SHE CALLED to the wandering star-wind and it answered her from far off. She called again and it came to her with a leap and a trill clear back across the galaxy, and Fairlie thought that anything, even a wind, would come to the calling of that voice.
It was round and full, produced with such ease that the tone was like warm silver, never pinched or strained, never shrill. The voice and the wind began to talk to each other—without words, but there was no need of words. The pattern of sound was simple, almost antique, but indescribably beautiful. Then the call-and-response became more complex and before the listening ear was aware of the change other voices had joined in, on the side of the wind—instrumental voices of such strangeness that Fairlie could not even guess how the sounds they made were produced.
They were rather shattering at first, but the woman's voice welcomed them as old friends, singing now with them, now against them, and after a minute or two the strangeness faded and only the eerie beauty of the sounds remained, weaving patterns of increasing complexity around that silvery voice. It dawned on Fairlie, very dimly because he didn't know much about music, that he was listening to a superb and joyous fugue such as Bach might have written if Bach had been a Dorian or an ancient Egyptian, and the instruments for which the music was created something not yet invented in any of the cultures of Earth.
He listened and in his mind's eye he could see the woman—not clearly, but he knew that she was beautiful—standing on a high place singing and all about her a beat and whirl and flash of wings, now dark, now shining, as the clustered stars swooped down and sang around her.
The silence when it was all over was a shock to Fairlie's ears.
"Effective, isn't it?" DeWitt said, and the ball stopped turning. "Remarkably human voice, too—just like the man's. Their vocal equipment couldn't have been too different from ours. Well, I still have a session with Speer ahead of me." He commenced deftly to pack up the alien recorder and the rack of silver balls. "Think over what we've been talking about, Fairlie. Call me when you're ready for more tapes. And let me know immediately if you come up with anything."
He was gone before Fairlie could wrench his stupefied brain back into its proper channel. And long after the door closed Fairlie was still thinking about the woman on the mountain-top singing to the stars.
He did not get much work done the rest of that day. He did not sleep very well that night, nor the night after that, and when he did he saw visions of such strangeness that he started up from them wide-awake and sweating. He began to work with a new intensity, harder than he had ever worked in his life before, but there was little joy in it. His shoulders seemed bowed with a great weight and there was an oppressiveness in the very air about him. When he looked at himself in the mirror while he shaved each morning it seemed to him that every day the face he saw looked older and more harried, the eyes more eager and yet more haunted.
He saw very little of the others, and when he did see them he thought that they too were laboring under the same fear, the same urgent hunger as himself. Oddly, in those first weeks, nobody mentioned any of the terrifying implications that DeWitt had brought up to Fairlie and so presumably to the others as well. Fairlie wanted to talk about these things, desperately, but whenever he tried he knew he could not because he had not yet really accepted them himself. Part of his mind was still involved in the struggle to tear down the basic concepts upon which the world and his life in it had always rested, and which had now with such brutal suddenness become inadequate.
The ships will go out. Somebody's ships, theirs or ours. The stars are waiting, and it depends on you.
That was too big a load to share with anybody. A man had to learn to carry it himself before he could even admit it was there.
And time went on.
Fairlie and Speer carried out their phonematic analyses independently. At the same time Bogan and Lisetti also independently, were working on a glossematic analysis of the written Ur-speech, glossemes being the smallest unit of significant meaning just as phonemes were the smallest unit of meaningful sound. There was not, of course, any discussion between them about how their separate jobs were progressing. Fairlie made his graphs and marked out his probable phonemes and checked and compared and did it all over again, knowing all the time that if his findings did not check with Speer's, or if the glossematic analyses failed to show any results, the labor was all for nothing.
There were many times when he thought that that would be a good thing and prayed for it to happen.
There were other times when he was sick with apprehension that the secret of the Ur-men would remain locked away forever in incomprehensible speech and undecipherable writing. The ships would never fly, the stars would glimmer and go out, and there would be nothing for him ever again but dusty visionless classrooms and yawning students.
These were the times when he listened to the singing of the Ur-woman. He did this more and more often, and it was increasingly difficult to make himself understand that the singer had been dead for thirty thousand years. The voice was there, alive and ringing, and it called to him.
He prepared his notes, wrote a careful summary of his findings, and met with Speer. Their findings checked.
Bogan and Lisetti, in the meantime, were comparing their own independently-arrived-at results on the analysis of similarities between the plaques on Ur-machines and those on Earthly machines of similar use. Bogan made it known that he was ready for a general session, and it was held in the middle of a hot bright morning in the shabby lounge. Four men in shirtsleeves with tomorrow in their sweaty hands. DeWitt sat in. He did not say anything, and physically he did nothing but sit in a chair and smoke, but he spread a tension through the room as tangible as a static charge.
Bogan, naturally, spoke first. "Dr. Lisetti and I have achieved almost identical results." The word almost deplored Lisetti's unfortunate stupidity. "On the basis of these results we can say with reasonable certainty that certain symbols or combinations of symbols can be translated as ON and OFF, or OPERATIVE and NON-OPERATIVE. Other symbols are identifiable as numerals in a digital system, and we have agreed on a partial listing of their values. We have also agreed on the probable interpretation of several other groups of symbols."
DeWitt said, "Then you've done it."
Bogan looked at him. "Done what?"
"Found the key to the translation." He stood up, leaning forward over the table. "How long will it take you to do it now that you're started?"
"Oh, for God's sake," said Bogan. "Why must one always be burdened with fools?" The cry was one of genuine anguish, and Fairlie realized that these weeks had told on Bogan as much as on any of them. The pompous façade was now only a shell maintained by habit. Behind it was a tired and frightened man no different from the rest of them.
"I suppose," said DeWitt, "because there are so many of us." His eyes were hot. "However, I do happen to know something about cryptography and in the light of that knowledge my question does not seem to me to be idiotic."
Bogan shook his head. "I'm sorry. But we are not dealing with cryptography, where the basic language is known and it is only necessary to determine what substitution of symbology has been made for it. We are confronted with total unknowns."
"You said you had identified certain words and numbers. That should certainly give you a clue."
"I said we had agreed on the probable meanings of certain symbols. That's quite a different thing."
"How so?"
"We still don't know what the symbols are. Whether they're pictograms, ideograms, letters of an alphabet, or stylized symbols that are simply that and no more, with an arbitrary meaning—just as a skull-and-crossbones always means POISON when you see it on a bottle. We have guessed at the meaning of other symbols because their position and application would seem to be the same as those similarly positioned on our own machines, but these are only guesses as yet and damned dangerous ones to depend on in actually operating the machines."
He ran a distracted hand through his mane of hair and pointed to the stacks of reports on the table.
"The work has only begun. Only barely begun. Not only do we have to determine the nature of the script, we have to determine the nature of the language. Is it agglutinative, syllabic, or—"
"The work has begun, though," DeWitt said flatly. "You have made progress."
"To the extent I have just outlined."
"Then I think we should have Christensen down here."
And Christensen came.
The day went on, reaching a crescendo of heat and glare, descending by imperceptible gradations to abrupt twilight and a cooling of the air, and then to night. Food was brought in, and a great deal of coffee, and many packs of cigarettes. About eleven-thirty the talking and thrashing of papers was done. Fairlie sagged in his chair, too tired to care what happened next, one part of his mind grappling like a sleepwalker with the new data that had come into it and already automatically planning out the next step he wanted to take.
The other part of his mind was listening to Christensen's incredibly unwearied voice telling them all what a splendid job they were doing and how he was sure that teamwork like this would eventually solve all the problems confronting them. Goose-grease, Fairlie thought, but pleasant to hear.
Then DeWitt said, "I think it's time to get moving."
Christensen looked at him. "In just what way?"
"Initiate a ship project. With what these gentlemen know now we can make a beginning—start running tests of the actual Ur-machines that we've repaired."
Christensen's face became bland, impenetrable, and hard as stone. "We're all anxious to get started, Glenn, but let's not go off half-cocked. We need to know an awful lot more before we start testing or any projects. Dr. Bogan and Dr. Lisetti have made it quite clear that operational procedures for these machines are still uncertain."
DeWitt smiled. "I know that. But I say it's time we got out of uncertainty and started doing something. Some physical tests—"
"—could easily result in disaster. No. It's far too premature." Christensen got up, a polite signal that the discussion was over.
DeWitt ignored it. "I don't think it is. What are we waiting for? A complete translation of every word? We can't wait that long. And as for the machines, some practical tests would help speed up the work." He turned swiftly to Bogan and the others. "Isn't that so, gentlemen?"
Bogan opened his mouth, but before he could get anything out of it Christensen spoke. "We will not have any tests at this time."
"Then when?" demanded DeWitt.
"When I decide that the work has progressed far enough to make it practicable."
"And I wonder just when that will be, if ever."
Christensen said quietly, "Did you mean something by that?"
"Yes, I did. You know what I think, Chris? I think you're scared of this thing. I think you'll put off the evil day as long as you possibly can." He paused. "Why don't we let Washington decide?"
Fairlie, watching this, saw that Christensen was angry—and Christensen angry was a formidable sight. Fairlie thought that Glenn DeWitt had more courage than he would have to face up to it. He began to understand now the kind of fierce impatience that had made DeWitt leave the Air Force.
After a minute Christensen said in a cool voice, "Very well, Glenn, you go to Washington and take it up with the Defense Secretary himself. I'll send in my own report, and we'll see what the decision is."
"Fine," DeWitt said, and went out. Christensen stood for a moment looking intently at nothing in particular. Bogan harrumphed and began to sweep papers together. He ignored Christensen.
"I suggest that we confer again in four or five weeks to exchange notes on what progress has been made—if any."
Christensen said abruptly, "Keep me informed. Good night, gentlemen."
He went out. The others straggled after him. Outside in the dark night and the wind Fairlie paused to look at the sky with its billion bristling stars, and Speer spoke from behind his shoulder.
"I wish I knew," said Speer, "how this will all turn out."
Fairlie grunted. The wind felt icy on him, stabbing through his clothes to the naked skin underneath. He began to shiver.
"There's something else I wish, too," said Speer in a different voice. "I wish to God they'd left me out of it."
He turned and went away.
Bogan and Lisetti had heard him. They looked at each other and at Fairlie, their faces pale and indistinct, blurred in the star shine.
"Amen," said Lisetti.
"Well, they didn't," said Bogan, "and so we may as well make the best of it. But I may also wish into eternal hellfire the man who roused up the nasty little beast I call conscience. It isn't a creature I've ever cared to wrestle with, and in our field of science one is hardly ever called upon to do it."
Lisetti looked up at the sky. He was shivering too.
"Oh hell," he said. "I am going to bed and get drunk. In that order."
They walked away from each other toward their separate quarters, small lonely figures in the wide dark, and none of them looked up again at the sky above them.
The work started again. The endless analyses, the comparisons, the hopeful trials and wholly expected defeats. In spare moments he wondered how DeWitt was doing in Washington, and swung as usual between hope that the Defense Secretary would listen to Christensen and forbid the tests, and then that he would listen to DeWitt and give them full speed ahead.
A week or so later DeWitt walked in on him and Fairlie didn't have to ask how it had gone. His hard face told very plainly that the official word had been a large round NO.
"We'll never get off the ground now until you people give us more to go on. Is there any hope of that in the foreseeable future?"
Nettled by DeWitt's harsh sarcasm, Fairlie took considerable pleasure in telling him that there was no hope at all.
"And anyway," he added, "I think Christensen's right. It's absurd to try and learn a whole new technology on the basis of two words, OFF and ON."
"Seems to me that's about all you need," DeWitt said softly. "I'm surprised at you, Fairlie, I thought you were a young man, but I see you're as old as Christensen, though you haven't any right to be. I can see why Christensen finds it hard to make the change-over, to look up instead of back. But you—" He shook his head and went out, leaving Fairlie hot with a rage he did not quite understand.
He turned on the recorder and listened to the woman singing, calling across time and the shining of countless stars. He hated Christensen and the Secretary of Defense.
He began to work with a new intensity, almost with frenzy. His lights burned late into the night, and few hours out of the twenty-four were wasted in sleep. He lived largely on black coffee and benzedrine. The world contracted around him until it was only large enough to contain himself, his tapes, his photostats and graphs, his notebooks, and the figurative stone wall against which he beat in an insane sort of way.
And after a certain time a little crack seemed to appear in the wall. He knew that it was not really there because it was based on an impossibility, a line he had followed out of sheer exhausted desperation and dropped as soon as he had had some sleep. Only he kept sneaking back to it because it was the only line that had produced any results at all, even spurious ones.
He did not tell anybody about it, not even Speer. He was ashamed to.
And then one night quite late the lights went out all in the wink of a second.
He stood up in the dark, startled. He had the recorder on and the voice of the Ur-woman filled his ears, but even so he could hear the faint skirling of the wind around the corner, the flick of blown sand against the window-pane. There was nothing else. The line had blown down, he thought, or else there had been a general power failure on the base. He groped his way to the door and stepped out to have a look.
And the distant glitter of lights around Administration were the first and the last things he saw.