Chapter 3

Jarvis continued. “So–we stared at each other. Finally the creature
went into a series of clackings and twitterings and held out its hands
toward me, empty. I took that as a gesture of friendship.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Harrison, “it looked at that nose of yours and
thought you were its brother!”

“Huh! You can be funny without talking! Anyway, I put up my gun and said
‘Aw, don’t mention it,’ or something of the sort, and the thing came
over and we were pals.

“By that time, the sun was pretty low and I knew that I’d better build a
fire or get into my thermo-skin. I decided on the fire. I picked a spot
at the base of the Thyle cliff, where the rock could reflect a little
heat on my back. I started breaking off chunks of this desiccated
Martian vegetation, and my companion caught the idea and brought in an
armful. I reached for a match, but the Martian fished into his pouch and
brought out something that looked like a glowing coal; one touch of it,
and the fire was blazing–and you all know what a job we have starting a
fire in this atmosphere!

“And that bag of his!” continued the narrator. “That was a manufactured
article, my friends; press an end and she popped open–press the middle
and she sealed so perfectly you couldn’t see the line. Better than
zippers.

“Well, we stared at the fire a while and I decided to attempt some sort
of communication with the Martian. I pointed at myself and said ‘Dick’;
he caught the drift immediately, stretched a bony claw at me and
repeated ‘Tick.’ Then I pointed at him, and he gave that whistle I
called Tweel; I can’t imitate his accent. Things were going smoothly; to
emphasize the names, I repeated ‘Dick,’ and then, pointing at him,
‘Tweel.’

“There we stuck! He gave some clacks that sounded negative, and said
something like ‘P-p-p-proot.’ And that was just the beginning; I was
always ‘Tick,’ but as for him–part of the time he was ‘Tweel,’ and part
of the time he was ‘P-p-p-proot,’ and part of the time he was sixteen
other noises!

“We just couldn’t connect. I tried ‘rock,’ and I tried ‘star,’ and
‘tree,’ and ‘fire,’ and Lord knows what else, and try as I would, I
couldn’t get a single word! Nothing was the same for two successive
minutes, and if that’s a language, I’m an alchemist! Finally I gave it
up and called him Tweel, and that seemed to do.

“But Tweel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them,
which I suppose is a great achievement if you’re used to a language you
have to make up as you go along. But I couldn’t get the hang of his
talk; either I missed some subtle point or we just didn’t _think_
alike–and I rather believe the latter view.

“I’ve other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the
language business, and tried mathematics. I scratched two plus two
equals four on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles. Again Tweel
caught the idea, and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once
more we seemed to be getting somewhere.

“So, knowing that Tweel had at least a grammar school education, I drew
a circle for the sun, pointing first at it, and then at the last glow of
the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury, and Venus, and Mother Earth, and
Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars, I swept my hand around in a sort of
inclusive gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I
was working up to putting over the idea that my home was on the earth.

“Tweel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and
with a great deal of trilling and clucking, he added Deimos and Phobos
to Mars, and then sketched in the earth’s moon!

“Do you see what that proves? It proves that Tweel’s race uses
telescopes–that they’re civilized!”

“Does not!” snapped Harrison. “The moon is visible from here as a fifth
magnitude star. They could see its revolution with the naked eye.”

“The moon, yes!” said Jarvis. “You’ve missed my point. Mercury isn’t
visible! And Tweel knew of Mercury because he placed the Moon at the
_third_ planet, not the second. If he didn’t know Mercury, he’d put the
earth second, and Mars third, instead of fourth! See?”

“Humph!” said Harrison.

“Anyway,” proceeded Jarvis, “I went on with my lesson. Things were going
smoothly, and it looked as if I could put the idea over. I pointed at
the earth on my diagram, and then at myself, and then, to clinch it, I
pointed to myself and then to the earth itself shining bright green
almost at the zenith.

“Tweel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood.
He jumped up and down, and suddenly he pointed at himself and then at
the sky, and then at himself and at the sky again. He pointed at his
middle and then at Arcturus, at his head and then at Spica, at his feet
and then at half a dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then, all of
a sudden, he gave a tremendous leap. Man, what a hop! He shot straight
up into the starlight, seventy-five feet if an inch! I saw him
silhouetted against the sky, saw him turn and come down at me head
first, and land smack on his beak like a javelin! There he stuck square
in the center of my sun-circle in the sand–a bull’s eye!”

“Nuts!” observed the captain. “Plain nuts!”

“That’s what I thought, too! I just stared at him open-mouthed while he
pulled his head out of the sand and stood up. Then I figured he’d missed
my point, and I went through the whole blamed rigamarole again, and it
ended the same way, with Tweel on his nose in the middle of my picture!”

“Maybe it’s a religious rite,” suggested Harrison.

“Maybe,” said Jarvis dubiously. “Well, there we were. We could exchange
ideas up to a certain point, and then–blooey! Something in us was
different, unrelated; I don’t doubt that Tweel thought me just as screwy
as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different
viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours. But–we
couldn’t get together, that’s all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I
_liked_ Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me.”