“In my head,” the stranger replied. “In my head ogod my head . . . eyes blurring everything going dim . . . luv to mairee . . . kids . . . a carry me home to the lone prayree . . . get this bluddy airlock open then they’ll see me die . . . but they’ll see me . . . some kind of atmosphere with this gravity . . . see me die . . . extrapolate from body what I was . . . what they are damthem damthem damthem . . . mann . . . master . . . I AM YOUR MAKER!”
For a few seconds the voice rose strong and clear, then faded away again and dwindled into a combination of those two curious noises I mentioned earlier. For some reason that I cannot explain, I found the combined sound very disturbðing despite its faintness. It may be that it induced some kind of sympathetic oscillation.
Then came words, largely incoherent and punctuated by a kind of surge like the sonic vibrations produced by variaðtions of pressure in a leaking gas-filled vessel.
“. . . done it . . . crawling into chamber, closing inner . . . must be mad . . . they’d find me anyway . . . but finished . . . want to see them before I die . . . want see them see me . . . liv few seconds, watch them . . . get outer one open . . .”
Chur-chur had adjusted his arc to a broad, clean, blue-white glare. I trembled a little as he brought it near the edge of the circular marking in the stranger’s skin. I could almost feel the disruption of the infra-molecular sense currents in my own skin.
“Don’t be squeamish, Palil,” Chur-chur said kindly. “He can’t feel it now that his contact sense has gone. And you heard him say that his central brain is in his head.” He brought the cutter firmly up to the skin. “I should have guessed that. He’s the same shape as Swen Two, and Swen very logically concentrated his main thinking part as far away from his explosion chambers as possible.”
Rivulets of metal ran down into a tray which a calm assistant had placed on the ground for that purpose. I averted my eyes quickly. I could never steel myself enough to be a surgical engineer or assembly technician.
But I had to look again, fascinated. The whole area circumscribed by the marking was beginning to glow.
Abruptly the stranger’s voice returned, quite strongly, each word clipped, emphasised, high-pitched.
“Ar no no no . . . god my hands . . . they’re burning through the lock and I can’t get back I can’t get away . . . stop it you feens stop it can’t you hear . . . I’ll be burned to deth I’m here in the airlock . . . the air’s getting hot you’re burning me alive . . .”
Although the words made little sense, I could guess what had happened and I was horrified.
“Stop, Chur-chur,” I pleaded. “The heat has somehow brought back his skin currents. It’s hurting him.”
Chur-chur said reassuringly: “Sorry, Palil. It occasionally happens during an operation—probably a local thermoelecðtric effect. But even if his contact senses have started workðing again and he can’t switch them off, he won’t have to bear this very long.”
Chirik shared my unease, however. He put out his hand and awkwardly patted the stranger’s skin.
“Easy there,” he said. “Cut out your senses if you can. If you can’t, well, the operation is nearly finished. Then we’ll repower you, and you’ll soon be fit and happy again, healed and fitted and reassembled.”
I decided that I liked Chirik very much just then. He exhibited almost as much self-induced empathy as any reporter; he might even come to like my favourite blue stars, despite his cold scientific exactitude in most respects.
My recorder tape shows, in its reproduction of certain sounds, how I was torn away from this strained reverie.
During the one-and-a-half seconds since I had recorded the distinct vocables “burning me alive,” the stranger’s words had become quite blurred, running together and rising even higher in pitch until they reached a sustained note—around E-flat in the standard sonic scale.
It was not like a voice at all.
This high, whining noise was suddenly modulated by apparent words without changing its pitch. Transcribing what seem to be words is almost impossible, as you can see for yourself—this is the closest I can come phonetically:
“Eeeeahahmbeeeeing baked aliiive in an uvennn ahdeeer-jeeesussunmuuutherrr! “
The note swooped higher and higher until it must have neared supersonic range, almost beyond either my direct or recorded hearing.
Then it stopped as quickly as a contact break.
And although the soft hiss of the stranger’s carrier wave carried on without perceptible diminution, indicating that some degree of awareness existed, I experienced at that moment one of those quirks of intuition given only to reporters:
I felt that I would never greet the beautiful stranger from the sky in his full senses.
Chur-chur was muttering to himself about the extreme toughness and thickness of the stranger’s skin. He had to make four complete cutting revolutions before the circular mass of nearly white-hot metal could be pulled away by a magnetic grapple.
A billow of smoke puffed out of the orifice. Despite my repugnance, I thought of my duty as a reporter and forced myself to look over Chur-chur’s shoulder.
The fumes came from a soft, charred, curiously shaped mass of something which lay just inside the opening. “Undoubtedly a kind of insulating material,” Chur-chur explained.
He drew out the crumpled blackish heap and placed it carefully on a tray. A small portion broke away, showing a red, viscid substance.
“It looks complex,” Chur-chur said, “but I expect the stranger will be able to tell us how to reconstitute it or make a substitute.”
His assistant gently cleaned the wound of the remainder of the material, which he placed with the rest; and Chur-chur resumed his inspection of the orifice.
You can, if you want, read the technical accounts of Chur-chur’s discovery of the stranger’s double skin at the point where the cut was made; of the incredible complexity of his driving mechanism, involving principles which are still not understood to this day; of the museum’s failure to analyse the exact nature and function of the insulating material found in only that one portion of his body; and of the other scientific mysteries connected with him.
But this is my personal, non-scientific account. I shall never forget hearing about the greatest mystery of all, for which not even the most tentative explanation has been adðvanced, nor the utter bewilderment with which Chur-chur announced his initial findings that day.
He had hurriedly converted himself to a convenient size to permit actual entry into the stranger’s body.
When he emerged, he stood in silence for several minutes. Then, very slowly, he said:
“I have examined the ‘central brain’ in the forepart of his body. It is no more than a simple auxiliary computer mechanism. It does not possess the slightest trace of conðsciousness. And there is no other conceivable centre of inðtelligence in the remainder of his body.”
There is something I wish I could forget. I can’t explain why it should upset me so much. But I always stop the tape before it reaches the point where the voice of the stranger rises in pitch, going higher and higher until it cuts out.
There’s a quality about that noise that makes me tremble and think of rust.
Sarah A. Hoyt
Being afraid of the dark is common among children, and would probably be considered more common among adults, if they weren’t embarrassed to admit it. Once, there actually were dangerous things out there, circling the fire (better not let it go out), looking in to the cave mouth with eyes reflecting that firelight, but now things are different. The night can be banished with a flip of an electric switch, and the deadliest predators are either extinct or kept in zoo cages. But suppose there were other, even deadlier creatures who moved away from the realm of machines and lights. Suppose they now lurk in the dark of space . . . waiting for an opportunity to show their power again.