Naudsonce | Page 6

will be so happy to know that I have a name for what
I'm studying. Probably be all I will know."
* * * * *
After dinner, he and Karl and Paul went into a huddle on what sort of
gifts to give the natives, and the advisability of trading with them, and
for what. Nothing too far in advance of their present culture level.
Wheels; they could be made in the fabricating shop aboard the ship.
"You know, it's odd," Karl Dorver said. "These people here have never
seen a wheel, and, except in documentary or historical-drama films,
neither have a lot of Terrans."
That was true. As a means of transportation, the wheel had been
completely obsolete since the development of contragravity, six
centuries ago. Well, a lot of Terrans in the Year Zero had never seen a
suit of armor, or an harquebus, or even a tinder box or a spinning
wheel.
Wheelbarrows; now there was something they'd find useful. He
screened Max Milzer, in charge of the fabricating and repair shops on
the ship. Max had never even heard of a wheelbarrow.
"I can make them up, Mark; better send me some drawings, though.
Did you just invent it?"
"As far as I know, a man named Leonardo da Vinci invented it, in the
Sixth Century Pre-Atomic. How soon can you get me half a dozen of
them?"
"Well, let's see. Welded sheet metal, and pipe for the frame and handles.
I'll have some of them for you by noon tomorrow. Now, about hoes;
how tall are these people, and how long are their arms, and how far can
they stoop over?"

* * * * *
They were all up late, that night. So were the Svants; there was a fire
burning in the middle of the village, and watch-fires along the edge of
the mound. Luis Gofredo was just as distrustful of them as they were of
the Terrans; he kept the camp lighted, a strong guard on the alert, and
the area of darkness beyond infra red lighted and covered by
photoelectric sentries on the ground and snoopers in the air. Like Paul
Meillard, Luis Gofredo was a worrier and a pessimist. Everything
happened for the worst in this worst of all possible galaxies, and if
anything could conceivably go wrong, it infallibly would. That was
probably why he was still alive and had never had a command
massacred.
The wheelbarrows, four of them, came down from the ship by
midmorning. With them came a grindstone, a couple of crosscut saws,
and a lot of picks and shovels and axes, and cases of sheath knives and
mess gear and miscellaneous trade goods, including a lot of the empty
wine and whisky bottles that had been hoarded for the past four years.
At lunch, the talk was almost exclusively about the language problem.
Lillian Ransby, who had not gotten to sleep before sunrise and had just
gotten up, was discouraged.
"I don't know what we're going to do next," she admitted. "Glenn Orent
and Anna and I were on it all night, and we're nowhere. We have about
a hundred wordlike sounds isolated, and twenty or so are used
repeatedly, and we can't assign a meaning to any of them. And none of
the Svants ever reacted the same way twice to anything we said to them.
There's just no one-to-one relationship anywhere."
"I'm beginning to doubt they have a language," the Navy intelligence
officer said. "Sure, they make a lot of vocal noise. So do chipmunks."
"They have to have a language," Anna de Jong declared. "No sapient
thought is possible without verbalization."
"Well, no society like that is possible without some means of

communication," Karl Dorver supported her from the other flank. He
seemed to have made that point before. "You know," he added, "I'm
beginning to wonder if it mightn't be telepathy."
He evidently hadn't suggested that before. The others looked at him in
surprise. Anna started to say, "Oh, I doubt if--" and then stopped.
"I know, the race of telepaths is an old gimmick that's been used in
new-planet adventure stories for centuries, but maybe we've finally
found one."
"I don't like it, Karl," Loughran said. "If they're telepaths, why don't
they understand us? And if they're telepaths, why do they talk at all?
And you can't convince me that this boodly-oodly-doodle of theirs isn't
talking."
"Well, our neural structure and theirs won't be nearly alike," Fayon said.
"I know, this analogy between telepathy and radio is full of holes, but
it's good enough for this. Our wave length can't be picked up with their
sets."
"The deuce it can't," Gofredo contradicted. "I've been bothered about
that from the beginning. These people act as though they got meaning
from us.