CHAPTER XV
The Lassan Explains
Before he had time to riddle out any of its secrets the door openedagain and one of the Lassans came in--a distinctly different type thanany he had hitherto seen. This one was smaller than most; his skin,where exposed, was covered by a tracery of fine wrinkles and hiscoloring was whiter than the rest. Little crowfeet stood around thecorners of his eyes, giving him an expression that was singularlyhumorous. He approached Sherman on noiseless feet, moved his trunk upand down as though examining him and then, producing from a pocket inhis cloak one of the thought-helmets, set it on Sherman's head,tightened a connection or two with his trunk and placing a like deviceon his own head, settled himself on the twisted bench.
The ordeal of the helmet! "They make you think whatever they want youto; it's like being hypnotized," Marta Lami had said. He braced himselfresolutely. This alien intelligence should not plumb his thoughtswithout a struggle....
To his surprise, there seemed no attempt to force his mind. The thoughtleaped up, unbidden, "Why, this--this Lassan is friendly!" No definiteimage or plan or connection of ideas formed itself in his brain; hemerely felt enormously soothed and strengthened. After all, he foundhimself arguing, nobody desired to hurt him; merely to discover whatcurious process of thought had led him to act as he had.
"You are too intelligent, too high a type to have been put to work atthe machines," came the unspoken thought of the Lassan. "We might betterhave put you at the controls of one of the fighting machines." (Thisthought caused a mental image of the giant silver fish he had seen inthe hall of the dome to rise in his mind; he pictured himself as seatedamid a mass of levers before a panel set with complex gauges.)
"It was a mistake," the thought he was receiving went on, "that you weresent there. The Alphen of the mental department, who had your case incharge should have known better. You earth-men make much better machinesthan the ones we brought with us. You do not even need the helmets inorder to control. Some of you are even capable of understanding andoperating the lights." (This, he explained afterward appeared not as aconsecutive sentence in Sherman's mind, but as a succession of ideas,almost as though he were thinking them himself. With the word "lights" acomplex picture presented itself, involving the light-guns and a largeamount of other complex apparatus, whose exact uses he did not then orlater understand, but which he felt he understood at the moment.)
"Now," the Lassan's thought went on, "I don't blame you for beingfrightened and trying to run away, but you know we are different and Idon't quite understand what frightened you. You were working at amachine, were you not?" And as Sherman unconsciously thought of himselfsticking his fingers in the apertures of the machines, "I thought so.What happened?"
Unbidden, the memory of the explosion came to him. Again he heard theLassan's step in the corridor, saw the guard move aside, the sputterfrom the cable, and then the explosion; then his memory jumped to themoment of tugging at the stones with the roar and heat all round and thewhite-hot stream in pursuit.
A vague, but sympathetic thought reached him, followed by aquestion--"But what made that happen? You're intelligent, you understandthese things, you are a mechanic--what made it happen?"
With a start of surprise Sherman realized that the Lassan had beenleading him gently along from place to place--to trap him! He struggleddesperately to keep the thought of the short-circuiting of the guard'shelmet from his mind; struggled to think about anything else atall--thought of a plate of steaming corned beef and cabbage, of themultiplication table--5 x 5 = 25, all in neat rows of figures, thoughtof how to control a plane that had gone into a tail-spin....
The pressure suddenly relaxed, the mind opposite his became friendlyagain; once more he received the vague intimation of sympathy andunderstanding, even of admiration of his mental strength.
"Why," the thought was telling him, "you have quite as much mentality asa Lassan! That is a very high compliment. I have never before met one ofthe lower animals who could withhold his thoughts from me. It is mostextraordinary. Is it possible for you to withhold your thoughts fromyour own kind as well?"
Not at all difficult, thought Sherman, relaxing a bit; indeed thedifficulty in human communication lies not in withholding thoughts butin expressing them.
His interlocutor went on, "Ah, but the feeling, the thought is generallyunderstood, though it may not be clear. Tell me, have you never withhelda thought from someone who wished to know it?"
Yes, thought Sherman, I have--and remembered the poker game at theCleveland airport when he had drawn two cards and unexpectedly filled astraight flush to win the biggest pot of the evening from Barney's fullhouse; and of the time when he had thought of numerous unpleasant waysof slaying the mechanic who had left a leak in his oil-line and of thetime when a girl had tried to gold-dig him and he had divined herintention first, and of the time when he had lifted the knife--!!!
Again that jar! He realized with a start that the Lassan having failedto pick his brain with friendliness, was trying to do it with flattery,and the realization so filled him with anger that he had no difficultyin resisting the pressure that was applied to make him tell, tell, tellwhat had happened in the machine-room at the end of the passage.
Once more the pressure relaxed. The Lassan was congratulating him again."No, this is sincere this time and not flattery. You win. I shall nottry to make you tell me again. We can probably obtain it from the otherone anyway. Oh, man of a debased and alien race, I salute you. If yourrace were all like you we might breed them for intelligence and live incooperation with you. It is almost a pity you had to be mechanized. Ifthere is any information you wish, I will gladly exchange with you. Wehave seen your homes, we are curious--imagine living above theground!--and from others of your race we know that you have many finemachines, almost a civilization, in fact. We would willingly know moreof it and in return will tell you of our accomplishments."
* * * * *
Could this offer conceal some new trap? Sherman wondered, but the Lassandivined this thought as soon as formed, and reassured him. "Since we nowlive here and since there are so few of your folk left it is importantthat we know about each other. We must live side by side--why not infriendship?"
The offer seemed fair enough. At all events if there were anyinjudicious questions he could turn them aside, and there was a gooddeal he wished to learn--about his mechanized body, about the purpose ofthose curious machines, the blue-domed halls, the silver fish, theinterweavings of this underground city, where the Lassans had comefrom--he assented.
"Good," the message reached him. "Suppose you ask a question and then Iwill. What do you wish to know?"
"How I was made into a machine."
"I do not know that I can explain it to you. I perceive your knowledgeof the nature of light is elementary.... But the material with which wesurrounded the space-ship in which we came, in order to protect it fromthe radiation of suns unknown to you, has a powerful action on allanimal substances. It is a material not unlike your radium, but athousand times more powerful. When we reached your planet, youratmosphere carried it to every part of the earth, and all living thingsreceived it. Those who were most affected by it were turned to metalwhich retained that quality called 'life' within its interior reaches;the others became merely solid metal.
"Our birds are under instructions to bring us all such individuals aspossess life. In our laboratories we make their forms over, so they willbe useful to us as servants. Those who have become solid, of course,nothing can be done for. We have found in the past that when we take anew planet and make the individuals over into machines, unless we returnthem to familiar surroundings, they lose their brains when they reawake.Therefore you woke in the same place in which you passed fromconsciousness."
"Wonderful," said Sherman, "and where do you come from and how did youget here?"
He felt the Lassan's amusement. "That is two questions you have asked,and not one. Nevertheless I will answer. We come from
a planet ofanother star, very far away--I do not know how to express it to you.Your methods of measurement for these things are different from ours."In Sherman's mind appeared a picture of the night heavens with thetremendous ribbon of the Milky Way swinging across its center; hisattention was directed to one star, a very bright one.
"Rigel!" his mind called, and the thought went on. He was suddenlytransported to the neighborhood of the star, felt that it was ages ago,long before the earth had cooled, and saw that the star, then a sun likeour own, was threatened by some enormous catastrophe, a titanicexplosion. Abruptly the picture was wiped out and he beheld the comet,the great comet the earthly astronomers had watched for so long beforeit struck on that fateful night, and realized that it was no comet, butan interplanetary vehicle bound from the planet of Rigel to the earth.
The star, like our own sun, was threatened by someenormous catastrophe, a titanic explosion.]
"But how--?" he began to frame another question. The Lassan cut acrossit firmly. "It is my turn to seek information now. We are interested inthe machine that brought you here--the bird machine. How does itoperate?"
Sherman imagined himself in the airplane's seat, operating the controlsand as well as he could to a strange type of mind, explained how theyworked. "But what drives it?" insisted the Lassan. "I do not understand.No, not the queer thing at the front that turns round. We have thatprinciple ourselves. But the thing that makes it turn."
For answer, Sherman tried to picture the interior of the engine and showthe gasoline exploding and driving it. The mind opposite his becamethoughtful at once, and then flashed a question. "Are theremany--explosives--in this earth?"
Sherman pictured gunpowder, dynamite and all the others he could thinkof. He at once sensed that the Lassan was both astonished and troubled.Something like a mental curtain which he could not pierce, droppedbetween them. A moment later the elephant-man rose.
"That will be sufficient for the present," he flashed, and came forwardto remove the helmet from Sherman's head.
* * * * *
A few moments later the door was swung open; Sherman saw that one of thecars was waiting for him with the word "EXIT" beckoning him on and hewas soon back in his cage.
As nearly as he could judge time, he was left alone for quitetwenty-four hours before being recalled for further questioning. As soonas he entered the interrogation room he perceived that something serioushad engaged the attention of the Lassans. The seat was prepared for himas before, but instead of one of the twisted benches, there were nowthree. His acquaintance, the old Lassan, occupied the center one; on oneside was a chubby elephant-man whose obesity gave a singularly infantileexpression to his features and on the other a slender-limbed type, asthough by contrast. All three had tubes connected to the helmet whichwas placed on his head, but he soon recognized that the older Lassan wasthe only one to ask questions.
"We wish to ask you about these explosives," came the message. "Are theyall alike?"
"No," he answered instantly.
"What causes them to explode?"
"I am not a chemist. I don't know." The idea of chemistry was slightlyunfamiliar to them; it was apparent from their thoughts that chemistryhad never occurred to them as the subject of a special study. Then cameanother question, "Are there many chemists?"
An idea struck Sherman. He closed his mind resolutely against thequestion and flashed back the message that he had come to learn as wellas teach. He sensed a certain annoyance among the new auditors, but theold Lassan answered, "That is only just. What do you wish to know?"
"What the machines are for."
"In the center of this as of every other earth lies the substance oflife, as it lies at the heart of every sun. The machines pierce to itand draw it up for our uses."
"What is this substance of life?"
"You would not understand if we told you. Sufficient that it is nothingknown on the surface of your world. Your idea that most nearlyapproaches it is--" he paused for a moment, feeling about in Sherman'smind for the proper expression "--is pure light; light having materialbody and strength. Now let me ask--do you use explosives as we use thesubstance of life, to fight your enemies?"
"Yes."
"What weapons do you use them in?"
Sherman thought of a revolver and then of a cannon.
"And do these weapons act at a distance?"
"Yes. May I ask a question?"
"If it is a brief one. This interview is important to us."
"How many of your people are there on the earth?"
"It is inadvisable to answer that fully, but there are some hundreds.Now tell us, are there any of these weapons near this place?"
Sherman thought. West Point--Watervliet Arsenal--Iona Island, leapedinto his mind. All three Lassans leaned back with a sigh of satisfactionand exchanged thoughts among themselves so rapidly that he could notfollow the process. Then the two younger Lassans disconnected theirhelmets and the older one said,
"We are disposed to be generous to you, we will demonstrate one of ourfighting machines to you if you will show us how to use theseexplosives."
There could be no particular harm in it, he argued to himself. The armywas a thing of the past, and if there were other people out in theworld, and he could take them a knowledge of the Lassan fightingmachines it would be of as much value as any information he could give.He agreed.
The old Lassan rose. "You will retain your helmet. It is a rule thatnone of the lower races are allowed in the fighting machines withoutthem, and you would be unable to control one without our help in anycase."
The car carried them to the blue-domed hall where he and Marta Lami hadhidden behind the shining fish. A little pang of loneliness leaped up inhim at the sight; he wondered where she was and whether she had beensent back to the machines. "No," the Lassan's thought answered his, "theother servant has not been returned to the machines. Many of them arenot working as a result of the recent trouble and the servant has beenplaced on other work instead. But I do not understand your idea that theother servant is somehow different from you."
"Do the Lassans, then, have no sex?" the thought raced through hisbrain.
"Sex? Oh, I understand. The difference between two of the lower softraces that makes reproduction possible. Our birds have it. No, we haveabolished it of course, as all higher races have. Our young are producedartificially."