“What I could understand of your talk sounded reasonable. It is certainly evident that we are different; we will probably never fully realize just how different. At least we are enough alike to talk together — and make what I hope will be a mutually profitable agreement.”
“I am sure it will be. Incidentally, in furtherance of it you will have to give me an idea of the places you want to go, and I will have to point out on your maps the place where I want you to go. Could we look at that Bowl of yours now? There is light enough for this vision set.”
“Certainly. The Bowl is set in the deck and cannot be moved; I will have to move the machine so that you can see it. Wait a moment.”
Barlennan inched across the raft to a spot that was covered by a smaller flap, clinging to deck cleats as he went. He pulled back and stowed the flap, exposing a clear spot on the deck; then he returned, made four lines fast about the radio, secured them to strategically placed cleats, removed the radio’s cover, and began to work it across the deck. It weighed more than he did by quite a margin, though fts linear dimensions were smaller, but he was taking no chances of having it blown away. The storm had not eased in the least, and the deck itself was quivering occasionally. With the eye — end of the set almost to the Bowl, he propped the other end up with spars so that the Flyer could look downward. Then he himself moved to the other side of the Bowl and began his exposition.
Lackland had to admit that the map which the Bowl contained was logically constructed and, as far as it went, accurate. Its curvature matched that of the planet quite closely, as he had expected — the major error being that it was concave, in conformity with the natives’ ideas about the shape of their world. It was about six inches across and roughly one and a quarter deep-at the center. The whole map was protected by a transparent cover — probably of ice, Lackland guessed — set flush with the deck. This interfered somewhat with Barlennan’s attempts to point out details, but could not have been removed without letting the Bowl fill with ammonia snow in moments. The stuff was piling up wherever it found shelter from the wind. The beach was staying relatively clear, but both Lackland and Barlennan could imagine what was happening on the other side of the hills that paralleled it on the south. The latter was secretly glad he was a sailor. Land travel in this region would not be fun for some thousands of days.
“I have tried to keep my charts up to date,” he said as he settled down opposite the Flyer’s proxy. “I haven’t attempted to make any changes in the Bowl, though, because the new regions we mapped on the way up were not extensive enough to show. There is actually little I can show you in detail, but you wanted a general idea of where I planned to go when we could get out of here.
“Well, actually I don’t care greatly. I can buy and sell anywhere, and at the moment I have little aboard but food. I won’t have much of that by the time winter is over, either; so I had planned, since our talk, to cruise for a time around the low-weight areas and pick up plant products which can be obtained here — materials that are valued by the people farther south because of their effect on the taste of food.”
“Spices?”
“If that is the word for such products, yes. I have carried them before, and rather like them — you can get good profit from a single shipload, as with most commodities whose value depends less on their actual usefulness than on their rarity.”
“I take it, then, that once you have loaded here you don’t particularly care where you go?”
“That is right. I understand that your errand will carry us close to the Center, which is fine — the farther south we go, the higher the prices I can get; and the extra length of the journey should not be much more dangerous, since you will be helping us as you agreed.”
“Right. That is excellent — though I wish we had been able to find something we could give you in actual payment, so that you would not feel the need to take time in spice-gathering.”
“Well, we have to eat. You say your bodies, and hence your foods, are made of very different substances from ours, so we can’t use your foodstuffs. Frankly, I can’t think of any desirable raw metal or similar material that I couldn’t get far more easily in any quantity I wanted. My favorite idea is still that we get some of your machines, but you say that they would have to be built anew to function under our conditions. It seems that the agreement we reached is the best that is possible, under those circumstances.”
“True enough. Even this radio was built specifically for this job, and you could not repair it — your people, unless I am greatly mistaken, don’t have the tools. However, during the journey we can talk of this again; perhaps the things we learn of each other will open up other and better possibilities.”
“I am sure ‘they will,” Barlennan answered politely.
He did not, of course, mention the possibility that his own plans might succeed. The Flyer would hardly have approved.
II: THE FLYER
The Flyer’s forecast was sound; some four hundred days passed before the storm let up noticeably. Five times during that period the Flyer spoke to Barlennan on the radio, always opening with a brief weather forecast and continuing a more general conversation for a day or two each time. Barlennan had noticed earlier, when he had been learning the strange creature’s language and paying personal visits to its outpost in the “Hill” near the bay, that it seemed to have a strangely regular life cycle; he found he could count on finding the Flyer sleeping or eating at quite predictable times, which seemed to have a cycle of about eighty days. Barlennan was no philosopher — he had at least his share of the common tendency to regard them as impractical dreamers — and he simply shrugged this fact off as something pertaining to a weird but admittedly interesting creature. There was nothing in the Mesklinite background that would enable him to deduce the existence of a world that took some eighty times as long as his own to rotate 0n its axis.
Lackland’s fifth call was different from the others, and more welcome for several reasons. The difference was due partly to the fact that it was off schedule; its pleasant nature to the fact that at last there was a favorable weather forecast.
“Barl” The Flyer did not bother with preliminaries — he knew that the Mesklinite was always within sound of the radio. “The station on Toorey called a few minutes ago. There is a relatively clear area moving toward us. He was not sure just what the winds would be, but he can see the ground through it, so visibility ought to be fair. If your hunters want to go out I should say that they wouldn’t be blown away, provided they wait until the clouds have been gone for twenty or thirty days. For a hundred days or so after that we should have very good weather indeed. They’ll tell me in plenty of time to get your people back to the ship.”
“But how will they get your warning? If I send this radio with them I won’t be able to talk to you about our regular business, and if I don’t, I don’t see — ”
“I’ve been thinking of that,” interrupted Lackland. “I think you’d better come up here as soon as the wind drops sufficiently. I can give you another set — perhaps it would be better if you had several. I gather that the journey you will be taking for us will be dangerous, and I know for myself it will be long enough. Thirty-odd thousand miles as the crow flies, and I can’t yet guess how far by ship and overland.”
Lackland’s simile occasioned a delay; Barlennan wanted to know what a crow was, and also flying. The first was the easier to get across. Flying for a living creature, under its own power, was harder for him to imagine than throwing — and the thought was more terrifying. He had regarded Lack-land’s proven ability to travel through the air as something so alien that it did not really strike home to him. Lackland saw this, partly.