A good answer. Obviously the Council of Ministers had had more than Flint’s experience in mind when they selected him.
“If we discover what we hope,” Flint said, “the mutual threat will be considerably abated. With the science of the Ancients, whether Kirlian or otherwise, our galaxy should be invulnerable.”
“Perhaps. Yet the Ancients perished.”
“After maintaining their empire for a million years or so.”
“Strange that they should fade so suddenly and completely, after such longevity,” the Master observed.
“Yes. That is one of their fascinating mysteries.”
“We regard it as ominous rather than intriguing.”
The saucer dropped down, and Flint climbed out from the visitor’s well. “Thank you for the lift,” he said.
“It has been an honor to serve.” The craft set off to locate a new entity.
Flint stood where he was for a moment, pondering. The exchange had been perfectly amicable, but the Master had shown him that it had come thoroughly prepared. An excellent ally—or an extremely dangerous enemy. The Canopians evidently were convinced of the importance of this site!
Thanks to the ride, Flint was first at the rendezvous. He looked about, concentrating on the ground rather than the sky. Here, more than anywhere, he ran the danger of stepping over a material cliff while gazing at the ethereal heavens, like the Fool of the Tarot deck.
All around were the preserved ruins of an advanced civilization. Not the pottery shards and stone arrowheads of Earthly archaeological sites, but actual buildings of a former city, no more strange in design than similar constructions of modern Sol, Polaris, or Canopus. It seemed almost as if an Ancient sapient were about to walk out.
Flint had not expected much, knowing that most Ancient sites were evident only to the trained eye: an unnatural mound here, a pattern of depressions there, sometimes a vague depression overgrown by jungle. Or even a mountain slope, the site a victim of orogeny, mountain building, now tilted and perhaps buried or even inverted. Some-times construction crews discovered deeply covered strata with the Ancient stigmata. But three million years was a long time; it was evident that the Ancients had been phenomenal ground-movers, but that offered little insight into their culture. Until this moment…
There was motion, down near the ground beyond a collapsed building. Flint, suddenly nervous, unlimbered one of his special weapons, a telescoping spear. This required human hands and skill for proper application, and as a Stone Age man and flintsmith, he was expert in its use. It was unlikely that any other creature could turn this against him. He could attack or defend, and if he lost it, he was also adept at defense against it. He doubted that the other creatures would be mechanically equipped to balk it. Of course they would have their own weapons. He wanted no quarrel, for both personal and Spherical reasons, still, something strange was coming toward him, and he wanted to be ready.
The motion manifested as a traveling patch of brambles. Flint studied its approach, and realized that it had to be sentient and sapient; there was no native life on Godawful Four, as he called this planet. The only thing that could move were the mattermitted, spacesuited representatives of the Spheres. He was being unreasonably jumpy. He put away his spear, though his primitive inclination was to step on the thing, squishing it like a centipede.
It was legless and had thousands of projectile-spines, like the barbed quills of an Earth porcupine or the spurs of sandspur grass. These shot out on tiny threads to hook into anything, even the dust of the airless desert. These were then reeled in, winching the main mass forward. At any given moment, a number of tethers were in every stage of the process—retracted, shooting out, catching, drawing in. The overall effect was, once he adjusted to the notion, rather graceful; the creature traveled across the rock smoothly.
It had to be in a spacesuit, for no lifeform Flint knew of existed in a vacuum. But what a suit! Each tiny hook and tether must be enclosed and pressurized. This bespoke a fine technology. Probably those myriad little members had exquisite detail control.
“Hello, comrade,” Flint said. There was no air to carry his voice, but he knew the sound would be transmitted through the ground. He also had a translator keyed into a radio transceiver in his suit.
He was answered by a staccato of faint taps, as of tiny anchors dropping. He turned on his unit, letting it orient on whichever language this was. In a moment it spoke. “Sphere Nath.”
“Sphere Sol,” Flint said. His unit did not translate his own words. For simplicity, each creature’s unit would handle all incoming messages, rendering them into the native language. There had been no direct human-Nathian contact before, though the two Spheres were adjacent. The expense, risk, and delay of inter-Sphere contact had been too great, until this galactic crisis.
“Arrivals?” his unit inquired as the Nathian tapped again.
“Sphere Canopus,” Flint said. “With a flying craft. No others I know of, yet.”
“Message from Sphere Bellatrix. Cannot attend, but information relayed to Sphere Mirzam, who attends.”
Flint visualized the map of the Vicinity Cluster of Spheres. Bellatrix was a small Sphere, about Sphere Sol’s size, adjacent to Nath. It was about five hundred light-years from Sol. Mirzam was two hundred and fifty light-years out. Bellatrix had been invited to attend; Mirzam had not, as contact had not yet been made. Evidently the chain of contacts was still extending, and that was good. Soon this entire section of the galaxy would be alert to the Andromedan threat.
“We of Sphere Nath have held long discourse with Sphere Bellatrix,” the creature continued. Flint knew the translation was approximate, as there had to be fundamental distinctions of concept. “Discourse” could mean war or slavery or cohabitation. But there were limits to what a hastily jury-rigged multiple translation system could do. “They are very shy of strangers, so could not attend. But they are affinitive to Mirzam, with whom their contact parallels ours, so they relayed transfer, and Mirzam attends.”
Could be. On the map, Sphere Bellatrix overlapped both Nath and Mirzam, so that as with Sol and Polaris, they could have had centuries of interaction, cooperative Fringe colonies, trade, and so on. Their refusal to interact immediately with a group of unfamiliar entities was understandable. Flint had seen Solarians as others saw them, there in Sphere Polaris, and it was a lesson he hoped never to forget. He still had trouble adjusting to new forms—in fact was having trouble right now—and he was Sol’s most experienced agent.
“We of Sphere Sol understand,” he said. “We appreciate the message.”
“Pull-hook,” the Nathian said.
Oops, a mistranslation. Obviously, to hook and pull was an expression of affinity, of motion or success; acquiescence. But since there were literal meanings to the terms, the machine had oriented on them, taking the simplest route. Which was one reason inter-Sphere relations could not be trusted entirely to machines.
“Perhaps we should wait on the others,” Flint said. “We want to coordinate the search.”
“Meaning clarification: occupy what position in relation to others?”
Flint reviewed his phrasing. “Remain inactive until the representatives of other Spheres arrive,” he said. Yes, he would have to watch his own language. These literalisms could be troublesome, even deadly. To wait on an alien creature might be to squash it, and his word might have been taken as a direct threat. His mass could do a lot of harm to a low-spread-out, thread-limbed creature like this. “We have translation problems; please verify all questionable remarks without taking offense.”