The Pure Observers — Inside the Classic

_The history of space-flight begins before man. While our planet still lay wrapped in its dream of isolation, other intelligences watched from above--minds pure, undying, noble--and pathetically vulnerable...._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"_Oh, he is dead!" my mind cried out._

Novna, my dear, I am writing this as a release for my conscience. Those things which trouble me are not such as one exchanges with vigil companions, or indeed with anyone not bound by ties like ours.

If I were at home with you I would exchange with your soul in a moment the feeling of my own, but distance permits no such consolation and it is not suitable for me to exchange so familiarly with my colleagues.

I find myself questioning the value of our customary refusal to communicate thoughts of a delicate and sensitive nature. The Earth people, who speak their thoughts, perhaps are less primitive than we like to imagine. They seem to have no sense of the danger of overwhelming the soul of another with unwanted confidences. The purely vocal nature of their communication does not admit an excessive degree of emotion to their relationships. They do not have to erect any artificial barriers between each other, as we must who exchange on a mental level.

These doubts of mine never could have arisen if we men of Hainos had not presumed to observe the alien ways of those creatures on the third Earth, so like ourselves and yet so remote, though we have hovered above them, listening and watching, for twelve of their generations.

This vigil, though it is to last but one journey around the sun, has seemed longer and less fruitful than all the others. I think I shall not come again, but leave such work to those who can remain efficient and disinterested Observers, unmoved by doubt and anxiety. Novna, you must begin to think what we two shall do with the rest of our eternity, for now that I have spent some small portion of mine in fifty vigils, I find they have become distasteful. We might go to the Palace of Art and study to be poet-priests. My last vigil has convinced me that I am more fitted for that life than this.

When our mission left Hainos for the third Earth, there was aboard our ship the poet-priest Gven. You must remember the many nights we sat beneath the rocks by the ocean, listening as his soul gave ours his songs. Innocent they were, and filled with talk of purity and light, though Gven is as old as the rest of us, even if he is as different from you and me as the Earth child is from its parents.

You have never seen him, I think. He is smaller than I, slight of build and tender-faced. How out of place he looked among the ship's sturdy men of science, with their ages of discipline and austerity written indelibly into their features. They did not want him. They told the commissioner that they did not want him.

"Let him stay at home," they said, "and sing his songs to those who wish to listen."

But the commissioner himself, and, I suspect, the commissioner's wife, was as fond as any of Gven and his songs, so he said Gven was to come if he liked.

Poor Gven tried hard enough to make us like him. He offered us the only gift he had, that of his songs, but no one cared to hear them except me, and I was ashamed to say so. In the end he was reduced to sitting for hours, looking out into the night through which the ship bore us, saying nothing to anyone, for fear of our scorn. He would have liked us to tell him about the Earth people, for his studies at the Palace fitted him sadly for a scientific expedition.

Of the Earth people, however, we hesitated to speak freely, even among ourselves, for all of us feel strongly about them, in one way or another. Our exchanges on the matter have always been burdened with emotion; and we find we cannot share easily our thoughts about Earth people, unless we banter lightly and say little of what we really feel.

When our long-ship drew near the third Earth, we were transferred into the round-ship in which we were to carry on our observations. I could see Gven was limp with excitement, but as always, I would not exchange with him for fear of the others, not even to drain off that excess of feeling which was to prove so dangerous to him.