Saturday, April 30. Still no prott. But I am feeling better. I went over my files on them and again it seems to me that there is only one conclusion possible : They exist.
Over an enormous sector in the depth of space, during many years, they have been sighted. For my own comfort, let’s list the known facts about prott.
First, they are a non-protoplasmic form of life. (How could they be otherwise, in this lightless, heatless gulf?) Second, their bodily organization is probably electrical. Simmons, who was electrical engineer on the Thor, found that his batteries showed discharges when prott were around. Third, they appear only to ships which are in motion between certain rates of speed. (Whether motion at certain speeds attract them, or whether it is only at certain frequencies that they are visible, we don’t know.) Fourth, whether or not they are intelligent, they are to some extent telepathic, according to the reports. This fact, of course, is my hope of communicating with them at all. And fifth, prott have been evocatively if unscientifically described as looking like big poached eggs.
On the basis of these facts, I’ve aspired to be the Columbus—or, more accurately, the Dr. Kinsey—of the prott. Well, it’s good to know that, lonely and rather worried as I am, I can still laugh at my own jokes.
May 3rd. I saw my first prott. More later. It’s enough for now: I saw my first prott.
May 4th. The Ellis has all-angle viewing plates, through 360 degrees. I had set up an automatic signal, and yesterday it rang. My heart thumping with an almost painful excitement, I ran to the battery of plates.
There it was, seemingly some five yards long, a cloudy, whitish thing. There was a hint of a large yellow nucleus. Damned if the thing didn’t look like a big poached egg!
I saw at once why everyone has assumed that prott are life-forms and not, for example, minute spaceships, robots, or machines of some sort. The thing had the irregular, illogical symmetry of life.
I stood goggling at it. It wasn’t alarming, even in its enormous context. After a moment, it seemed to flirt away from the ship with the watery ease of a fish.
I waited hopefully, but it didn’t come back.
May 4. No prott. Question: since there is so little light in deep space how was I able to see it? It wasn’t luminous.
I wish I had had more training in electronics and allied subjects. But the bursar thought it more important to send out a man trained in survey techniques.
May 5. No prott.
May 6. No prott. But I have been having very odd thoughts.
May 8th. As I half-implied in my last entry, the ideas I have been having (such odd ideas—they made me feel, mentally, as if some supporting membrane of my personality were being overstrained) were an indication of the proximity of prott.
I had just finished eating lunch today when the automatic signal rang. I hurried to the viewers. There, perfectly clear against their jet-black background, were three prott. Two were almost identical; one was slightly smaller in size. I had retraced over and over in my mind the glimpse of the one prott I had had before, but now that three of them were actually present in the viewers, I could only stare at them. They’re not alarming, but they do have an odd effect upon the mind.
After several tense seconds, I recovered my wits. I pressed a button to set the automatic photographic records going. I’d put in plates to cover the whole spectrum of radiant energy, and it will be interesting when I go to develop my pictures to see what frequencies catch the prott best. I also—this was more difficult—began to send out the basic “Who? Who? Who?” in which all telepathic communicators are trained.
I have become reasonably good at telepathy through practice, but I have no natural talent for it. I remember Mcllwrath telling me jokingly, just before I left New York, that I’d never have trouble with one of the pitfalls of natural telepaths—transmitting a desired answer into the mind of a subject by telepathy. I sup pose any deficiency has some advantageous side.
I began to send out my basic “Who?”. It may have been only a coincidence, but as soon as the fourth or fifth impulse had left my mind, all three prott slid out of the viewing plates. They didn’t come back. It would seem that my attempts at communication alarmed them. I hope not, though.
When I was convinced that they would not return for a while, I began to develop my plates. Those in the range of visible light show the prott very much as they appear to the eye. The infra-red plates show nothing at all. But the ultra-violet-sensitive ones are really interesting.
Two of the prott appear as a network of luminous lines intricately knotted and braided. For some reason, I was reminded of the “elfish light” of Coleridge’s water snakes, which “moved in tracks of shining white.” The third prott, which I assume to have been the smaller one, gave an opaque, flattened-ovoid image, definitely smaller than that of its companions, with a round dark shadow in the centre. This shadow would appear to be the large yellow nucleus.
Question: Do these photographic differences correspond to organizational differences? Probably, though it might be a matter of phase.
Further question: If the difference is in fact organizational, do we have here an instance of that specialization which, among protoplasmic creatures, would correspond to sex? It is possible. But such theorizing is bound to be plain guesswork.
May 9th (I see I gave up dating by days some while ago). No prott. I think it would be of some interest if, at this point I were to try to put down my impression of those “odd thoughts” which I believe the prott inspired in me.
In the first place, there is a reluctance. I didn’t want to think what I was thinking. This is not because the ideas were in themselves repellent or disgusting, but because they were uncongenial to my mind. I don’t mean uncongenial to my personality or my idiosyncrasies, to the sum of differences that make up “me,” but uncongenial to the whole biological orientation of my thinking. The differences between protoplasmic and non-protoplasmic life must be enormous.
In the second place, there is a frustration. I said, “I didn’t want to think what I was thinking,” but it would be equally true to say that I couldn’t think it. Hence, I suppose, that sensation of ineffectuality.
And in the third place, there is a great boredom. Frustration often does make one feel bored, I suppose. I couldn’t apprehend my own thoughts. But whenever I finally did, I found them boring. They were so remote, so incomprehensible, that they were uninteresting.
But the thoughts themselves? What were they? I can’t say.
How confused all this is! Well, nothing is more tiresome than to describe the indescribable.
Perhaps it is true that the only creature that could understand the thoughts of a prott would be another prott.
May 10th. Were the “odd thoughts” the results of attempts on the protts’ part to communicate with me? I don’t think so. I believe they were near the ship, but out of “view-shot,” so to speak, and I picked up some of their interpersonal communications accidentally.
I have been devoting a good deal of thought to the problem of communicating with them. It is too bad that there is no way of projecting a visual image of myself onto the exterior of the ship. I have Matheson’s signalling devices, and next time—if there is a next—I shall certainly try them. I have little confidence in devices, however. I feel intuitively that it is going to have to be telepathy or nothing. But if they respond to the basic “Who?” with flight… well, I must think of something else.