Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

SHARE OUR WORLD | 47 be designated by you when you were taping it. Chang’s report went like this: First a still: a typed page, reading, “Chang Kwei-T’ao. Day 12. About the tapirinos—hereafter called NIB- BLIES.” There foliowed a string of code numerals. Then another still. Type. “One herd of nibblies has been feeding near the ship since morning of Day 10. Movies are being taken.” A very brief silent movie sequence, from those Moreira had made, show- . ing the nibblies’ co-operation in felling trees. The accompanying voice was Chang’s. She called attention to the appearance of communication be- tween members of the herd, then ended, “Day 10 we saw _ nibblies apparently carrying messages between herds. Very important if true. The following section tells what happened. It is inconclusive.”’ (Which meant, “Skip it unless you’re specially in- terested.’’) Movie. Diagram. Chang sketched what she’d seen, describing it orally as she went along. This took only about three minutes for Chang to record, and less than thirty seconds for the reader. Section ending. Still. Type. “The rest of this report concerns the behaviour of the captive nibbly. I would summarize by saying that the results are unexpectedly nega- tive. No laboratory stimulus has pro- duced such organized activity as free nibblies show. See my last report, Day 8. However, a peculiar physiological reaction led to discovery by Hilda Streloff and me of a large organ in the nibbly’s head whose function is un- certain.” Still. Type. A table of contents of the remainder of the report, by sections. Movie, from Chang’s previous re- port, showing the nibbly characteris- tically ignoring his laboratory sur- roundings. Meanwhile Chang ex- plained orally the maze set-up, and the reasons for trying it; ending, “This section merely discusses the results of the first series of maze runs.” Stills. Tabulated results of these runs, in parallel with typical results in the same mazes using rats and padzids. (These Chang got from her library.) Movie. Several sequences of the nib- bly in the maze, showing respects in which he did much less well than expected. Section ending. Movie. Chang spoke a brief descrip- tion of the set-up after the maze was fitted with electric contacts; then the nibbly’s misadventures were shown. “We have not discovered that any permanent injury resulted.” Section ending. Movie. .Diagram. A sketch of the nibbly appeared first, and other things were added as Chang described the experiment she and Hilda had tried after the conversation with Balch. The nibbly was put on a floor which would make a less effective ground than the one used before, then pre- sented with a constant-voltage source at nose height; this was repeated using frequencies from thirty to five thou- sand cycles, and the impedance meas- ured. Still. Circuit diagram. Still. Graph of the readings—im- pedance plotted against frequency. Below it, written remarks: “‘You no- tice that from about one hundred cycles on up the impedances are very scattered. There’s more of a pattern if you consider the order in which the readings were taken. The rest of this section shows the nibbly’s behavior during successive readings, and the values we obtained.” Movie. The nibbly approached the contact with very little show of in- terest, laid his nose on it, took it away. “That’s at thirty cycles. High connicloolks. conn