Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

48 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION impedance. The next few tries, at somewhat higher frequencies, were about the same. Now here’s one hun- dred twenty cycles.” The next few shots were of the nibbly approaching the contact with more interest, leaving his nose there longer; the frequencies Chang read off were higher each time, the impedances stayed low. ‘‘Here’s four thousand cycles.”” There was a marked change in the nibbly’s reac- tion: he investigated the wall all around before loping up to the contact itself; when he did, he left it shortly. The measured impedance was way up again. “After this, when the lower frequencies were tried again, the pre- vious great interest was not observed ; neither were the low impedances.” Section ending. “Summary: The ability of the nib- bly to admit current over a considera- ble range of frequencies was lost. Apparently this was either a result of injury from the four-thousand-cycle current or a Side effect of the nibbly’s loss of interest in the contact. Hilda and I decided to look for features of his anatomy which would account for the peculiar response to electric cur- rent. We used X rays and supersonics to map the internal organs of the head. This had not been tried before, and was not tried now for other parts of the body, because of the danger of injury to the nibbly. It was, of course, impossible to anaesthetize him; he allowed his head to be clamped.” The next section showed the results of these experiments; in the case of the supersonics, they were presented as a movie—an animated _ three- dimensional graph, you might call it— for the benefit of those skilled in sur- veying four-dimensional arrays of data by this method. There followed a somewhat conjectural sketch of the inside of the nibbly’s “‘head’’—which it turned out actually extended back into what looked like his shoulders. “The large organ at this point appears to act as a condenser. If so, its capacity presumably changed greatly in the course of our experiments. I will not make any more guesses now.” There followed only a still, repeat- ing the table of contents, augmented by code numbers of the films which gave full details of the subject of each section. All Chang’s reports ended that abruptly. Chang stopped at the open door of Hilda Streloff’s lab. Hilda and Chandra Melkote were there. “Come in!” said Hilda, beckoning with her whole arm. She was a tall, strong woman, and her very athletic gestures always seemed to Chang like threats to anything breakable in the room. Chang sat down out of her arm’s reach. Hilda said, ‘““Melkote was just start- ing up to see you. Blanca Moreira’s been having trouble with him. Have ou talked to her?” “Not today,” Chang admitted; “I should have. What’s the disagree- ment?” Chandra explained calmly, ‘““Mcreira feels that since the movies being taken of the tapirinos—” ‘“‘Nibblies, you mean,” Hilda in- terrupted. Chang explained the ety- mology of Balch’s name for the animals. “Good! Nibblies. These movies she’s taking for you, so she says, are so important that for me to work out- side would be virtually sabotage. Hilda seems to agree.” “Work outside?” “Yes. I’m introducing various Earth organisms, chosen for their probable viability on Four, into jars of Four organisms living as nearly as possible as if they were wild.” “Oh, yes, I remember. So you have to work out there?” ‘‘Adjacent to the ship would be the conniicloooks.c© iin