“Do you suppose the communicator alone was up against this? Or did the alien leave the airlock open for the Master Computer itself to be connected?”
“From the racket we heard, it seemed to me that at first the two ships were open to each other. I’d say it was open on our ship at least as far as the hatch off the corridor to the airlock.”
If, Cassetti told himself, there had been no provision for a connection, the communicator would have lacked contact with the rest of the computer’s circuits. But the communicator was supposed to be provided with a large built-in memory, sophisticated programs in ROM for contacting extraterrestrials, and a calculating ability supposedly capable of making any ordinary human look foolish. Besides, where had all that chopped-up cable come from? It must have been connected. But either way, it hadn’t done much good.
Richards spoke sharply.
“Watch it! The bamboo thing just moved again! You want me over there?”
“Better stay where you are. If we’re both watching the same thing, something else could come loose.”
As Cassetti studied it, the thing that looked tacked together out of odds and ends of bamboo remained still.
The imitation octopus stayed motionless with the flowers sticking out its imitation necks, with both its imitation heads tilted back.
Cassetti exhaled sharply. Whatever mistakes the computer may have made, and whatever instructions it had given, he and Richards would have to act for themselves. His mind hopefully free of most of the computer’s indoctrination, he stepped carefully forward, tugged on the flowers, and they lifted into his hands. A passage from the Extraterrestrial-Contact Training Manual now repeated itself in his head:
“You will at all times avoid physical contact with extraterrestrials or their artifacts except in situations in which physical contact is clearly indicated.” In this situation, nothing seemed clearly indicated.
He adjusted an external mirror, looked down the holes the flowers had come out of into the hollow interior of something with translucent curving walls, then got a grip on one of the flexible arms.
The imitation tentacles, it developed, bent smoothly and easily under pressure. After twining the end of one of them over the creature’s shoulder, the flowers fit in a loop of tentacle, to look like a bouquet. Another of the monster’s tentacles, around in front, pushed over a third, gave the effect of one leg crossed over another. The heads latched neatly when clapped shut. He stepped back to take a look.
There sat a pink two-headed octopus cross-legged on an oversize toadstool holding an armful of purple-and-yellow flowers, as its bamboo-monster friend looked on with an evil gaze.
Richards laughed. “One insanity deserves another.”
“I may be wrong, but something tells me the alien in control of this scene is not of a strictly logical nature.”
There was the sharply varied blast of a whistle. They looked around.
As the last tones died away, the bamboo thing sluggishly began to move. Unfolding an arm with several joints, it brought up a kind of spike-studded metal bar, swung it up overhead, wheeled it leisurely around in a wide arc, made a slight adjustment in aim, and then brought this deadly looking thing down toward Cassetti’s head.
The creature’s intent seemed clear from the vicious light in the eyes at the end of its T-shaped stalk, but as it was moving with the speed of a hurried snail, it was no problem to get out from underneath as this spike-studded club traveled down, hit the deck, bounced, and then the creature braced itself, got the club up again, and took another swipe, bringing it around horizontally this time.
Cassetti stepped out of the way, got out the thin flexible line fitted into a compartment on the right leg of his suit, and that they had practiced with almost to exhaustion, and with Richards’s help tied this bamboo creature, minus its club, to the overgrown toadstool.
Richards turned slowly around, to check whether they were alone, and his voice sounded doubtful. “If it weren’t for what these aliens did to the computer, I’d think they weren’t too bright.”
“I’m not so sure. That business with the imitation octopus gave us no reasonable precedent at all. Next, this bamboo thing and its club pitted two sensible rules against each other: don’t hurt the alien; don’t get hurt yourself. Then there are the extra complications that the bamboo thing obviously meant harm, was too slow to do it if you used your head, but was still too dangerous to ignore. And neither of these problems was what you’d expect to run into in contacting an extraterrestrial.”
“But what’s the idea? What is it we’re up against? Is the bamboo cretin the extraterrestrial? And what, if anything, is this hollow octopus? Not to mention the damned flowers and the toadstool.”
“I don’t know. But—”
There was another varying whistle, then a clank from the direction of the bamboo creature they had just tied up.
They turned, to see it heave against the cord, whirl, thrash, move in a blur to the end of the cord—then streak to a stop in the opposite direction as the cord strained and the toadstool shook. Considering the way it was moving, if it ever got loose—
Richards grabbed up the spike-studded club, evaded a lightning-fast swipe, brought the club down hard, and smashed the creature’s legs.
Abruptly it lay still.
Richards stepped back, holding the club.
Because of faceplate reflections, Cassetti couldn’t see Richards’s expression, but he could hear the scowclass="underline"
“When it’s free, it has the speed of a caterpillar. Once it’s tied up, it goes so fast you can hardly see it. If this thing had moved like that earlier, one of us would have wound up in pieces on the end of its club.”
“Either it has a peculiar metabolism or that was another test.”
“Did we pass it?”
“We’re alive.”
“Right. Thinking of the communicator—”
There was a faint click.
They glanced around, which involved changing their positions in order to aim the faceplates roughly where they wanted to look, then swiveled the mirrors—but there was nothing in sight they hadn’t expected to see.
Behind them, the heavy inner airlock door was solidly shut. The side walls looked blank. In front was a bulkhead with another hatch. The hatch looked shut.
What made the dick?
Just then Cassetti noticed a dull glint of reflected light from something on the deck near the right-hand wall.
He stepped over, and there lay a curving piece of shiny metal with a broken chunk of dull-grey material attached to it. Along the broken surface, this material appeared to be very finely and elaborately patterned.
Richards said, “Part of the memory bank of the communicator?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Suggests we’re in the same place where it got beat up.”
“Where it got, for all intents and purposes, killed.”
“This didn’t make that click, did it?”
“I don’t see how. It sounded like a latch.”
Just then, there was the faintest, barely detectable, creaking sound. They looked around.
In the wall toward the interior of the alien ship, the hatch slowly swung open.
Through the hatchway stepped a creature roughly like a cross between a man and an ostrich, with deep green and scarlet plumes, a long slender neck, a large-skulled head with a face like a forty-year-old spoiled brat equipped with a hawk’s beak, small dainty arms where wings might have been expected, and legs ending in large birdlike claws. Both of its lower legs were fitted with glittering knifelike spurs whose points aimed to the rear.
Richards said drily, “I liked the bamboo thing better.”