“Just a-”
“Wait, Chief.” Lackland cut short Rosten’s expostulation. “I know Barl better than you do. Let me talk.” He and Rosten could see each other in their respective screens, and for a moment the expedition’s leader simply glared. Then he realized the situation and subsided.
“Right, Charlie. Tell him.”
“Barl, you seemed to have some contempt in your tone when you referred to, our excuse for not explaining our machines to you. Believe me, we were not trying to fool you. They are complicated; so complicated that the men who design and build them spend nearly half their lives first learning the laws that make them operate and the arts of their actual manufacture. We did not mean to belittle the knowledge of your people, either; it is true that we know more, but it is only because we have had longer in which to learn.
“Now, as I understand it, you want to learn about the machines in this rocket as you take it apart. Please, Barl, take my word as the sincerest truth when I tell you first that I for one could not do it, since I do not understand a single one of them; and second, that not one would do you the least good if you did comprehend it. The best I can say right now is that they are machines for measuring things that cannot be seen or heard or felt or tasted — things you would have to see in operation in other ways for a long time before you could even begin to understand. That is not meant as insult; what I say is almost as true for me, and I have grown up from childhood surrounded by and even using those forces. I do not understand them. I do not expect to understand them before I die; the science we have covers so much knowledge that no one man can even begin to learn all of it, and I must be satisfied with the field I do know — and perhaps add to it what little one man may in a lifetime.
“We cannot accept your bargain, Barl, because it is physically impossible to carry out our side of it.”
Barlennan could not smile in the human sense, and he carefully refrained from giving his own version of one. He answered as gravely as Lackland had spoken.
“You can do your part, Charles, though you do not know it.
“When I first started this trip, all the things you have
just said were true, and more. I fully intended to find this rocket with your help, and then place the radios where you could see nothing and proceed to dismantle the machine itself, learning all your science in the process.