Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

QUIZ a lab man looked in and said: ‘‘We’ve broken the language, Dr. Fenton.” I didn’t even look up. “Does it. matter any more?” “Dr. Crooks says the aliens are still alive, sir.” I stood up, my tiredness dropping away like a discarded shirt. We had won, I thought. Just how much remained to be seen. But we had won —at least a little. I walked into the room where the aliens were waiting. Sam and Weber were at the window watching the sun come up when I came back in. They didn’t hear me. “Our big worry now is how we're going to fake a story so the wind-up won’t sound as bad as it is,’ Weber was saying. “After all, you just don’t shoot Santa Claus.” “Oh, we'll find a way,” Sam said brutally. I made a noise and they turned and saw me. Sam glanced at me soberly and said: “I can read it in your face. They died before you could even ask them their names.” “No,” I said, “no, they didn’t. We had time to talk to them.” My eyes were having difficulty focusing after the gloom of the next room. “There were only two left,” I continued. Weber had his notebook out. ““What did you ask them?” “You know,” I mused, “it was wonderful to be able to lean on some- body for a while. To think that there were beings who could answer all our GAME 39 questions.”’ I stopped a minute and fumbled for my glasses. ““And maybe that’s what they were thinking, too.” ‘The questions?’ Sam repeated. I felt like I wanted to be quietly sick. “We winnowed the questions out pretty well. We discarded most of the scientific questions—we’ll find the answers to them eventually. The same with the sociological. What we wanted to ask was something—something fundamental.” I felt myself wandering again. “I think we made the wrong assumption. How do you tell whether a civilization ~ is inferior or superior? Because they had the means to get here didn’t mean that the aliens considered themselves ' superior to us. Would another race judge superiority the same way we do? They couldn’t see what I was driving at. “What did you ask?” Weber repeated. I made a conscious effort to get a grip on myself. “I thought I had winnowed the questions down pretty well. Maybe somebody else would have thought of different questions, I don’t know. But the questions I was going to ask actually don’t matter.” Both of them caught it at the same time. “Going to?” Sam asked stu- pidly. “Oh, don’t you see!’ I shouted. “What do you think they landed here for, why do you think they tried so hard to communicate with us, tryi to make themselves understood? Can’t you guess what happened in the short time we had before they died? “We didn’t get a chance to ask them anything! They asked us!” CORMIELOOOkKS CoM >