“I can’t possibly be sure, Son, until he comes back. It may be a piece of apparatus he intends to use on his next visit; it may be a gift in return for your aid with the plant collection. I think we’d best take it home, as he seemed to want, and do nothing at all to it until he comes back.”
“But if he’s not coming back until the day after tomorrow—”
“I know curiosity is a painful disease, Rog; I suffer from it myself. But I still think that the one who’ll come out ahead in this new sort of trading is the one who steps most cautiously and keeps his real aims up his sleeve the longest. We’re still not certain that this scientific investigation isn’t aimed at just one end — to relieve them of the need for paying us for tobacco. After all, why did this fellow start with plants? There are lots of other things he might have shown interest in.”
“If he’s as different from our sort of life as he seems to be, how would he know that tobacco is a plant?” countered Roger. “It certainly doesn’t stay unburned long enough at his temperature to let him look at the crumbs with a microscope or anything, and a cigarette doesn’t much look like a plant.”
“That’s true,” his father admitted. “Well, I only said we don’t know he hasn’t that up his sleeve. I admit it doesn’t seem likely.”
Curiously enough, Ken thought of one of those points himself before the next visit; and when he descended in the clearing by the Wing home with four collecting boxes attached to his torpedo, the first thing he did was to make clear he wanted minerals in one that was not equipped with refrigeration apparatus. Pointing to another similarly plain he said, “Thing — good — hot — cold.” The Wings looked at each other for a moment; then Edith spoke.
“You mean anything that stays good whether it’s hot or cold? Stuff that you don’t have to keep in a refrigerator?” There were too many new words in that sentence for Ken, but he took a chance. “Yes. Hot, good.” He was still drifting a foot or two from the ground, having so arranged the load this time that he could detach it without first freeing himself. Now he settled lightly to the ground, and things began to happen.
The ground, like most of that in evergreen forests, was largely composed of shed needles. These had been cleared away to some extent around the house, but the soil itself was decidedly inflammable. Naturally, the moment Ken’s armored feet touched it a cloud of smoke appeared, and only lightning-like action in lifting himself again prevented its bursting into flame. As it was, no one felt really safe until Roger had soaked the spot with a bucket of water.
That led to further complications. Ken had never seen water to his knowledge, and certainly had never seen apparatus for dispensing apparently limitless amounts of any liquid. The outside faucet from which the bucket had been filled interested him greatly; and at his request, made in a mixture of signs and English words, Roger drew another bucketful, placed it on the flat top of one of the cement posts at the foot of the porch steps, and retreated. Ken, thus enabled to examine the object without coming in contact with anything else, did so at great length; ana finished by dipping a handler cautiously into the peculiarly transparent fluid. The resulting cloud of steam startled him almost as much as the temporary but intense chill that bit through the metal, and he drew back hastily. He began to suspect what the liquid was, and mentally took off his hat to Feth. The mechanic, if that was all he really was, really could think.
Eventually Ken was installed on top of an outdoor oven near the house, the specimen boxes were on the ground, and the children had disappeared in various directions to fill them. The language lesson was resumed, and excellent progress made for an hour or so. At the end of that time, both parties were slightly surprised to find themselves exchanging intelligible sentences — crude and clumsy ones, full of circumlocutions, but understandable. A faint smile appeared on Mr. Wing’s face as he realized this; the time had come to administer a slight jolt to his guest, and perhaps startle a little useful information out of him. He remembered the conversation he had had with Don the night before, and felt quiet satisfaction in the boy — the sort of satisfaction that sometimes goes to make a father a major bore.