_The science of language--an overly-neglected field for the
extrapolations of science-fiction--is put to brilliant use in this
powerful story. Against a background of ultimate peril from a
galactic invader, man (in this case, woman) goes back beyond Babel
to recall for humanity the places of the soul, where words are not
enough._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories October 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Every mind on earth capable of understanding the problem was focused on
the spaceship and the ultimatum delivered by its occupants. _Talk or
Die!_ blared the newspaper headlines.
The suicide rate was up and still climbing. Religious cults were having
a field day. A book by a science fiction author: "What the Deadly
Inter-Galactic Spaceship Means to You!" had smashed all previous
best-seller records. And this had been going on for a frantic seven
months.
The ship had _flapped_ out of a gun-metal sky over Oregon, its shape
that of a hideously magnified paramecium with edges that rippled like a
mythological flying carpet. Its five green-skinned, froglike occupants
had delivered the ultimatum, one copy printed on velvety paper to each
major government, each copy couched faultlessly in the appropriate
native tongue:
"_You are requested to assemble your most gifted experts in human
communication. We are about to submit a problem. We will open five
identical rooms of our vessel to you. One of us will be available in
each room._
"_Your problem: To communicate with us._
"_If you succeed, your rewards will be great._
"_If you fail, that will result in destruction for all sentient life on
your planet._
"_We announce this threat with the deepest regret. You are urged
to examine Eniwetok atoll for a small display of our power. Your
artificial satellites have been removed from the skies._
"_You must break away from this limited communication!_"
Eniwetok had been cleared off flat as a table at one thousand feet
depth ... with no trace of explosion! All Russian and United States
artificial satellites had been combed from the skies.
* * * * *
All day long a damp wind poured up the Columbia Gorge from the ocean.
It swept across the Eastern Oregon alkali flats with a false prediction
of rain. Spiny desert scrub bent before the gusts, sheltering
blur-footed coveys of quail and flop-eared jackrabbits. Heaps of
tumbleweed tangled in the fence lines, and the air was filled with dry
particles of grit that crept under everything and into everything and
onto everything with the omnipresence of filterable virus.
On the flats south of the Hermiston Ordnance Depot the weird bulk of
the spaceship caught pockets and eddies of sand. The thing looked
like a monstrous oval of dun canvas draped across upright sticks. A
cluster of quonsets and the Army's new desert prefabs dotted a rough
half-circle around the north rim. They looked like dwarfed outbuildings
for the most gigantic circus tent Earth had ever seen. Army Engineers
said the ship was six thousand two hundred and eighteen feet long, one
thousand and fifty-four feet wide.
Some five miles east of the site the dust storm hazed across the
monotonous structures of the cantonment that housed some thirty
thousand people from every major nation: Linguists, anthropologists,
psychologists, doctors of every shape and description, watchers and
watchers for the watchers, spies, espionage and counter-espionage
agents.
For seven months the threat of Eniwetok, the threat of the unknown as
well, had held them in check.
Toward evening of this day the wind slackened. The drifted sand began
sifting off the ship and back into new shapes, trickling down for all
the world like the figurative "sands of time" that here were most
certainly running out.
Mrs. Francine Millar, clinical psychologist with the Indo-European
Germanic-Root team, hurried across the bare patch of trampled sand
outside the spaceship's entrance. She bent her head against what was
left of the windstorm. Under her left arm she carried her briefcase
tucked up like a football. Her other hand carried a rolled-up copy of
that afternoon's _Oregon Journal_. The lead story said that Air Force
jets had shot down a small private plane trying to sneak into the
restricted area. Three unidentified men killed. The plane had been
stolen.
Thoughts of a plane crash made her too aware of the circumstances in
her own recent widowhood. Dr. Robert Millar had died in the crash of
a trans-Atlantic passenger plane ten days before the arrival of the
spaceship. She let the newspaper fall out of her hands. It fluttered
away on the wind.
Francine turned her head away from a sudden biting of the sandblast
wind. She was a wiry slim figure of about five feet six inches, still
trim and athletic at forty-one. Her auburn hair, mussed by the wind,
still carried the look of youth. Heavy lids shielded her blue eyes. The
lids drooped slightly, giving her a perpetual sleepy look even when
she was wide awake and alert--a circumstance she found helpful in her
profession.
She came into the lee of the conference quonset, and straightened.
A layer of sand covered the doorstep. She opened the door, stepped
across the sand only to find more of it on the floor inside, grinding
underfoot. It was on tables, on chairs, mounded in corners--on every
surface.
* * * * *
Hikonojo Ohashi, Francine's opposite number with the Japanese-Korean
and Sino-Tibetan team, already sat at his place on the other side of
the table. The Japanese psychologist was grasping, pen fashion, a thin
pointed brush, making notes in ideographic shorthand.
Francine closed the door.