by Hal Clement
“There is certainly some justice in that viewpoint,” he said cautiously. “If that is the case, what can I do for you? I’m certainly no linguist, and know next to nothing of economic theory, if you’re hitting trading difficulties.”
“We are having difficulties, but not in that way. They stem from the fact that the planet in question is so different from Sarr that personal visits are impossible. We have had the greatest difficulty in establishing contact of a sort with even one group of natives—or perhaps a single individual; we can’t tell.”
“Can’t tell? Can’t you send a torpedo down with television apparatus, at least?”
“You’ll see.” The still nameless individual gave a rather unpleasant smile. “At any rate, we have managed to do a little trading with this native or natives, and found that they have something we can use. We get it, as you can well imagine, in trickles and driblets. Basically, your problem is—how do we get more of it? You can try to figure out some way of landing in person if you like, but I know you’re not an engineer. What I thought you could do was get a good enough analysis of the planet’s conditions—atmosphere, temperature, light, and so on—so that we could reproduce them in a more convenient location and grow our own product. That way, we wouldn’t be forced to pay the price the native asks, too.”
“That sounds simple enough. I notice you don’t seem to want me to know what the product is—except that it seems to be of vegetable nature—but that doesn’t bother me. I had a friend in the perfume business once, and the way he tried to keep secrets in elementary chemistry was a scandal. I’m certainly willing to try—but I warn you I’m not the Galaxy’s best chemist by a long shot, and I’ve brought no apparatus with me, since I didn’t know what you wanted me to do. Have you anything here in the ship?”
“Not in the ship. We discovered this place around twenty years ago, and have built a fairly comfortable base on the innermost planet of this system. It keeps the same hemisphere facing the sun all the time, and we’ve been able to concentrate enough sunlight in a small valley to make the temperature quite bearable. There’s a fairly respectable laboratory and shop there, with a very good mechanic named Feth Allmer; and if you find yourself in need of something we don’t have, we can probably afford to get it for you. How does that sound?”
“Very good indeed. I’ll take your job, and do what I can.”
Ken was a little happier at this point, partly because the job seemed interesting in itself and partly because of some of the other’s statements. If this product was a plant, as seemed to be the case, there was at least a slight possibility that he was not on a blind run after all. The matter of the need for refrigeration, of course, had not come up specifically—for all that had been said so far, the planet was as likely to be too hot as too cold for comfort; but what he had seen of this system’s sun made that seem doubtful. Then there was the reference to warming the innermost planet—no, the place was cold. Definitely, Chances improved again. He switched his attention from these thoughts, as he realized that his employer—if this were really the head of the concern—was speaking again.
“I was sure you would. You can give orders for anything you need, starting now. You may use this ship as you please, subject only to Ordon Lee’s veto if he considers the vessel in danger.” The pilot was indicated by the wave of a supple tentacle as the name was pronounced. “Incidentally, I am Laj Drai. You are working for me, and I am sure we will both be more comfortable if that fact is borne in mind. What do you think should be done first?”
Ken decided to ignore Drai’s subtle implication of superiority, and answered the question with another.
“Do you have any samples of the atmosphere or soil of this planet?”
“Of the first, no. We have never been able to keep a sample; probably we did not collect it properly. One cylinder that was collected leaked and burned in our air, for what that may be worth. We do have bits of soil, but they were all exposed to our own air at one time or another, and may have been changed by that. You will have to decide that for yourself. All that I really know is that their atmosphere has a pressure around two thirds of Sarr-normal, and at its base the temperature is low enough to freeze most of the regular gases out of our own air—I believe it would even freeze potassium. Our mechanic claimed that was what happened to one device that failed to work.”
“How about size?”
“Bigger than Sarr—the figures are all at the base on Planet One; it would be easier to look them over there. I don’t pretend to remember any of them at all precisely—as a matter of fact, we don’t have any of them too precisely. You’re the scientist, as far as we are concerned; my people are just eyes and tentacles for you.
“We do have remote-controlled torpedoes, as you suggested. It might be well to tell me before you use them; we lost nineteen of the first twenty to reach the planet’s surface. We planted a permanent transmitter at the point where the twentieth landed, and we always home down on it now. Just what happened to the others we don’t exactly know, though we have a pretty good guess. I’ll tell you the whole story at the same time that you look over the other material. Is there anything you’d care to do before we leave the vicinity of the planet and go over to One?”
“Leave the vicinity? I thought you said that world was not the one in question.” Ken waved a tentacle at the cratered crescent.
“That one isn’t—that’s a satellite of Three, the one we’re interested in.”
A chill came back to Ken’s skin. The satellite had been frightening; the planet itself could be little if any warmer since it must be about the same distance from the sun. An atmosphere would help a little, of course; but still—cold enough to freeze potassium, and lead, and tin! He had not given real thought to that. His imagination was good— perhaps a little too good; and it began conjuring up out of nothing in particular an image of a world chilled to the core. It was rough, and an icy blizzard played over it, and nothing moved in the dim reddish light—a planet of death.
But that couldn’t be right; there were natives. Ken tried to imagine the sort of life that could exist under such hideous conditions, and failed completely. Maybe Laj Drai was wrong about the temperature; after all, he hadn’t been sure. It was just a mechanic’s opinion.
“Let’s see this place, since we’re so close to it. I might as well learn the worst,” he said at this point in his imagining. Laj Drai gestured to the pilot, and the hull of the Karella rotated slowly. The airless satellite slid out of sight, and stars followed it across the field of view. The ship must have spun a full hundred and eighty degrees before Planet Three itself hung in the apparent center of the port. They must be floating directly between planet and satellite, Ken thought. Not wise if the inhabitants had telescopes.
Since the sun was now behind them, the disc of the great world was fully illuminated. Unlike the bare moon, a fuzziness of outline showed that it possessed an extensive atmosphere, though Ken could not imagine what gases might be present. In spite of the definitely reddish sunlight, most of the surface had a decided blue tint. Details were impossible to make out; the atmosphere was extremely hazy. There were definite patches of white, and green, and brown, but there was no way of telling what any of them represented.
And yet, foggy as it was, there was something about the sight of the world which caused the shiver to caress the scientist’s skin once more. Perhaps it was the things he had been told, and the things he had deduced from the appearance of the sun; perhaps it was nothing objective at all. Whatever it was, the very sight of the world made him shudder, and he turned away abruptly.
“Let’s go to One, and look over that data,” he said, striving to control his voice diaphragm. The pilot obeyed without comment.
Earth, really, is not as bad as all that. Some people are even quite fond of it. Ken, of course, was prejudiced, as anyone is likely to be against a world where water is a liquid—when he has grown up breathing gaseous sulfur and, at rare intervals, drinking molten copper chloride
.
II.
Roger Wing, for example, would probably have been slightly shocked at Ken’s attitude. He was strongly in favor of Earth, at least the rather small portion which he knew. He had some justification, for the country around Lake Pend’ Oreille is very much worth knowing, particularly in spring and summer. The first glimpse of the lake each June was something to look forward to; all the way up the highway from Hayden Lake the children maintained shrill rivalry over who would be the first to sight the Ear Drop. Even with only four of them this year, the noise was nearly as great as usual; for the absent Donald had never contributed too much to the racket. Roger, left the senior member by his older brother’s absence, was determined to make the most of the opportunity; the more so since it was to last only another forty miles or so. Don was expected to fly to Sandpoint with a friend and meet the family there.
It was, all in all, a hilarious group; and the parents in the front seat had only moderate success in maintaining order. However, the northbound highway from Coeur d’Alene is a good one, and the disturbance in the rear was never really dangerous. The principal interruption occurred when the right rear tire of the station wagon went flat near Cocolalla. John Wing was a little slow in stopping the heavily loaded vehicle, and Roger got the first whiff of the sulfurous odor of burning rubber. He was to became much more familiar with sulfur during the course of the summer.
The children were a little quieter after that—the expression on their father’s face suggested that his patience might not have much farther to go; but the journey was never really silent. The causeway across the tip of Pend’ Oreille was greeted with ringing cheers, which ceased only momentarily while Mr. Wing purchased a new tire in Sandpoint. Then they proceeded to the small airport at the edge of the town, and the noise increased again as the youngsters caught sight of their oldest brother standing beside a Cub on the grass parking area.
He was tall, and rather slim, with dark hair and eyes and a narrow face like his father’s. Roger, who had grown considerably since the last September, discovered to his chagrin that Donald still overtopped him by half a head; but he did not let the annoyance lessen the exuberance of his greeting. Don shook hands with his father and Roger, kissed his mother and sisters, and swung six-year-old Billy to his shoulder. No, the flight from Missoula had not been eventful. Yes, his final grades had been good, if not outstanding. No, he had no luggage except the little handbag beside him—a Cub has sharp load limitations. They might as well continue their journey, and he could answer questions on the way. He tossed the bag at Roger and moved toward the station wagon, Billy still on his shoulder; and with the crowd settled more or less comfortably, they rolled on.
North from Sandpoint; east fork to Kootenai; around the north end of the question-mark-shaped lake to Hope, and on to Clark Fork. There the car was left, in a building that partook of the characteristics of storehouse and garage.
Don and Roger disappeared, and returned with an imposing array of pack and saddle horses. These were accoutered with a speed which suggested the maneuver was not a new one to the family; and the Wings, waving farewell to their acquaintances who had gathered to see them off, headed northward into the woods.
Donald grinned at his father as the town vanished behind them.
“How many campers do you suppose we’ll have this year?”
“It’s hard to say. Most of the folks who know us have come to mind their own business pretty well, and I didn’t notice any strangers in the town; but prospectors seem to turn up when least expected. I don’t mind honest prospecting—it lends protective coloration. It’s the ones who expect to benefit from our ‘strike’ that bother me. You boys will have to scout as usual—though I may want Don with me this time. If you’ve really gotten something out of freshman chemistry, Son, you may be able to help solve a problem or two. If he does go with me, Roger, you’ll have a bigger responsibility than usual.” The boy nodded, eyes shining.
He had only gradually come to realize the tremendous difference between the way his family and those of his schoolmates spent their summers. At first, the tales of trips to ranches, seashores, and mountains had aroused his envy; then he had begun to boast of his own mountain trips. When he finally realized the atmosphere of secrecy that surrounded certain aspects of those trips, his pride had exceeded his powers of restraint—until he had realized that his schoolmates simply didn’t believe that his father had a “secret mine in the mountains.” Pique had silenced his boasts for a while and by the time he had developed a convincing argument he had realized that silence might be better for all concerned.
That had been the spring when he was ten years old. His father had somehow heard about the whole story, and seemed pleased for some reason; that summer he had extended to Roger the responsibility which Don had been carrying alone, of scouting the territory around their summer home before and during Mr. Wing’s trips into the mountains. The find, their father had told him, was his own secret; and for reasons he would explain later it must be kept that way.
That summer and the two following he had continued to make his trips alone; now it looked as though there might be a change. Don, Roger knew, had been told a little just before leaving for college the preceding fall; his courses had been partly selected on the basis of that information—chemistry, astronomy and mathematics. The first seemed logical, but Roger failed to see the point of the others. Certainly astronomy seemed of doubtful value in anything connected with mining.
Still, he would find that out in due course; perhaps sooner than Don had, since their father seemed to be letting down the bars. His problem for the moment was to figure out a way by which one boy could keep himself informed about every person who came within a mile of the summer house in any direction—and farther than that in some directions. Roger, of course, knew the topography of the neighborhood quite well; but he began right then planning a series of exploration jaunts to make more certain of some points. He was a young man who took things seriously, if they were presented to him in that light.
Like anyone else of his own age, however, he tended even more strongly to fly off on the interests of the moment; and he was easily aroused from his reverie when Edie caught him in the face with a fir cone slyly tossed over her shoulder. She burst into laughter as he looked around fruitlessly for a means of retaliation—there seemed to be no more cones within reach, and the trail at this point was too narrow for the horses to travel side by side. The pack horse the girl was leading formed, for the time being, an impassable barrier.
“Why don’t you wake up and join the party?” Edith finally gurgled out between spasms of laughter. “You looked as though you’d just remembered leaving your favorite fishpole in Spokane!” Roger assumed a mantle of superiority.
“Of course, you girls have nothing to do between now and September,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of men’s work to be done, though, and I was deciding how to go about it.”
“Men’s work?” The girl raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “I know Dad will be busy, but what’s that to you?” She knew perfectly well what Roger’s summer duties were, but had reasons of her own for speaking as she did. “Does it take a man to stroll around the house on sentry-go a couple of times a day?” Roger stiffened.
“It takes more than a girl to do a good job of it,” he retorted. The words were hardly out when he regretted them; but he had no time to think of a way out of the corner into which he had talked himself.
“Evidence!” Edith responded quietly, and Roger mentally kicked himself. She had been playing for just that. Family rules required that any statement made by a member of the family be backed up with evidence if another member required it—a rule the elder Wing had instituted, with considerable foresight. He was seldom caught by it himself, being a thoughtful man by nature.
“You’ll have to let me try, now,” Edith remarked, “and you’ll have to give me a fair amount of teaching. To be really fair, you’ll have to let Margie try, too—” The last was
an afterthought, uttered principally for its explosive effect. Roger almost left his saddle, but before he succeeded in expressing himself a thought struck him. After all, why couldn’t the girls help? He could show them what he and Don had done in the past, and they might very well have ideas of their own. Roger’s masculine pride did not blind him to the fact that girls in general, and his sisters in particular, did have brains. Edie and Marge could both ride, neither was afraid of the woods, and all things considered would probably make extremely useful assistants. Edith was so near to his own age that he could not dismiss her as too young for the work, and even the eight-year-old had at least sense enough to keep quiet when silence was needed and obey orders when argument would be injudicious.
“All right. You can both try it.” Roger brought his cogitation to an end. “Dad won’t mind, I guess, and Mother won’t care if the work gets done. We’ll have a conference tonight.”
The conversation shifted to other matters, and the caravan wound on up the river. Two or three hours out of Clark Fork they crossed the stream and headed eastward toward the Montana border; and there were still several hours of daylight remaining when they reached the “summer cottage.”
It was hardly a cottage. Built well up on a steep hillside, though still below the timber line, it boasted enough rooms to house the Wing family without any fear whatever of crowding. It possessed a gasoline-powered electric plant, a more or less limited supply of running water piped from a spring farther up the hill, and in general bore witness to Mr. Wing’s luck or skill in the prospecting which was supposed to be the source of his income.
A short distance downhill from the dwelling was another building which combined the functions of storehouse and stable. Both structures were solidly built, and had never suffered serious damage from the Northwest winters. The foundation of the house was part of the bedrock core of the mountain, and its walls were well insulated. The family could easily have lived there the year round, and the parents had vague plans of doing so once the children had all finished school.
