The creature, now in the shadow of the 'Troncist's helmet, slowed down abruptly—went limp—collapsed.
"Get out of his light!" Jack snapped, and pushed his friend violently away; and as the vicious sunlight struck it, the native revived and began to revolve as vigorously as before. "I've got a hunch. Sounds screwy—never heard of such a thing—but it acts like an energy-converter. Eats energy, raw and straight. No storage capacity—on this world he wouldn't need it—a few more seconds in the shade would probably have killed him, but there's no shade here. Therefore, he can't be dangerous."
He reached out and touched the middle of the revolving shaft. Nothing happened. He turned it at right angles to the plate. The thing rolled away in a straight line, perfectly contented with the new direction. He recaptured it and stuck a test-prod lightly into the sand, just ahead of its shaft and just inside one paddle wheel. Around and around that slim wire the creature went: unable, it seemed, to escape from even such a simple trap; perfectly willing, it seemed, to spend all the rest of its life traversing that tiny circle.
"'What a brain!' is right, Mase," Jack exclaimed. "What a brain!"
"This is wonderful, boys, really wonderful; something completely new to our science." Samms' thought was deep with feeling. "I am going to see if I can reach its mind or consciousness. Would you like to come along?"
"Would we!"
Samms tuned low and probed; lower and lower; deeper and deeper; and Jack and Mase stayed with him. The thing was certainly alive; it throbbed and vibrated with vitality: equally certainly, it was not very intelligent. But it had a definite consciousness of its own existence; and therefore, however tiny and primitive, a mind. Although its rudimentary ego could neither receive nor transmit thought, it knew that it was a fontema, that it must roll and roll and roll, endlessly, that by virtue of determined rolling its species would continue and would increase.
"Well, that's one for the book!" Jack exclaimed, but Samms was entranced.
"I would like to find one or two more of them, to find out ... I think I'll take the time. Can you see any more of them, either of you?"
"No, but we can find some—Stu!" Northrop called.