Astounding Science Fiction (British edition) — page 72: what you’re looking at

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

70 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION words, for the words were not inde- pendent; everything was always in context and the context was always different. She learned without being conscious of how she learned—the way a human child learns, only faster. She even went so far as to accept the language completely on its own terms. That is, she stopped looking at the auxiliary oscilloscope which gave her signal separate from the incoming one. She did as the nibblies did: sensed only the net current flowing through her circuit. It worked. The rest of the afternoon became more and more like telepathy. When Chang learned, for example, about the rudimentary sign language the nibblies had for signaling over distances in open country, she didn’t just learn the fact. The fact came through clearly and translatably, and she reported it to the microphone. The rest she couldn’t translate; the nib- blies’ language was too different in principle from the symbologies she knew. But it came through. She knew —or thought she knew—some of the features of the sign language. She knew—or thought she knew—the satisfaction the two signaling nibblies would have at joining their minds over such a distance, a warm affection- ate happiness. She felt such sympathy, she tried to tell the nibblies that humans could give them a better way of communicating over distances. This may have failed; the response was confusing; she decided she’d just have to show them Hilda’s idea of metal wire. Later. For now—she was sure they had understood her sympathy. Occasionally she glanced over to Balch’s table. She noticed several times that the crew members standing by were demonstrating something or other to the nibblies there, at Balch’s direction. Should she send Keller to Balch with advice? It would occur to her, but she was always too busy. She sat absorbed, forgetting after a while even to use the microphone. The shadow of the ship had reached them before her group of nibblies finally broke up. Balch’s did the same a moment later. Chang rose from her seat, blinking, and smiled at the crew members who still stood there, unable to tell them what had happened while they’d watched. Then Balch came over, Swinging his arms vigorously to get his circulation back. “Chang, these animals are—’’ He grinned, laughed out loud in his en- thusiasm. “They’re subtle, Chang. Very subtle fellows!” That hadn’t been her principal im- pression at all. ““They’re so under- standing, Balch! They’re able to—” “Oh, they understand, all right! I’ve run through the science of addi- tion, among many other things.” “And decimal notation?” asked Melkote. “No, I haven’t even given them symbols for numbers; I let them work out their own. But it’s fantastic, that they should catch on so quickly. I’m sure they didn’t have any arithmetic of their own.” “I don’t think so either,” com- mented Chang. “Why should they want one?” Balch laughed again. “That’s the thing. Can you imagine a human society at their level of culture seeing the sense of arithmetic? Why should they want it? Let alone picking up the ‘basic ideas in under an hour. These nibblies are subtle!” Chang was disappointed : she wanted so much to share with Balch her own experience with the nibblies. She said, inadequately, ‘“Tim, did you try letting them teach you?” “No, I got along all right telling them. After all, we have more to tell than they do.” | connicloooks.conn Wess