“Surely leaving your vehicle to crawl along this old and unstable pathway was not a sentient action,” Cromonar said. “Or perhaps there are circumstances which render it so?”
“When we discovered that there was intelligent life on your planet,” Martin replied, “we felt the need to investigate it and talk to you.”
“I understand,” the burrower said. “Curiosity can-outweigh risk with some people. On this world such beings are in the minority, and a number of them are gathered in this area. Were there reasons other than curiosity for investigating us?”
“We wanted to know why you were hiding,” Martin replied, “and to offer assistance if it was required.”
“We need help,” the burrower said, “even though the majority of us do not feel the need. But right now, stranger, your need for help is of greater urgency than ours. Can you remain absolutely still and refrain from violent touchings while I try to eat you out of there?”
The tunnel, Cromonar explained, enabled its people to move between the cavern and an area of edible root crops without having to ingest the tasteless and nutrition-lacking soil of the locality. Due to the excessively heavy touchings of Martin’s digger, the entire length of the tunnel was in danger of collapse. None of its colleagues were willing to risk physical contact with such a violent toucher, which meant that the rescue operation was likely to be a long one.
The soil had been removed from his back and the bur-rower’s weight was centered on his buttocks when it happened-a sudden renewal of pressure on his shoulders and a fall which partially covered one arm. Martin’s pulse rate skyrocketed again and sweat misted his visor so that the tunnel ahead became a bright, featureless blur,
“Do not move,” Cromonar said, and it began patiently eating and clearing the new fall from his back. The process of ingestion did not affect its ability to talk.
It was talking, Martin realized suddenly, to reassure him and take his mind off his present predicament. If he panicked and tried to pull himself out before Cromonar was ready, the entire tunnel would fall in and he would certainly die, and so the burrower was talking furiously about itself, its species, their world, and everything under its unseen sun.
They had evolved from a species of small, sightless flat worm which had burrowed in the primal ooze of their world, paralyzing larger life forms with their sting and ingesting them piecemeal. As their physical size, numbers, and food requirements increased, they became blind hunters whose sense of touch became specialized to the point where they did not need any other sensory channel. They could feel the movements of their surface prey, identify its vibrations, and lie in wait for it just below ground until it came within reach of their stings. Or they could feel out and identify surface tracks and follow their victim to its lair, and either burrow underground and sting it from below or attack it when its internal vibrations indicated that it was asleep.
Because of the strange, extra sense possessed by the creatures who roamed the surface and the air above it, they had. no success against conscious opponents aware of their presence, and very often they had become the prey rather than the hunters.
The surface animals, too, had become larger and stronger and less affected by the burrowers’ stings. They were forced to act together in setting up more and more complex ambushes and cooperation in the matter of food-gathering, storage, and distribution led to the formation of subsurface villages and towns. They already educated their young by touch, and methods were devised for feeling each other over long distances.
Martin had his eyes closed, the better to see the incredible mind-pictures the burrower was painting with its history lesson. His pulse was still racing, but with excitement now, and the threat of an unknown tonnage of soil falling on him seemed to have lost some of its urgency.
Amplifiers and transformers enabled them to refine their sense of touch to the point where they could feel light and radio frequencies. Their attempts at powered flight were still in progress. These had claimed the lives of a great many burrowers who could only gauge their position and altitude by feeling the touchings of air currents on their flying surfaces and trusting to a sense of balance which was woefully inadequate in the alien environment of the sky. These inadequacies had been overcome in part by using long touchings of the irregularities in the ground below.
Blind flying, Martin thought incredulously, with Doppler radar indications in Braille! He wanted to compliment the burrower on its species’ achievements in spite of the worst possible handicap. But the fallen soil had again been eaten clear of his back and Cromonar was still doing all the talking.
The increasing sophistication of their long-range touching systems made them aware of complex vibrations reaching them from beyond their own world. This knowledge had excited some people, but the majority had been made fearful and wanted to conceal themselves lest these faint touchings indicated the pressure of other beings with the strange extra sense, beings more powerful and dangerous than the predators of their own world.
All things considered, Martin thought, it was a good reason for hiding; good enough to satisfy a Federation which normally had no time at all for people who treated others with fear and distrust. More than any other race in his experience, these burrowers needed Federation help. He was not out of trouble himself yet, but already he was considering methods of assessing their suitability for citizenship.
“You have a most unusual and interesting feel,” said the burrower, who was working above his lower legs. “I assume, from earlier touchings felt while you were on the surface, that these are the limbs on which you balance when you move quickly over the ground. On that occasion you were accompanied by a lighter being whose presence I no longer feel.”
Martin kept quiet so that Beth could speak for herself.
“I am the being whose presence you felt earlier,” she said, and went on to give a brief, simplified description of the two-way translation system which was converting the burrower’s stubble touchings into sounds which the visitors could understand, and the visitors’ words into a form which the burrower could feel. She went on, “I thank you for your efforts to rescue my life-mate, and I apologize for the irritation caused by the devices we must use to touch you underground. Solid material is impassible to our extra sense, and your own species’ highly developed sense of touch is truly unique.”
“Uniquely unfortunate, I fear,” Cromonar replied, and even in translation the anger was apparent in its voice. “It seems that every sentient and non-sentient creature in existence has the ability to accurately navigate over long or short distances without needing to feel the touch of sun or wind or sea currents or vibrations bouncing off distant objects. We are cripples, beings lacking vital organs, and we know not what it is that we lack.
“The sensitivity of our long-range touching systems,” it went on more calmly, “made us aware of the many and complex vibrations reaching us from beyond our world. These touchings were not natural occurrences, and we hoped that, some day, beings much more advanced than ourselves would visit us and perhaps help us attain that ability which we alone lack. Your presence and actions here demonstrate that my people need no longer fear everyone and everything above the surface. More, it proves to us that there are other planetary surfaces and subsurfaces warmed by countless numbers of suns whose touchings we can barely detect, but whose soil and creatures we may one day like to feel around us. Believe me, your gratitude is appreciated, but it is we who are in your debt.”
Martin gave an involuntary shiver which caused the burrower to renew its warning against unnecessary movement. When Beth spoke she bypassed the translator so that only he could hear her.