Part 4 (1/2)
”I couldn't have been more surprised if it had! It drummed on its diaphragm, and then suddenly boomed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and gave its pushcart a vicious poke at me! I jumped aside, and away it went while I stared dumbly after it.
”A minute later another one came hurrying along. This one didn't pause, but simply drummed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and scurried by. How did it learn the phrase? Were all of the creatures in some sort of communication with each other? Were they all parts of some central organism? I don't know, though I think Tweel does.
”Anyway, the creatures went sailing past us, every one greeting us with the same statement. It got to be funny; I never thought to find so many friends on this G.o.d-forsaken ball! Finally I made a puzzled gesture to Tweel; I guess he understood, for he said, 'One-one-two--yes!--two-two-four--no!' Get it?”
”Sure,” said Harrison, ”It's a Martian nursery rhyme.”
”Yeah! Well, I was getting used to Tweel's symbolism, and I figured it out this way. 'One-one-two--yes!' The creatures were intelligent.
'Two-two-four--no!' Their intelligence was not of our order, but something different and beyond the logic of two and two is four. Maybe I missed his meaning. Perhaps he meant that their minds were of low degree, able to figure out the simple things--'One-one-two--yes!'--but not more difficult things--'Two-two-four--no!' But I think from what we saw later that he meant the other.
”After a few moments, the creatures came rus.h.i.+ng back--first one, then another. Their pushcarts were full of stones, sand, chunks of rubbery plants, and such rubbish as that. They droned out their friendly greeting, which didn't really sound so friendly, and dashed on. The third one I a.s.sumed to be my first acquaintance and I decided to have another chat with him. I stepped into his path again and waited.
”Up he came, booming out his 'We are v-r-r-riends' and stopped. I looked at him; four or five of his eyes looked at me. He tried his pa.s.sword again and gave a shove on his cart, but I stood firm. And then the--the dashed creature reached out one of his arms, and two finger-like nippers tweaked my nose!”
”Haw!” roared Harrison. ”Maybe the things have a sense of beauty!”
”Laugh!” grumbled Jarvis. ”I'd already had a nasty b.u.mp and a mean frostbite on that nose. Anyway, I yelled 'Ouch!' and jumped aside and the creature dashed away; but from then on, their greeting was 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' Queer beasts!
”Tweel and I followed the road squarely up to the nearest mound. The creatures were coming and going, paying us not the slightest attention, fetching their loads of rubbish. The road simply dived into an opening, and slanted down like an old mine, and in and out darted the barrel-people, greeting us with their eternal phrase.
”I looked in; there was a light somewhere below, and I was curious to see it. It didn't look like a flame or torch, you understand, but more like a civilized light, and I thought that I might get some clue as to the creatures' development. So in I went and Tweel tagged along, not without a few trills and twitters, however.
”The light was curious; it sputtered and flared like an old arc light, but came from a single black rod set in the wall of the corridor. It was electric, beyond doubt. The creatures were fairly civilized, apparently.
”Then I saw another light s.h.i.+ning on something that glittered and I went on to look at that, but it was only a heap of s.h.i.+ny sand. I turned toward the entrance to leave, and the Devil take me if it wasn't gone!
”I suppose the corridor had curved, or I'd stepped into a side pa.s.sage.
Anyway, I walked back in that direction I thought we'd come, and all I saw was more dimlit corridor. The place was a labyrinth! There was nothing but twisting pa.s.sages running every way, lit by occasional lights, and now and then a creature running by, sometimes with a pushcart, sometimes without.
”Well, I wasn't much worried at first. Tweel and I had only come a few steps from the entrance. But every move we made after that seemed to get us in deeper. Finally I tried following one of the creatures with an empty cart, thinking that he'd be going out for his rubbish, but he ran around aimlessly, into one pa.s.sage and out another. When he started das.h.i.+ng around a pillar like one of these j.a.panese waltzing mice, I gave up, dumped my water tank on the floor, and sat down.
”Tweel was as lost as I. I pointed up and he said 'No--no--no!' in a sort of helpless trill. And we couldn't get any help from the natives.
They paid no attention at all, except to a.s.sure us they were friends--ouch!
”Lord! I don't know how many hours or days we wandered around there! I slept twice from sheer exhaustion; Tweel never seemed to need sleep. We tried following only the upward corridors, but they'd run uphill a ways and then curve downwards. The temperature in that d.a.m.ned ant hill was constant; you couldn't tell night from day and after my first sleep I didn't know whether I'd slept one hour or thirteen, so I couldn't tell from my watch whether it was midnight or noon.
”We saw plenty of strange things. There were machines running in some of the corridors, but they didn't seem to be doing anything--just wheels turning. And several times I saw two barrel-beasts with a little one growing between them, joined to both.”
”Parthenogenesis!” exulted Leroy. ”Parthenogenesis by budding like _les tulipes_!”
”If you say so, Frenchy,” agreed Jarvis. ”The things never noticed us at all, except, as I say, to greet us with 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!'
They seemed to have no home-life of any sort, but just scurried around with their pushcarts, bringing in rubbish. And finally I discovered what they did with it.
”We'd had a little luck with a corridor, one that slanted upwards for a great distance. I was feeling that we ought to be close to the surface when suddenly the pa.s.sage debouched into a domed chamber, the only one we'd seen. And man!--I felt like dancing when I saw what looked like daylight through a crevice in the roof.
”There was a--a sort of machine in the chamber, just an enormous wheel that turned slowly, and one of the creatures was in the act of dumping his rubbish below it. The wheel ground it with a crunch--sand, stones, plants, all into powder that sifted away somewhere. While we watched, others filed in, repeating the process, and that seemed to be all. No rhyme nor reason to the whole thing--but that's characteristic of this crazy planet. And there was another fact that's almost too bizarre to believe.