by Hal Clement
All this, of course, assumed that water and the oxides of carbon were gases at this temperature. The method offered him two out of three chances of learning something—better, really, since it was likely that two, or all three, of the reactions occurred together. Only if CO2 alone were produced, would there be a negative result. The catch seemed to be how one was to seal one of these devices in a gas-tight container, with a limited amount of atmosphere?
The container, of course, was available. His own ship had a good deal of waste space, left deliberately to allow for later modifications, if and when they were developed. He could open his hull for maintenance at virtually any point, and the openings were naturally designed to seal gas-tight, since his occupation was more than likely to lead him into corrosive atmospheres such as this.
He would have to be sure that he let the planet’s air only into chambers where it could not reach either his own tissues or the ship’s circuitry. No, wait. The test should take only minutes or hours, not years. Both his flesh and the silver wires could stand oxygen that long, and he could get rid of it later by opening the hull to the vacuum of space. That made matters easier—much easier.
But how could he detect the change in pressure, if it did occur? He did have manometers, of course. But they were vented to the outside of his hull. No one had foreseen a need for measuring internal pressure. He would have to do some more hard thinking.
What effects would pressure produce, besides merely mechanical ones? There would not be enough change, in the electrical properties of the exposed wires, for even the agent to detect. The change would probably not be fast enough to alter the temperature noticeably. And even if it did alter it, he would not be able to tell whether the change were due to gas laws, or simply the operation of the machine.
In the temperature range of this world, it was not really certain that all the products were gaseous, anyway. The mere fact that he had detected them in that form, during his approach, meant nothing. The infra-red spectro-graphic equipment he had used would have picked up trace quantities. It was unfortunate that its receivers were also aimed outward.
The agent could not, for the life of him, recall the vapor-pressure curves of any of the expected products—though, come to think of it, something was liquid here. The clouds he could see proved that, as did their precipitation on his half. He could not assume that it was one of the products he sought, however, and his best bet was still to maintain pressure change. If he could do it . . .
VIII
STUNNED, SHAKEN, the three humans stared at the star-traveler which had now so unbelievably and unexpectedly revealed itself in full. And the star-traveler stared back at them through its dull, opaque vision windows.
It was Candace Parsons who spoke first. “Why!” she exclaimed in a strained, oddly small voice. “Why—it looks like a gigantic bathysphere! Maybe . . .” she fell silent.
Hal Parsons, ignoring the rain that streamed down his face, said, “Maybe what, baby?”
“I don’t know.” Candace’s voice remained off-pitch, tremulous. “I guess I was thinking that maybe—if he is from outer space—our atmosphere is like an ocean to him. Maybe he is a bathysphere.”
“Why do you refer to that thing as he?” her husband asked sharply. “Whatever is inside probably has no more concept of sex as we know it than an amoeba.”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know, Hal.” Candace mopped the rainwater from her face with a khaki towel she had brought from the jeep. “I don’t know, but he—just seems masculine somehow.”
“If that’s a bathysphere,” put in Truck MacLaurie, with a forced attempt at levity, “I’d surer than hell hate to take a bath in it. How would I ever get out?”
“Truck!” said Candace, biting her underlip. “Don’t you honestly know what a bathysphere is?”
“Isn’t it a round bathtub?” Truck asked.
“For your information,” Candace said, more to herself than to the young man who had blundered, “A bathysphere is a globular device designed by William Beebe for deep underwater observation. Professor Piccard later used an improved model to—”
Her husband, who kept his eyes riveted on the alien visitor, suddenly leapt at her and pushed her flat on her face against the hillside. As he did so he yelled at Truck, “For God’s sake, flatten out!”
The alien was on the move. There could be no doubt about it this time. Candace, her face ashen, felt the near-earthquake vibration emanating from the advancing sphere and looked up, barely in time to see it zoom skyward, leaving boiling earth and mud in its wake.
The alien’s rise was as rapid as the pursuit-foiling lifting processes attributed to flying saucers in the nation’s press. He shot up a thousand feet—two thousand—and again they smelled the acrid aroma of metal heating up unbearably from friction with the atmosphere.
Feeling a sudden, shocking, incongruous disappointment, Candace cried, “Oh—he’s getting away! He’s leaving Earth.”
“No he isn’t,” said Truck, staring grimly up into the rain. “Get a load of that!”
That proved to be a sudden lateral maneuver on the part of the alien. It moved several hundred yards sideways and again was immobile. It was apparently as capable of remaining immobile in the atmosphere as it had been immediately following its self-burial in the rocky soil.
Candace could see the great round eyes, reduced to mere dots in the distance, trained steadily upon the three of them. She experienced paralyzing fear. It was obvious now that the alien failed to welcome close contact with humans, and was determined to resist investigation.
Secondarily—but no less frightening—was the thought that, being an alien, it could scarcely be expected to have humanitarian sympathies. It would probably be no more hesitant about wiping them out than most people were about destroying bothersome insects.
She glanced at her husband for reassurance, but saw in his fear-shadowed eyes a reflection of her own fears. She had learned, long ago—in high-school biology—that the legend of a snake’s ability to paralyze a bird-victim with an hypnotic stare was utterly false. Yet Hal’s trapped gaze failed to refute that ancient tale. His eyes remained fixed upon the strange object hovering almost motionless above them, half-veiled by a mist of its own creation.
Then, suddenly, Candace screamed. The alien was returning, swooping directly down toward them with the speed of a V-2. Before the echoes of her scream could dwindle and die away, it had landed—not upon them but in its former resting place. It perched there lightly, dominating the immediate landscape, its opaque twin lenses still fixed implacably upon them.
It was Harold, lifting himself slowly from the rain-soaked ground, who said, “Now I wonder just what in hell was the precise purpose of that maneuver.”
Candace, close to hysteria from the backlash of terror and shock, replied, “You might just as well ask why such a creature does anything?”
“Funny thing,” said Truck, brushing mud from the front of his clothing. “I think it wanted a better look at us. Did you notice the way it kept those fish-eyes on us all the time it was dancing that rock-’n-roll over us?”
“I noticed,” Harold Parsons replied tersely, his face still drained of its natural color. “What beats me is why it had to hop around like that.”
Truck frowned at the looming bulk of the alien. Then he looked at his companions and rubbed the bristles on his chin. “Funny thing,” he repeated. “I’m completely sure now it wasn’t trying to scare us.”
“Then just what do you think it was trying to do?” Candace asked.
Truck had latched on to something and, bulldog-like, he was not giving it up. “This probably won’t make much sense to you eggheads,” he told them, in his Southwestern drawl. “But the way that thing acted reminded me of an uncle of mine. His eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, and he won’t wear bi-focals. When he wants a good look at anything close-up, he has to pull his head back. Do you know what I mean?”
“If your uncle looks like that,�
� said Candace, with a tremulous nod at the alien, “it’s no wonder you’re having trouble with your credits.”
“Hold it, baby,” said Hal, regarding MacLaurie with something like awe. “I think he’s got something. Take a good look at those things our friend sees with—if seeing is what they’re for. Its eyes are set at much too flat a curvature to enable it to see anything small and close up without some sort of focusing agent. I can detect no evidence of its having any. In that case . . .” He paused.
“You mean, I’m right?” Truck asked incredulously.
“I mean you could be,” said Parsons. “Nice going, Truck.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he added, “If it really is a space-traveling machine of some sort—and the evidence to date makes that highly probable—then its eyes would be designed for judging objects of immense size, immense distances away. It would need no focusing devices.”
“All right, you two geniuses,” said Candace, who had recovered a small measure of her equilibrium, “if it really is a space-traveler, why would it have to resort to such extremes just to get a good look at us? Surely it has all kinds of other senses—or instruments for measurement. If not, how could it have gotten here in the first place?”
Harold Parsons fished a limp cigarette from an equally limp pack in his breast pocket. He eyed it in disgust and quickly tossed it away. “Has it occurred to you, baby, that it may not be that simple?” he asked. “If its vision equipment is so faulty under Earth-conditions, it undoubtedly is faced with other problems.”
He paused, wiped his forehead briefly dry, and added, “I’ll stake my Ph.D. that we’re just as big a problem to our friend as he is to us. We know that it is capable of radio communication by voice. But, so far, all that it has been able to communicate is the fact that it can indulge in parrot-like mockery of our speech.”
“Hey!” said Truck, who had been listening attentively. “You mean it hasn’t made sense out of what we were saying.”
“What do you think?” said Parsons.
Candace said, “You know, this may be silly, but it makes me think of a movie I saw once—one in which an explorer on a strange island had to learn to get on with the natives by pointing out objects and then repeating over and over their speech equivalents. The natives had to do the same thing.”
“You saw it once? I saw it six times,” said Truck. “The guy kept pointing at trees and rocks, and describing them in English.”
Hal Parsons threw the pack after his discarded cigarette. “Probably it was Robinson Crusoe!” he exploded. “But, once again, Truck, you and Candace could be on the nose. The only trouble is—I don’t believe we managed to impart much information while our pal was zooming about.” He paused, adding with a frown, “There’s only one way to find out.”
They plodded back to the jeep. Truck cranked the battery, while Parsons got the radio transmitter into operation. This time, he didn’t have to speak first. The moment the receiver was working, he could hear his own voice coming through the earphones in a reiterated, “Who’s that? Hello! . . . Who’s that? Hello?”
Parsons acknowledged, with, “Hello out there. We were watching you just now.”
Back it came. “Hello out there. We were watching you just now.” Infuriatingly, frustratingly, it went on—meaningless repetition following meaningless repetition. Finally, as before, Parsons had to give it up in disgust.
Candace produced some dry cigarettes from the expedition stores, and she and Hal smoked them silently, under the shelter of the jeep-top. Truck, who was in training, did not join them. It was a damp, disheartening breathing spell.
Finally, Candace said, “Well, remember Valley Forge. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“Frankly, I’d rather not think about Valley Forge right now,” said Parsons unhappily. “If that thing isn’t able to make sense out of us unless it sees us, and it can’t see us—how in hell are we going to make sense out of it? I think we’d better get help from outside—if we can. Okay, it’s uphill for us again.”
“Maybe not,” said Truck. “Listen.”
They heard the faint thrum of plane engines coming through the overcast, maintaining itself, growing louder. Parsons threw his cigarette away and said, “Come on, Truck. Let’s get going.”
It was the general again, anxious to know how they were making out. Parsons told him in terse syllables. Truck looked up from his battery-duty and said, “Getting anywhere, Sergeant?” And was rewarded by a shut-your-mouth gesture.
Parsons said, “I know it’s tough. But you must be able to get through to us somehow. How about dropping a couple of philologists by ’chute?”
“We may have to,” was the reply. “But only as a last resort. Blast this rain! But you’re doing okay, Professor. Stay with it.”
And that was that. It was a gloomy threesome that made its way slowly over the soggy hillside from jeep to alien. They walked slowly around the alien, and then stood in front of it, regarding a little more calmly now the disclike, too-flat lenses that had gone opaque again.
“I wonder if it can see us at all from this distance,” Parsons mused. Then, irrelevantly, “You wouldn’t think, with all the resources of modern science and the Air Force, they’d let a little rain stop them cold.”
“It isn’t a little rain,” said Candace, who had been listening to her husband’s colloquy with the general through one earphone. “It’s a lot of rain—and it has raised hob all around here. The soil and rock formations aren’t used to so much moisture. They just can’t take it.”
“Let’s hope we can take it a while longer,” said Parsons, putting an arm around her and squeezing.
“Don’t, honey,” she said. “I just can’t take it right now.”
“Hey!” called Truck, who had been eyeing the monster from a bit to one side. “Watch it! Something’s happening!”
IX
As usual, the solution was ridiculously simple, once the traveler had thought of it. Most of the access-doors in the hull opened outward and all were operated electrically. He had perfect control over the current supplied to their operating motors. He knew that if he refrained from latching one or more of the doors, and simply held it shut with the motor, he could sense directly the amount of effort needed to keep it sealed against the internal pressure.
As far as he was concerned, it was a quantitative solution—if the pressure increased. If it decreased—well, he would know it, from the extra effort needed to open the door. He was concentrating on immediate small details now—and very wisely.
With his machine, action could follow thought without delay. The moment he had his answer, a door swung open in the side of the great metal egg he was driving, and Earth’s air poured in. Good as his seals were, the ship had not, of course, retained any significant amount of gas in the millennia it had been in space.
He did not bother to develop a plan for enticing one of the machines through the opening. He assumed, quite justly, that any intelligent mind must have a fair proportion of curiosity in its makeup. The fact that self-preservation might oppose this influence did not, as far as the agent knew or suspect, apply to the present situation. The risk of sacrificing even an expensive remote-controlled machine should be well worth taking in such circumstances. He simply waited for one of the devices to be driven into his ship.
Before this happened, however, there was a good deal of conversation among the machines present and, he presumed, the distant broadcaster—if, of course, it could be called conversation. The agent was still unable to reconcile this supposition with the absence of intelligent life in the present group.
At last, however, the expected event occurred. One of the machines swung about and moved toward the opening in the hull. Just outside, it halted, and the agent guessed at a brief burst of atmospheric pressure waves, though his manometers did not react fast enough to catch them. Then it entered.
It traveled on four struts instead of two. It became completely horizontal and advance
d on the supporting struts. Evidently the upper ones, which the agent had seen, could be used for locomotion when desirable. Its entrance was slower than by its usual rate of motion, though the agent could not imagine why. The suggestion that slower motion made detail observation easier would never have occurred to a being whose perception and recording operations occupied fractions of a microsecond. Whatever the reason for the delay, it finally managed to get inside.
The agent wasted no time. Ready to observe anything and everything that resulted, he shut the access hatch.
Results, by his reaction-time standards, were slow—additional evidence that remote control was involved. The electromagnetic unit burst into activity the instant things finally began to happen. Some of the machines outside began to tap on the hull with dimly perceptible solid fragments, apparently pieces of silicate rock. The agent tried to find regularities in the blows that might be interpreted as communication code of some sort. He failed.
One of the devices, standing a little distance away, moved one of its attached fragments of metal until a hollow cylinder—which formed part of it—was in line with the hull. After a long moment the more distant end of the cylinder filled with gas, sufficiently ionized to be clearly perceptible to the alien.
The gas must have been under considerable pressure, for almost instantly it began to expand, driving before it a smaller fragment of metal which had plugged the tube. This fragment became progressively easier to perceive as its speed through the planet’s magnetic field increased.
It emerged from the near end of the cylinder with sufficient momentum to continue in a nearly linear course, until it made contact with the hull. The agent watched with mounting excitement as it flattened, spread out and finally broke into many pieces. Incredible! He analyzed it, both electrically and mechanically, from the way it broke up. But he could make no sense of the operation.
