And then he thought: I've spent a long time doing things foreverybody's sake.
Just for once, I'm going to do something for me.
I don't think we can find other nomes with this Ship, but at least I knowwhere to look for frogs.
"Thing," he said, "take us to South America-and don't argue."
Chapter 12
Frogs: Some people think that knowing about frogsis important. They are small and green, or yellow, and have four legs. They croak. Young frogs aretadpoles. In my opinion, this is all there is toknow about frogs. - From A Scientific Encyclopediaor the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo deHaberdasheri.
Find a blue planet ... Focus.
This is a planet. Most of it is covered with water, but it's stillcalled Earth.
Find a country... . Focus... . Blues and greens and browns under thesun, and long wisps of rain cloud being torn by the mountains... .
Focus ... on a mountain, green and dripping, and there's a ... focus ... tree, hung with moss and covered with flowers, and ... focus ... on aflower with a little pool in it, is an epiphytic bromeliad.
Its leaves, although they might be petals, hardly quiver at all as threevery small and very golden frogs pull themselves up and gaze inastonishment at the fresh, clear water. Two of them look at their leader, waiting for it to say something suitable for this historic occasion.
It's going to say ... mipmip... .
And then they slide down the leaf and into the water.
Although the frogs can spot the difference between day and night, they're a bit hazy on the whole idea of time. They know that some thingshappen after other things. Really intelligent frogs might wonder if thereis something that prevents everything happening all at once, but that'sabout as close as they can get to it.
So how long it was before a strange night came in the middle of the dayis hard to tell, from a frog point of view.
A wide black shadow drifted over the treetops, and came to a halt. Aftera while there were voices. The frogs could hear them, although theydidn't know what they meant or even what they were. They didn't soundlike the kind of voices frogs were used to.
What they heard went like this:
"How many mountains are there, anyway? I mean, it's ridiculous! Who needsthis many mountains? I call it inefficient. One would have done.
I'll go mad if I see another mountain. How many more have we got to search?"
"I like them."
"And some of the trees are the wrong height."
"I like them, too, Gurder."
"And I don't trust Angalo doing the driving."
"I think he's getting better, Gurder."
"Well, I just hope no more airplanes come flying around, that's all."
Gurder and Masklin swung in a crude basket made out of bits of metal and wire. It hung from a square hatchway under the Ship.
There were still huge rooms in the Ship that they hadn't explored yet.
Odd machines were everywhere. The Thing had said the Ship had been usedfor exploring.
Masklin hadn't quite trusted any of it. There probably were machines that could have lowered and pulled up the basket easily, but he'd preferred toloop the wire around a pillar inside the Ship, and with Pion helpinginside, to pull themselves up and down by sheer nomish effort.
The basket bumped gently on the tree branch.
The trouble was that humans wouldn't leave them alone. No sooner had they found a likely looking mountain than airplanes or helicopters would buzz around, like insects around an eagle. It was distracting.
Masklin looked along the branch. Gurder was right. This would have to be the last mountain.
But there certainly were flowers here.
He crawled along the branch until he reached the nearest flower. It was three times as high as he was. He found a foothold and pulled himself up.
There was a pool in there. Six little yellow eyes peered up at him.
Masklin stared back.
So it was true, after all.
He wondered if there was anything he should say to them, if there was anything they could possibly understand.
It was quite a long branch, and quite thick. But there were tools andthings in the Ship. They could let down extra wires to hold the branchand winch it up when it was cut free. It would take some time, but thatdidn't matter. It was important.
The Thing had said there were ways of growing plants under lights thesame color as the sun, in pots full of a sort of weak soup that helpedplants grow. It should be the easiest thing to keep a branch alive. Theeasiest thing in the world.
If they did everything carefully and gently, the frogs would never know.
If the world was a bathtub, the progress of the Ship through it would belike the soap, shooting backward and forward and never being where anyoneexpected it to be. You could spot where it had just been by airplanes andhelicopters taking off in a hurry.
Or maybe it was like the ball in a roulette wheel, bouncing around andlooking for the right number.
Or maybe it was just lost.
They searched all night. If there was a night. It was hard to tell. TheThing tried to explain that the Ship went faster than the sun, althoughthe sun actually stood still. Some parts of the world had night whileother parts had day. This, Gurder said, was bad organization.
"In the Store," he said, "it was always dark when it should be. Even ifit was just somewhere built by humans." It was the first time they'dheard him admit the Store was built by humans.
There didn't seem to be anywhere that looked familiar.
Masklin scratched his chin.
"The Store was in a place called Blackbury," he said. "I know that much.
So the quarry couldn't have been far away."
Angalo waved his hand irritably at the screens.
"Yes, but it's not like the map," he said. "They don't stick names onplaces! It's ridiculous! How's anyone supposed to know where anywhereis?"
"All right," said Masklin. "But you're not to fly down low again to tryto read the signposts. Every time you do that, humans rush out into thestreets and we get lots of shouting on the radio."
"That's right," said the Thing. "People are bound to get excited whenthey see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street."
"I was very careful last time," said Angalo stoutly. "I even stopped whenthe traffic lights went red. I don't see why there was such a fuss. Allthe trucks and cars started crashing into one another too. And you callme a bad driver."
Gurder turned to Pion, who was learning the language fast. The geesenomes did. They were used to meeting nomes who spoke other languages.
"Your geese never got lost," he said. "How did they manage it?"
"They just did not get lost," said Pion. "They knew always where they going."
"It can be like that with animals," said Masklin. "They've got instincts.
It's like knowing things without knowing you know them."
"I don't know," said Gurder. "Why doesn't the Thing know? It could find Floridia, so somewhere important like Blackbury ought to be no trouble."
"I can find no radio messages about Blackbury. There are plenty about Florida," said the Thing.
"At least land somewhere," said Gurder. Angalo pressed a couple of buttons.
"There's just sea under us right now," he said. "And-what's that?"
Below the Ship and a long way off, something tiny and white skimmed over the clouds.
"Could be goose," said Pion.
"I ... don't ... think ... so," said Angalo carefully. He twiddled a knob. "I'm really learning about this stuff," he said.
The picture of the screen flickered a bit, and then expanded.
There was a white dart sliding across the sky.
"Is it the Concorde?" said Gurder.
"Yes," said Angalo.
"It's going a bit slow, isn't it?"
"Only compared to us," said Angalo.
"Follow it," said Masklin.