Simon thought they were limbless until he saw the leader project a long pencil-thin arm with six joints and a three-fingered hand from each hole in the ball-hub. The arm bent in the middle to point downward. This seemed to be a signal to slow down. The others put out stick-like six-jointed legs from both holes in the hubs. These had collapsible feet, broad when spread out, toeless, and with thickly calloused soles. They dragged these in the dirt until they had reduced speed, then they retracted their legs.
The leader’s left arm came out, and he turned halfway toward where he was pointing. The others followed suit, keeping the same exact distance behind him.
Simon flew above them for a while in the red light of the ancient and dying sun. The herd, seen from above, formed the outline of an arrowhead. Its point was the leader, a big purple creature with white sidewalls. The V of the arrow was composed of young males riding shotgun. Straight out from behind the leader, in Indian file, were females with their young rolling along beside them. The base of the arrow was made up of old males whose purple was turning gray. As he would discover, the formation was based on a rigid pecking order. The leader was always in front, and the females behind him held positions according to their fertility and sexual vigor.
All except the leader were a solid purple. But when a young male overthrew the old leader, he would grow white sidewalls. His new social position triggered off hormones that caused this strange tire-change.
The leader had signaled a change in direction and speed because he had seen some tumbleweeds rolling toward them. Presently, the herd intercepted these, and their right arms snatched the plants and tore off branches. The pieces went into the right-hand holes. Inside were mouths with broad strong teeth which mashed and chewed the plants with a sidewise motion. The plants provided not only water but food like rubbery chocolate.
The anal opening was by the left-hand hole in the hub; the excrement was shot out in tiny pellets. Since the Lalorlongians had an extremely efficient metabolism, they expelled very little offal.
Simon told the ship to fly close to the left of the herd. As he’d expected, the herd turned toward the right. They were hesitant about turning at a right angle and so presenting their bodies to the full force of the strong wind. Once they’d fallen to the ground, they had no way of getting back up. They rolled at a forty-five-degree angle from their previous path, leaning into the wind. To do this, they stuck out their right arms as far as they could and bent their eye-stalks to the right. Then they drew their arms back into the holes, rolled along for a while, and, at a signal from the leader, pointed straight westward again. This manoeuvre was done with the aid of the left arms.
“What do they talk with?” Simon said to Chworktap.
“They use their fingers, just like deaf-and-dumb people.”
The Hwang Ho carried a jeep. Simon ordered the ship to stop, and he and Chworktap got into the jeep. The dog and the owl, who were suffering from cabin fever, complained so much about being left behind that he told them to get in too. But the owl had to sit in the back seat so she wouldn’t disturb Chworktap. The port opened, a gangplank ran out, and they drove onto the smooth surface. The ship then lifted and followed them a mile behind.
The jeep had no trouble catching up, even though the wind was pushing the herd at about thirty-five miles an hour. The eyes on the ends of the stalks rolled with fright as the jeep neared them, and the herd veered to the left. Their arms came out, the fingers wriggling and crossing and bending as they asked each other what in hell these strangers were and what did they mean to do? Their signal lights began flashing hysterically. It was later that Simon discovered that these people used their lights in conjunction with their fingers when they talked. This was to make it difficult for him to carry on a conversation. He couldn’t use the fingers of both his hands and operate two flashlights at the same time. But Chworktap turned the lights on and off for him, and the two were able to carry on a conversation with the wheels. Sometimes, they got a little confused and had to start a sentence all over again.
Simon and Chworktap spent most of each day on the road. Somebody had to drive but somebody also had to operate the flashlights. Chworktap rigged up a device which enabled her to turn the lights off and on with the fingers of one hand while she drove with the other. Fortunately, she didn’t have to watch out for cars or immovable objects or worry about running off the pavement. After a few days, she put together a device which kept the car at the same distance from the Lalorlongian they were learning the language from. This fixed a laser beam on their informant. If the informant went too far away or came too close, the change in the beam’s length caused a motor to turn one of two straps fixed to the wheel to correct the course and also to alter the setting of the cruise control.
Simon was beginning to wonder what he would ever have done without Chworktap.
“Watch it!” he told himself. “You aren’t about to fall in love with a robot!”
Simon won the confidence of the wheelers the third day. One of the young adolescent males was showing off. He would curve around and head into the wind until he was stopped and then was pushed backward. He had done this a dozen times to the admiration of the young females, who wiggled their fingers and flashed their lights in a running ovation. But while the young stud was cutting a figure-eight, he leaned over too far and fell on his side. The fingers and lights of everybody signaled panic and despair, but they all rolled on, leaving the young male lying on his side, one arm stuck up and waving frantically, his eyes rolling in their sockets.
“They’re going to abandon him,” Chworktap said.
“Apparently, they have no way of lifting him up,” Simon said. “So it’s tough titty for anybody that falls over.”
Simon disconnected the driving mechanism and turned the jeep around. It only took a moment for the two of them to lift upright the three-hundred-pound youth. He did not start rolling at once, however. His eyes still rotated like the Coyote’s when he gets caught in a trap he’s set for the Roadrunner.
“He looks like he’s in pain,” Chworktap said.
This, as it turned out, was right. Above the arm-opening was another hole, a small one from which the male’s pistil stuck during mating or when he was excited. The youth had been excited while he was showing off, and when he had fallen he had squeezed the end of his pistil under his hub. This was comparable to being kicked in the crotch.
After a while, the youth seemed ready to go. Simon knew that he would never catch up with the herd, so he and Chworktap lifted him up over the back end of the jeep and onto the back seat. The dog, which had just finished pissing against the youth, jumped into the front seat. The owl flew overhead, circling the jeep, but when she saw that she was going to be left behind, she landed on the hood and grabbed the ornament.
Simon drove the jeep far ahead of the herd, and he and Chworktap hoisted the youth out and set him upright. Presently, the herd came along, and the youth, aided by a shove from Simon, took off to rejoin the herd.
Simon later observed a mother feeding her child. The little wheel ran up alongside the female, who dragged her feet to reduce her speed until they were going at the same pace. A long cartilaginous tube came out of a hole near the top of the hemisphere, just below the rotating collar. It traveled out until it was over a hole in a similar location on the child’s hemisphere. The child reached up with its hand and pulled the tube into its hole. They traveled together for about fifteen minutes, after which the tube withdrew. The mother had fed milk through this to the young.