Someone else could.
Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination
of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new
antibiotic--and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked,
sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that
_may_ contain food.
Suppose you call him "Hatcher" (and suppose you call it a "him.")
Hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but
it did have females and he was certainly not that. Hatcher did not in
any way look like a human being, but they had features in common.
If Hatcher and McCray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance,
they might have got along very well. Hatcher, like McCray, was an
adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences
of his culture. Both enjoyed games--McCray baseball, poker and
three-dimensional chess; Hatcher a number of sports which defy human
description. Both held positions of some importance--considering their
ages--in the affairs of their respective worlds.
Physically they were nothing alike. Hatcher was a three-foot,
hard-shelled sphere of jelly. He had "arms" and "legs," but they were
not organically attached to "himself." They were snakelike things which
obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes
curl; but they did not touch him directly. Indeed, they worked as well
a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested
in the crevices they had been formed from in his "skin." At greater
distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the Law of
Inverse Squares.
Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the "probe team"
which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little
excited. His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on
various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest
limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a
state of violent commotion.
The probe team had had a shock.
"Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the
others mumbled agreement. Hatcher ordered silence, studying the
specimen from Earth.
After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman.
"Incredible--but it's true enough," he said. "I'd better report. Watch
him," he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to
watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of
them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of
a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as
Herrell McCray.
* * * * *
Hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in
which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all
probes would be in permanent session. They admitted him at once.
Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report:
"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to
inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own
members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure.
After observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable
to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him.
"This appeared to work well for a time. He seemed relatively
undisturbed. However, he then reverted to physical-contact,
manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had
provided for him.
"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs
in his breathing passage.
"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial
skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces."
The supervising council rocked with excitement. "You're sure?" demanded
one of the councilmen.
"Yes, sir. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces
now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating
a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the
vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing."
"Fantastic," breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. "How
about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?"
"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why; but
we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while."
The council conferred among itself for a moment, Hatcher waiting. It
was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in
the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going
on--knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the
dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for
him briefly and again produced the rising panic.
Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back.
"Stop fidgeting," commanded the council leader abruptly. "Hatcher, you
are to establish communication at once."
"But, sir...." Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly;
he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture
with. "We've done everything we dare. We've made the place homey
for him--" actually, what he said was more like, _we've warmed the
biophysical nuances of his enclosure_--"and tried to guess his needs;
and we're frightening him half to death. We _can't_ go faster. This
creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal
forces--heat, light, kinetic energy--for his life. His chemistry is not
ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is
closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves."
"Understood, Hatcher. In your first report you stated these creatures
were intelligent."
"Yes, sir. But not in our way."
"But in _a_ way, and you must learn that way. I know." One lobster-claw
shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself
in an admonitory gesture. "You want time. But we don't have time,
Hatcher. Yours is not the only probe team working. The Central Masses
team has just turned in a most alarming report."
"Have they secured a subject?" Hatcher demanded jealously.
The councillor paused. "Worse than that, Hatcher. I am afraid their
subjects have secured one of them. One of them is missing."
There was a moment's silence. Frozen, Hatcher could only wait. The
council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke
again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members
drifting about him.
Finally the councillor said, "I speak for all of us, I think. If the
Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably
narrowed. Indeed, we may not have any time at all. You must do
everything you can to establish communication with your subject."
"But the danger to the specimen--" Hatcher protested automatically.
"--is no greater," said the councillor, "than the danger to every one
of us if we do not find allies _now_."
* * * * *
Hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily.
It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a
reputation for demanding results at any cost--even at the cost of
destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible.
Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot
be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy
that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward
communication. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting
physical differences between the Earthman and his own people. But
Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough
getting him here.
Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of
his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he
took time to eat. In Hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not
entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his
body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which
Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the
eating room. He then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture
of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for
another day.
He returned quickly to the room.
His second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers
reported--nothing new--and asked about Hatcher's appearance before the
council. Hatcher passed the question off. He considered telling his
staff about the disappearance of the Central Masses team member, but
decided against it. He had not been told it was secret. On the other
hand, he had not been told it was not. Something of this importance was
not lightly to be gossiped about. For endless generations the threat
of the Old Ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical
beings from the Central Masses of the galaxy. One brush with them, in
ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people. Only by running and
hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it--with
its population--as a decoy, had they arrived at all.
Now they had detected mapping parties of the Old Ones dangerously near
the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they
had begun the Probe Teams to find some way of combating them, or of
fleeing again.
But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their
existence to their enemies--
"Hatcher!"
The call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. It was his
second in command, very excited. "What is it?" Hatcher demanded.
"Wait...."
Hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. Obviously something
was about to happen. He took the moment to call his members back to
him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted
themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into
his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had
just taken.... "Now!" cried the assistant. "Look!"
At what passed among Hatcher's people for a viewing console an image
was forming. Actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a
cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to
show.
Hatcher was startled. "Another one! And--is it a different species? Or
merely a different sex?"
"Study the probe for yourself," the assistant invited.
Hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless.
"No matter," he said at last. "Bring the other one in."
And then, in a completely different mood, "We may need him badly. We
may be in the process of killing our first one now."
"Killing him, Hatcher?"
Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like
puppies dislodged from suck. "Council's orders," he said. "We've got to
go into Stage Two of the project at once."