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Chapter 4

They lost track of time.

Day and night were meaningless in the unending light of the softly glowing walls that enclosed them. Hours became a dubious subdivision of a temporal reference that no longer existed. Their watches ran down and were packed away.

They slept when tired. They ate perfunctorily when hungry from an enormous stock of canned goods that Smith had brought from Earth.

They studied.

Smith, displaying qualities that would have made him a creditable success as Simon Legree in a small-time stage production, tirelessly kept them at their lessons. He lashed them with words when they faltered, and, on the rare occasions when they pleased him, damned them with faint praise. (“You learn well—but so slowly!”)

First they learned a basic interstellar language that Smith called, in all seriousness, small-talk. It was so wonderfully concise, so amazingly logical, that they would have mastered its rudiments in a sitting had it not been for the pronunciation, which was fraught with fiendish traps for the human vocal apparatus.

They quickly achieved a measure of fluency in small-talk, though they continued to massacre its pronunciation. Then Smith introduced large-talk, and the words they already knew were revealed to them as abbreviated clues to an incredibly rich, dazzling vast panorama of expression.

They arrived—somewhere—and transmitted from the spaceship to a sealed suite of rooms in Smith’s Certification Group Headquarters. They studied. They learned to talk, read, and write large-talk. They learned a supplementary universal alphabet whose characters turned out to be numbers, allegedly capable of arrangement in combinations that could depict the sounds of any of the uncounted spoken languages of the galaxy. There was also a universal touch alphabet, for species of intelligent life incapable of phonation, and special modifications for species with sundry other handicaps. Darzek found himself gloomily contemplating the problem of communicating with a species that possessed no senses whatsoever.

“I know of none,” Smith said, with a slight gurgle that Darzek had begun to suspect was a laugh. “But anything is possible. It takes all kinds to make a galaxy.”

“I believe you,” Darzek said fervently.

Smith was one of them. He had shed his epidermis as soon as they shed Earth’s Solar System, and he appeared vaguely human in the way a human might look after he’d been run over by a steamroller: flattened out. Immensely broad when viewed from the front, but unbelievably thin in profile. His face was caved in, its features weirdly inverted. The enormous eyes were widely separated and almost on a line with the single, gaping nostril. The mouth was a puckered gash in the chin, the neck a slender pipe. There were no ears or hair. The flesh was of a distinctive hue that Miss Schlupe at once labeled oxygen-starvation blue.

“If he wants to remove that epidermis, too, it’s all right with me,” she had confided to Darzek.

Smith added absently, “There are even species that have rather involved communication systems based upon odors, but no one has ever been able to reduce these to symbols.”

“Thank God!” Darzek exclaimed.

“You must have a fair mastery of large-talk, and if you remain long on a world you may want to learn the local languages, assuming that you are physiologically capable of doing so. You needn’t worry about the more complicated forms of communication, but you should know about them. For example, a strange male who approaches and touches a female on your world would be guilty of criminal misconduct. In interstellar society the action would be recognized as a search for someone with an understanding of touch speech.”

“There’d be the same understanding on Earth,” Darzek said, “but the woman probably wouldn’t like what was being said.”

“I mention this so that if it should happen to Miss Schlupe she would not react in the accepted manner of your Earth women.”

Miss Schlupe blinked innocently. “I’d take it as a compliment—on Earth or anywhere else.”

“If all we need to know is large-talk, let’s get on with it,” Darzek said.

“Large-talk,” Smith agreed gloomily. “And manners and customs and finance and business and practical technology and—and the Council of Supreme is becoming impatient. There is so little time, and you learn so slowly.”

Finally there was a brief farewell ceremony with Smith, and Darzek and Miss Schlupe drank a toast with the last of Miss Schlupe’s rhubarb beer, which Smith refused to touch. They stepped through a special transmitter hookup to a passenger compartment of a commercial space liner. With that step they crossed their Rubicon. They knew, now, that they could not turn back. They did not even know how to get back.

While Miss Schlupe curiously explored the compartment’s five compact rooms, Darzek opened his suitcase and took out a thick throw rug. He carefully arranged it in front of the transmitter.

“What’s it for?” Miss Schlupe asked.

“It’s a little thing I rigged up before I left. I got to thinking about the implications of life in a transmitter-orientated society, and I decided that I didn’t like some of them. Step on it.”

Miss Schlupe did so and leaped off hurriedly when a buzzer rasped.

“I couldn’t sleep if I thought anyone or anything could step into my room without knocking,” Darzek said.

“Is that possible?”

“It shouldn’t be, but I’m taking no chances.”

“What if they jump over it?”

“A person sneaking into a room is more likely to tiptoe than to jump.”

Miss Schlupe winced as a thump sounded over their heads and the compartment shuddered. “What was that?”

“Probably they’re loading another compartment. These spaceships are hollow hulks, except for their operation and service sections. The transmitter eliminates the need for corridors and stairs and elevators and such paraphernalia. Passenger compartments are taken aboard as they are engaged, and hooked up to power and ventilation connections. They load freight compartments the same way. We may have tons of freight above us, but that doesn’t matter in weightless space—and a spaceship never ventures where there’s significant gravity. We can be buried in the tail of the ship and still be only a step from the passenger lounge by transmitter.”

“How long does it take them to get us out of here if the transmitter doesn’t work?”

Darzek shook his head and dropped onto a chair. It gently shifted to accommodate him, thrust up a protrusion to support his back, spread out to provide a footrest. “Lovely,” he murmured. “I wonder if they call it ‘Interspacial Modern.’”

Every piece of furniture looked like a monstrous hassock, and certainly contained enough electronic gadgetry to stock a TV repair shop. The chairs could accommodate the posterior or anterior contours of any conceivable life form, at any desired height, and were probably adjustable in ways a human wouldn’t think either necessary or possible. The larger cylinders served as tables or desks, and kept records, recorded financial transactions, sent and received anything from a message to a full-course meal. Darzek would not have been surprised to learn that in private homes they also did the laundry and cared for the children.

Miss Schlupe seated herself beside him. “I miss my rocking chair,” she grumbled.

They followed the routine they had become inured to: they studied. Occasionally they practiced ordering food with the service transmitter, but they took most of their meals from the dwindling stock of Earth food. When they tired of study Darzek paced the floor, grappling futilely with the many questions Smith had left unanswered, and resisting the temptation to deplete his stock of cigarettes. Miss Schlupe got out her knitting, and read and reread the stack of confession magazines she’d brought along, accompanying her clicking needles with disapproving clucks of her tongue.

Smith had recommended that they remain in their compartment, but Darzek, to satisfy his curiosity, made one trip to the ship’s lounge. Several of the life forms he encountered there could not be believed even when seen, and this fact convinced him that galactic civilization was best taken in a long series of extremely small doses until one had built up an immunity to it.

They experienced no sensation of motion. A transmitter that transmitted itself, the ship moved through space on a series of enormous transmitting leaps, each laboriously calculated. Area-transmitting, Smith called it: it involved a leap to a destination area, carefully selected to avoid suns; as distinguished from point-transmitting, which was used only for limited distances within a solar system, and even then was rarely attempted without a transmitting receiver. The ship’s final transmitting leap would be to the general area of its destination. There it would revert to the clumsy status of an atomic-powered rocket in order to reach its assigned transfer station.

There were only an Earth day from Primores, the central sun of the galaxy, when Miss Schlupe finally spoke the thought that had been on both their minds since they started.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I wish Smith had come along.”

“Smith was scared silly. Didn’t you notice?”

She stared at him. “How could you tell?”

“Various things. He was afraid of the Dark, no pun intended. He was afraid the Dark would somehow locate us and polish us off right under his indented nose. That’s why we were spirited away from Earth in a sealed compartment, and why we were then held incommunicado in sealed quarters, and why Smith made elaborate arrangements to put us on this ship without our passing through a transfer station. The crew on Smith’s ship didn’t know we were aboard. No one at Certification Group Headquarters—except Smith— knew we were there. And no one on this ship knows anything about us except that we’re here. Smith was scared silly that the Dark would find us.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Miss Schlupe said.

“It makes a great deal of sense. It shows us how omnipotent this menace is. What it’s done is so utterly unbelievable that rational people like Smith are convinced it can do anything.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me. If Smith feared for our safety, why did he kick us out on our own? Why didn’t he come with us?”

“He’s a prominent certification official. He was afraid it would compromise our mission if he were seen with us. He was afraid to take steps to protect us, because they would only attract attention to us, and the omnipotent Dark would promptly finish us off. An escort would attract attention. A special ship would attract attention, because nobody travels on special ships. A disguise might be recognized as such, and make the Dark’s agents wonder what we were trying to hide. Our only chance of safety is to be so inconspicuous as to be beneath suspicion.”

“All right. So we arrive at Primores, and this Biag-n, or whatever his name is, meets us, and everything is hunky-dory. But what if he doesn’t show?”

“He’s an agent of Supreme, so he’s probably a highly capable person. He knows the ship we’re on. He knows what we look like. We know what he looks like. Nothing has been left to chance. At least, I hope not. I’m looking forward to meeting this Mr. Biag-n. If he really knows the Dark from personal experience, I want some long overdue answers to about a thousand questions.”

“I still think Smith should have come with us.”

“I think so, too, but there was no arguing with him. Like I said, he was scared silly.”

They cleared away all traces of their occupancy, dumping the last of their Earth food into the disposal, and they were packed and waiting when the signal came to disembark. Each of them clutching a suitcase, they stepped through to Primores Transfer Station Twelve, Arrival Level.

And into a surrealist’s private zoo.

For all of Smith’s talk about the galaxy’s divergent life forms, nothing he said had quite prepared them for this. Long before their minds had decided to accept what their astonished eyes saw, the sounds and odors had overwhelmed them. Several ships were unloading simultaneously, and from the curving row of transmitters came striding things, leaping things, scurrying things, crawling things, slithering things, even bouncing things, all pouring nonchalantly into the milling press of the Arrival Level. Some carried luggage, some towed it floating above them or rolling along the floor. A few were carried by it, riding haughtily on purring, streamlined valises.

Darzek, keeping a firm grip on his own suitcase, nudged Miss Schlupe out of the central flow of passengers and into a quiet eddy, where they both stood staring.

“The mere thought of it would have driven Noah nuts,” Darzek observed. “I never realized what a relative thing beauty is. Take that snail, for example. Not that one, the one with legs and no shell. Its shape is unimaginably ugly and its colors are indescribably beautiful. Smith was right. We didn’t need a disguise. I couldn’t even imagine a shape that would be conspicuous in this mélange. Is that an octopus with wings?”

“How will this Biag-n character locate us in this mob?”

“We’ll be conspicuous enough to anyone who knows what we look like. No chance of confusing us with that insect, for example—are the flowers part of its head, or is it wearing a hat? Biag-n should be conspicuous, too. Just keep an eye open for Tweedledum in skirts.”

They drifted in widening circles, adroitly dodging through the main currents of traffic and pausing frequently. The room began to thin out.

“Somebody goofed,” Miss Schlupe announced firmly.

“It would seem so. However, we must allow for the inevitable mix-up and the unavoidable delay. This is Transfer Station Twelve; our friend may be dashing from station to station looking for us. Let’s keep circulating.”

They began another circuit of the room. More ships had docked, and the arrival gates debouched a fresh surge of passengers. “It may be that he’s here, but doesn’t think the moment propitious,” Darzek said. “He may want to check carefully to see if anyone is spying on him.”

“Spying with what?” Miss Schlupe demanded irritably. “Some of these things don’t have eyes. Some are even luckier —they don’t have noses.”

Darzek looked at her quickly and thought he detected a tinge of green in her normally ruddy complexion.

“I don’t mind the way they look,” she went on, “and I could probably get used to all this hissing and squealing and honking, but the smells!”

“It does seem that we’ve stumbled upon an unlimited market for perfumes and deodorants,” Darzek agreed. “We can’t be certain, though. Maybe what we smell is perfume and deodorant!”

They joined the newcomers and again drifted slowly across the room toward the numbered transmitter gates that linked the transfer station with the planets of the Primores system. Before they reached them they turned aside, made a half-circuit of the room, and began the trip anew.

“Somebody goofed,” Miss Schlupe said again.

“I was wondering if for some reason or other they might have found it necessary to send a substitute, but none of these hallucinations seems to be looking for us. They’re all intent on going somewhere else, and it’s just occurred to me that we’d better do the same, before someone gets the idea that we’re behaving abnormally.”

“Sure. Where will we go?”

“Schluppy, you have a remarkable gift for placing your finger on the precise nub of the problem. Let’s give it one more try.”

They joined another surge of newcomers, but Darzek felt certain, now, that they were wasting their time. They were not going to be met—by anyone.