Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  It was, however, the only object in the vicinity with functioning, electrical circuits. Moreover, there was no direct sign of life in any of the machines which gathered quickly around the ship. Finding it a little hard to believe even his own theories, the agent once more examined the radio—only to reach the same conclusion.

  Its organization was not sufficiently complex to compare with a single living crystal, much less an entire nervous system. The conclusion seemed inescapable. Not only was the machine carrying it being controlled from a distance, but even the vehicle itself operated without detectable electrical forces.

  The machine, of course, could not be invisible. His failure to see it meant merely that he was employing the wrong means—anything material can be seen, in some way or other. There remained the question of just what were the proper means in this particular case.

  Free metals affected electric or magnetic fields, or both, in ways which permitted their recognition. Only a few fragments of such material were present—fragments quite evidently shaped by intelligence, but not themselves part of either an intelligent body, or even a complex mechanism.

  Non-conducting crystals reflected and refracted many kinds of radiation. Perhaps these things, then, could be seen. The only trouble with this idea was that eyes were not a normal part of the agent’s physical makeup. While his ship possessed several which were used in navigation—stars were most easily detected and recognized by light waves—they all happened to be underground at the moment. He had never anticipated a use for them on the surface of the planet, not being himself a chemist.

  The machines were now all moving about on the ground in his immediate vicinity. One of them even moved onto the exposed section of his hull for a few moments and it gave him his first chance to approximate their mass really accurately. Unfortunately he could not determine precisely how much of the energy radiating from their footsteps was due to weight.

  The machine on his hull carried a tiny ionization tube, whose behavior at the moment was being affected by the mild radioactivity of the ship—activity only natural after a million years in interstellar space. The purpose of the tube was no more obvious than that of the electromagnetic radiator. Neither could move or think. The only possibility seemed to lie in a connection with the remote control of these machines. Perhaps, they were sensing devices of some sort.

  There seemed no logical reason for not raising the ship far enough to get a look at these alien machines. He had discovered all he could expect to learn, from where he was. They did receive him. They were interested, and they, therefore, had at least glimmerings of intelligence. They could not—or, at least, their machines could not—determine the direction from which radio-waves were coming.

  It was still not clear to him whether these machines were under the control of one individual, or that of several. There seemed no way of investigating this important question for some time to come. What the agent wanted to know, as soon as possible, was just what sort of mechanism could operate without perceptible electrical fields—and that seemed to demand that he see them. Yes, he must see them.

  His hull had long since cooled, and could be controlled without difficulty. He started it vibrating again, and, simultaneously, applied enough drive to counteract the weight of ship and its contents. For a fleeting instant, he wondered whether the distant operators could detect the flickering of the myriads of relays that responded to his thoughts, or even the electrical fields of the thoughts themselves.

  If the latter were true, they could certainly not interpret them properly. In that case, the machines would have found him much earlier, and the agent would, by now, have been holding a conference with them about the best means of intercepting the mole robots. That possibility, he decided, could be ignored.

  The patrol flier lifted easily, until over half its bulk was above the ground. Its pilot held it there, briefly, while the rhythm of the hull packed and firmed the powdered soil that had drifted beneath it. Then he cut his power once more, and began to look about him with his newly uncovered eyes.

  VI

  THE LITTLE PARTY’S jubilation had proved short-lived. They had, it was true, attained communication with the Whatisit—but apparently all that it could or would do in this field was to mimic their voices and speech in startlingly unexpected fashion. After a quarter of an hour of ever-increasing exasperation, Truck MacLaurie won Parsons’ temporary disfavor by suggesting, “Hey! I wonder if it can sing.”

  Candace didn’t help the geologist’s feelings by laughing outright at the infantile remark.

  Hal said, “It’s not funny, dammit! How are we going to get any more sense out of it. You’d think from the way you act this was a Sunday School picnic—not something deathly serious, even terrifying.”

  “I guess we’ll have to find it first,” said Truck, rubbing his face briefly dry with a large blue bandana. He looked more troubled and uneasy than he had permitted himself to look a moment before.

  Candace gazed sadly at the ruin of her cigarette. “I wonder,” she said, “just how we’re going to accomplish that.”

  “Follow the beam,” Truck suggested. He spoke lightly, but all the levity was gone from his stare.

  “Get in,” said Parsons, nodding toward the jeep. “We’re going to find out if our friend really is beaming his messages.”

  They drove a quarter of a mile and tested. The baffling mimicry aped them just as clearly, just as strongly, as before.

  “Maybe,” said Candace optimistically, “we’re headed straight toward him.”

  “Not likely, dear,” said Parsons. But he got the jeep going over the rough terrain at right angles to their previous direction before making another test. Once again, the mockery continued without any noticeable fluctuation in volume or alteration in its monotony of tone.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed fervently. “He’s sending. without direction.”

  “What makes you so sure it’s a him?” asked Candace.

  “All right,” said Hal, a trifle testily. “She’s sending without direction.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Hal honey,” Candace told him. “I was just wondering if we hadn’t jumped the gun in thinking of our friend as an intelligent entity.”

  “He, she or it was smart enough to move around that mountain yesterday,” put in Truck, from the rear seat. “That took brains.”

  “Or machinery,” said Candace.

  “Supposing its nothing more than a machine

  “That,” said Hal, resting his forearms on the wheel in front of him, “raises some mighty interesting possibilities. Let’s say, for the moment, that it is a machine. Obviously, a missile—if that’s what it is—could have reactors that would enable it to avoid a crash—as with the mountain. But if it is a machine, somebody, or some things, had to make it. No intelligent creature would manufacture anything so complex without a purpose, and send it at random through space.”

  “Maybe it’s not from space. Maybe the Commies sent it over to broadcast germs or something,” said Truck.

  “You think of the loveliest ideas,” said Candace. Then, frowning and poking at the sopping ruin of her hair, “If that were true, it wouldn’t be answering us—even with mockery. It would be lying nice and doggo. My money—listen to the girl!—says it’s from space. If it were a missile that goofed, you can be sure the big brains in the Pentagon wouldn’t be kicking up such a fuss.”

  “Well, we aren’t going to solve the problem by sitting here talking about it,” Hal said practically. “We’ve got to hunt until we find it.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Candace asked.

  He told them. They were going to do it on foot, tracking the valley floor and leaving bits of cloth and direction markers whenever they reached the hills, so they would not be forced to retrace their steps. “That way,” he concluded, “we can find out where it isn’t, if nothing else.”

  “We can get good and wet, too,” said Truck.

  Parsons quelled him with a look,
and they got busy. They hardly spoke at all, for their thoughts were now completely immediate, grim and serious.

  It was a tedious, unrewarding day of plodding through rain-soaked sand and soil. When, as the sunless daylight waned, they finally returned to the shelter of the jeep, all three of them were exhausted.

  “Another two or three days of this,” Truck complained, “and my legs will be too musclebound for football.” It wasn’t what he’d intended to say. It was merely a quick cover-up to conceal his real emotions.

  “I think I left my feet on the other side of the valley, last time across,” said Candace, falling in with his mood. “Hal honey, where do you suppose it is?”

  “It’s here somewhere,” said Parsons, wishing his own feet would cool off and stop aching. “We just haven’t looked in the right places.”

  “We’d better get back up a hill and do some broadcasting,” said Candace. “I’ll cook us some sort of a meal.”

  “I’m too tired to eat now,” Parsons told her. “But you’re right.” He got the jeep into gear, adding, “Maybe they’ve found it somewhere else.”

  “Happy thought!” said Candace. “But it’s too much to hope for.”

  And theirs was the only report on the alien. Parsons talked to a General Somebody, who had jetted from Washington, D.C., to Butte that afternoon, to be closer to the critical scene. Apparently, the entire world was in a ferment over the possibility of contact with a messenger from an alien race.

  “How are ground conditions?” the general asked.

  “Lousy!” Parsons told him bluntly. He gave him a succinct account of the frustrating day the expedition had endured.

  “You mean, you actually talked with it?” the General asked.

  “You could call it that,” said Hal, and went into a full explanation.

  “Do you think we could get a helicopter in under those blankety-blank clouds?” the General wanted to know. “It would enable us to get a fix on its whereabouts.”

  Parsons looked dismally at the mist that enshrouded hilltop and valley alike. “Not a chance, I’m afraid,” he said. “This stuff is thick and close. We’re snafu-ed, but good!”

  Candace, who was standing by with a plate of hot food, heard this portion of the conversation and said, “Hal honey, maybe if they could get a plane overhead and they knew where we were, we could rig some sort of a fix on our friend. Ask him?”

  “The trouble with that,” said Parsons, “is our pal’s sending doesn’t reach up here. And how are we going to tell where either of us is if we can’t see through the clouds?”

  “What’s that?” the General asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Mrs. Parsons,” said Hal. “She wonders if you couldn’t send a plane over tomorrow to help us get a radio fix on our friend.”

  There was silence. Then, “Tell your wife she gets a large box of filter-tip cigars when this is over. By God! That’s the first really constructive idea that’s come out of this foulup yet. But it will take a bit of doing. Lucky that stuff over you is not much more than two thousand feet. You’ll hear from me in an hour. Signing off and good luck.”

  “What did he say?” Candace asked eagerly, as Parsons flipped the switch and motioned for Truck to stop cranking the battery.

  “He says he’s going to give you a box of choice Havana cigars when we get out of this hole, baby,” Parsons told her, accepting his food. “Mmm! These beans are good! What did you do to them?”

  “Oh—I just let you work up an appetite, that’s all,” said Candace. Then her eyes widened. “You mean he’s actually going to do it?”

  “He’s going to try,” said Hal through a full mouth. He tilted his tin plate to let the rainwater trickle off onto the ground. “If we ever do make sense with this creature, I’m going to ask him to turn off the waterworks.”

  “Amen to that!” said Candace. “I was figuring on working up a sunburn that would last all winter,” said Truck mournfully.

  The general radioed back, on the nose. An air-fix would be attempted the following morning at ten o’clock. It was complicated, but he thought it could be done. “We’ve got to find that thing—or rather, you have to find it. Are you aware that we have an expedition with Weasels on its way to reinforce you?”

  “Weasels!” Parsons was startled. “But we got in here okay in a jeep.”

  “You couldn’t do it now,” the general told him. “Those two days of wet weather have washed out all the trails. But don’t worry. We’ll be getting through to you soon. Just find our friend and see that he doesn’t take off before we open communications.”

  “What’s the verdict to date?” Parsons asked. “Is it extra-terrestrial?”

  “Looks that way. The Russians swear on a stack of Karl Marx they had nothing to do with it.

  They’re talking it up as some new sort of war-mongering frightfulness we’ve developed. Well, I’ll be overhead tomorrow morning.”

  Once again, there was little sleep in the expedition. But their restlessness was not the result of frustration, unrewarding as their day of effort to locate the stranger had been. There was a sense of impending excitement, of discovery lying just ahead of them, a growing awareness of the importance of the position fate had put them in.

  “If they’re right,” Candace mused aloud, “you and I, honey, are the first two humans ever to communicate with a being from another world.”

  “What price communication?” said Hal. “We might as well have been yelling our heads off in Echo Canyon.”

  “How about me?” put in Truck. “Don’t I get to talk to it, too?”

  “Of course, Truck!” Candace said warmly, reacting with quick, feminine sympathy to the young gladiator’s sense of having been left on the outside. “You can talk your varsity team mask off tomorrow.”

  “Gee—thanks, memsahib,” said Truck, feeling his dark inner mood lighten a little.

  He retired into silence, apparently considering the effect of his impending importance on certain members of Candace’s sex. She and Hal exchanged meaningful glances. They were both growing increasingly fond of Truck. He might not be cut out for a Ph.D., but his strength and stamina, his amiability and his quick native intelligence made him a valuable member of the closely-knit team they had become.

  With the coming of the dawn, they rose and broke camp again. They made another descent to the valley floor, handling jeep and trailer with extra care lest an accident damage their radio gear. Certainly, weatherwise, the situation had not improved overnight. Mist and rain were equally heavy, and the once hard-packed ground was slowly turning into a quagmire. It took them more than an hour to get located on a bit of high ground, where they would not become hopelessly bogged down.

  “Let’s see if our friend is still sending,” said Candace.

  They set up shop, and Truck took over the mike. He said, “Hello, out there,” and promptly received a “Hello, out there,” in response.”

  Parsons scowled at the set. “If our pal doesn’t shut up when the General starts sending,” he said, “it’s going to be awfully confused.”

  “We’ll manage,” Candace said confidently.

  The general, as usual, was on time. He said, “I’m somewhere overhead in a helicopter, with another copter standing by. We want a fix on you, first. Then we’ll try for a fix on the alien and at least give you direction.”

  “Hello out there,” said the voice from the stars.

  “Who in hell is that?” the general asked, startled.

  “That,” said Parsons, “is our unexplained visitor. You’ll have to sift if he keeps cutting in.”

  “Okay, Parsons—let’s get busy,” said the general. “Start reeling off a page of statistics—or anything that comes into your head.”

  Parsons complied with the multiplication table. After imitating him at first, the Whatisit apparently gave up and stopped sending. Ten minutes later, the general’s voice came over the receiver.

  “We’ve got you,” he said. “Now, see if you can
get the owner of that voice.”

  Parsons raised the unknown visitor, using short, varied sentences. He was, he felt with growing excitement, beginning to learn a little about the alien. Two or three times, when the human speeches were long and intricate, or merely repetitious, it had simply ceased sending. Evidently, some sort of selective mind was at work, determining which phrases merited repetition, and which did not—even though, apparently, none of them made sense to the alien.

  “Okay, Parsons, here it is!” said the general. “Got a compass handy?” He gave the directions concisely, and concluded by saying, “Sorry we can’t give you more. We spot you maybe half a mile apart, but our own location is too unstable to give you a clean estimate of distance. If you follow the direction I just gave you, and keep your eyes open, you ought to find him.”

  “We’ll do our best, General,” said Hal. Then, sighting along the direction-line he had just been given, he exclaimed in dismay, “Damn! This runs right along the hills on the north side of this bowl.”

  “You’ll manage,” said the general, with a confidence Hal, at that moment, was far from feeling. “Good luck. But be careful. He may be dangerous.”

  “Now he tells us!” said Candace, who had appropriated one of the earphones.

  They had to leave the jeep where it was, and scramble, slipping, stumbling, peering vainly through the mist for some sign of the alien. Their progress was abruptly halted when they had covered about a quarter of a mile, and the hillside across which they were moving became split by a sharp declivity.

  “It couldn’t be worse!” muttered Parsons. “We’ll have to work our way around it.”

  Working their way around took them approximately half an hour. They were about halfway up the gentler slope of the far side when Truck, who had lumbered on ahead, let out a yell that echoed from crag to crag like a many-throated summons to battle.

  “Here it is! I’ve found it! Come on, you two! I’ve found it!”