The Best of John Wyndham 1951-1960 by John Wyndham

Author:John Wyndham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1972-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Our creature comprehended this and made a sign.

The other re-entered its artifact and went away.

And so the situation rests.

Eptus now agrees that the disked affair is an artifact but contends that so squashy and semi-liquid a creature as our specimens cannot have made anything so hard. Therefore, he argues, there must be another and doubtless higher type of intelligence here, housed in a harder form capable of dealing with such materials.

Podas is still trying to communicate with our specimen. It has folded itself up against an angle of the wall and floor where it again tries quite desperately at intervals to remove the boltik frame which prevents it from using its weapon.

He is convinced that the slot is somehow linked with its transmission of thought. Eptus says this is nonsense – it has become quite clear to him that our wall interrupts these creatures’ thought-waves, so that they fall back on a secondary form of communication by marks.

Podas objects that we were able to distinguish the outside creature’s thought waves – some of them very clearly. To which Eptus objects that it stands to reason that we are a great deal more sensitive than this soggy and revolting form of life.

Argument on such lines, it seems to me, not only can go on for some time but doubtless will.

Interim Report.

Dear Zenn, I have become worried by recent developments. The plain fact is that we do not know enough about these strange creatures here to keep the situation firmly in hand. There is now a crowd of them with their artifacts outside our east wall.

Several of our party have disintegrated and I fear that more may go at any moment. The creatures fling the most dangerous frequencies around, not only without effort but regardless of consequences.

Podas suggests that they may not know the danger in the frequencies since their pudgy bodies are unlikely to respond, that they are, in fact naturally sound-absorbent. Fantastic as this may seem Eptus is for once inclined to support him. It is also apparently endorsed by our attempts to beam them.

We directed a most powerful beam upon them and ran it through a range of highly destructive frequencies. One cannot say it was entirely without effect. For a moment they did check and we were gratified – we thought we were near a critical length.

They turned to look at one another with obvious puzzlement in their minds. Then they started to communicate – it does look as if Podas were right, for they invariably accompany thought projection with movement of their slots.

As far as we could interpret they were ‘saying’ such things as, “Do you hear it too?…It’s not just my ears, is it?…Like a funny kind of music – only it isn’t music…Not, not exactly music…It’s very queer…”

That last seemed to be the most general reaction. So far from disintegrating them it did not seem, even at full power, to do more than disturb them slightly, and puzzle them. In other words this powerful weapon is useless against them.

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