I collapsed joints and hung up to talk with Dak-whirr. He blinked his eyes in some discomfort.
"What do you want, Palil?" he asked complainingly.
"As if you didn’t know."
"I can’t give you permission to examine it. The thing is being saved for inspection by the board. What guarantee do I have that you won’t spoil it for them?"
I thrust confidentially at one of his body-plates. "You owe me a favor," I said. "Remember?"
"That was a long time in the past."
"Only two thousand revolutions and a reassembly ago. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be eroding in a pit. All I want is a quick look at its thinking part. I’ll vrull the consciousness without laying a single pair of pliers on it."
He went into a feedback twitch, an indication of the conflict between his debt to me and his self-conceived duty.
Finally he said, "Very well, but keep tuned to me. If I warn that a board member is coming, remove yourself quickly. Anyway how do you know it has consciousness? It may be mere primal metal."
"In that form? Don’t be foolish. It’s obviously a manufacture. And I’m not conceited enough to believe that we are the only form of intelligent manufacture in the Universe."
"Tautologous phrasing, Palil," Dak-whirr said pedantically. "There could not conceivably be ‘unintelligent manufacture.’ There can be no consciousness without manufacture, and no manufacture without intelligence. Therefore there can be no consciousness without intelligence. Now if you should wish to dispute—"
I turned off his frequency abruptly and hurried away. Dak-whirr is a fool and a bore. Everyone knows there’s a fault in his logic circuit, but he refuses to have it traced down and repaired. Very unintelligent of him.
The thing had been taken into one of the museum sheds by the carriers. I gazed at it in admiration for some moments. It was quite beautiful, having suffered only slight exterior damage, and it was obviously no mere conglomeration of sky metal.
In fact, I immediately thought of it as "he" and endowed it with the attributes of self-knowing, although, of course, his consciousness could not be functioning or he would have attempted communication with us.
I fervently hoped that the board, after his careful disassembly and study, could restore his awareness so that he could tell us himself which solar system he came from.
Imagine it! He had achieved our dream of many thousands of revolutions—space flight—only to be fused, or worse, in his moment of triumph.
I felt a surge of sympathy for the lonely traveler as he lay there, still, silent, non-emitting. Anyway, I mused, even if we couldn’t restore him to self-knowing, an analysis of his construction might give us the secret of the power he had used to achieve the velocity to escape his planet’s gravity.
In shape and size he was not unlike Swen—or Swen Two, as he called himself after his conversion—who failed so disastrously to reach our satellite, using chemical fuels. But where Swen Two had placed his tubes, the stranger had a curious helical construction studded at irregular intervals with small crystals.
He was thirty-five feet tall, a gracefully tapering cylinder. Standing at his head, I could find no sign of exterior vision cells, so I assumed he had some kind of vrulling sense. There seemed to be no exterior markings at all, except the long, shallow grooves dented in his skin by scraping to a stop along the hard surface of our planet.
I am a reporter with warm current in my wires, not a cold-thinking scientist, so I hesitated before using my own vrulling sense. Even though the stranger was non-aware—perhaps permanently—I felt it would be a presumption, an invasion of privacy. There was nothing else I could do, though, of course.
I started to vrull, gently at first, then harder, until I was positively glowing with effort. It was incredible; his skin seemed absolutely impermeable.
The sudden realization that metal could be so alien nearly fused something inside me. I found myself backing away in horror, my self-preservation relay working overtime.
Imagine watching one of the beautiful cone-rod-and-cylinder assemblies performing the Dance of the Seven Spanners, as he’s conditioned to do, and then suddenly refusing to do anything except stump around unattractively, or even becoming obstinately motionless, unresponsive. That might give you an idea of how I felt in that dreadful moment.
Then I remembered Dak-whirr’s words—there could be no such thing as an "unintelligent manufacture." And a product so beautiful could surely not be evil. I overcame my repugnance and approached again.
I halted as an open transmission came from someone near at hand.
"Who gave that squeaking reporter permission to snoop around here?"
I had forgotten the museum board. Five of them were standing in the doorway of the shed, radiating anger. I recognized Chirik, the chairman, and addressed myself to him. I explained that I’d interfered with nothing and pleaded for permission on behalf of my subscribers to watch their investigation of the stranger. After some argument, they allowed me to stay.
I watched in silence and some amusement as one by one they tried to vrull the silent being from space. Each showed the same reaction as myself when they failed to penetrate the skin.
Chirik, who is wheeled—and inordinately vain about his suspension system—flung himself back on his supports and pretended to be thinking.
"Fetch Fiff-fiff," he said at last. "The creature may still be aware, but unable to communicate on our standard frequencies."
Fiff-fiff can detect anything in any spectrum. Fortunately he was at work in the museum that day and soon arrived in answer to the call. He stood silently near the stranger for some moments, testing and adjusting himself, then slid up the electromagnetic band.
"He’s emitting," he said.
"Why can’t we get him?" asked Chirik.
"It’s a curious signal on an unusual band."
"Well, what does he say?"
"Sounds like utter nonsense to me. Wait, I’ll relay and convert it to standard."
I made a direct recording naturally, like any good reporter.
"—after planetfall," the stranger was saying. "Last dribble of power. If you don’t pick this up, my name is Entropy. Other instruments knocked to hell, airlock jammed and I’m too weak to open it manually. Becoming delirious, too. I guess. Getting strong undirectional ultra-wave reception in Inglish, craziest stuff you ever heard, like goblins muttering, and I know we were the only ship in this sector. If you pick this up, but can’t get a fix in time, give my love to the boys in the mess. Signing off for another couple of hours, but keeping this channel open and hoping…"
"The fall must have deranged him," said Chirik, gazing at the stranger. "Can’t he see us or hear us?"
"He couldn’t hear you properly before, but he can now, through me," Fiff-fiff pointed out. "Say something to him, Chirik."
"Hello," said Chirik doubtfully. "Er—welcome to our planet. We are sorry you were hurt by your fall. We offer you the hospitality of our assembly shops. You will feel better when you are repaired and repowered. If you will indicate how we can assist you—"
"What the hell! What ship is that? Where are you?"
"We’re here," said Chirik. "Can’t you see us or vrull us? Your vision circuit is impaired, perhaps? Or do you depend entirely on vrulling? We can’t find your eyes and assumed either that you protected them in some way during flight, or dispensed with vision cells altogether in your conversion."