Spaceworlds: Stories of Life in the Void by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NASA, golden age of SF, interstellar, faster than light, alien, space travel, deep space
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2021-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

He dried up the wet patches of floor with a cloth which he threw into the now partly waterfilled airlock. His sandals and coveralls were wet so he threw them in, also, then he closed the inner seal and opened the outer. While the water was boiling off into the vacuum outside he readjusted the gravity grids so that the floor was flat and the walls vertical again, then he retrieved his sandals, coveralls and cloth which were now bone dry.

“You seem to have everything well organized,” said Caxton grudgingly as he fastened his helmet. “At least you’re looking after the youngster better than you did its parents. See it stays that way.

“The Monitor will be along to see you at hour nine tomorrow,” he added, and left.

O’Mara returned quickly to the bedroom for a closer look at the coloured patch. It was a pale bluish grey and in that area the smooth, almost steel-hard surface of the skin had taken on a sort of crackle finish. O’Mara rubbed the patch gently and the FROB wriggled and gave a blast of sound that was vaguely interrogatory.

“You and me both,” said O’Mara absently. He couldn’t remember reading about anything like this, but then he had not read all the book yet. The sooner he did so the better.

The chief method of communicating between beings of different species was by means of a Translator, which electronically sorted and classified all sense-bearing sounds and reproduced them in the native language of its user. Another method, used when large amounts of accurate data of a more subjective nature had to be passed on, was the Educator tape system. This transferred bodily all the sensory impressions, knowledge and personality of one being into the mind of another. Coming a long way third both in popularity and accuracy was the written language which was somewhat extravagantly called Universal.

Universal was of use only to beings who possessed brains linked to optical receptors capable of abstracting knowledge from patterns of markings on a flat surface—in short, the printed page. While there were many species with this ability, the response to colour in each species was very rarely matched. What appeared to be a bluish-grey patch to O’Mara might look like anything from yellow-grey to dirty purple to another being, and the trouble was that the other being might have been the author of the book.

One of the appendices gave a rough colour-equivalent chart, but it was a tedious, time-consuming job checking back on it, and his knowledge of Universal was not perfect anyway.

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