Norton, Andre - Anthology (28 page)

 
          
 
"Suppose you start translating,"
Casker suggested wearily, "and maybe find us something to eat."

 
          
 
They opened boxes until they found a likely-looking
substance. Laboriously, Hellman translated the symbols on it.

 
          
 
"Got it," he said. "It reads
:—
'Use Sniffers — The Better abrasive.' "

 
          
 
"Doesn't sound edible," Casker said.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid not."

 
          
 
They found another, which read: vigroom!
fill
all

 
          
 
YOUR STOMACHS, AND FILL THEM RIGHT!

 
          
 
"What kind of animals do you suppose
these Helgans were?" Casker asked.

 
          
 
Hellman shrugged his shoulders.

 
          
 
The next label took almost fifteen minutes to
translate. It read: argosel makes your thudra all
tizzy
,
contains THIRTY ARPS OF RAMSTAT PULZ, FOR SHELL LUBRICATION.

 
          
 
"There must be something here we can
eat," Casker said with a note of desperation.

            
"I hope so," Hellman
replied.

 
          
 
At the end of two hours, they were no closer.
They had translated dozens of titles and sniffed so many substances that their
olfactory senses had given up in disgust.

 
          
 
"Let's talk this over," Hellman
said, sitting on a box marked: vormitash — good as it sounds!

 
          
 
"Sure," Casker said, sprawling out
on the floor.
"Talk."

 
          
 
"If we could deduce what kind of
creatures inhabited this planet, we'd know what kind of food they ate, and
whether it's likely to be edible for us."

           
 
"All we do know is that they wrote a lot
of lousy advertising copy."

 
          
 
Hellman ignored that. "What kind of
intelligent beings would evolve on a planet that is all mountains?"

 
          
 
"Stupid ones!"
Casker said.

 
          
 
That was no help. But Hellman found that he
couldn't draw any inferences from the mountains. It didn't tell him if the late
Helgans ate silicates or proteins or iodine-base foods or anything.

 
          
 
"Now look," Hellman said,
"we'll have to work this out by pure logic. Are you listening to me?"

 
          
 
"Sure," Casker said.

 
          
 
"Okay. There's an old proverb that covers
our situation perfectly: 'One man's meat is another man's poison.' "

 
          
 
"Yeah," Casker said. He was positive
his stomach had shrunk to approximately the size of a marble.

 
          
 
"We can assume, first, that their meat is
our meat."

 
          
 
Casker wrenched himself away from a vision of
five juicy roast beefs dancing tantalizingly before him. "What if their
meat is our poison? What then?"

 
          
 
"Then," Hellman said, "
we
will assume that their poison is our meat."

 
          
 
"And what happens if their meat and their
poison are our poison?"

 
          
 
"We starve."

 
          
 
"All right," Casker said, standing
up. "Which assumption do we start with?"

 
          
 
"Well, there's no sense in asking for
trouble. This is an oxygen planet, if that means anything. Let's assume that we
can eat some basic food of theirs. If we can't, we'll start on their
poisons."

 
          
 
"If we live that long," Casker said.

 
          
 
Hellman began to translate labels. They
discarded such brands as androgynites delight and verbell — for LONGER,
CURLIER, MORE SENSITIVE ANTENNAE,
Until
they found a
small gray box, about six inches by three by three. It was called valkorin's
universal taste treat, for ALL DIGESTIVE CAPACITIES.

 
          
 
"This looks as good as any," Hellman
said. He opened the box.

 
          
 
Casker leaned over and sniffed. "No
odor."

 
          
 
Within the box they found a rectangular, rubbery
red block. It quivered slightly, like jelly.

 
          
 
"Bite into it," Casker said.

 
          
 
"Me?" Hellman asked.
"Why not you?"

 
          
 
"You picked it."

 
          
 
"I prefer just looking at it,"
Hellman said with dignity. "I'm not too hungry."

 
          
 
"I'm not either," Casker said.

 
          
 
They sat on the floor and stared at the
jellylike block. After ten minutes, Hellman yawned, leaned back, and closed his
eyes.

 
          
 
"All right, coward," Casker said
bitterly. "I'll try it. Just remember, though, if I'm poisoned, you'll
never get off this planet. You don't know how to pilot."

 
          
 
"Just take a little bite, then,"
Hellman advised.

 
          
 
Casker leaned over and stared at the block.
Then he prodded it with his thumb.

 
          
 
The rubbery red block giggled.

 
          
 
"Did you hear that?" Casker yelped,
leaping back.

 
          
 
"I didn't hear anything," Hellman
said, his hands shaking. "Go ahead."

 
          
 
Casker prodded the block again. It giggled
louder, this time with a disgusting little simper.

 
          
 
"Okay," Casker said, "what do
we try next?"

 
          
 
"Next? What's wrong with this?"

 
          
 
"I don't eat anything that giggles,"
Casker stated firmly.

 
          
 
"Now listen to me," Hellman said.
"The creatures who manufactured this might have been trying to create an
esthetic sound as well as a pleasant shape and color. That giggle is probably
only for the amusement of the eater."

 
          
 
"Then bite into it yourself," Casker
offered.

 
          
 
Hellman glared at him, but made no move toward
the rubbery block. Finally he said, "Let's move it out of the way."

 
          
 
They pushed the block over to a corner. It lay
there giggling softly to itself.

 
          
 
"Now what?"
Casker said.

 
          
 
Hellman looked around at the jumbled stacks of
incomprehensible alien goods. He noticed a door on either side of the room.

 
          
 
"Let's have a look in the other
sections," he suggested.

 
          
 
Casker shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

 
          
 
Slowly they trudged to the door in the left
wall. It was locked, and Hellman burned it open with the ship's burner.

 
          
 
It was a wedge-shaped room, piled with
incomprehensible alien goods.

 
          
 
The hike back across the room seemed like
miles, but they made it only slightly out of wind. Hellman blew out the lock in
the righthand wall and they looked in.

 
          
 
It was a wedge-shaped room, piled with
incomprehensible alien goods.

 
          
 
"All the same," Casker said sadly,
and closed the door.

 
          
 
"Evidently there's a series of these
rooms going completely around the building," Hellman said. "I wonder
if we should explore them."

 
          
 
Casker calculated the distance around the
building, compared it with his remaining strength, and sat down heavily on a
long gray object.

 
          
 
"Why bother?" he asked.

 
          
 
Hellman tried to collect his thoughts.
Certainly he should be able to find a key of some sort, a clue that would tell
him what they could eat. But where was it?

 
          
 
He examined the object Casker was sitting on.
It was about the size and shape of a large coffin, with a shallow depression on
top. It was made of a hard, corrugated substance.

 
          
 
"What do you suppose this is?"
Hellman asked.

 
          
 
"Does it matter?"

 
          
 
Hellman glanced at the symbol painted on the
side of the object, then looked them up in his dictionary.

 
          
 
"Fascinating," he murmured, after a
while.

 
          
 
"Is it something to eat?" Casker
asked, with a faint glimmering of hope.

 
          
 
"No. You are sitting on something called
the morog

 
          
 
CUSTOM SUPER TRANSPORT FOR
THE DISCRIMINATING HELGAN WHO DESIRES THE BEST IN VERTICAL TRANSPORTATION.
It's a vehicle!"

 
          
 
"Oh," Casker said dully.

 
          
 
"This is important! Look at it! How does
it work?"

 
          
 
Casker wearily climbed off the Morog Custom
Super Transport and looked it over carefully. He traced four almost invisible
separations on its four corners. "Retractable wheels, probably, but I
don't see—"

 
          
 
Hellman read on. "It says to give it
three amphus of high-gain Integor fuel, then a van of Tonder lubrication, and
not to run it over three thousand Ruls for the first fifty mungus."

 
          
 
"Let's find something to eat,"
Casker said.

 
          
 
"Don't you see how important this
is?" Hellman asked. "This could solve our problem. If we could deduce
the alien logic inherent in constructing this vehicle, we might know the Helgan
thought pattern. This, in turn, would give us an insight into their nervous
systems, which would imply their biochemical makeup."