Read Online Writers of the Future, Volume 29 by L. Ron Hubbard - Free Book Online

everything is fine the way it naturally occurs. They manage to think big thoughts without so much as building a roof to keep the rain off.” I brought up the data on the biological samples taken by the robot explorer. “What do you make of these?” I pointed to a picture of an animal; its rounded upper portion looked like a meter-high hemisphere that was set on a larger-diameter disc. The hemisphere was rigid and the disc was flexible. The animal moved by undulating the flexible disc. Tentacles sprouted from the junction of the hemisphere and disc.
    â€œHerd animal. Grazer.”
    â€œThey definitely travel in groups, but they’re not exclusively grazers. The robot found a carcass that had fresh meat in its stomach. The key here is fresh, no traces of spoilage.”
    â€œThey hunt?”
    â€œExactly. Hunting in groups takes a greater level of coordination than grazing. That implies greater intelligence. What’s the other thing you notice about the species?”
    Lester thought a while, then shook his head. “I guess I missed it.”
    â€œThere was only one carcass of this animal found. There are thousands of them all over the planet, but the robot could only find one that had been dragged off by a predator.”
    â€œI’m still not getting it.”
    â€œThey dispose of their dead.”
    â€œThey might practice cannibalism.”
    â€œTrue, but if what they do has the smallest element of ritual involved, that implies an understanding of mortality, which is an indication of self-awareness. We have to be sure.”
    We tried to land close to a group of the creatures without being obvious. The ship can camouflage its color to some extent. We came down looking sky-blue and used the antigravity drive to minimize noise.
    After the atmospheric checks, we got into our suits and headed out for a little animal watching. We crawled on our bellies through what looked like grass and recorded the animals’ behavior. Back on the ship we watched the recordings. I pointed to a pair of the creatures and backed the recording up. “Did you see that?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWatch those arms.”
    Lester zoomed the display. “They touched arms.”
    â€œAnd moved in tandem afterward.”
    Lester nodded. “Communications. So are they intelligent?”
    â€œNot necessarily. Every social animal has some form of communication, but there are lots of social animals that are not intelligent. But every intelligent animal has some form of communications. Communication is necessary, but not sufficient to prove intelligence.”
    Lester slumped in his chair. “This is starting to sound like Philosophy 101.”
    â€œSometimes that’s what this job comes down to.”
    The next day, we opened the hatch to find only one of the creatures in the nearby grassland. We watched it from the trees, trying to stay out of its line of sight. It moved slowly in the direction of a rise. We kept pace with it.
    Lester kept looking over his shoulder. “They never move alone—too much chance of predation.”
    â€œThis is unusual. We should record its behavior.” The creature led us partially up the slope of a hill and ducked inside a cave. We followed to the cave mouth and found no sign of its companions. “I don’t remember anything in the documentation of this planet about these things using caves.”
    Lester thought. “I can’t remember anything either.”
    â€œIt’s the unusual behaviors that are more likely to indicate intelligence. This is risky, but if we’re going to find out whether they’re intelligent or not, we’ve got to observe their behavior. I’m going in. You wait at the mouth of the cave in case they’re more intelligent than we thought.”
    Lester took up a defensive position just inside the cave, and I followed the creature. The cave was too low for me to stand. I could hear the creature a