This star shall be free
on the ground than in the air. It was still absolutely mirror-like on
its outer surface. It still seemed featureless, because the spidery
mounts of its scanning-tubes were tiny. But its monstrous size was more
evident.
It rested on the ground on its larger, rounded end. Its smaller part
pointed upward. It was three hundred feet high--three times the height
of the tallest trees about it, some of which had been crushed by its
weight as it descended. Their branches projected from beneath it. It
was a gigantic silver egg, the height of a thirty-story building, and a
city block thick. It rested on squashed oak-trees in completely
enigmatic stillness, with no sign of life or motion anywhere about it.
Tork walked up to it stiffly, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. He
moved into the very shadow of the thing. Then he stopped. The urge
abruptly ceased.
Pure terror sent him into howling, headlong flight. And instantly the
urge returned. Twenty yards from the outward-bulging silvery metal, he
crashed to earth. Then he stood up and stiffly retraced his steps
toward the ship. Again compulsion left him and he wailed and fled--and
within twenty yards he slowed to a walk, and turned, and came back in
blind obedience.
Ten times in all he tried to flee, and each time returned to the shadow
of the motionless, mirror-like ovoid. The tenth time he stood still,
panting, his eyes wild. He saw his own reflection on the surface of the
thing. He croaked at it, thinking that here was another captive. His
image made faces at him, but no sound. He could not make it answer. In
the end he turned his back upon it sullenly. He stood shivering
violently, like any wild thing caught and made helpless.
Half an hour later he saw something moving across the ground toward the
great silver egg. There was a faint, faint sound, and a gigantic curved
section of the egg opened. Sloshing water poured out and made puddles.
There was a smell as of the ocean. The approaching thing, a vehicle,
floated nearer, six feet aboveground, with strange shapes upon it and a
tawny-striped mass of fur which Tork knew could be nothing but
saber-tooth. Tork trembled in every limb, but he knew he could not
flee.
Just before the vehicle floated into the opening made by the dropped
curved plate, two of the shapes descended from it and came curiously
toward Tork.
He shook like an aspen-leaf. He half-grasped his club and half-raised
it, but he was too much unnerved to attack.
The shapes regarded him interestedly. They wore suits of a rubbery
fabric bulging as if from liquid within. There were helmets with
transparent windows, from which eyes looked out. But the windows were
filled with water.
The creatures from Antares halted some paces from Tork. One of them
trained a small tube upon him, and immediately he seemed to hear
voices.
“We called you here to be kind to you. We saw you yesterday, standing
upon a rock.”
Tork merely trembled. The second shape trained a tube upon him, and he
heard another voice. There was no difference in the timbre, of course,
because Tork’s own brain was translating direct mental impressions into
words; but he knew that the second figure spoke.
“It is an experiment, Man. We come from a far star, mapping out worlds
our people may some day need. Yours is a good world, with much water.
We do not care for the land. Therefore we do not mind being kind to you
who live on the land.... You have fire.”
Tork found his brain numbly agreeing. He thought of fire, and cookery,
and the two creatures seemed to find his thoughts interesting.
“You have intelligence,” said the first creature brightly, “and it has
occurred to us to make an experiment in ecology. How do you get food?”
Tork grasped only the final sentence. Again he thought numbly.
Gathering nuts. Picking berries. Spearing fish with a sharpened stick.
Digging shellfish. Small animals such as rabbits and squirrels, knocked
over by lucky stones. He thought also of One-Ear, who had been well-fed
enough yesterday merely to demand fish. On other occasions he had come
bellowing, club in hand, and chased Tork away from the food he had
gathered for himself.
“That is bad,” said the voice in Tork’s mind, but it seemed amused. “We
shall show you ways to get much food. All the food you desire. We shall
show you defenses against animals. It will be interesting to see what
comes of an ecological imbalance so produced. You will wait here.”
* * * * *
The two shapes moved away--they floated a little above the ground, Tork
noted dazedly--and entered the ship. The curved plate closed behind
them. There was a whistling of air somewhere. To a man of later
millennia, the sound might have suggested a water-lock closing, being
filled with water so that water-dwelling creatures could swim from it
freely into the liquid-filled interior of the ship from Antares. To
Tork, it suggested nothing.
Nothing happened for hours. Then, suddenly, Tork saw a great elk moving
steadily and hypnotically toward the ship from Antares. It reached a
spot less than fifty yards from the ship’s side, and seemed suddenly to
be released from compulsion. It turned and bounded away; then its
flight slackened and stopped. It came back toward the ship. Fifty yards
away, again it tried to escape, and again was recaptured.
Tork watched, wide-eyed.
Rabbits appeared, hopping toward the ship. They appeared by dozens and
then by hundreds. The steady advance, converging from all directions,
came to a halt in milling confusion at a fixed distance from the
gigantic glistening egg.
The curved plate opened again, and again there was a great sloshing of
water and the smell of the sea. Four or five shapes emerged, floating
above the ground. Even before he saw tubes trained upon him, Tork was
aware of fragments of thought-conversation.
“I acknowledge that an experiment on land cannot possibly affect our
later use of this planet.” Another intonation, indignant: “But it is
cruel! Give these creatures unlimited food and the means of defense and
you condemn their descendants to starvation!” Then other voices said
disjointedly, “I insist that a new ecological balance of low birth-rate
will result--” “Land-animals are of no concern to us--” “Stability of
nature--” “Some new factor will nullify the experiment absolutely--”
Tork was a savage. He was of the cave-folk, and he had never come into
contact with an abstraction in his life. Because these were thoughts,
he perceived them. He even understood them. But they had no reference
to any of the other things in his mind or experience. So they lingered
only like the fragments of a dream.
The creatures placed a sort of box before him. It seemed to Tork like a
stone. There was a pattern of color leaning against it which after
laborious study he discovered to be a reduced appearance of a human
being. It was the first picture he had ever seen. Actually, it was a
picture of him--the key pattern of the urge which had brought him, if
the matter were fully understood. But he heeded the mental voices,
referring to the box he thought a stone.
“This is a device which projects a desire. Since you are merely a man,
we have stabilized the device so that it projects one desire only. That
desire is of coming to the place from which the desire is projected. We
drew you to this place by tuning the projection to you. It made you
wish to come here.”
Tork’s brain assimilated the information after a fashion. Very
patiently, the mental voices corrected his impressions. They went on:
“This device will now project only that desire, but we have left the
tuning variable. Any human may change the tuning now. Stand close to
the device and think of an animal, and the device will tune to animals
of that sort and make them wish to come wherever the device may be.”
Tork thought of saber-tooth, and cringed. The mental voices were
amused, again.
“Even that is arranged. Here is a picture of a man. Look at it and you
will think only of a man, and the device will only call man to you.
Here also is a picture of an elk. Place this by the device and look at
it, and your thoughts of elk will tune the device, so elk will wish to
come to you. Rabbits--”
Tork was frightened. It would be pleasant enough to be able to make
squirrels or rabbits--he saw hundreds of rabbits now, out of the corner
of his eye--come to be knocked on the head. But an elk? What could a
man do with an elk? An elk could trample and toss----
“Naturally,” said the voice in his mind, with some dryness, “we give
you safety from animals also, if you change your habits to make use of
our gifts. We have made spears with points of stone, which you can soon
learn to duplicate. With the picture-device you can draw animals to
you, and with the spears you can kill them. Moreover--”
The voices in his mind went on and on. There were a bow and arrows.
There were stone knives. For the purpose of the experiment, each
instrument save the hypnotic device itself had been carefully designed
to be understood by primitive minds.
“We of Antares seek new worlds for our race to inhabit. We have chosen
your world for later use, and shall remain upon it for perhaps a
hundred of your years, to survey it. We shall be able to see the first
results of what we do today. Then we shall go back to our own world,
and when we return we will see the final result of our gifts to you.
What happens on the land, of course, will not affect our use of the
seas.”
Another mental voice interrupted, protesting that the man was not given
a fair chance to refuse the gifts. The instructor went on drily: “Your
species can now multiply without limit. We think that you will overrun
all the land and destroy all other animals for food, and ultimately
destroy yourselves. But we are not sure. We are curious to learn. You
can refuse the gift if you choose.”
Tork blinked. He understood--temporarily. But he was human and a
savage. The prospect of unlimited food outweighed all other possible
considerations. He was frightened, but he wanted all the food that
could be had. Definitely.
Instructions continued. Presently Tork understood the spears, and was
naively astonished. He understood the bows and arrows, and was amazed.
He grew excited. He wanted to use the marvelous new things. He felt
that the shapes were amused by him.
The land-suited figures floated back to the water-lock of the ship. It
closed. He was left alone. He fingered the weapons. Another great plate
lowered. But this was not a lock; it was a window. A vast expanse of
transparent stuff appeared. Behind it was water, and in the liquid the
Antareans--no longer in their rubbery suits--swam within the great
metal egg, watching.
Tork, newly instructed, examined the beautifully fashioned stone point
of a spear, and then lifted the spear as he had been told to do. He
remembered sharp-pointed, sharp-edged stones he had seen. He remembered
stones breaking when struck together. He knew he could make a point
like this. But----
He was a savage. He went to that extraordinary circular confusion where
rabbits hopped hypnotically toward the great silver egg, and at a
certain distance were released and turned to flee, and again became
subject to the irresistible urge to approach it. Tork went out to them,
his mouth slavering.
He made a monstrous slaughter before it palled on him. Then he saw the
elk. Fifty yards from the ship it stopped, and stared about it, and
bounded away. It turned and came back toward the great ship until
suddenly it stopped and stared....
Tork killed it while it marched toward the ship in dazed obedience to
the urge. Then he went crazy with triumph. He gorged himself upon the
raw flesh, and went back to the shadow of the ship--in his triumph he