Lattimore returned to the attack.

"What we have in the reports, Mr. Ainson, is a summary of what the leader of the patrol told you. Is he a reliable man?”

"Reliable? Yes, he is reliable enough. There is a war on in this country, you know, Mr. Lattimore, and we can't always choose the men we want”

"I see. And what was this man's name?”

And indeed what was his name? Young, beefy, rather sullen. Not a bad fellow. Horton? Halter? In a calmer atmosphere he would remember at once. Controlling his voice, Ainson said, "You will find his name in the written report.”

"All right, all right, Mr. Ainson. Obviously you have your answers. What I'm saying is that you should have returned with a lot more answers. You see you are some-thing of a keyman here, aren't you?

You're the Master Explorer. You were trained up to just this situation.
I'd say you have made it very difficult for all of us by producing inadequate or even conflicting data.”

Lattimore sat down, leaving Ainson standing.

"The nature of the data is to be conflicting," Ainson said. "Your job is to make sense of it, not to reject it. Nobody is to blame. If you have any complaints, then they must be forwarded to Captain Bargerone.

Captain Bargerone was in charge of the whole thing, not I. Oh, and Quilter was the name of the fellow in charge of the patrol. I've just remembered.”

Gerald Bone spoke without rising.

"As you know, I'm a novelist, Mr. Ainson. Perhaps in this distinguished company I should say 'only a novelist'. But one thing has worried me about your part in this.

"Mr. Lattimore says that you should have returned from Clementina with more answers than you did.

How-ever that may be, it does seem to me that you have returned with a few assumptions which, because they have come from you, have been accepted all round without challenge as fact.”

With dry mouth, Ainson waited for what was to come. Again he was aware that everyone was listening with a sort of predatory eagerness.

"We know that these ETA's were found by a river on Clementina. Everyone also seems to accept that they are not natives of that planet As far as I can see, this notion began with you. Is that so?”

The question was a relief. This Ainson could answer.

"The notion did begin with me, Mr. Bone, though I would call it a conclusion rather than a notion. I can explain it easily, even to a layman. These ETA's belonged to the ship; be quite clear about that Their excreta was caked all over the inside of it - a computed thirty days' accumulation of it As additional evidence, the ship was clearly built in their image.”

"The Mariestopes, you might say, is built in the image of the common dolphin. It proves nothing about the shape of the engineers who designed it.”

"Please be courteous enough to hear me out. We found no other mammalian type life of 12B - Clementina, as it is now called. We found no animal life larger than a two-inch tail-less lizard and no insect life larger than a type of bee as big as a common shrew. In a week, with stratospheric surveys day and night you cover a planet pretty thoroughly from pole to equator. Excluding the fish in the seas, we discovered that Clementina had no animal life worth mentioning - except these big creatures that turn the scales at twenty Earth stones. And they were together in one group by the spaceship. Clearly it is an absurdity to suppose them to be natives.”

"You found them beside a river. Why should they not be an aquatic animal, possibly one that spends most of its time at sea?”

Ainson opened and shut his mouth. "Sir Mihaly, this discussion naturally raises points that a layman can hardly be expected... I mean, no purpose is served....”

"Quite so," agreed Pasztor. "All the same, I think Gerald has an interesting point. Do you feel we can definitely rule out the possibility that these fellows are" aquatic?”

"As I've said, they came from the spaceship. That was absolutely conclusive, you have my word for it as the man on the spot." As he spoke, Ainson's eye went belligerently over the group; when it met Lattimore's eye, Lattimore spoke.

"I would say they had the lines of a marine animal -speaking purely as a layman, of course.”

"Perhaps they are aquatic on their own planet, but that has no bearing on what they were doing on Clementina," Ainson said. "Whatever you say, their spaceship is a spaceship, and consequently we have intelligence on our hands.”

Mihaly came to his rescue then, and called for the next report, but it was obvious that a vote of no confidence had been passed on Master Explorer Ainson.