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ETA's, They scuttled for a fold of skin and disappeared. Ainson pointed towards them.
"You see that? Then they are still there. They look very like lizards. I believe there are four of them all
together; they keep close to the extra-terrestrials. There were two of them accompanying the dying ETA
we took aboard theMariestopes. Probably they are synoecists or even sym-bionts. The fool of a captain
heard of them from my reports and wanted them destroyed - said they might be dangerous parasites -
but I stood out against him."
"Who was that? Edgar Bargerone?" Pasztor asked. "A brave man. not brilliant; he probably still clings
to the geocentric conception of the universe."
"He wanted me to be communicating with these fellows before we touched Earth! He has no
conception of the problems confronting us."
Enid, who had been watching the captives intently, looked up and asked, "Are you going to be able to
com-municate with them?"
"The question is not as simple as it would appear to a layman, my dear. I'll tell you all about it another
time."
"For God's sake. Bruce, I'm not a child. Are you or aren't you going to be able to communicate with
them?"
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The Master Explorer tucked his hands into the hip flounces of his uniform and regarded his wife. When
hespoke, it was smoulderingly, as a preacher from the eleva-tion of a pulpit.
"With a quarter of a century's stellar exploration behind us, Enid, the nations of Earth - despite the fact
that the total number of operational starships at any one time rarely exceeds a dozen - have managed to
survey about three hundred roughly Earth-type planets. On those three hundred planets, Enid, they have
sometimes found sen-tient life and sometimes not. But they have never found beings that could be
regarded as having any more brain than a chimpanzee. Now we have discovered these creatures on
Clementina, and we have our reasons for sus-pecting that they may possess an intelligence equivalent to
man's - the main circumstantial reason being that they have an - er, machine capable of travelling between
planets."
"Why make such a mystery of it, then?" Enid asked. "There are fairly simple tests devised for this
situation; why not apply them? Do these creatures have a written script? Do they talk with each other?
Do they observe a code between themselves? Are they able to repeat a simple demonstration or a set of
gestures? Do they respond to simple mathematical concepts? What is their attitude to-wards human
artifacts - and, of course, have they artifacts of their own? How do -"
"Yes. yes, my dear, we entirely take your point: there are tests to be applied. I was not idle on the
voyage home; I applied the tests."
"Well, then, the results?"
"Conflicting. Conflicting in a way that suggests that the tests we applied were inefficient and insufficient
- in a word, too steeped in anthropomorphism. And that is the point I was trying to make. Until we can
define intelligence more nearly, we are not going to find it easy to begin communicating."
"At the same time," Pasztor supplemented, "you are going to find it hard to define intelligence until you
have succeeded in communicating."
Ainson brushed this aside with the gesture of a prac-tical man cutting through sophisms.
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"First we define intelligence. Is the little spider,argy-roneta aquatica, intelligent because she can build
a diving bell and thus live underwater? No. Very well, then these lumbering creatures may be no more
intelligent because they can construct a spaceship. On the other hand, these creatures may be so highly
intelligent, and the end-products of a civilization so ancient, that all the reason-ing we conduct in our
conscious minds, they conduct in their hereditary or subconscious minds leaving their con-scious minds
free for cogitation on matters - and indeed for forms of cogitation - beyond our understanding. If that is
so, communication between our species may be for ever out of the question. Remember that one
dictionary defini-tion of intelligence is simply 'information received'; if we receive no information from
them, and they none from us, then we are entitled to say these ETA's are unintelligent."
"This is all very puzzling to me," Enid said. "You make it sound so difficult now, yet in your letters you
made it sound so simple. You said these creatures had come up and attempted to communicate with you
in a series of grunts and whistles; you said they each possessed six excellent hands; you said they had
arrived on what's it -on Clementina, by spaceship. Surely the situation is clear. They are intelligent; not
simply with the limited intel-ligence of an animal, but intelligent enough to have pro-duced a civilization
and a language. The only problem is to translate their noises and whistles into English."
Ainson turned to the Director.
"You understand why it isn't so easy, don't you, Mihaly?"
"Well, I have read most of your reports, Bruce. I know these are mammals with respiratory systems
and digestive tracts much like ours, that they have brains with a similar weight ratio to our own, that
possessing hands they would approach the universe with the same basic feeling we have that matter is
there to be manipulated - no, frankly, Bruce, I can see that to learn their language or to get them to learn
ours may be a difficult task, but I do feel you are overestimating the hazards of the case."
"Do you? You wait till you've observed these fellows for a while. You'll feel differently. I tell you,
Mihaly, I try to put myself in their place, and despite their disgusting habits I have managed to preserve
sympathy towards them. But the only feeling I get - amid an ocean of frustration -is that they must, if they
are intelligent at all, have a very different point of view to the universe from ours. Really, you'd imagine
they were - they were -" he gestured at them, calm behind the glass - "holding themselves aloof from me."
"We shall have to see how the linguists get on," Pasztor said. "And Bryant Lattimore of USGN Flight
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