“Don’t be alarmed,” Martin whispered. “My guess is that they’re helping each other remove their ear protectors.”
Suddenly the burrowers were emerging from the walls and floor and swarming silently over his hull. The tunnel on both sides of the digger was full of them. With a feeling of self-satisfaction he noted that none of them were wearing earmuffs.
They were ready to talk.
Carefully, so as not to hit his hand accidentally against the console, Martin switched off the external lighting, then turned it on again for precisely one second. He waited for ten seconds then switched it on and off again twice, then three and finally four times. He repeated the one-two-three-four sequence several times, indicating his willingness to communicate in a fashion which would not painfully overload their hypersensitive hearing.
There was no response.
He turned up the external lighting to its full, eye-searing intensity and tried again. Still they ignored him. He looked away from the brilliantly illuminated cave to rest his eyes, and then it was that an even greater light dawned.
Incredulously, he whispered, “They’re Wind!”
Chapter 15
ARE you sure?” Beth asked, matching his tone. “If you’re right, it explains a lot.”
It would certainly explain why the creatures preferred to remain under the surface. Above ground they would have little or no protection against the ultra-quiet predators and winged life forms who were guided to their victims by a sense the burrowers did not possess and might not even understand. Without sight, they would know only that on the surface there was death or serious in-. jury, inflicted by beings who could not be evaded. As a result they had remained safely underground, developed their own peculiar culture, and ignored the beasts who roamed the surface and the atmosphere above it.
But not entirely.
They had dealt very effectively with the six-legged predator who had attacked the protector vehicle, with the vehicle itself, and they had successfully hidden themselves from a hypership orbiting their planet. A sudden, uncontrollable shiver made Martin’s suit rub noisily against the couch.
What kind of people were they, and what additional or heightened faculties did they possess to compensate for their blindness? The question was unspoken, but Beth began answering it, anyway.
“Correlation of the latest X-ray scans together with the key datum that the life form is blind,” she said excitedly, “explains certain physiological anomalies. Not only is this species blind, the indications are that it is deaf and dumb as well. There are no organs resembling functional ears or mechanisms for producing speech. The entire sensorium, virtually the whole surface of the body, is responsive to touch. Apparently it is the only sense they possess.
“According to the mastermind here,” she went on, “this makes them highly sensitive to vibration transmitted through the soil or water and, to a lesser extent, air. Their equivalent of talking is to tap or rub specialized groups of stubble sited above and below the beak, whose shape gives the sounds a degree of directional focus. Properly speaking they do not talk and listen to each other so much as touch at long range.
“I’ve never called the main computer a liar before,” she added, “but when I just did, it told me that if I disliked its conclusions I should have fed it a different set of data.”
“So,” Martin whispered, “they can hear, or rather feel me at a distance with the hypersensitive touch sensors we’re calling their ears, but I can’t hear diem. Surely their tapping and rubbing sounds are detectable?”
The screen showed burrowers moving away from the tunnel. The movement was steady and purposeful, he thought, and not a panic reaction to the sound of his voice.
“They’re leaving the area,” Beth said, “and putting on their ear protectors as they go. For the next stage you’re going to need very special equipment. Your tri-di projector and other visual aids to communication will be singularly ineffective with a species that is blind. Will you return to the lander now?”
“I’m not sure,” Martin said. “I think we’re making progress, and this isn’t the time to break off contact. These are the only members of the species who did not hide from us, and we might not be able to find them again to resume where we left off. I can’t see the details on this small screen, but they seem to be taking up some kind of formation.”
“They’ve taken up a hollow cone formation with you at the center of its base,” she reported. “The cone is pointed in a southwesterly direction and inclined downward by twenty-three degrees, and is moving forward slowly. I’d say that they are pointing the way and want you to follow.”
“I’m following,” Martin said quietly. “But what I need now is a method of attenuating the sound of my voice so they won’t be deafened every time I try to say something.”
Slowly he moved the digger out of the tunnel and lined it up with the direction indicated by the cone. The speed seemed to be comfortable for the burrowers because they matched his pace exactly and were not moving farther out to escape his noise.
“You are headed toward one of the small, permanent tunnels which must be their equivalent of a minor road,” Beth reported. “Further ahead there is a subterranean river which flows, for no natural geological reason, in a straight line. It passes through a large cave, which is not entirely a natural feature either, containing small accumulations of metal which could be tools, machinery, or weapons. At this range the picture is unclear.
“I’m going to reposition the lander above that cavern,” she ended, “because that is where the action is likely to be.”
Operating from the orbiting hypership as easily as if she were in the lander’s control module, Beth lifted the ship out of contact with the surface and set it down again directly above the cave. Had it been necessary, she could just as easily have remote-controlled the digger, which made Martin feel very safe but just a bit redundant.
For the few minutes that the lander was in the air, Martin was sonically blind, and when its probes were redeployed he had to act quickly to avoid a serious and almost certainly fatal accident. His vehicle had wandered from the indicated course and was edging dangerously close to one of his escorts, who was steadfastly, or stupidly, refusing to move away from his cutters. He turned away, swearing, then remembered that the bur-rowers had no way of knowing that, when his vehicle was in motion, he was nearly as blind as they were without the lander to shed its sonic tight on the situation.
“This is interesting,” Beth said suddenly. “Some of those metal objects are using power. Obviously the people in the cave aren’t hiding from us anymore. But I’d like to know their purpose. Even the civilized, peace-loving races used weapons, both long- and short-range, at some period before they grew out of the habit. They could be getting ready to jump you.”
“I can’t imagine a long-range weapon being developed by a blind race,” Martin said softly. “I wish they’d move faster.”
He was impatient to reach that cave, now. But if he increased speed the noise would seriously inconvenience the burrowers and that, for the person wanting to establish contact with them, would not be a friendly thing to do. So he closed his eyes, forced patience on himself, and tried to think like a being who could only feel the world around it.
“The cone is changing direction,” Beth said sharply. “Can’t you see it?”
“I can now,” Martin said, opening his eyes. “But wait a minute, they’re pointing me nearly twenty degrees to the right of the cavern! That cavern is the place I want to see.”
As he was speaking, Martin reduced speed until the burrowers forming the base of the cone had pulled more than thirty meters ahead, then he turned back on to the original course.