DuQuesne was aware that force would be an improbably successful means of getting what he wanted. Guile was equally satisfactory. Accordingly he took off his clothes and examined himself, front and back and sides, in a full-length mirror.
He would do, he concluded. There would be nothing about his physical person which would cause him any trouble in his dealings with the Jelmi. Since he always took his sun-lamp treatments in the raw, his color gradation was right. He was too dark for a typical Caucasian Tellurian; but that was all right — he wasn’t going to be a Tellurian. He would, he decided, be a native of some planet whose people went naked… the planet Xylmny, in a galaxy ’way out on the Rim somewhere… yes, he had self-control enough not to give himself away.
But his cabin wouldn’t stand inspection on a usually naked basis, nor would any other private room of the ship. All had closets designed unmistakably for clothing and it wasn’t worth while to rebuild them.
Okay, he’d be a researcher who had visited dozens of planets, and everybody had to wear some kind of clothing or trappings at some time or other. Protectively at least. And probably for formality or for decoration.
Wherefore DuQuesne, with a helmet on his head and a half-smile, half-sneer on his face, let his imagination run riot in filling closet after closet with the utilitarian and the decorative garmenture of world after purely imaginative world. Then, after transferring his own Tellurian clothing to an empty closet, he devoted a couple of hours to designing and constructing the apparel of his equally imaginary native world Xylmny.
In due time a call came in from the spaceship up ahead. “You who are following us from the direction of the world Tellus: do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you following us, Tellurian?”
“I am not a Tellurian. I am from the planet Xylmny; which, while very similar to Tellus, lies in a distant galaxy.” He told the caller, as well as he could in words, where Xylmny was. “I am a Seeker, Sevance by name. I have visited many planets very similar to yours and to Tellus and to my own in my Seeking. Tellus itself had nothing worthy of my time, but I learned there that you have a certain knowledge as yet unknown to me; that of operating through the fourth dimension of space instantaneously, without becoming lost hopelessly therein, as is practically always the case when rotation is employed. Therefore I of course followed you.”
“Naturally. I would have done the same. I am Savant Tammon of the planet Mallidax — Llurdiaxorb Three which is our destination. You, then, have had one or more successes in rotation? Our rotational tests all failed.”
“We had only one success. As a Seeker I will be glad to give you the specifications of the structures, computers, and forces required for any possibility of success — which is very slight at best.”
“This meeting is fortunate indeed. Have I your permission to come aboard your vessel, as such time as we approach each other nearly enough to make the fourth dimensional transfer feasible?”
“You certainly may, sir. I’ll be very glad indeed to greet you in the flesh. And until that hour, Savant Tammon, so long and thanks.”
Since Mergon braked the Mallidaxian down hard to help make the approach, and since the two vessels did not have to be close together even in astronomical terms, it was not long until Tammon stood facing DuQuesne in the Capital D’s control room.
The aged savant inhaled deeply, flexed his knees, and said, “As I expected, our environments are very similar. We greet new friends with a four-hand clasp. Is that form satisfactory?”
“Perfectly; it’s very much like our own,” DuQuesne said; and four hands clasped briefly.
“Would you like to come aboard our vessel now?” Tammon asked.
“The sooner the better,” and they were both in Tammon’s laboratory, where Mergon and Luloy looked DuQuesne over with interest.
“Seeker Sevance,” Tammon said then, “these are Savant Mergon, my first assistant, and Savant Luloy, his… well, ‘wife’ would be, I think, the closest possible English equivalent. You three are to become friends.”
The hand-clasp was six-fold this time, and the two Jelmi said in unison. “I’m happy that we are to become friends.”
“May our friendship ripen and deepen,” DuQuesne improvised the formula and bowed over the cluster of hands.
“But Seeker,” Luloy said, as the cluster fell apart, “must all Seekers do their Seeking alone? I’d go stark raving mad if I had to be alone as long as you must have been.”
“True Seekers, yes. While it is true that any normal man misses the companionship of his kind, especially that of the opposite sex—” DuQuesne gave Luloy a cool, contained smile as his glance traversed her superb figure — “even such a master of concentration as a true Seeker must be can concentrate better, more productively, when absolutely alone.”
Tammon nodded thoughtfully. “That may well be true. Perhaps I shall try it myself. Now — we have some little time before dinner. Is there any other matter you would like to discuss?”
For that question DuQuesne was well prepared. A Seeker, after all, needs something to be Sought; and as he did not want to appear exclusively interested in something which even the unsuspicious Jelmi would be aware was a weapon of war, he had selected another subject about which to inquire. So he said at once:
“A minor one, yes. While I am scarcely even a tyro in biology, I have pondered the matter of many hundreds probably many millions — of apparently identical and quite possibly inter-fertile human races spaced so immensely far apart in space that any possibility of a common ancestry is precluded.”
“Ah!” Tammon’s eyes lit up. “One of my favorite subjects; one upon which I have done much work. We Jelmi and the Tellurians are very far apart indeed in space, yet cross-breeding is successful. In vitro, that is, and as far as I could carry the experiment. I can not synthesize a living placenta. No in vitro trial was made, since we of course could not abduct a Tellurian woman and not one of our young women cared to bear a child fathered by any Tellurian male we saw.”
“From what I saw there I don’t blame them,” agreed DuQuesne. It was only the truth of his feelings about Tellurians — with one important exception. “But doesn’t your success in vitro necessitate a common ancestry?”
“In a sense, yes; but not in the ordinary sense. It goes back to the unthinkably remote origin of all life. You can, I suppose, synthesize any non-living substance you please? Perfectly, down to what is apparently its ultimately fine structure?”
“I see what you mean.” DuQuesne, who had never thought really deeply about that fact, was hit hard. “Steak, for instance. Perfect in every respect except in that it never has been alive. No. We can synthesize DNA-RNA complexes, the building blocks of life, but they are not alive and we can not bring them to life. And, conversely, we cannot dematerialize living flesh.”
“Precisely. Life may be an extra-dimensional attribute. Its basis may lie in some order deeper than any now known. Whatever the truth may be, it seems to be known at present only to the omnipotence Who we of Mallidax call Llenderllon. All we know about life is that it is an immensely strong binding force and that its source — proximate, I mean, of course, not its ultimate origin — is the living spores that are drifting about in open space.”
“Wait a minute,” DuQuesne said. “We had a theory like that long ago. So did Tellus — a scientist named Arrhenius — but all such theories were finally held to be untenable. Wishful thinking.”