Yet when he closed his eyelids once again, golden opacity returned. He reopened them thoughtfully. The alien, apparently, could cut off its vision. Yet the eyes of a creature so high must be many feet in diameter. And, at this height, twin opacities would be spotted even from the nearby town. But no such sight had been reported. Therefore, the lids were opaque only from the inside. Which was ridiculous. Yet it was happening. Jerry's thoughts were interrupted by a giddy realization. He, in this alien body, was not standing. He was seated cross-legged on the ground. That meant a height of not five hundred feet, but nearer seven hundred. Cautiously, he extended a hand toward one of the tiny mine-cars. He had a little difficulty directing a hand and arm he could not see; but, by feeling along the earth, he got hold of the dull gray object and tried to lift it. It came up with featherweight ease. Then, halfway to his eyes, it began to glow, to smoke, to grow terribly hot. And as Jerry released it with a reflex of pain, it burst into white flame and hit the ground as a shapeless gobbet of molten slag. Jerry's hand came to his mouth automatically. He sucked and licked at the sore surfaces of his finger and thumb, trying to drain some of the hurt out of them. Then he froze. After a heartbeat, he felt carefully about the interior of his mouth with a forefinger. Gums. Warm, wet, soft-boned toothless gums. Whatever the alien looked like—it was still only a baby. Which meant— Quickly Jerry looked at the sky again. Not a cloud had moved. Their rotund fleeciness might have been carven there. He gave himself a mental kick. Hadn't one of his first alien awarenesses been the sound of wind? And yet the grass lay still. The trees stood silent. And the clouds, so nearly over his head that he could have touched one, hung quietly against a perfectly calm sky. It was not the wind he had heard. It was air. Just molecules of air, as they shifted and flew about at incredible speeds. The alien-baby's time-sense was occluded, as that of any Earth-baby, by shortness of life. It was the paradox of relative lifetime. A lifetime, Old Peters had said, training the eager young men who were to become graduate Space Zoologists, is a lifetime. He'd written it on the
Prev.
Back
Top