that mud lump and what was in it. They were topmen. But I had got tied up with Miller more or less by chance, and Ifigured I'd be replaced by an expert. I can say that I was a collegeman, but that's nothing.
I guess you can't give up participation in high romance without someregret. Yet I wasn't too sorry. I liked things the way they'd alwaysbeen. My beer. My Saturday night dates with Alice. On the job, theatmosphere was getting a bit too rich and futuristic.
* * * * *
Later that evening, Miller drew me aside. "You've handled carrierpigeons and you've trained dogs, Nolan," he said. "You were good atboth."
"Here I go, back to the farm-yard."
"In a way. But you expand your operations, Nolan. You specialize asnurse for a piece of off-the-Earth animal life."
"Look, Miller," I pointed out. "Ten thousand professors are a milliontimes better qualified, and rarin' to go."
"They're liable to _think_ they're well qualified, when no man couldbe--yet. That's bad, Nolan. The one who does it has to be humbleenough to be wary--ready for whatever _might_ happen. I think a knackwith animals might help. That's the best I can do, Nolan."
"Thanks, Miller." I felt proud--and a little like a damn fool.
"I haven't finished talking yet," Miller said. "We know that realcontact between our kind and the inhabitants of another world can't befar off. Either they'll send another ship or we'll build one on Earth.I like the idea, Nolan, but it also scares the hell out of me. Menhave had plenty of trouble with other ethnic groups of their ownspecies, through prejudice, misunderstanding, honest suspicion. Howwill it be at the first critical meeting of two kinds of things thatwill look like hallucinations to each other? I suspect an awful andinevitable feeling of separateness that nothing can bridge--exceptmaybe an impulse to do murder.
"It could be a real menace. But it doesn't have to be. So we've got tofind out what we're up against, if we can. We've got to prepare andscheme. Otherwise, even if intentions on that other world are okay,there's liable to be an incident at that first meeting that can spoila contact across space for all time, and make interplanetary travelnot the success it ought to be, but a constant danger. So do you seeour main objective, Nolan?"
I told Miller that I understood.
That same night, Klein and Craig put the lump of mud in a small glasscase from which two-thirds of the air had been exhausted. Theremainder was kept dehydrated and chilled. It was guess work, backedup by evidence: The rusty red of that mud; the high hemoglobin contentof the alien blood we had seen; the dead-air cells--resistant tocold--in the shreds of rough skin that we had examined. And then therewas the fair proximity of Mars and Earth in their orbits at the time.
My job didn't really begin till the following evening, when Craig andKlein had completed a much larger glass cage, to which myoutlandish--or, rather, outworldish--ward was transferred. Millerprovided me with a wire-braced, airtight costume and oxygen helmet,the kind fliers use at extreme altitudes. Okay, call it a spacesuit.He also gave me a small tear-gas pistol, an automatic, and a knife.
All there was to pit such armament against was a seemingly helplesslump of protoplasm, two inches in diameter. Still, here was anillustration of how cautiously you are prompted to treat so unknown aquantity. You are unable to gauge its powers, or lack of them, for youhave nothing on which to base a judgment.
I became like a monk--my pressure armor was my robe; the chillysemi-vacuum inside that glass cage, my cell. Nights out with Alicewere going to be far between.
* * * * *
On the third evening, that lump of mud, resting in dried-out soilsimilar to itself, split along the line where Craig had originally cutit. Out onto the cage floor crept what the records designated as_E.T.L._--Extra-Terrestrial-Life. It was finished with the mud shellthat had enabled it to survive a crash and fire.
Craig, Klein, Miller and a lot of news reporters stared into the glasscage from outside. There was nothing for me to do just then exceptwatch that tiny monster, and try to read, in its every clumsy,dragging movement, some fragmentary unveiling of many riddles.
Although it might have shrunk a bit since I had last seen it, itlooked more complete. The dusky pink of its wrinkled integument wasdarker. It had dozens of short tendrils, hardly thicker thanhorsehair, with which it pulled itself along. It had lost someleaflike pieces of skin. Laterally, two eyes gleamed, clear andslit-pupiled. Its jaws, hinged on a horizontal plane, opened andclosed between fleshy flaps. Through the thin plastic of my oxygenhelmet, I heard a querulous "chip-chip-chip," which reminded me of thesqueaking of an infant bat.
The E.T.L. crept in a small looping course on the cage floor, back toone half of the mud shell that had encased it. It tried to mount this,perhaps to gain a vantage point for better observation. But it felland turned over. Its ventral surface was ceiling-ward; its tendrilswrithed furiously as it tried to right itself. I thought of ahorseshoe crab, stranded on its back and kicking helplessly. But thisthing's form and movement were even more alien.
After a moment, I followed an impulse which was part duty to my joband part pity. I tipped the little horror back on its bottom, gladthat there was a glove between me and it. Then I did the same thing Iwould do with a pet puppy or kitten. I set a dish of food--chemicallyprepared to duplicate the contents of the tubes we had found in thewreck--right down in front of the E.T.L.
It fumbled at the stuff and, possibly because of a gravitytwo-and-a-half times as great as it was made for, it almost got itselfstuck in the mess. But it freed itself. Its mouth-flaps began to makelapping movements as it sucked the nourishment.
I felt prematurely relieved. This was no potentially dominant wizardin a strange body, I told myself. This was pure animal.
Over my helmet radiophone--there was a mike outside the cage, so theycould communicate with me when I was inside--I heard Miller say to thereporters:
"The feeding instinct. They've got it, too. Now we know for sure...."
* * * * *
I think that the E.T.L. had colic from that first meal, though, likeany half-smart puppy trainer, I tried not to let it eat too much. Itwrithed for a while, as if in pain. And I was on pins. How was Isupposed to know just what was best to feed the thing, so it wouldsurvive? Everything was guesswork, varying formulas cautiously,groping. And it wasn't only the food. There was the searching for thetemperature, the air-pressure and the degree of dryness at which theE.T.L. seemed most comfortable. And there was also the fiddling aroundwith light-composition and intensities, variable in the sun lamps, tofind what seemed best.
We seemed to have figured things out right--or else the monster wasjust rugged. It shed several skins, thrived and grew active. Its sizeincreased steadily. And other things began to grow in that cage. Odd,hard-shelled, bluish-green weeds; lichenous patches, dry as dust;invisible, un-Earthly bacteria--all were harmless, possibly evenbeneficial, to my charge.
How did all this stuff come into being? Miller and Craig had examinedthe dried clay of the E.T.L.'s discarded casing with microscopes. Theyscraped dust from every fragment of the wreck that hadn't been blastedtoo much with fire, and made cultures. They were looking for sporesand seeds and microbes. And it wasn't long before they had classifiedquite a list of other-world biological forms. The most common of thesethey transplanted into the cage.
Often I even slept inside the cage, clad in my armor. That's devotionto a purpose for you. In a way, it was like living on a little pieceof Mars. Often enough I was bored stiff.
But plenty did happen. From the start Etl--we began calling the thingthat--showed an almost electrically intense curiosity for everything.Some of the habits of its kind were written in its instincts. Itbasked in strong light, but it liked dark corners, too. At night--whenwe turned the sun lamps off, that is--it would bury itself in thedusty soil. Protection against nocturnal cold might have been thereason for that.
* * * * *
When he
was a month and two days out of his clay shell, Etl tried torear up vertically on his tendrils. He kept toppling over. Maybe hewas trying to "walk." But there were no bones in those tendrils and,of course, the strong Earth gravity defeated him.
Lots of times I tried to see what he could do. A real scientist wouldcall this "making tests." I just called it fooling around. I made himclimb a stool for his food. He seemed to make a careful survey first,eying each rung; then he drew himself up in one motion.
During one of my rare nights in town--to get a refresher fromoutlandish stuff in Alice's company--I bought some toys. When I cameback to relieve Craig, who had taken care of Etl during my absence, Isaid: "Etl, here's a rubber ball. Let's play."
He caught it on the second try, in those swift, dextrous tendrils.There was a savagery in