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The Talking Stone

The asteroid belt is large and its human occupancy s assign frequency if his salary could possibly compensate for a nearly solitary confineht youth, who did not bear the look of either a spationautical engineer or an asteroid man He had blue eyes and butter-yellow hair and an invincible air of innocence that masked a quick mind and an isolation-sharpened bump of curiosity

Both the look of innocence and the bump of curiosity served him well on board the Robert Q When the Robert Q landed on the outer platform of Station Five, Vernadsky was on board alht about hi tail and a happy cacophony of barks

The fact that the captain of the Robert Q rins with a stern sour silence that sat heavily on his thick-featured face made no difference As far as Vernadsky was concerned the ship was yearned-for company and elcoallons of ice or any of the tons of frozen food concentrates stacked away in the hollowed-out asteroid that served as Station Five Vernadsky was ready with any power tool that ht be required for any hyperatomic motor

Vernadsky was grinning all over his boyish face as he filled out the routine for it out quickly for later conversion into co He put down ship's naenerator number, and so on, port of embarkation ('asteroids, damned lot of them, don't knohich was last' and Vernadsky simply wrote 'Belt' which was the usual abbreviation for 'asteroid belt'); port of destination ('Earth'); reason for stopping ('stuttering hyperatomic drive')

'How many in your crew, Captain?' asked Vernadsky, as he looked over ship's papers

The captain said, Two No about looking over the hyperatoot a shipment to make'

His cheeks were blue with dark stubble, his bearing that of a hardened and lifelong asteroid miner, yet his speech was that of an educated, almost a cultured, man

'Sure' Vernadsky lugged his diagnostic kit to the engine rooree, force-field density with easy-going efficiency

He could not help wondering about the captain Despite his own dislike for his surroundings he realized dimly that there were some who found fascination in the vast euessed that a man like this captain was not an asteroid miner for the love of solitude alone

He said, 'Any special type of ore you handle?'

The captain frowned and said, 'Chroanese' That so? I'd replace the Jenner manifold, if I were you'

'Is that what's causing the trouble?'

'No, it isn't But it's a little beat-up You'd be risking another failure within a ot the ship in here-'

'All right, replace it But find the stutter, will you?'

'Doing my best, Captain'

The captain's last reh to abash even Vernadsky He worked awhile in silence, then got to his feet 'You've got a gaed semireflector Every time the positron beam circles round to its position the drive flickers out for a second You'll have to replace it'

'How long will it take?'

'Several hours Maybe twelve'

'What? I'm behind schedule'

'Can't help it' Vernadsky remained cheerful There's only so much I can do The systeet inside And then I have to calibrate the new seht in ht You'd break down before you reach the orbit of Mars'

The captain glowered 'Go ahead Get started'

Vernadsky carefully maneuvered the tank of heliuenerators shut off, it weighed virtually nothing, but it had its fullif it were to make turns correctly The maneuvers were all the ht

It was because his attention was concentrated entirely on the cylinder that he took a wrong turn in the crowded quarters and found hie and darkened room

He had time for one startled shout and then twothe door behind him

He said nothing, while he hooked the cylinder to the intake valve of thenoise as the heliuases into the all-accepting emptiness of space

Then curiosity overcaot a silicony aboard ship, Captain A big one' The captain turned to face Vernadsky slowly He said in a voice froht?'

'I saw it How about a better look?'

'Why?'

Vernadsky grew i 'Oh, look, Captain, I've been on this rock over half a year I've read everything I could get hold of on the asteroids, which s about the siliconies And I've never seen even a little one Have a heart'

'I believe there's a job here to do'

'Just heliu else to be done till that's over How come you carry a silicony about, anyway, Captain?'

'A pet Sos I like siliconies'

'Have you got it talking?'

The captain flushed 'Why do you ask?'

'Some of them have talked Some of them read minds, even'

'What are you? An expert on these das?'

'I've been reading about them I told you Come on, Captain Let's have a look'

Vernadsky tried not to show that he noticed that there was the captain facing him and a crewer than he was, each; weightier, each-he felt sure-was armed

Vernadsky said, 'Well, what's wrong? I' I just want to see it'

It may have been the unfinished repair job that kept him alive at the moment Even more so, perhaps, it was his look of cheerful and alood stead

The captain said 'Well, then, come on'

And Vernadsky followed, his agileand his pulse definitely quickened

Vernadsky stared with considerable awe and just a little revulsion at the gray creature before him It was quite true that he had never seen a silicony, but he had seen triraphs and read descriptions Yet there is soraphs are substitutes

Its skin was of an oily srayness Its motions were slow, as became a creature who burrowed in stone and wasof muscles beneath that skin; instead it reasily over one another

It had a general ovoid shape, rounded above, flattened beloith two sets of appendages Beloere the 'legs,' set radially They totaled six and ended in sharp flinty edges, reinforced byit into edible portions

On the creature's flat undersurface, hidden from view unless the silicony were overturned, was the one opening into its interior Shredded rocks entered that interior Within, limestone and hydrated silicates reacted to form the silicones out of which the creatures's tissues were built Excess silica re-e as hard white pebbly excretions

How extraterrologists had puzzled over the smooth pebbles that lay scattered in small holloithin the rocky structure of the asteroids until the siliconies were first discovered And how they marveled at the manner in which the creatures en polymers with hydrocarbon side chains-perform so many of the functions that proteins performed in terrestrial life

Fro appendages, two inverse cones hollowed in opposing directions and fitting snugly into parallel recesses running down the back, yet capable of lifting upward a short way When the silicony burrowed through rock, the 'ears' were retracted for strea When it rested in a hollowed-out cavern, they could lift for better and ue resemblance to a rabbit's ears made the naists, who referred to such creatures habitually as Siliconeus asteroidea, thought the 'ears'to do with the rudimentary telepathic powers the beasts possessed A minority had other notions

The silicony was flowing slowly over an oil-smeared rock Other such rocks lay scattered in one corner of the room and represented, Vernadsky knew, the creature's food supply Or at least it was its tissue-building supply For sheer energy, he had read, that alone would not do

Vernadsky marveled 'It's a runted noncommittally

'Where did you get it?' asked Vernadsky

'One of the rocks'

'Well, listen, two inches is about the biggest anyone's found You could sell this to some museum or university on Earth for a couple of thousand dollars, maybe'

The captain shrugged 'Well, you've seen it Lets get back to the hyperatomics'

His hard grip was on Vernadsky's elbow and he was turning ahen there was an interruption in the forritty one

It was ainst rock and Vernadsky stared in near horror at the speaker

It was the silicony, suddenly beco can talk' Vernadsky whispered, 'For the love of space It does!'

'All right,' said the captain io now'

'And it reads minds,' said Vernadsky

The silicony said, 'Mars rotates in two four hours three seven and one half minutes Jupiter's density is one point to Uranus was discovered in the year one seven eight one Pluto is the planet which is most far Sun is heaviest with a mass of two zero zero zero zero zero zero'

The captain pulled Vernadsky away Vernadsky, half-walking backward, half-stu of zeroes

He said, 'Where does it pick up all that stuff, Captain?' There's an old astronomy book we read to him Real old'

'From before space travel was invented,' said one of the crew ular print' 'Shut up,' said the captain

Vernadsky checked the outflow of heliua and work in the interior It was a painstaking job, and Vernadsky interrupted it only once for coffee and a breather

He said, with innocence beaure it, Captain? That thing lives inside rock, inside some asteroid all its life Hundreds of years,and it's probably a lot smarter than the run-of-the-mill silicony Now you pick it up and it finds out the universe isn't rock It finds out a trillion things it never iined That's why it's interested in astronoets in the book and in human minds, too Don't you think that's so?'

He wanted desperately to s his deductions on For this reason he risked telling what must be half the truth, the lesser half, of course

But the captain, leaning against a ith his arh?'

It was his last coed to rest content The motor was adjusted finally to Vernadsky's satisfaction, and the captain paid the reasonable fee in cash, accepted his receipt, and left in a blaze of ship's hyper-energy

Vernadsky watched it go with an almost unbearable excitement He made his way quickly to his sub-etheric sender

'I've got to be right,' he ot to be'

Patrolman Milt Hawkins received the call in the privacy of his ho a two-day stubble, a can of iced beer, and a film viewer, and the settled melancholy on his ruddy, wide-cheeked face was as much the product of loneliness as was the forced cheerfulness in Vernadsky's eyes

Patrollad Even though it was only Vernadsky, co hello and listened luxuriously to the sound of a voice without worrying too strenuously concerning the contents of the speech

Then suddenly aone and both ears were on the job and he said, 'Hold it Ho-Id it What are you talking about?'

'Haven't you been listening, you du my heart out to you'

'Well, deal it out in suy's got one on board He calls it a pet and feeds it greasy rocks'

'Huh? I swear, a miner on the asteroid run would et it to talk back to him'

'Not just a silicony Not one of these little inch jobs It's over a foot across Don't you get it? Space, you'd think a guy would know so out here'

'All right Suppose you tell me'

'Look, greasy rocks build tissues, but where does a silicony that size get its energy from?'

'I couldn't tell you'

'Directly froht now?'

'Right now, no I wish there were'

'You won't in a y by the direct absorption of gamma rays'

'Says who?'

'Says a guy called Wendell Urth He's a big-shot extraterrologist What's more, he says that's what the silicony's ears are for' Vernadsky put his two forefingers to his teamma radiation at levels no human instrument can detect'

'Okay Nohat?' asked Hawkins But he was growing thoughtful 'Now this Urth says there isn't enough gamma radiation on any asteroid to support siliconies h radioactivity So here we have one a foot long, a good fifteen inches'

'Well-'

'So it has to come from an asteroid just riddled with the stuff, lousy with uraniuamma rays

An asteroid with enough radioactivity to be warular orbit patterns so that no one's come across it Only suppose some smart boy landed on the asteroid by happenstance and noticed the war This captain of the Robert Q is no rock-hopping ignorauy'

'Go on'

'Suppose he blasts off chunks for assay and coot the most unbelievable strike in all history And he doesn't need assays The silicony can lead him to the rich veins'

'Why should it?'

'Because it wants to learn about the universe Because it's spent a thousand years, maybe, under rock, and it's just discovered the stars It can read minds and it could learn to talk It could make a deal Listen, the captain would ju is a state monopoly Unlicensed miners aren't even allowed to carry counters It's a perfect setup for the captain' Hawkins said, 'Maybe you're right'

'Noaround me while I watched the silicony, ready to ju me out after two minutes'

Hawkins brushed his unshaven chin with his hand and made a mental estimate of the ti can you keep the boy at your station?'

'Keep hione!'

'What! Then what the devil is all this talk about? Why did you let hiet away?'

'Three guys,' said Vernadsky patiently, 'each one bigger than I am, each one armed, and each one ready to kill, I'll bet What did you want me to do?'

'All right, but what do we do now?'

'Co their semireflectors and I fixed them my way Then-poill shut off completely within ten thousand miles And I installed a tracer in the Jenner manifold'

Hawkins goggled at Vernadsky's grinning face 'Holy Toledo'

'And don't get anyone else in on this Just you, y and we'll have, a cannon or two They'll tell us where the uraniuet in touch with Patrol Headquarters We will deliver unto theiant-size silicony like nobody on Earth ever saw, and one, I repeat, one great big fat chunk of uranium ore like nobody on Earth saw, either And you et proht?'

Hawkins was dazed 'Right,' he yelled 'I'll be right out there'

They were allinting of reflected sunlight Hawkins said, 'Didn't you leave thehts? You didn't throw off their eenerator, did you?'

Vernadsky shrugged They're saving power, hoping they'll get picked up Right now, they're putting everything they've got into a sub-etheric call, I'll bet'

'If they are,' said Hawkins dryly, 'I' it up'

'You're not?'

'Not a thing'

The police cruiser spiraled closer Their quarry, its power off, was drifting through space at a steady ten thousand miles an hour The cruiser matched it, speed for speed, and drifted inward

A sick expression crossed Hawkins' face 'Oh no!'

'What's the matter?'

The ship's been hit A h of them in the asteroid belt' All the verve washed out of Vernadsky's face and voice 'Hit? Are they wrecked?'

There's a hole in it the size of a barn door Sorry, Vernadsky, but this ood'

Vernadsky closed his eyes and sed hard He knehat Hawkins meant Vernadsky had deliberately ed a felony And death as a result of a felony was murder

He said, 'Look, Hawkins, you knohy I did it'

'I knohat you've told me and I'll testify to that if I have to But if this ship wasn't s' He didn't finish the statement Nor did he have to

They entered the smashed ship in full spacesuit cover

The Robert Q was a shambles, inside and out Without power, there was no chance of raising the feeblest screen against the rock that hit the it if they had detected it It had caved in the ship's hull as though it were so much aluminum foil It had smashed the pilot room, evacuated the ship's air, and killed the three men on board

One of the crew had been slaainst the wall by the impact and was so much frozen meat The captain and the other crewested with frozen bloodclots where the air, boiling out of the blood, had broken the vessels

Vernadsky, who had never seen this for messily inside his spacesuit and succeeded

He said, 'Let's test the ore they're carrying It's got to be alive' It's got to be, he told hiot to be

The door to the hold had been warped by the force of collision and there was a gap half an inch here it no longer met the frame

Hawkins lifted the counter he held in his gauntleted hand and held its ap

It chattered like a pies

Vernadsky said, with infinite relief, 'I told you so'

His enious and praisworthy fulfillment of a citizen's loyal duty and the ht death to three rettable accident

It took two blaster bolts to break the twisted door loose, and tons of rock hts

Hawkins lifted two chunks of erly into one of the suit's pockets 'As exhibits,' he said, 'and for assay'

'Don't keep the,' warned Vernadsky

The suit will protect et it back to ship It's not pure uranium, you know'

'Pretty near, I'll bet' Every inch of his cockiness was back

Hawkins looked about 'Well, this tears things We've stopped a s, maybe, or part of one But what next?'

The uranium asteroid-uh, oh!'

'Right Where is it? The only ones who know are dead'

'Space!' And again Vernadsky's spirits were dashed Without the asteroid itself, they had only three corpses and a few tons of uranium ore Good, but not spectacular It would mean a citation, yes, but he wasn't after a citation He wanted promotion to a per

He yelled, 'For the love of space, the silicony! It can live in a vacuum It lives in a vacuum all the time and it knohere the asteroid is'

'Right!' said Hawkins, with instant enthusias?'

'Aft,' cried Vernadsky This way'

The silicony glinted in the light of their flashes It moved and was alive