An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man") — John Shaqi
An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man")Farley, Ralph Milne
Science
An Earthman on Venus (Originally titled "The Radio Man")
Farley, Ralph Milne
Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Venus (Planet) -- Fiction
And then I remembered the speculations of some earth scientists, which
had been running in the newspapers shortly before my departure from that
sphere. The opinion had been expressed that insects communicate by very
short length radio waves. I had made a note to investigate this subject
later, but at that time I had been too engrossed with my machine for the
transmission of matter to be able to give the question of insect speech
more than a mere passing thought. It had not crossed my mind again
until, immediately after my sad meeting with the beautiful Cupian, I was
racking my brains for some means of talking with her.
Radio! The very thing!
How strange that I, a radio engineer, whose life was the capture and
subjugation of the Hertzian wave, should have missed this solution for
so long!
The solution certainly was plausible: If fireflies can produce a
ninety-five per cent efficient light, and if electric eels can generate
a current sufficient to kill a horse, why should not an insect be able
to send out and receive radio messages over short distances? If animals
can create light and electricity in their bodies, why can they not
create radio? Perhaps Doggo could enlighten me.
“Doggo,” wrote I, only I called him by his number, 334-2-18, instead of
Doggo, “can ant-men and Cupians communicate in any way other than
writing?”
“Of course they can,” he replied. “They use their antennae to talk and
to hear.”
Or “to send and to receive”; I don’t know just which way to translate
the words which he used, but I caught his meaning.
“In my world,” I wrote, “people send with their mouths, and receive with
their ears. Let me show you how.”
So speaking a few words aloud, I wrote on my pad: “That constitutes our
kind of sending.”
But he shook his head, for he hadn’t received a single word.
He then sent, and of course this time it was I who failed to receive.
But at least we had made a beginning in interplanetary communication,
for we had each tried to communicate. Was it not strange that all this
time, while I had been accusing the inhabitants of this planet of
deafness and dumbness, they had been making the same accusation against
me?
At this moment the electric lights went on, and they gave me an
inspiration.
Pointing at them, I wrote: “Where are those things made? Is there a
department at the university devoted to that subject?”
He answered: “There is a department of electricity at Mooni, with an
electrical factory attached to the department.”
“That,” I said, “was my line of work on earth. Do you suppose that you
could take me to Mooni? If you could, I believe that I can construct
electrical antennae which will turn your kind of message into my kind,
and _vice versa_, thus enabling us actually to talk together.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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