Astounding British Edition, Vol. 9, No. 10 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

= 44 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION | “T see,” Harmon said. Sadness was in his voice. He took a wild ride in the back of the truck, with hickory nuts, walnuts, and brightly-colored packets of vegetable seeds bouncing all round him. Pienster either had no knowledge of speed laws or no respect for them. In the back end, Yanvro tried to explain. “It is a matter of seeing the human organism in many ways. Of seeing it as muscle and bone and blood plasma.” “T know that,” Harmon protested. “It is also a matter of seeing how all these parts fit together and how the whole determines the function of the parts—” “Hold on. That wasn’t what I was taught in school.” “It may be possible that some of the things you were taught were not in ac- cordance with the evidence,” Yanvro said. His eyes twinkled gently behind the thick- lensed, tinted spectacles. “It is also a matter of seeing the human organism as an electrical system, with minute but ex- ceedingly important currents being gener- ated in every bit of tissue, even in every cell, and how these currents blend to- gether and flow through the organism and form the whole.” oj STL “To see all of this as we see it is not easy, my friend,” Yanvro said. His voice was very gentle. “Tl try.” “Good. In turn, I will try to explain.” Harmon listened. He knew he was grasping and retaining very little of what was said, that Yanvro was explaining what could only be demonstrated. “The tools, the concepts with which: to think, you do not as yet have them, my friend,” Yanvro said, over and over again. “I’m trying to get them,” Harmon said sadly. The truck came to a halt. Harmon looked wildly around. Pienster had brought them into the hills, into wooded high country where the road stopped. He had halted the truck beside a thick grove of trees. Hidden in the grove was some- thing that startled Harmon as he had never been startled before. Harmon whispered. “You—” “Yes,” Yanvro said. He took off the tinted, thick-lensed spectacles. What was behind them was clearly revealed. The eyes that looked out from the face were not human eyes. For some time thereafter all three of them were very busy carrying boxes of seeds and the panel from the back of the truck. Harmon protested every step of the way. He did not succeed in making himself heard until they had finished with the carrying. | “But you don’t have to leave!” He — had said the words over and over before Yanvro answered. “You and your kind would make us welcome,” Yanvro said. “We know that. But Dr. Lapham—”’ “Tl kill him,” Harmon said. Lapham was now interfering with the best dream he had ever known. “What would be the gain if you des- troyed him? There are millions like him. Another Dr. Lapham would take his place. If you destroyed that one, there would be another one. Then there would be others like the burly man, like Kemper, and the seekers of love potions, and— “T know,” Harmon said. “Why don’t you humans grow up as a race?” Yanvro said. “We cannot under- stand at all your failure to mature as a race. There is so much waiting for you, when you grow up.” His nonhuman eyes lifted to the sky as if somewhere in those vast depths was some world about which he knew. “I guess we will, in time, but it seems a slow process.” “Do not be sad, my friend. We—” “But I still can’t understand the seeds,” Harmon interrupted. “If you wanted them, why didn’t you just take them?” “Such an act would have been a breach in our sense of justice. We never take unless we give something of value in return. We had to give something for the seeds, our own laws require it. We gave health.” “But why nuts?” Yanvro smiled. “In spots, the plains of my world are barren. Our native growth is failing. We need new life from another planet, new seeds. In what we CORNICE OOOKS Conn