Son of the Stars Page 4

  Ron stepped down, his eyes upturned still to the dark spaces, mysterious and inviting.

  “I guess you’re right. Maybe we can get Clonar to take us through when he’s able.”

  “The authorities may not even want Clonar to go back into the ship.”

  “It’s his! They can’t keep him out of his own ship!”

  “Well, we’ll see. But I don’t think we should disturb a thing. We’ll phone the Air Base this afternoon so that a guard can be placed to keep vandals out.”

  “What about Clonar himself?” said Ron. “He can’t just be turned over to a hospital to be examined like a guinea pig. He may not be our kind of human, but he’s got human rights.”

  Mr. Barron continued staring up into the ship. “We may not have anything to say about it. This is an extremely important affair and it will be up to the authorities to decide what is to be done with Clonar.”

  Ron made no answer, but Anne felt his hand tighten in hers. She understood the friendship he wanted to offer Clonar. They moved away again to another sector of the wreckage.

  “I’m not going to let them treat Clonar like a guinea pig,” Ron said. “We’ve got to keep them from it.”

  It was dark by the time they reached town again. They dropped Anne at her house, after seeing Smithers home.

  “You’ll give me a call if anything important happens, won’t you, Ron?” she said.

  “1*11 call early in the morning. If Dr. Smithers thinks it’s all right, we’ll see what can be done about teaching Clonar some more English.”

  When they reached home George Barron placed a long-distance call immediately to his personal friend, Colonel Middleton, at the Crocker Air Base. He avoided speaking of any details of their find over the phone, but he obtained the Colonel’s promise to come first thing Monday morning.

  Since this was Saturday, it meant another full day without protection for the wreckage, but Mr. Barron could be no more insistent than he had been without telling the whole story. As well hidden as it was, the ship ought to be safe one more day, he decided.

  Ron was dismayed as he overheard the call. He knew the Colonel from visits the officer had made to their house.

  “Did it have to be Middleton?” he asked. “Couldn’t you go higher, or get someone else?”

  “He’s about the most accessible, with suitable authority to handle the matter,” said Mr. Barron. “What’s the matter with Middleton?”

  “He’ll never understand. He’ll never understand a thing like this, or a person like Clonar.”

  George Barron smiled faintly and rested his hand upon Ron’s shoulder.

  “I agree with you, son,” he said. “Middleton won’t understand. He won’t understand a thing you’re thinking of at this moment—a dream of the stars and light-years of space.

  “He won’t understand your dream of close friendship with this fellow, Clonar, from a world that man has never seen. Not many can understand such a dream, Ron. That’s why we haven’t reached the stars before this.

  “But you have to learn to deal with men who do not understand your dreams and do not have any of their own. They’re everywhere, and they have power and authority. And they must be dealt with on their own terms of what they call practical realism. To Middleton and the others who will come after him, the practical realism in this matter is that here is a ship that offers tremendous military value. It may contain sources of power capable of revolutionizing our air force. Clonar himself may possess knowledge which will advance our science a hundred years, a thousand, even. Those are the practical matters, Ron. And they have to be met and considered.”

  “I understand all that—but Clonar is my friend, not a specimen in a bottle.”

  Mrs. Barron virtually refused any discussion of the subject with either of them. Ron himself saw to Clonar’s needs before going to bed.

  A couple of times during the night he got up to take a look and found Clonar sleeping soundly each time, without any evidence of distress. The police guard, who had been called in for another shift, was unhappy about the whole thing.

  “That’s a queer-looking bird you got there, Ronnie,” he said. “Where did you pick him up anyway?”

  “Personal friend from India. You know, a fakir—one of those guys that can climb a rope suspended from thin air. You be good to him or he’ll conjure up a snake that will wrap around your ears.”

  In the morning Ron personally prepared breakfast for Clonar. There would be no more raw hamburger, he promised himself. The thought of it made his own stomach roll slightly, but it seemed to have done what needed to be done for Clonar.

  He chose a sample of everything he could think of that Clonar might be willing or able to eat, concentrating on the protein foods. A couple of fried eggs with large strips of lean bacon, milk, and some white beans left over from the night before. These he thought should be heavy enough on the protein to satisfy Clonar.

  The boy was awake and cheery when Ron entered the room. He looked with interest at the tray of food and examined the dishes and utensils closely. He placed the glass of milk to his lips and drank half the contents without stopping.

  It was as good a time as any to continue their English lessons, Ron thought. He pointed to the items of food.

  “Eggs,” he said.

  Clonar responded eagerly. “Eggs.”

  Ron gave the specific name of each item and then the general names of classes and groups as he had done the previous day. Clonar caught on rapidly. And once he learned a word, he seemed not to forget it or the manner of its usage.

  Ron’s parents and Francie were preparing for Sunday school, but Ron wanted to continue the language lesson. Dr. Smithers dropped in as the Barrons were leaving for church.

  “How’s the patient doing?” he asked.

  He applied the stethoscope to Clonar’s chest—not because he could tell anything specific about the physiology of Clonar, but for purposes of comparison with yesterday’s condition.

  The heart beat seemed a little slower. Respiration was slower and more even. The temperature remained as high as ever.

  “The hamburger treatment looks like it worked,” he said. “Maybe I should try that on some of my other patients. Clonar looks like a new man today.”

  “Do you think he can stand it if we push him on the English learning?”

  “Get him to tell you the moment he feels like it’s too much. I think he probably has excellent sensitivity for such matters, much as animals do—and as most humans badly need.

  “I’ll be getting on to church. Dr. Hamilton said that if I don’t show up there once in a while he’s going to announce my funeral. I’ll drop by again this afternoon.”

  Ron called Anne then, and she got her family to drop her off on their way to church. As rapidly as Clonar could absorb it, they fed him words and phrases, quickly passing from nouns only to more difficult concepts of verbs and other parts of speech.

  Within an hour Clonar was able to speak in simple sentences. By the time the family returned from church he could use astonishingly complex phrasing.

  Anne glanced at her watch as she heard the arrival of Ron’s family. Within a few moments her own arrived.

  “I hate to leave now, but I’m afraid they’ll send me to an orphanage if I stay away all day,” she said.

  “Stay for lunch,” said Ron. “Ask them, anyway.”

  Anne obtained permission, and after lunch they drove hard again to break down the communication barrier surrounding Clonar. Ron raided his father’s library of stacks of reference books, particularly those on astronomy and aircraft, and his own books on spaceflight.

  He concentrated on the vocabulary of these things and then began to press questions upon Clonar.

  “Can you tell us where you came from?” he said.

  “Yes, I think so,” said Clonar slowly. “Give me your books.”

  He turned the pages of the astronomy books, glancing at the star maps and the pictures of distant island universes.

&
nbsp; “This,” he said suddenly, jabbing his finger at a page. “This is my home.”

  Ron stared. Clonar was pointing to a magnificent Mount Wilson photo of the Great Nebula of Andromeda.

  Ron breathed deeply before he spoke. “A million fight-years—” he whispered.

  That meant that not only did Clonar’s people have spaceflight, but also that they could exceed the velocity of fight. How far ahead of Earth science they must be!

  “Why did you come here?” asked Ron after a time. “To find—” said Clonar, groping for the right word. “To find-”

  “Explore?” suggested Ron. And then he gave a definition of the word in terms of those that Clonar already knew.

  Clonar nodded. “Yes, I think so. Explore is the word.”

  “Did you intend to communicate with Earthmen?”

  “No. Our ships, which you have sometimes seen, gave us a report of your difficulties and wars. Our commanders said it would not be wise to let ourselves be known to you. But now that I have met you,” he added gently, “I think that they were wrong.”

  “Was your ship alone—or were there others who may be able to take you back home?”

  “There were others. My father was in command of this ship. It was assigned some final details in four solar systems of this sector of the Galaxy. The fleet commander knew that much, but as far as I know, the crash came so quickly that no word could be sent of our exact location.

  “I am not sure of the cause of the crash. Everyone else, including my father and brother, was killed. The only reason I survived was that I was strapped in the sleeping net because for several days I had worked long overtime on a special project. I went to the communications room at once, but it was crushed so that I could not even get in, and there was no power to operate the equipment. There is no way of ever letting them know I am alive—and there is almost no chance that they could find me, even if they wished to spend time on such a search. I am alone, and I will have to make my home with you for the rest of my life.

  “It’s not easy to say this, Ron and Anne. You can’t know what it’s like to be lost at such distance from home. You have offered me friendliness. I have to ask you to help me find a way to live among your people.”

  “Don’t worry about that!” said Ron. “One more thing I’d like to know—about Pete. Can you talk with him?”

  Clonar smiled and glanced at the shaggy dog on the floor. “Pete and I understand each other,” he said. “We have on our world a form of communication. It’s like—” he stopped, fumbling for a word.

  “Telepathy?” said Anne. “We don’t have it, but we think there are possible means of minds communicating with each other directly without speech.”

  “That’s it. I can’t do it with you. We can do it in special instances, and always with animals of intelligence such as Pete’s. As soon as I left the ship I felt out for intelligent minds. His was the first I found, and through him I knew that you were friendly. He can accept thoughts only in the form of very simple concepts as a whole, you understand, but that was enough for what I needed.”

  “It was plenty!” said Ron. “That hamburger saved your life, according to Dr. Smithers.”

  “Yes, I think it did.”

  Clonar paused. “There is one favor that I must ask now. My father and brother—I need to take care of them. Will you help?”

  “Sure, we will. What do you want to do?”

  “Put them in the—Make a hole in the planet and cover their death.”

  “Bury them?”

  “You do the same thing?”

  Ron nodded. “As soon as you wish to go, we will help you, but don’t you think you should rest another day or two until you are better?”

  “Yes,” Clonar said. “I think I should.” He lay back on the pillows in sudden weariness as if he hadn’t realized his own exhaustion. He closed his eyes a moment and then looked up at them. “I’m sure my commanders were wrong,” he said.

  Chapter 5 Under Guard

  Colonel Middleton arrived early Monday morning. He was a small man with a precise mustache and fussy mannerisms that kept his hands in constant motion.

  Mr. Barron went alone with him to the wreckage of the saucership. Ron wanted to accompany them, but his father suggested it would be better for the Colonel to form his own opinion and estimation of the ship’s value. They left without even introducing him to Clonar.

  Clonar seemed in exuberant spirits when he awoke that morning. His first request was to get out of bed.

  It was wonderful to see him looking so well, Ron thought. His vitality seemed incredible in bringing such rapid recovery from the weakness and shock of only two days ago.

  The deep brown color seemed to be fading also, verifying Dr. Smithers’ opinion that it was a burn of some type. He asked Clonar about it.

  “Color? Brown?” said Clonar. They laughed together, for this was the way their speech went. They had reached a point of considerable fluency, and Clonar’s grasp of idioms was swift. But every third or fourth sentence brought them to a brick wall in the form of some word Ron used, or Clonar needed, which had to be explained or supplied.

  After much discussion, Clonar agreed. “I was burned. My normal color is about like yours.”

  “But will there be other harm?” Ron described the effects of atomic radiation burns.

  “We don’t use that kind of energy in our ships. Long ago we developed secondary kinds, out of the primitive type you mention. Their radiations do not have the same deadening effect upon our persons. I will be white in a few days.”

  He stood up and stretched in the morning sunlight. The muscles rippled across his broad chest and shoulders. What a man he’d be on the Longview football team, Ron thought!

  He smiled to himself at the thought of Clonar in one of his high-school classes. Clonar could probably make a good many of the Ph.D.‘s in the country look like kindergarten kids.

  “Clothes are the problem now,” he said.

  “Clothes?”

  Ron touched the T shirt he had on. He estimated Clonar as about two inches taller than his own six foot height, and about twenty-five pounds heavier. Ron considered himself no slouch in the muscle department, but he admired Clonar’s bulging biceps and thick layer of chest muscles.

  “You might be able to get into my T shirts,” he said. “But shoes and trousers are something else again.”

  With his mother’s sewing tape, he measured Clonar. He estimated shoe size by comparison with his own. Then he phoned an order to Garman’s Department Store, which they agreed to deliver after lunch.

  Clonar donned his own knee-length shorts and the moccasins, and one of Ron’s T shirts to go down to breakfast.

  Mrs. Barron had been introduced to Clonar the day before, and her insistent demands that he be removed had been overcome temporarily merely by being ignored.

  Clonar entered the kitchen and spoke, as Ron had so carefully taught him to do. “Good morning, Mrs. Barron.”

  She looked up from the pan of eggs on the stove. For a moment Ron saw a wavering hostility on her face, and then it seemed to break. He sensed that she saw in Clonar’s face some of the vigor and courage that she loved in the boys of Ron’s generation, and some of the agony of homesickness that filled his heart.

  She forced a smile to her lips. “Good morning, Clonar—and Ron. Breakfast will be ready in a moment. Your father and the Colonel have gone already.”

  Ron breathed easier. “Yeah, I know. I talked with Dad. We decided to be lazy this morning. Where’s Francie?”

  “She’s out, too.”

  Ron heard the sudden roll of skates on the walk in front of the house.

  He glanced at Clonar. This was the way it was on Earth, he thought. You had a family, and you loved them, and they loved you, and after school and maybe the army you’d go away and there’d be a family of your own. This was the sum of living, and it was all a guy could ask for. Even the great ships and the exploration of a thousand alien planets could never tak
e the place of this. He wondered if that’s the way it was with Clonar. But it was not the time to ask, for Clonar’s eyes were staring, turned inward upon distant, private worlds that Earthmen couldn’t see.

  After breakfast they went out to Ron’s lab and shop building. Ron showed him everything, from the remains of the first chemistry set he’d got at nine, to the fine machine tools used in building the hotrod.

  He showed him collections that had been gathered sporadically over a period of eight years, the butterflies, the rocks, and the precious meteorites. Then he explained how he had detected the fall of the ship and set out to search for it.

  Clonar expressed deep interest in all these things, and Ron explained in detail how the meteor detector worked when a moving spot of light was picked up by a mirror, which activated an optical homing device that centered on the spot and followed its flight.

  “Actually, there have to be two of these to plot a line of fall,” said Ron. “The other is at Anne’s house, and data from it comes over here by a small radio transmitter/’

  “Radio?”

  Ron grinned. They were off again. He showed Clonar his amateur transmitter and receiver and explained its workings in great detail.

  “I don’t get much time to use this any more, but I have a schedule with some other guys around the country once a week. Every Tuesday night from seven to nine o’clock we get together for a rag-chew and exchange traffic.”

  Clonar smiled and held up his hand. “One word at a time, please!”

  Ron explained the ham lingo, but Clonar’s expression seemed suddenly intent and far away from the things being spoken.

  “Could this—could this reach my other ships?” he said.

  “How far might they be?”

  “Perhaps as much as a light-year.”

  Ron shook his head. “The best we’ve done yet is bounce a wave off the moon. How can you communicate over such distance? We couldn’t do it with these transmitters. Our waves travel only at the speed of light. Do yours exceed that?”