Page:Fantastic Universe (1956-10; vol. 8, no. 3).djvu/30

Rh things needful. We try. We fail. Earthmen so great, so successful."

For a moment, George felt a sense of pity for the alien technician. He saw the reason for the irritable truculence Sleth Forander had displayed at first. His deep, blind admiration for Earthmen had made it necessary to build a wall against them. Now that wall was down. George almost regretted what he had to say.

"You don't go forward by walking backwards," he said slowly. The Ragalian stood motionless as if struck by a blow. No sound or expression came from his still form for a full minute. Then he said almost inaudibly, "Understand?"

"I think you understand, all right," George answered. "At least I'll bet your anthropologists do. If you had any decent engineers they'd know it, too. Those flippers of yours are designed for moving strictly in the other direction, and five hundred thousand or a million years of deliberately walking backwards hasn't altered their basic form."

"You insult!"

"Don't get on your high horse. You asked for it. I think you know intuitively what I'm talking about even if you don't know it otherwise.

"The whole picture is as plain as your desire to build ships with control rooms where the engines belong. Look: mankind has the same problem, too. Not as bad as yours. I'll admit, but bad enough. We've got soft, easily damaged bodies that have to be handled with care to keep them from getting squashed in a world where squashing is easy.

"Your case is just a little worse. Mother Nature on your world really really played a dirty trick, putting your brains right out in the open with only a thin membrane between them and a brutal, destructive environment.

"It was a matter of life or death to protect the delicate, exposed organ. The survival of the race depended on it. Everything you do now, everything you've ever done, is geared to protection of this one terribly vulnerable physical characteristic. And some ages ago, your race even hit on the incredible solution of protecting it with the rest of your body by actually walking backwards!"

"Insult! Go!" The fierce arms of sinew lashed out suddenly, coming within a hair width of George's face. A sudden chill rippled the length of his spine. He hadn't anticipated this, but Sleth Forander could rip open the suit with a single flick of those deadly arm tips. Death in that bluish atmosphere would not be pleasant.

"I have a couple more things to say," he continued quietly. "Then I'll go if you want me to.

"If you had the experience with mechanisms that I have had you'd recognize at once that the form and function of a machine is invariably an expression of the attitude, illu-