They came in groups of about a hundred, pulling themselves slowly toward the edges of the great sticky lake that lay within the vaster area where the pink matter dried and crumbled into the strong breeze. Some were smaller than others, offspring who were nudged along by their elders. But these small creatures were the ones who scampered most of all after they had fed. Joyously they danced back toward the mountain. A few of medium height went back in pairs, firm taffy fingers intertwined in each other.
“They mate,” said Creno. “It is their custom.”
“How tiring they are,” said Harta. “I have lost interest. We have seen thirty-one worlds with such customs and these creatures are too simple to be interesting. Let us go home or try some other system.”
“Not yet,” Creno insisted. “We passed through the ocean and surveyed the lands of this tiny planet. Nowhere else has there been the tiniest unit of life. Why at this one spot should something exist?”
“But we have several parallel situations,“ Harta protested. “They were colonies landed in one spot by the civilization of another planet. They landed here with their feeder machine. And that is the explanation.”
“Your mind does not function well in a four-dimension continuum, Harta. You will need more training—”
“But these cases are rare, and, Creno—”
“I know they are rare, my child. But still they exist. You will have to learn eventually, a little at a time. Now then, it is a rule of such limited dimensional realms that the movement of matter and events from place to place is highly difficult. Certain compacting procedures must be observed. To transport a machine this size across their space would have required enormous effort and an intelligence they do not yet have. More than that, it would have been unnecessary. A smaller device would have supplied them with food. I am forced to conclude that—somehow—we are approaching this problem backwards.”
“Backwards? You mean they made the machine here after they came?”
He did not reply to that. “We must concentrate together on thinking ourselves into their functioning in their manifold.”