It was Raph whose eagerness dominated the first half of the conversation, and Lernin’s comments were as luminous and as brief as lightning flashes. And then, there was a sudden whirl of the center of gravity, and Lernin took over.
“You will excuse me, learned friend,” Lernin said with a characteristic stiffness that he could make so amiable, “if I find your problem unimportant. No, no”-he lifted a long-fingered hand-”not, in the uncomplicated talk of the times, merely unimportant to myself because my interest lies elsewhere, but unimportant to the Grouping of all the Groupings-to every single Gurrow from end to end of the world.”
The concept was staggering. For a moment, Raph was offended; offended deep in his sense of individuality. It showed in his face.
Lernin added quickly: “It may sound impolite, crude, uncivilized. But I must explain. I must explain because you are primarily a social scientist and will understand-perhaps better than we ourselves.”
“My life-interest,” said Raph angrily, “is important to myself. I cannot assume those of others in preference.”
“What I talk about should be the life-interest of all-if only because it may be the means of saving the lives of all of us.”
Raph was beginning to suspect all sorts of things from a queer form of joking to the unbalance of mind that sometimes came with age. Yet Lernin was not old.
Lernin said, with an impressive fervor: “The Eekahs of the other world are a danger to us, for they are not friendly to us.”
And Raph replied naturally: “How do you know?”
“No one other than myself, my friend, has lived more closely with these Eekahs who have arrived here, and I find them people with minds of emotional content strange to us. I have collected queer facts which we find difficult to interpret, but which point, at any rate, in disquieting directions.
“I’ll list a few: Eekahs in organized groups kill one another periodically for obscure reasons. Eekahs find it impossible to live in manner other than those of ants-that is, in huge conglomerate societies-yet find it impossible to allow for the presence of one another. Or, to use the terminology of the social scientists, they are gregarious without being social, just as we Gurrows are social without being gregarious. They have elaborate codes of behavior, which, we are told, are taught to the young, but which are disobeyed in universal practice, for reasons obscure to us. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.”
“I am an archaeologist,” said Raph, stiffly. “These Eekahs are of interest to me biologically only. If the curvature of the thigh bone is known to me, I care little for the curvature of their cultural processes. If I can follow the shape of the skull, it is immaterial to me that the shape of their ethics is mysterious.”
“You don’t think that their insanities may affect us here?”
“We are six thousand miles apart, or more, along either ocean,” said Raph. ‘We have our world. They have theirs. There is no connection between us.”
“No connection,” mused Lernin, “so others have said. No connection at all. Yet Eekahs have reached us, and others may follow. We are told that the other world is dominated by a few, who are in turn dominated by their queer need for security which they confuse with an Eekah word called ‘power,’ which, apparently, means the prevailing of one’s own will over the sum of the will of the community. What if this ‘power’ should extend to us?”
Raph bent his mind to the task. The matter was utterly ridiculous. It seemed impossible to picture the strange concepts.
Lernin said: “These Eekahs say that their world and ours in the long past were closer together. They say that there is a well-known scientific hypothesis in their world of a continental drift. That may interest you, since otherwise you might find it difficult to reconcile the existence of fossils of Primate Primeval closely related to living Eekahs six thousand miles away.”
And the mists cleared from the archaeologist’s brain as he glanced up with a live interest untroubled by insanities: “ Ah, you should have said this sooner.”
“I say it now as an example of what you may achieve for yourself by joining us and helping us. There is another thing. These Eekahs are physical scientists, like ourselves here in East Harbor, but with a difference dictated by their own cultural pattern. Since they live in hives, they think in hives, and their science is the result of an ant-society. Individually, they are slow and unimaginative; collectively, each supplies a crumb different from that supplied by his fellow-so that a vast structure is erected quickly. Here the individual is infinitely brighter, but he works alone. You, for instance, know nothing of chemistry, I imagine.”
“A few of the fundamentals, but nothing else,” admitted Raph. “I leave that, naturally, to the chemist.”
“Yes, naturally. But I am a chemist. Yet these Eekahs, though my mental inferiors, and no chemists in their own world, know more chemistry than I. For instance, did you know that there exist elements that spontaneously disintegrate?”
“Impossible,” exploded Raph. “Elements are eternal, changeless-”
Lernin laughed: “So you have been taught. So I have been taught. So I taught others. Yet the Eekahs are right, for in my laboratories I have checked them, and in every detail they are right. Uranium gives rise to a spontaneous radiation. You’ve heard of uranium, of course? And furthermore, I have detected radiations of energy beyond that produced by uranium which must be due to traces of elements unknown to us but described by the Eekahs. And these missing elements fit well into the so-called Periodic Tables some chemists have tried to foist upon the science. Though I do wrong to use the word ‘foist’ now.”
“Well,” said Raph, “why do you tell me this? Does this, too, help me in my problem?”
“Perhaps,” said Lernin, ironically, “you will yet find it a royal bribe. You see, the energy production of uranium is absolutely constant. No known outward change in environment can affect it-and as a result of the loss in energy, uranium slowly turns to lead at an absolutely constant rate. A group of our men is even now using this fact as a basis for a method of determining the age of the earth. You see, to determine the age of a stratum of rock in the earth, then, it is but necessary to discover a region in it containing a trace of uranium-a widely spread element-and to determine about it the quantity of lead-and I might here add that the lead produced from uranium differs from ordinary lead and can be easily characterized-and it is then simple to determine the length of time in which that stratum has been solid. And of course, if a fossil is found in that stratum, it is of the same age, am I not correct?”
“Stars above,” and Raph rose to his feet in a tremble, “you do not deceive me? It is really possible to do this?”
“It is possible. It is even easy. I tell you that our great defense, even at this late date, is co-operation in science. We are a group now of many, my friend, from many Groupings, and we want you among us. If you join us, it would be a simple matter to extend our earthage project to such regions as you may indicate-regions rich in fossils. What do you say?”
“I will help you.”
It is doubtful if the Gurrow Groupings had ever before seen a community venture of such breadth as now took place. East Harbor Grouping, as has been remarked, was a shipping center, and certainly a trans-Atlantic vessel was not beyond the capacity of a Grouping that traded along the full lengths of both coasts of the Americas. What was unusual was the vastness of the co-operation of Gurrows from many Groupings, Gurrows of many interests.
Not that they were all happy.
Raph, for instance, on the particular morning that now concerns us, six months from the date of his first arrival in East Harbor, was searching anxiously for Lernin.