Pluto is, on the average, about forty times as far away from the sun
as is Mother Earth. Each square yard of Earth's surface receives about
sixteen hundred times as much heat as does each of Pluto's. The sun
as seen from Pluto is a dim, wan speck. Even at perihelion, an event
which occurs only once in two hundred forty eight Tellurian years, and
at noon and on the equator, Pluto is so bitterly cold that climatic
conditions upon its surface simply cannot be described by or to
warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing man.
As good an indication as any can be given, perhaps, by mentioning the
fact that it had taken the Patrol's best engineers over six months
to perfect the armor which Virgil Samms then wore. For no ordinary
space-suit would do. Space itself is not cold; the only loss of heat is
by radiation into or through an almost perfect vacuum. In contact with
Pluto's rocky, metallic soil, however, there would be conduction; and
the magnitude of the inevitable heat-loss made the Tellurian scientists
gasp.
"Watch your feet, Virge!" had been Roderick Kinnison's insistent last
thought. "Remember those psychologists--if they stayed in contact with
that ground for five minutes they froze their feet to the ankles. Not
that the boys aren't good, but slipsticks sometimes slip in more ways
than one. If your feet ever start to get cold, drop whatever you're
doing and drive back here at max!"
Virgil Samms landed. His feet stayed warm. Finally, assured that the
heaters of his suit could carry the load indefinitely, he made his way
on foot into the settlement near which he had come to ground. And there
he saw his first Palainian.
Or, strictly speaking, he saw part of his first Palainian; for no
three-dimensional creature has ever seen or ever will see in entirety
any member of any of the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing races.
Since life as we know it--organic, three-dimensional life--is based
upon liquid water and gaseous oxygen, such life did not and could not
develop upon planets whose temperatures are only a few degrees above
absolute zero. Many, perhaps most, of these ultra-frigid planets have
an atmosphere of sorts; some have no atmosphere at all. Nevertheless,
with or without atmosphere and completely without oxygen and water,
life--highly intelligent life--did develop upon millions and millions
of such worlds. That life is not, however, strictly three-dimensional.
Of necessity, even in the lowest forms, it possesses an extension into
the hyper-dimension; and it is this metabolic extension alone which
makes it possible for life to exist under such extreme conditions.
The extension makes it impossible for any human being to see anything
of a Palainian except the fluid, amorphous, ever-changing thing which
is his three-dimensional aspect of the moment; makes any attempt at
description or portraiture completely futile.
Virgil Samms stared at the Palainian; tried to see what it looked like.
He could not tell whether it had eyes or antennae; legs, arms, or
tentacles, teeth or beaks, talons or claws or feet; skin, scales, or
feathers. It did not even remotely resemble anything that the Lensman
had ever seen, sensed, or imagined. He gave up; sent out an exploring
thought.
"I am Virgil Samms, a Tellurian," he sent out slowly, carefully, after
he made contact with the outer fringes of the creature's mind. "Is it
possible for you, sir or madam, to give me a moment of your time?"
"Eminently possible, Lensman Samms, since my time is of completely
negligible value." The monster's mind flashed into accord with Samms'
with a speed and precision that made him gasp. That is, a part of it
became en rapport with a part of his: years were to pass before even
the First Lensman would know much more about the Palainian than he
learned in that first contact; no human beings except the Children
of the Lens ever were to understand even dimly the labyrinthine
intricacies, the paradoxical complexities, of the Palainian mind.
"'Madam' might be approximately correct," the native's thought went
smoothly on. "My name, in your symbology, is Twelfth Pilinipsi; by
education, training, and occupation I am a Chief Dexitroboper. I
perceive that you are indeed a native of that hellish Planet Three,
upon which it was assumed for so long that no life could possibly
exist. But communication with your race has been almost impossible
heretofore ... Ah, the Lens. A remarkable device, truly. I would slay
you and take it, except for the obvious fact that only you can possess
it."
"What!" Dismay and consternation flooded Samms' mind. "You already know
the Lens?"
"No. Yours is the first that any of us has perceived. The mechanics,
the mathematics, and the basic philosophy of the thing, however, are
quite clear."
"What!" Samms exclaimed again. "You can, then, produce Lenses
yourselves?"
"By no means, any more than you Tellurians can. There are magnitudes,
variables, determinants, and forces involved which no Palainian will
ever be able to develop, to generate, or to control."
"I see." The Lensman pulled himself together. For a First Lensman, he
was making a wretched showing indeed....
"Far from it, sir," the monstrosity assured him. "Considering the
strangeness of the environment into which you have voluntarily flung
yourself so senselessly, your mind is well integrated and strong.
Otherwise it would have shattered. If our positions were reversed,
the mere thought of the raging heat of your Earth would--come no
closer, please!" The thing vanished; reappeared many yards away. Her
thoughts were a shudder of loathing, of terror, of sheer detestation.
"But to get on. I have been attempting to analyze and to understand
your purpose, without success. That failure is not too surprising, of
course, since my mind is weak and my total power is small. Explain
your mission, please, as simply as you can."
Weak? Small? In view of the power the monstrosity had just shown,
Samms probed for irony, for sarcasm or pretense. There was no trace of
anything of the kind.
He tried, then, for fifteen solid minutes, to explain the Galactic
Patrol, but at the end the Palainian's only reaction was one of blank
non-comprehension.
"I fail completely to perceive the use of, or the need for, such an
organization," she stated flatly. "This altruism--what good is it? It
is unthinkable that any other race would take any risks or exert any
effort for us, any more than we would for them. Ignore and be ignored,
as you must already know, is the Prime Tenet."
"But there is a little commerce between our worlds; your people did not
ignore our psychologists; and you are not ignoring me," Samms pointed
out.
"Oh, none of us is perfect," Pilinipsi replied, with a mental shrug
and what seemed to be an airy wave of a multi-tentacled member. "That
ideal, like any other, can only be approached asymptotically, never
reached; and I, being somewhat foolish and silly, as well as weak and
vacillant, am much less perfect than most."
Flabbergasted, Samms tried a new tack. "I might be able to make my
position clearer if I knew you better. I know your name, and that you
are a woman of Palain Seven"--it is a measure of Virgil Samms' real
size that he actually thought "woman", and not merely "female"--"but
all I can understand of your occupation is the name you have given it.
What does a Chief Dexitroboper do?"
"She--or he--or, perhaps, it ... is a supervisor of the work of
dexitroboping." The thought, while perfectly clear, was completely
meaningless to Samms, and the Palainian knew it. She tried again.
"Dexitroboping has to do with ... nourishment? No--with nutrients."
"Ah. Farming--agriculture," Samms thought; but this time it was the
Palainian who could not grasp the concept. "Hunting? Fishing?" No
better. "Show me, then, please."
She tried; but demonstration, too, was useless; for to Samms the
Palainian's movements were pointless indeed. The peculiarly flowing
subtly changing thing darted back and forth, rose and fell, appeared
and disappeared; undergoing the while cyclic changes in shape and form
and size, in aspect and texture. It was now spiny, now tentacular, now
scaly, now covered with peculiarly repellent feather-like fronds,
each oozing a crimson slime. But it apparently did not _do_ anything
whatever. The net result of all its activity was, apparently, zero.
"There, it is done." Pilinipsi's thought again came clear. "You
observed and understood? You did not. That is strange--baffling. Since
the Lens did improve communication and understanding tremendously, I
hoped that it might extend to the physical as well. But there must be
some basic, fundamental difference, the nature of which is at present
obscure. I wonder ... if I had a Lens, too--but no...."
"But yes!" Samms broke in, eagerly. "Why don't you go to Arisia and be
tested for one? You have a magnificent, a really _tremendous_ mind.
It is of Lensman grade in every respect except one--you simply don't
_want_ to use it!"
"Me? Go to Arisia?" The thought would have been, in a Tellurian, a
laugh of scorn. "How utterly silly--how abysmally stupid! There would
be personal discomfort, quite possibly personal danger, and two Lenses
would be little or no better than one in resolving differences between
our two continua, which are probably in fact incommensurable."
"Well, then," Samms thought, almost viciously, "can you introduce me to
someone who is stupider, sillier, and more foolish than you are?"
"Not here on Pluto, no." The Palainian took no offense. "That was why
it was I who interviewed the earlier Tellurian visitors and why I am
now conversing with you. The others avoided you."
"I see." Samms' thought was grim. "How about the home planet, then?"
"Ah. Undoubtedly. In fact, there is a group, a club, of such persons.
None of them is, of course, as insane--as aberrant--as you are, but
they are all much more so than I am."
"Who of this club would be most interested in becoming a Lensman?"
"Tallick was the least stable member of the New-Thought Club when I
left Seven; Kragzex a close second. There may of course have been
changes since then. But I cannot believe that even Tallick--even
Tallick at his outrageous worst--would be crazy enough to join your
Patrol."
"Nevertheless, I must see him myself. Can you and will you give me a
chart of a routing from here to Palain Seven?"
"I can and I will. Nothing you have thought will be of any use to me;
that will be the easiest and quickest way of getting rid of you." The
Palainian spread a completely detailed chart in Samms' mind, snapped
the telepathic line, and went unconcernedly about her incomprehensible
business.
Samms, mind reeling, made his way back to his boat and took off.
And as the light-years and the parsecs screamed past, he sank
deeper and deeper into a welter of unproductive speculation. What
were--really--those Palainians? How could they--really--exist as they
seemed to exist? And why had some of that dexitroboper's--whatever
_that_ meant!--thoughts come in so beautifully sharp and clear and
plain while others...?
He knew that his Lens would receive and would convert into his own
symbology any thought or message, however coded or garbled or however
sent or transmitted. The Lens was not at fault; his symbology was.
There were concepts--things--actualities--occurrences--so foreign to
Tellurian experience that no referents existed. Hence the human mind
lacked the channels, the mechanisms, to grasp them.
He and Roderick Kinnison had glibly discussed the possibility of
encountering forms of intelligent life so alien that humanity would
have no point whatever of contact with them. After what Samms had
just gone through, that was more of a possibility than either he or
his friend had believed; and he hoped grimly, as he considered how
seriously this partial contact with the Palainian had upset him, that
the possibility would never become a fact.
He found the Palainian system easily enough, and Palain Seven. That
planet, of course, was almost as dark upon its sunward side as upon
the other, and its inhabitants had no use for light. Pilinipsi's
instructions, however, had been minute and exact; hence Samms had
very little trouble in locating the principal city--or, rather, the
principal village, since there were no real cities. He found the
planet's one spaceport. What a thing to call a _port_! He checked
back; recalled exactly this part of his interview with Pluto's Chief
Dexitroboper.
"The place upon which space-ships land," had been her thought, when she
showed him exactly where it was in relationship to the town. Just that,
and nothing else. It had been his mind, not hers, that had supplied the
docks and cradles, the service cars, the officers, and all the other
things taken for granted in space-fields everywhere as Samms knew them.
Either the Palainian had not perceived the trappings with which Samms
had invested her visualization, or she had not cared enough about his
misapprehension to go to the trouble of correcting it; he did not know
which.
The whole area was as bare as his hand. Except for the pitted,
scarred, slagged-down spots which showed so clearly what driving blasts
would do to such inconceivably cold rock and metal, Palainport was
in no way distinguishable from any other unimproved portion of the
planet's utterly bleak surface.
There were no signals; he had been told of no landing conventions.
Apparently it was everyone for himself. Wherefore Samms' tremendous
landing lights blazed out, and with their aid he came safely to ground.
He put on his armour and strode to the air-lock; then changed his
mind and went to the cargo-port instead. He had intended to walk, but
in view of the rugged and deserted field and the completely unknown
terrain between the field and the town, he decided to ride the "creep"
instead.
This vehicle, while slow, could go--literally--anywhere. It had a
cigar-shaped body of magnalloy; it had big, soft, tough tires; it
had cleated tracks; it had air- and water-propellers; it had folding
wings; it had driving, braking, and steering jets. It could traverse
the deserts of Mars, the oceans and swamps of Venus, the crevassed
glaciers of Earth, the jagged, frigid surface of an iron asteroid, and
the cratered, fluffy topography of the moon; if not with equal speed,
at least with equal safety.
Samms released the thing and drove it into the cargo lock, noting
mentally that he would have to exhaust the air of that lock into space
before he again broke the inner seal. The ramp slid back into the ship;
the cargo port closed. Here he was!
Should he use his headlights, or not? He did not know the Palainians'
reaction to or attitude toward light. It had not occurred to him
while at Pluto to ask, and it might be important. The landing lights
of his vessel might already have done his cause irreparable harm. He
could drive by starlight if he had to ... but he needed light and he
had not seen a single living or moving thing. There was no evidence
that there was a Palainian within miles. While he had known, with his
brain, that Palain would be dark, he had expected to find buildings and
traffic--ground-cars, planes, and at least a few space-ships--and not
this vast nothingness.
If nothing else, there _must_ be a road from Palain's principal city to
its only spaceport; but Samms had not seen it from his vessel and he
could not see it now. At least, he could not recognize it. Wherefore he
clutched in the tractor drive and took off in a straight line toward
town. The going was more than rough--it was really rugged--but the
creep was built to stand up under punishment and its pilot's chair
was sprung and cushioned to exactly the same degree. Hence, while the
course itself was infinitely worse than the smoothly paved approaches
to Rigelston, Samms found this trip much less bruising than the other
had been.
Approaching the village, he dimmed his roadlights and slowed down. At
its edge he cut them entirely and inched his way forward by starlight
alone.
What a town! Virgil Samms had seen the inhabited places of almost
every planet of Civilization. He had seen cities laid out in circles,
sectors, ellipses, triangles, squares, parallelopipeds--practically
every plan known to geometry. He had seen structures of all shapes
and sizes--narrow skyscrapers, vast-spreading one-stories, polyhedra,
domes, spheres, semi-cylinders, and erect and inverted full and
truncated cones and pyramids. Whatever the plan or the shapes of
the component units, however, those inhabited places had, without
exception, been understandable. But this!
Samms, his eyes now completely dark-accustomed, could see fairly
well, but the more he saw the less he grasped. There was no plan, no
coherence or unity whatever. It was as though a cosmic hand had flung a
few hundreds of buildings, of incredibly and senselessly varied shapes
and sizes and architectures, upon an otherwise empty plain, and as
though each structure had been allowed ever since to remain in whatever
location and attitude it had chanced to fall. Here and there were
jumbled piles of three or more utterly incongruous structures. There
were a few whose arrangement was almost orderly. Here and there were
large, irregularly-shaped areas of bare, untouched ground. There were
no streets--at least, nothing that the man could recognize as such.
Samms headed the creep for one of those open areas, then
stopped--declutched the tracks, set the brakes, and killed the engines.
"Go slow, fellow," he advised himself then. "Until you find out what
a dexitroboper actually does while working at his trade, don't take
chances of interfering or of doing damage!"
No Lensman knew--then--that frigid-blooded poison-breathers were not
strictly three-dimensional; but Samms did know that he had actually
seen things which he could not understand. He and Kinnison had
discussed such occurrences calmly enough; but the actuality was enough
to shake even the mind of Civilization's First Lensman.
He did not need to be any closer, anyway. He had learned the
Palainians' patterns well enough to Lens them from a vastly greater
distance than his present one; this personal visit to Palainopolis had
been a gesture of friendliness, not a necessity.
"Tallick? Kragzex?" He sent out the questing, querying thought.
"Lensman Virgil Samms of Sol Three calling Tallick and Kragzex of
Palain Seven."
"Kragzex acknowledging, Virgil Samms," a thought snapped back, as
diamond-clear, as precise, as Pilinipsi's had been.
"Is Tallick here, or anywhere on the planet?"
"He is here, but he is emmfozing at the moment. He will join us
presently."
Damnation! There it was again! First "dexitroboping", and now this!
"One moment, please," Samms requested. "I fail to grasp the meaning of
your thought."
"So I perceive. The fault is of course mine, in not being able to
attune my mind fully to yours. Do not take this, please, as any
aspersion upon the character or strength of your own mind."
"Of course not. I am the first Tellurian you have met?"
"Yes."
"I have exchanged thoughts with one other Palainian, and the same
difficulty existed. I can neither understand nor explain it; but it is
as though there are differences between us so fundamental that in some
matters mutual comprehension is in fact impossible."
"A masterly summation and undoubtedly a true one. This emmfozing,
then--if I read correctly, your race has only two sexes?"
"You read correctly."
"I cannot understand. There is no close analogy. However, emmfozing has
to do with reproduction."
"I see," and Samms saw, not only a frankness brand-new to his
experience, but also a new view of both the powers and the limitations
of his Lens.
It was, by its very nature, of precisionist grade. It received thoughts
and translated them precisely into English. There was some leeway, but
not much. If any thought was such that there was no extremely close
counterpart or referent in English, the Lens would not translate it at
all, but would simply give it a hitherto meaningless symbol--a symbol
which would from that time on be associated, by all Lenses everywhere,
with that one concept and no other. Samms realized then that he might,
some day, learn what a dexitroboper actually did and what the act of
emmfozing actually was; but that he very probably would not.
Tallick joined them then, and Samms again described glowingly, as he
had done so many times before, the Galactic Patrol of his imaginings
and plannings. Kragzex refused to have anything to do with such
a thing, almost as abruptly as Pilinipsi had done, but Tallick
lingered--and wavered.
"It is widely known that I am not entirely sane," he admitted, "which
may explain the fact that I would very much like to have a Lens. But I
gather, from what you have said, that I would probably not be given a
Lens to use purely for my own selfish purposes?"
"That is my understanding," Samms agreed.
"I was afraid so." Tallick's mien was ... "woebegone" is the only word
for it. "I have work to do. Projects, you know, of difficulty, of
extreme complexity and scope, sometimes even approaching danger. A Lens
would be of tremendous use."
"How?" Samms asked. "If your work is of enough importance to enough
people, Mentor would certainly give you a Lens."
"This would benefit me; only me. We of Palain, as you probably already
know, are selfish, mean-spirited, small-souled, cowardly, furtive, and
sly. Of what you call 'bravery' we have no trace. We attain our ends by
stealth, by indirection, by trickery and deceit." Ruthlessly the Lens
was giving Virgil Samms the uncompromisingly exact English equivalent
of the Palainian's every thought. "We operate, when we must operate at
all openly, with the absolutely irreducible minimum of personal risk.
These attitudes and attributes will, I have no doubt, preclude all
possibility of Lensmanship for me and for every member of my race."
"Not necessarily."
_Not necessarily!_ Although Virgil Samms did not know it, this was
one of the really critical moments in the coming into being of the
Galactic Patrol. By a conscious, a tremendous effort, the First Lensman
was lifting himself above the narrow, intolerant prejudices of human
experience and was consciously attempting to see the whole through
Mentor's Arisian mind instead of through his Tellurian own. That
Virgil Samms was the first human being to be born with the ability to
accomplish that feat even partially was one of the reasons why he was
the first wearer of the Lens.
"Not necessarily," First Lensman Virgil Samms said and meant. He was
inexpressibly shocked--revolted in every human fiber--by what this
unhuman monster had so frankly and callously thought. There were,
however, many things which no human being ever could understand, and
there was not the shadow of a doubt that this Tallick had a really
tremendous mind. "You have said that your mind is feeble. If so, there
is no simple expression of the weakness of mine. I can perceive only
one, the strictly human, facet of the truth. In a broader view it is
distinctly possible that your motivation is at least as 'noble' as
mine. And to complete my argument, you work with other Palainians, do
you not, to reach a common goal?"
"At times, yes."
"Then you can conceive of the desirability of working with
non-Palainian entities toward an end which would benefit both races?"
"Postulating such an end, yes; but I am unable to visualize any such.
Have you any specific project in mind?"
"Not at the moment." Samms ducked. He had already fired every shot in
his locker. "I am quite certain, however, that if you go to Arisia you
will be informed of several such projects."
There was a period of silence. Then:
"I believe that I _will_ go to Arisia, at that!" Tallick exclaimed,
brightly. "I will make a deal with your friend Mentor. I will give him
a share--say fifty percent, or forty--of the time and effort I save on
my own projects!"
"Just so you _go_, Tallick." Samms concealed right manfully his real
opinion of the Palainian's scheme. "When can you go? Right now?"
"By no means. I must first finish this project. A year, perhaps--or
more; or possibly less. Who knows?"
Tallick cut communications and Samms frowned. He did not know the
exact length of Seven's year, but he knew that it was long--_very_
long.