Murray Leinster - Keyhole

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Keyhole

There’s a story about a psychologist who was studying the intelligence of a chimpanzee. He

led the chimp into a room full of toys, went out, closed the door and put his eye to the keyhole

to see what the chimp was doing. He found himself gazing into a glittering interested brown eye

only inches from his own. The chimp was looking through the keyhole to see what the psychologist

was doing.

When they brought Butch into the station in Tycho Crater he seemed to shrivel as the

gravity coils in the air lock went on. He was impossible to begin with. He was all big eyes and

skinny arms and legs, and he was very young and he didn’t need air to breathe. Worden saw him as a

limp bundle of bristly fur and terrified eyes as his captors handed him over.

“Are you crazy?” demanded Worden angrily. “Bringing him in like this? Would you take a

human baby into eight gravities? Get out of the way!”

He rushed for the nursery that had been made ready for somebody like Butch. There was a

rebuilt dwelling cave on one side. The other side was a human school room. And under the nursery

the gravity coils had been turned off so that in that room things had only the weight that was

proper to them on the Moon.

The rest of the station had coils to bring everything up to normal weight for Earth.

Otherwise the staff of the station would be seasick most of the time. Butch was in the Earth-

gravity part of the station when he was delivered, and he couldn’t lift a furry spindly paw.

In the nursery, though, it was different. Worden put him on the floor. Worden was the

uncomfortable one there—his weight only twenty pounds instead of a normal hundred and sixty. He

swayed and reeled as a man does on the Moon without gravity coils to steady him.

But that was the normal thing to Butch. He uncurled himself and suddenly flashed across

the nursery to the reconstructed dwelling-cave. It was a pretty good job, that cave. There were

the five-foot chipped rocks shaped like dunce caps, found in all residences of Butch’s race. There

was the rocking stone on its base of other flattened rocks. But the spear stones were fastened

down with wire in case Butch got ideas.

Butch streaked it to these familiar objects. He swarmed up one of the dunce-cap stones and

locked his arms and legs about its top, clinging close. Then he was still. Worden regarded him.

Butch was motionless for minutes, seeming to take in as much as possible of his surroundings

without moving even his eyes.

Suddenly his head moved. He took in more of his environment. Then he stirred a third time

and seemed to look at Worden with an extraordinary intensity— whether of fear or pleading Worden

could not tell.

“Hmm,” said Worden, “so that’s what those stones are for! Perches or beds or roosts, eh?

I’m your nurse, fella. We’re playing a dirty trick on you but we can’t help it.”

He knew Butch couldn’t understand, but he talked to him as a man does talk to a dog or a

baby. It isn’t sensible, but it’s necessary.

“We’re going to raise you up to be a traitor to your kinfolk,” he said with some grimness.

“I don’t like it, but it has to be done. So I’m going to be very kind to you as part of the

conspiracy. Real kindness would suggest that I kill you instead—but I can’t do that.”

Butch stared at him, unblinking and motionless. He looked something like an Earth monkey

but not too much so. He was completely impossible but he looked pathetic.

Worden said bitterly, “You’re in your nursery, Butch. Make yourself at home!”

He went out and closed the door behind him. Outside he glanced at the video screens that

showed the interior of the nursery from four different angles. Butch remained still for a long

time. Then he slipped down to the floor. This time he ignored the dwelling-cave of the nursery.

He went interestedly to the human-culture part. He examined everything there with his

oversized soft eyes. He touched everything with his incredibly handlike tiny paws. But his touches

were tentative. Nothing was actually disturbed when he finished his examination.

He went swiftly back to the dunce-cap rock, swarmed up it, locked his arms and legs about

it again, blinked rapidly and seemed to go to sleep. He remained motionless with closed eyes until

Worden grew tired of watching him and moved away.

The whole alTair was preposterous and infuriating. The first men to land on the Moon knew

that it was a dead world. The astronomers had been saying so for a hundred years, and the first

and second expeditions to reach Luna from Earth found nothing to contradict the theory.

But a man from the third expedition saw something moving among the upflung rocks of the

Moon’s landscape and he shot it and the existence of Butch’s kind was discovered. It was

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Murray Leinster - Keyhole

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