Hal Clement - Natives of Space

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Also by Hal Clement ... .

CYCLE OF FIRE

CLOSE TO CRITICAL

NATIVES

SPACE

Hal Clement

This is an original publication—not a reprint.

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW- YORK

CONTENTS

ASSUMPTION UNJUSTIFIED

TECHNICAL ERROR

IMPEDIMENT

ASSUMPTION UNJUS1IFIED: Copyright, 1946, in U.S.A. and Great Britain by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.

TECHNICAL ERROR: Copyright, 1943, in U.S.A. and Great Britain by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.

IMPEDIMENT: Copyright, 1942, in U.S.A. and Great Britain by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.

Printed in Canada

First Ballantine Printing: April 1965

Ballantine Books, Inc., 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10003

Assumption Unjustified

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Thrykar saw the glow that limned the broad pine trunk with radiance and sent an indefinite

shadow toward the spot where he lay, and knew that extreme caution must direct his actions from

then on. He had, of course, encountered living creatures as he had felt his way through the

darkness down the forested mountain side; but they had been small, harmless animals that had

fled precipitately as the sounds denoting his size or the odors that warned of his alienness had

reached their senses. Artificial light, however, which he and Tes had seen from the mountain top

and which was now just below him, meant intelligence; and intelligence meant—anything.

He felt the ridiculousness of his position. The idea of having not only to conceal his intentions,

but even his existence, from intelligent beings could seem only silly to a member of a culture that

embraced literally thousands of physically differing races, and Thrykar did have a rising desire to

stand on his feet and walk openly down the main thoroughfare of the little settlement in the

valley. He resisted the temptation principally because it was not an unexpected one; the handbook

had warned that such a reaction was probable—and warned in the strongest terms against

yielding to it.

Instead of yielding, therefore, he resumed his crawling, working his way headforemost downhill

until he had reached the tree. Hugging the rough trunk closely, he reached his eight feet of snaky

body to full height behind it, tapped out the prearranged signal to Tes on the small communicator

he carried, and began carefully examining the town and the ground between him and the outlying

houses.

It was not a large town. About three thousand human beings lived in it, though Thrykar was not

familiar enough with men to be able to judge that fact from the number of buildings. He did

realize that some of the structures were probably not dwelling places; the pur-poses of the railway

station became fairly clear as a lighted train chugged slowly into motion and snaked its way out

of town to the north. Most of the lights were concentrated within a few blocks of the station, and

it was only in that neighborhood that Thrykar could see the moving figures of human beings. A

few lighted windows, and the rather thinly scattered street lamps, were all that betrayed the true

size of the place.

There was another center of activity, however. As the sound of the train died out in the distance, a

rhythmic thudding manifested itself to Thrykar's auditory organs. It seemed to come from his

right, from that portion of the town nearest to the foot of the mountain. Leaning out from behind

his tree, he could see nothing in that direction; but a fact which he had only subconsciously noted

before was brought to prominence in his mind.

Only a few yards below him, the mountainside fell away abruptly in a sheer cliff which seemed,

in the darkness, to extend for some distance to either side of Thrykar's position. The undergrowth

which covered the slope continued to the very edge of this cliff; so the alien dropped once more

to the prone position and wormed his way downhill until he could look over. He hadn't im-proved

matters much, as the darkness was impenetrable to his eyes, but the sounds were a little clearer.

They were quite definitely coming from the right and below and after a moment's hesitation,

Thrykar began crawling along the cliff edge in that direction. The bushes, which grew thicker

here, hampered him somewhat; for the flexibility of his body, which was no thicker than a man's,

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was offset by the great, triangular, finlike appendages which extended more than two feet

outward on each side. These, too, were fairly flexible, however, ribbed as they were with

cartilage; and he managed to accommodate himself to the somewhat uncomfortable mode of

travel.

He had gone less than a hundred yards when he found the cliff edge to be curving outward and

down, as though it were the lip of a somewhat irregular vertical shaft cut into the mountain. This

impression was strengthened when the curve led back to the left, away from the source of sound

that Thrykar wished to investigate; but he continued to follow the edge, and eventually reached

its lowest point, which must have been almost directly beneath the place at which he had first

looked over. At this point things became interesting.

On Thrykar's left—that is, within the shaft—the drip-ping of water became audible; and at the

same time the bushes and irregular rocks disappeared, and he found himself on what could be

nothing but a badly kept road. He did not realize its condition at first; but within a few feet he

found a rivulet flowing across it, in a fairly deep gully which it had cut in the hard earth.

Investigating this flow of water, he found that its source was the shaftlike excavation, which was

apparently full of water almost to the level of the road. With growing enthusiasm, Thrykar found

that the hole was fully a hundred and fifty yards in the dimension running parallel to the face of

the moun-tain; and he had learned during his descent that it had fully half that measure in the

other direction. If it were only deep enough—he was on the point of entering the water to

investigate, when he remembered the communicator, which might suffer damage if wet, and from

which he had promised Tes not to separate himself. Instead of investigating the pit, therefore, he

turned back, following the road toward the sounds which had first roused his curiosity.

His progress, on the legs which were so ridiculously short for his height, was not rapid. In fifteen

minutes he had passed two more of the water-filled pits and was approaching a third. This he was

able to examine in more detail than the others, though he could not approach it closely; for the

road at this point, and the water near it, were illuminated by the first of the town's outlying street

lamps. A few yards farther, on the side of the road away from the pits, house lights began to be

visible; and, seeing them, Thrykar paused to consider.

The sound was evidently coming from farther inside the town. If he went any further in his

investigations, he not only sacrificed the shelter of darkness, but could also expect a heavier

concentration of human beings. On the other hand, his skin was dark in color, the lights were by

to means numerous, he was very curious about the sounds which had continued without

interruption since he had first heard them, and it would be necessary to confront a human being

eventually, in any case—though, if all went well, the human being would never know it. Thrykar

finally elected to proceed, with increased cau-tion.

He chose the side of the road away from the pits, as it was somewhat darker at first, and offered

some conceal-ment in the form of hedges and fences in front of the houses, which now began to

be more numerous. He walked, with his mincing gait, close beside these, standing at his full

height and letting the great, independent eyes set on either side of his neckless, rigidly set head

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rove constantly around the full circle of his vision. One more pit was passed in this fashion; but a

hundred yards further down the road, on the right side, a wall began which effectually cut off the

sight of any more, if they existed. It was a fence of boards, solidly built, and its top was fully two

feet above Thrykar's head. The sounds appeared to be coming from a point behind this barrier,

but somewhat further down the road.

Having come so far, the alien was human enough to dislike the idea of having wasted his efforts.

He crossed the road at a point midway between two street lamps. Between the pits, the brush-

covered slope of the hill came down almost to the thoroughfare; so he dropped flat once more to

take advantage of this cover as he approached the near end of the wall. He had hoped to find

access to the hinder side of the barrier, but he found that, instead of beginning where it was first

visible, the portion along the road was merely a continuation of a similar structure that came

down the hillside; and Thrykar considered it a waste of time to circumambulate the enclosure on

the chance of finding an opening.

Instead, he rose once more to his full height, and looked carefully about him. The neighborhood

still seemed deserted. Pressing close against the boards, he reached up and let the tips of his four

wiry tentacles curl over the top of the fence. The appendages, even at the roots, were not much

thicker than a human thumb, for they were, anatomically, detached portions of the great side fins

rather than legs and feet modified for prehensile use; unless they could be wound completely

around an object, they could not approach the gripping or pulling strength of the human hand and

arm. Thrykar, however, let his supple body sag in an S-curve, and straightened suddenly, leaping

upward; and at the same instant exerted all the strength of which the slender limbs were capable.

The effort proved sufficient to get the upper portion of his body across the top of the fence, and

during the few seconds he was able to maintain the position he saw enough to satisfy him.

There were two more of the pits inside the fence, dimly lighted by electric bulbs. They contained

practically no water, and were enormously deep—the nearer, whose bottom was visible to

Thrykar, was over two hundred feet from the edge to the loose blocks of stone that lay about in

the depths. The pits were quarries, quite evidently. The stone blocks and tools, as well as the

innumerable nearly flat faces on the granite walls, showed that fact clearly. The noises that had

aroused the alien's curiosity came from machines located at the bottom of the nearer pit; and the

existence of certain large pipes running up from them, as well as the almost complete absence of

water, assured him that they were pumps.

There was a further deduction to be drawn from the absence of water. These human beings were

strictly air-breathers—the handbook had told Thrykar and Tes that much; and it followed that the

pits farther along the mountain side, which had been allowed to fill with water, must no longer be

in use. If they were as deep as these, there was an ideal hiding place for the ship.

At that thought, Thrykar let himself slip down once more outside the fence. He flexed his body

once or twice to ease the ache where the edges of the boards had cut into his flesh, and started to

stretch his tentacles for the same purpose; but suddenly he froze to rigidity. Behind him, on the

road down which he had come, appeared a glow of yellow that brightened swiftly—so swiftly

that before he could move, its source had swept into sight around the last shallow curve in the

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Hal Clement - Natives of Space

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