The vine-like growths that formed the extensions of Lurr’s body were draped wetly across him as they had been on his first awakening. He ended the distasteful intimacy by pushing the dark green mass away, trying to understand why it came near him at all. He was pretty sure that Lurr was as sexless as a cabbage, and yet its touch had something of the quality of a ghastly, yearning caress. Was it possible for a plant to become perverted? Purvey found something particularly unpleasant in the thought of being violated by a vegetable.
“Listen,” he said suspiciously. “How long will the trip last?”
A broad leaf unfurled and the laboured writing appeared. “Fifteen of your days.”
“What about food?” Purvey demanded. “I’ll need food.”
“You shall share the Ahtaur’s food.”
“Ahtaur? What’s that?”
“Ahtaur is a helper. She brought you here.”
“I don’t want her food,” Purvey said, suddenly afraid.
“Ahtaur will not mind.” Lurr stirred slowly and moved away, leaving a trail through which could be seen the whitish metal of the floor beneath. There were small perforations in it and, as Purvey watched, more mud welled up through them until the metal was covered.
Purvey followed Lurr, wondering if its last remark had been some kind of sarcasm. Could a thing like Lurr have a sense of humour? Purvey hoped not. It was bad enough to be touched up in his sleep by a sex-starved broccoli without it going around making wisecracks afterwards.
Reaching a little door low down on a bulkhead, Lurr extended a tendril, touched a white circle and the door opened revealing a plain cupboard-like interior. At the touch of another circle, a hatch opened in the rear surface and a block of pink spongy material slid out. Purvey picked it up warily, but he had been hungry long before his current misfortunes had begun, and he had little trouble bringing himself to taste the strange food. It was slightly warm, chewy, and tasted like lobster paste with a strong dash of red pepper. It was better than he had expected.
When he had finished eating Purvey obtained a rather unsatisfactory drink from one of the little rivulets of water which ran down the walls at intervals. Lurr had gone to one of his instrument panels and was lying motionless beside it, eye stalks extended and poised over the array of meters.
By constant questioning Purvey learned that the ship he was on was a kind of scout which had been escorting a huge interstellar liner or battleship. When the accident had occurred, rather than have the mother ship stop to give assistance, Lurr had radioed that it would be possible for the scout to reach base unaided. If the scout failed to return, however, the mother ship would come back and find it. Lurr’s race only fought wars when attacked by aggressors, but their battleships were very big and powerful.
Purvey noted that the last statement echoed various utterances made by human politicians in the United Nations, and he began to wonder if it had been intended as some kind of a hint. For the possessor of such an alien mind, to say nothing of the body housing it, Lurr seemed to have an excellent control of the English language and did not waste many words.
“How is it,” Purvey asked, “that you speak, I mean write English so well?”
But the black beads were dull again. He wandered around the room looking at the alien mechanisms, flapping his arms to keep warm, and trying to decide what was wrong about the place. It was all wrong, of course, being the product of the thinking of an alien life form. But there was another wrongness …
Purvey found that he got tired easily. Time dragged by in the monotonous discomfort of the room and he slept often, crouched in the darkest corner where there was the least mud. This was the place where the explosion had occurred, as was evidenced by the seared metalwork, dented machine housings and shattered ceiling lights. Purvey liked it best because it was the one place that Lurr seemed to avoid.
Once, when he was feeling particularly miserable and Lurr was in one of its unresponsive moods, he decided to look for something in which to wrap himself for warmth. His showerproof was heavy with mud, wet and useless as a garment, and he found himself longing for heat in any form.
He went to the row of low doors and opened several of them by pressing the white circle, which was a common feature. Inside he found perfectly normal shelves stacked with unmarked boxes or machine parts which, although beaded with moisture, showed no signs of corrosion. One shelf was loaded with hundreds of blocks of coloured glass or plastic, another with what looked like purple seaweed.
A larger door had a red circle on it. Numb with the cold, Purvey opened the door and saw a little room, in the centre of which glowed an old-fashioned, pot-bellied stove. He was stooping to cross the threshold when it occurred to him that the stove just could not be there, and he jarred to a halt. Something moved near his feet. Just before he jumped back and slammed the door he had a blurry vision of a fat slug-like creature rearing up with grey mouth agape.
Lurr was suddenly conscious again, holding up his communicative leaf. “I see you recognized the Ahtaur this time.”
“This time?” Purvey said. “Was that the woman I saw?”
Lurr seemed quite active and alert as the sentences appeared in answer, noticeably quicker than before. The Ahtaur was a very slow-moving, carnivorous animal indigenous to Lurr’s home planet. It got close to its victims by telepathically invading their minds and controlling the visual centres to make itself appear attractive to them. Apparently, Lurr had muzzled the Ahtaur, fitted it with something he described as a force field grab, and lowered it to Earth to find a human being in a quiet and lonely place. Purvey, who liked quiet and lonely places, had walked into the trap.
As a by-product of their study of the Ahtaur’s ability, Lurr’s people had been able to develop a device which enabled them to detect and comprehend the thoughts of intelligent animals. Purvey eyed his green companion speculatively, rubbing the stubble on his chin, and wondering if he had picked up another note of warning.
On the fifth day, reckoned by his wrist watch, Purvey discovered that Lurr had been telling him lies.
His feeling that there was a subtle wrongness in the set-up finally culminated in the realization that there were two entirely separate sets of controls in the room. The set which was in use, and at which Lurr spent most of its time, was grouped along one wall. Every part of it, every short pedestal and housing, was constructed with smooth, brilliant metal and with the high standard of workmanship that Purvey associated with good pinball machines. The joints in the metal were barely discernible and the little coloured dots that Lurr used instead of numbers were perfect circles and squares etched into the metal.
The unused set of controls was scattered over the centre of the floor area and, in contrast, reminded Purvey of a radio he had built during a course of remedial training. There were plates which did not fit, unfilled holes, bolts which bolted nothing, and the coloured markings were roughly shaped blobs of enamel. Scooping away some handfuls of mud, he found that holes had been burned in the floor to let associated cables and pipes pass through.
None of these earmarks of a jerried-up experimental rig agreed with Lurr’s picture of a standard scout ship serving as an operational vessel. But it was hard to see the alien’s point in deceiving him over a thing like that. He carefully refrained from thinking about his discovery in case Lurr should be able to read his mind and, acting on principle, he began to take an interest in the operation of the ship. His professional instincts told him he might have stumbled on to something good.
Another day went by, speeded now by routine. At intervals Lurr drew some of the pink spongy stuff from the locker and pushed it through a slot in the door of the Ahtaur’s room. The dangerous little creature seemed to have about the same status as a pet dog in Lurr’s life, except that it was never allowed out for its equivalent of a walk. Purvey helped himself to the same food any time he was hungry and found he was growing to like it.