It could not break apart, of course. In its substance lay strengths beyond its own comprehension. For the planet upon which it had been born was too distant from its star to have developed cellular life; the Twerlik was a single, indestructible molecule, formed of an uncountable number of interlinked atoms. But—like the radar-grid it resembled —it could see, by the process of subtraction. Mild waves of light from the cold, distant star bathed it eternally. And so, objects that thrust in between the Twerlik and its source of life were recorded as negations upon its sensitive cilia, and the composite blotting-out of the light was sorted and filed and classified in its elongated brain in a fractional instant, so that it knew what went on in its vicinity.
It could see. And it could think. And it could do.
What it did, over endless ages, was convert some of the energy absorbed from the distant star into power. It used the power to work upon the atoms of the gray sand upon which it lay, and at a peripheral rate of about half an inch per Earth year, it turned the sand into its own substance and thus grew. The larger it became, after all, the more its surface could catch the faint light from the star. And the more light it could catch, on its planet whose rotation was equal to its period of revolution, the more sand it could transmute; and the more sand it transmuted, the larger it became.
That was its entire cycle of life. The Twerlik was content with it. Absorb, transmute, grow. Absorb, transmute, grow. So long as it could do these things, the Twerlik would be happy.
Then, part way through its hundred billionth trip around the dim, distant star, the men of Earth came.
Its first awareness of their arrival was a sort of bloating sensation, not unlike a mild twinge of nausea, as the cilia far beneath the gleaming fires of the rocket-thrust began hungrily to overabsorb.
The Twerlik did not know what was occurring, exactly, but it soon got itself under control, and would not let those cilia nearest the descending fires partake overly of the unexpected banquet. It made them take a share proportionate to their relationship in size to the rest of the enormous body, and it urged the rest of itself to partake similarly. By the time the slim metal rocket had come down, midway between the outermost fringes of the Twerlik and its splayed-out central brain, the creature had been able to feed more than in the previous three periods of the planetary revolution.
“This thing which has come,” it told itself; “is therefore a good thing.”
It was pleased at this new concept. Until the ship had come, the Twerlik had simply assumed that life was being lived to its peak. Now it knew there were better things. And this necessity to parcel out absorbable energy to its limbs was new, also. It gave the Twerlik a greater awareness of its own brain as the key motivator of this farflung empire which was itself. “I am a me,” it realized, “and the rest of my extensions are but my parts!” It almost glowed with delight—not to mention an overload of absorbed energy —at the thought of all it had learned in a few moments. And then it realized what “moments” were, too; until the arrival of the ship, everything had been the same, and so the vast eons it had been there registered as no longer than an eyeblink would to a man, because it had had no shorter events for comparison of time. “So quickly!” the Twerlik mused. “I know what goodness and betterment are; I know that I am a me; I know the difference between a moment and an eon.”
The Twerlik was abruptly aware, then, of yet another new sensation: gratitude. “This tall thing,” it said, and at the same time filed away its first knowledge of differentiation in heights for later reference, “has done the me a service, in a moment, and the me is bettered, and grateful!”
And then it knew its first pain, as this rush of new concepts attempted to file themselves in subatomic synaptic structures incapable of coping with such a swift influx.
The Twerlik’s brain throbbed with this cramming. To ease the pain, it used a fraction of the energy it had absorbed from the fires of the rocket, and enlarged the surface of the thinking section. Wisely—for it was growing wiser by the moment—it overenlarged it, that it might not again know pain should more concepts try to engrave themselves upon its consciousness. And just in time, too. For it suddenly needed room for concepts of foresight, prudence, headache, remedy and alertness.
Being lost in its own introspections, it turned its mind once more to the New Thing on the planet as it felt another increase in the absorption of its cilia. It did some rapid subtraction from the shifts in light from its star, and then it “saw” that there were things like unto itself emerging from the tall thing.
Its brain instantly added the concept of pity to the collection.
For these like-creatures were stunted travesties of the Twerlik. Only four limbs, and a limb stub on top. And these four fairly developed limbs had but five filaments to each, and no apparent cilia, save upon the useless limb stub. And the five filaments upon each of the two limbs nearest the me were bound up in layers of something that was not part of the creatures at all.
“These magnificent creatures,” mourned the Twerlik, “having so little of their own, have yet shared their largesse with me!” For the creatures were bearing bulky objects out of the tall thing, and setting them upon the gray sand and upon the Twerlik itself. And from these objects there flared a great deal of brightness and warmth, and the creatures were standing amid this brightness and warmth, and doing incomprehensible things with four-limbed objects that had no life at all . . . and the cilia of the Twerlik were absorbing all they could of this unexpected feast.
“I can grow now!” it told itself. “I can grow in a short period as I have never in my life grown before. I can spread out until I cover the entire—planet.” The Twerlik puzzled over the latest addition to its increasing concepts. From where had this strange idea come, this idea of a gigantic ball of solid material swinging about a star? And it suddenly knew that those other four-limbed nonliving creatures were called “chairs” and “tables,” and that the poorly developed things were named “men.”
The Twerlik tried to solve this puzzle. How were these concepts reaching it? It checked its subtractions, but there was nothing new blocking the starlight. It checked its absorptions, but its rate of drainage upon the spilled-over warmth and light from the “electric heaters” and the “lamps”—and it realized, again enlarging its brain to store these concepts—was just as it had been. Yet these new ideas were reaching it somehow. The ideas came from the “men,” but in what manner the Twerlik could not determine.
Then it checked into yet another one of its newfound concepts, “pressure,” and found that there was something incomprehensible occurring.
Its first awareness of this concept had been when the “spaceship” (“Larger, brain, larger!”) had pressed down upon the limbs and filaments and cilia of the me. Then secondary awarenesses that told the Twerlik of differentiations in “pressure” came when the “men” had trodden upon it, and again when the “chairs” and “tables” and “electric heaters” and “lamps” had been “set up.” (“More room, brain, more room!”) But there was a new kind of “pressure” upon the me. It came and went. And it was sometimes very heavy, sometimes very faint, and it struck only near the “men” at its fullest, being felt elsewhere along the cilia in a “circle” (“Grow!”) about them, but less powerfully, and in a larger “circle” about that one, but much less powerfully.