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was a click. All Kilgour's juggling with the dials produced no further
sound. He sat, all the ship's lights switched off, waiting for death. It
was not a quiescent wait. His whole being palpitated with the will to
live. A darkener! What in the name of the ebony gods could it be? The
question was not new to Kilgour. For an hour he had sat in a room made
fantastic by the blaze of color from his painted body. He sat with his
notebook, frantically going over the data he had. A perfect paint made
ofeighty percent liquid light. Light was light; the liquid must follow
the same laws as the beam. Or must it? And what of it. A perfect paint
capable of his mind refused to go through the list of qualities again.
He felt physically ill, and time and again he fought off nausea. He was
so hot, it was like a fever. His feet dangled in a pan of cold water;
the theory of that had been that if his blood had a cold area to run
through, it wouldn't start boiling. Actually, he knew that there was
little danger of his temperature rising beyond its present almost
unbearable point. There was such a thing as a limit to aninm1 heat,
particularly since it had penetrated at last that he had better stick to
vitamin capsules and leave calories alone. It would be insane to take in
fuel that manufactured body heat. The gravest danger was that, with his
body overrun by the paint, his pores would be unable to breathe. Death
would follow, how quickly, Kilgour didn't know. His ignorance didn't add
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to his peace of mind. Funny, though, that now he was reluctantly waiting
for death, it was slow in coming. The thought jarred Kilgour out of his
developing incoherence. Slow? He leaped to his feet. Because it was
slow. He raced for the bathroom mirror. In a dizzy excitement he peered
at his image. The paint still covered only half his body. It had not
expanded during the past hour. The past hour, during which he had sat in
darkness except for the light from the paint. The paint, he noted more
critically, had not lost ground. It still covered half his body. But,
actually, that was natural. It was made to survive the black Venusian
night. Suppose, however, that he climbed into the greater darkness of
his in- sulated-against energy, empty fuel tank? For half an hour,
Kilgour sat in the tank; and then he climbed out again, shaky but still
determined. Absolute darkness must be the solution, but he was missing
something vital. It seemed obvious that if darkness alone was enough,
then the fuel in his full fuel tank would by this time have cleared
itself of the effects of the paint. He tried the launcher; and there was
no explosion. There must be something else. "The problem," thought
Kilgour, "is to drain off the eighty percent liquid light by providing a
sufficient darkness, or by some other means. But it's almost impossible
for darkness to be darker than it is inside that tank. It's insulated
against outside energies. So what's wrong?" The insulation! That was it.
The light from the paint merely reflected from the walls, and was
re-absorbed by the paint. There was no place for the light to escape.
Solution: Remove the insulation. No, that was wrong. Kilgour's
excitement sagged. With the insulation removed the light would escape
all right, but the outside energies would seep in to replace the escaped
quantity. Better test that, though. He did. And it was so. He came out
as covered with paint as ever. He was standing there, in the grip of
hopelessness, when the answer struck him. On the way back to Earth a
month later, Kilgour ran into the radio signals of another ship he had
sat in darkness except for the light from the paint. The paint, he noted
more critically, had not lost ground. It still covered half his body.
But, actually, that was natural. It was made to survive the black
Venusian night. Suppose, however, that he climbed into the greater
darkness of his in- sulated-against energy, empty fuel tank? For half an
hour, Kilgour sat in the tank; and then he climbed out again, shaky but
still determined. Absolute darkness must be the solution, but he was
missing something vital. It seemed obvious that if darkness alone was
enough, then the fuel in his full fuel tank would by this time have
cleared itself of the effects of the paint. He tried the launcher; and
there was no explosion. There must be something else. "The problem,"
thought Kilgour, "is to drain off the eighty percent liquid light by
providing a sufficient darkness, or by some other means. But it's almost
impossible for darkness to be darker than it is inside that tank. It's
insulated against outside energies. So what's wrong?" The insulation!
That was it. The light from the paint merely reflected from the walls,
and was re-absorbed by the paint. There was no place for the light to
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r r
escape. Solution: Remove the insulation. No, that was wrong. Kilgour's
excitement sagged. With the insulation removed the light would escape
all right, but the outside energies would seep in to replace the escaped
quantity. Better test that, though. He did. And it was so. He came out
as covered with paint as ever. He was standing there, in the grip of
hopelessness, when the answer struck him. On the way back to Earth a
month later, Kilgour ran into the radio signals of another ship
approaching Venus. He explained what had happened. He finished, "So
you'll have no difficulty landing. The Venusians will give you the keys
to their colorful cities." "But just a minute!" came the puzzled reply.
"I thought you said they'll only allow people whose intelligence is the
same as, or greater than, that of the person who succeeds in their test.
You must be quite a bright lad to have done so. But we're only a bunch
of dumb spacemen. So where does that leave us?" "You're sitting right on
top of the world," Kilgour re- sponded cheerfully. "And I mean Venus.
Like most space- men, I was never noted for my I.Q. My forte has always
been vim, vigor, and a spirit of adventure." He concluded modestly,
"Since I'm the measuring rod for admittance, I would say that at a
conservative estimate, ninety-nine percent of the human race can now
visit Venus."
"But''
Kilgour cut him off. "Don't ask me why their test was so simple. Maybe
you'll understand when you see them." He frowned. "You're not going to
like the Venusians, friend. But one look at their many-legged,
multiarmed bodies will give you some idea of what they meant when they
said it was difficult to figure out tests for alien minds. And now, any
more questions?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]