_[7]_
The image of the Nipe on the glowing screen was clear and finelydetailed. It was, Stanton thought, as though one were looking through awindow into the Nipe's nest itself. Only the tremendous depth of focusof the lens that had caught the picture gave the illusion a feeling ofunreality. Everything--background and foreground alike--was sharply infocus.
Like some horrendous dream monster, the Nipe moved in slow motion,giving Stanton the eerie feeling that the alien was moving through athicker, heavier medium than air, in a place where the gravity was muchless than that of Earth. With ponderous deliberation, the fingers of oneof his hands closed upon the handle of an oddly shaped tool and liftedit slowly from the surface upon which he worked.
"That's our best-placed camera," said Colonel Mannheim, "but some of theothers can always get details that this one doesn't. The trouble isthat we'll never really have enough cameras in there--not unless we studthe walls, ceilings, and floors with them, and even then I'm not so surewe'd get everything. It isn't the same as having a trained expert oncamera who is _trying_ to demonstrate what he's doing. An expert playsto the camera and never obstructs any of his own movements. But theNipe ..." He left the sentence unfinished and shook his head sadly.
Stanton narrowed his eyes at the image. To his own speeded-up perceptiveprocesses, the motion seemed intolerably slow. "Would you mind speedingit up a little?" he asked the colonel. "I want to get an idea of the wayhe moves, and I can't really get the feeling of it at this speed."
"Certainly." The colonel turned to the technician at the controls."Speed the tape up to normal. If there's anything Mr. Stanton wants tolook at more closely, we can run it through again."
As if in obedience to the colonel's command, the Nipe seemed to shakehimself a little and go about his business more briskly, and the air andgravity seemed to revert to those of Earth.
"What's he doing?" Stanton asked. The Nipe was performing some sort ofoperation on an odd-looking box that sat on the floor in front of him.
The colonel pointed. "He's got a screwdriver that he's modified to giveit a head with an L-shaped cross section, and he's wiggling it aroundinside that hole in the box. But what he's doing is a secret between Godand the Nipe at this point," Colonel Mannheim said glumly.
Stanton glanced away from the screen for a moment to look at the othermen who were there. Some of them were watching the screen, but most ofthem seemed to be watching Stanton, although they looked away as soon asthey saw his eyes on them. All, that is, except Dr. George Yoritomo,who simply gave him a smile of confidence.
_Trying to see what kind of a bloke this touted superman is_, Stantonthought. _Well, I can't say I blame 'em._
He brought his attention back to the screen.
So this was the Nipe's hideaway. He wondered if it were furnished in thefashion that a Nipe's living quarters would be furnished on whateverplanet the multilegged horror had come from. Probably it had the samesimilarity as Robinson Crusoe's island home had to a middle-classnineteenth-century English home.
There was no furniture in it at all, as such. Low-slung as he was, theNipe needed no tables or workbenches; all his work was spread out on thefloor, with a neatness and tidiness that would have surprised many humantechnicians. For the same reason, he needed no chairs, and, since truesleep was a form of metabolic rest he evidently found unnecessary, heneeded no bed. The closest thing he did that might be called sleep washis habit of stopping whatever he was doing and remaining quiet forperiods of time that ranged from a few minutes to a couple of hours.Sometimes his eyes remained opened during these periods, sometimes theywere closed. It was difficult to tell whether he was sleeping or justthinking.
"The difficulty was in getting cameras in there in the first place,"Colonel Mannheim was saying. "That's why we missed so much of his earlywork. There! Look at that!" His finger jabbed at the image.
"The attachment he's making?"
"That's right. Now, it looks as though it's a meter of some kind, but wedon't know whether it's a test instrument or an integral and necessarypart of the machine he's making. The whole machine might even be only atest instrument for something else he's building. Or perhaps a machineto make parts for some other machine. After all, he had to start outfrom the very beginning--making the tools to make the tools to make thetools, you know."
Dr. Yoritomo spoke for the first time. "It's not quite as bad as allthat, eh, Colonel? We must remember that he had our technology to drawupon. If he'd been wrecked on Earth two or three centuries ago, hewouldn't have been able to do a thing."
Colonel Mannheim smiled at the tall, lean man. "Granted," he saidagreeably, "but it's quite obvious that there are parts of ourtechnology that are just as alien to him as parts of his are to us.Remember how he went to all the trouble of building a pentode vacuumtube for a job that could have been done by transistors he already hadhad a chance to get and didn't. His knowledge of solid-state physicsseems to be about a century and a half behind ours."
Stanton listened. Dr. Yoritomo was, in effect, one of his traininginstructors. _Advanced Alien Psychology_, Stanton thought; _SeminarCourse. The Mental Whys & Wherefores of the Nipe, or How to Outthink theEnemy in Twelve Dozen Easy Lessons. Instructor: Dr. George Yoritomo._
The smile on Yoritomo's face was beatific, but he held up a warningfinger. "Ah, ah, Colonel! We mustn't fall into a trap like that soeasily. Remember that gimmick he built last year? The one that blindedthose people in Baghdad? It had five perfect emeralds in it, connectedin series with silver wire. Eh?"
"That's true," the colonel admitted. "But they weren't used the way we'duse semiconducting materials."
"Indeed not. But the thing _worked_, didn't it? He has a knowledge ofsolid-state physics that we don't have, and vice versa."
"Which one would you say was ahead of the other?" Stanton asked. "Idon't mean just in solid-state physics, but in science as a whole."
"That's a difficult question to answer," Dr. Yoritomo said thoughtfully."Frankly, I'd put my money on his technology as encompassing more thanours--at least, insofar as the physical sciences are concerned."
"I agree," said Colonel Mannheim. "He's got things in that little nestof his that--" He stopped and shook his head slowly, as though hecouldn't find words.
"I will say this," Yoritomo continued. "Whatever his great technologicalabilities, our friend the Nipe has plenty of good, solid guts. Andpatience." He smiled a little, and then amended his statement. "From ourown point of view."
Stanton looked at him quizzically. "How do you mean? I was just about toagree with you until you tacked that last phrase on. What does point ofview have to do with it?"
"Everything, I should say," said Yoritomo. "It all depends on theequipment an individual has. A man, for instance, who rushes into abuilding to save a life, wearing nothing but street clothes, hascourage. A man who does the same thing when he's wearing a nullothermsuit is an unknown quantity. There is no way of knowing, from thataction alone, whether he has courage or not."
Stanton thought he saw what the scientist was driving at. "But you'renot talking about technological equipment now," he said.
"Not at all. I'm talking about personal equipment." He turned his headslightly to look at the colonel. "Colonel Mannheim, do you think itwould require any personal courage on Mr. Stanton's part to stand upagainst you in a face-to-face gunfight?"
The colonel grinned tightly. "I see what you mean."
Stanton grinned back rather wryly. "So do I. No, it wouldn't."
"On the other hand," Yoritomo continued, "if you were to challenge Mr.Stanton, would that show courage on your part, Colonel?"
"Not really. Foolhardiness, stupidity or insanity--but not courage."
"Ah, then," said Yoritomo with a beaming smile, "neither of you canprove you have guts enough to fight the other. Can you?"
Mannheim smiled grimly and said nothing. But Stanton was thinking thewhole thing out very carefully. "Just a second," he said. "That dependson the circumstances. If Col
onel Mannheim, say, knew that forcing me toshoot him would save the life of someone more important thanhimself--or, perhaps, the lives of a great many people--what then?"
Yoritomo bowed his head in a quick nod. "Exactly. That is what I meantby viewpoint. Whether the Nipe has courage or patience or any otherhuman feeling depends on two things: his own abilities and exactly howmuch information he has. A man can perform any action without fear if heknows that it will not hurt him--or if he does _not_ know that it_will_."
Stanton thought that over in silence.
The image of the Nipe was no longer moving. He had settled down into his"sleeping position"--unmoving, although the baleful violet eyes werestill open. "Cut that off," Colonel Mannheim said to the operator."There's not much to learn from the rest of that tape."
As the image blanked out, Stanton said, "Have you actually managed tobuild any of the devices he's constructed, Colonel?"
"Some," said Colonel Mannheim. "We have specialists all over the worldstudying those tapes. We have the advantage of being able to watch everystep the Nipe makes, and we know the materials he's been using to workwith. But, even so, the scientists are baffled by many of them. Can youimagine the time James Clerk Maxwell would have had trying to build amodern television set from tapes like this?"
"I can imagine," Stanton said.
"You can see, then, why we're depending on you," Mannheim said.
Stanton merely nodded. The knowledge that he was actually a focal pointin human history, that the whole future of the human race depended to atremendous extent on him, was a realization that weighed heavily and, atthe same time, was immensely bracing.
"And now," the colonel said, "I'll turn you over to Dr. Yoritomo. He'llbe able to give you a great deal more information than I can."