Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  After a time, the pounding ceased, and the two machines remaining outside drew together. No obvious activity came from them for some time.

  Inside the hull, more interesting, possibly more understandable, events were taking place. The moment the door had closed, the machine trapped within had attempted to withdraw. Its action was a trifle faster than that of the ones still outside. The agent could not decide whether this meant that the escape reaction was automatic, or that a distant controller had turned his attention to the captive machine first.

  It had pounded aggressively on the inside of the door in the same seemingly planless fashion as its fellows. Then it had slowed down, and began to move another of the strangely fashioned pieces of metal distributed about its frame. This abruptly became clearly perceptible, as an electric current began to flow through portions of its structure.

  The source of the current was a seemingly endless supply of metallic ions—quite evidently chemical energy could be used for something. The current’s function was less obvious, since it was led through a conductor whose greatest resistance was concentrated in a tight metal spiral.

  This must in some way have been shielded from atmospheric oxygen, since, while it must have reached a fairly high temperature if the ion cloud around it meant anything, it nevertheless remained uncorroded. Heating the wire seemed all that the device accomplished—the agent refused to believe that the ion cloud was intense enough to help either in action or perception. The light and heat radiated were inconsiderable, but—wait! Perhaps that was it—perhaps this machine had eyes!

  The agent examined the electrical device more closely, and discovered that part of its uncharged structure consisted of a roughly paraboloidal piece of metal, which must certainly have been able to focus light into a beam of sorts.

  A few moments later, it became evident that it did just that. The agent’s body was exposed in several places in this part of the ship, and, time after time, one part would be struck by radiance, while the rest were in more or less complete darkness. Furthermore, a few minutes’ observation showed that when the machine moved at all it followed the direction in which the light beam happened to be pointing at the time.

  Sometimes it did not move, though the beam kept roving around the chamber. The agent deduced from that one of two things. Either the device had several eyes, or the one it had was movable over virtually the entire sphere of possible directions. The thing was making an orderly survey of the interior of the space in which it was trapped. But it was carefully refraining from touching anything except the floor on which it stood.

  That portions of this floor consisted of the agent’s tissue made no difference to either party—as far as either knew. But the agent began to wonder how much of the exposed machinery of the ship would be comprehensible to the presumed distant observer.

  Still more, he wondered how this presumed observer maintained contact with his machine. There was no energy whatever—in any form that the agent could detect—getting through his hull, either to or from the trapped machine. A minor exception to this might be the pressure waves generated by the stones striking his hull. But he had already failed to find in these blows any pattern at all, much less one which could be correlated with the actions of the machine inside.

  Naturally, the thought that this might be an automatic device, similar to the mole robots, could hardly help occurring to the Conservationist. If this were the case, its present behavior was far more complicated than that of any such machine he had ever encountered. But hold on—he had already faced the implications inherent in that idea. So the technology of this world was more advanced, in some ways, than his own. There were still things the natives didn’t know—things which would most certainly hurt them. Any concern he might have felt about himself was drowned in this larger solicitude.

  He wondered whether he could so operate any of his own machinery to or through his prisoner, so as to convey a message of any sort. Certainly, if it used light as a vehicle of perception, it could detect motion on the part of the relays. For example—they were larger by quite a margin than the wave length of the radiation the hot wire was emitting in greatest strength.

  There were several hundred thousand of them in the dozen square yards exposed to the direct-line vision of the captive, which should be enough to form some sort of pattern. Some sort of pattern, that is, if their owner could figure out how to operate them without making the ship misbehave.

  He was still pondering this problem, along with the question of just what would be a meaningful pattern to the operators of the machine, when his attention was once more drawn to the outside.

  The machines there seemed to have taken up a definite course of action. They had once more approached the hull, and were doing something to it which he could not at first quite understand. It quickly enough became evident, however. The brightness of the images he was receiving through the eyes, to which he had naturally been paying very little attention, began rapidly to decrease.

  Within a minute or so, the lenses ceased to transmit at all.

  His tactile “sense” consisted in part of the ability to analyze the response of his hull to the vibrating impulses he applied to it. If such impulses were followed faithfully he could be sure that there was no mass in contact with the surface. On the other hand, if they were damped to any extent, he could form a fairly accurate idea of the amount and even some of the physical properties of such a mass.

  In the present case, he discovered almost instantly that his eye lenses had been covered with a most peculiar substance. It not only adhered tenaciously to them, but seemed to absorb without noticeable reaction the same vibrations which had sent the soil dancing out of his way like summer chaff in a breeze. This did not particularly bother him, since the eyes were nearly useless for watching the machines anyway. But he kept trying to shake the material off, while he considered the implications of the move.

  One was that the machines depended, far more heavily than he had suspected, on the sense of sight, and must suppose that he did likewise. Another was that they were about to take measures which they did not want observed by him. He did not worry seriously about anything they could do to his ship, but he began to listen very carefully for their footsteps all the same.

  Another possibility was that they simply did not want him to fly away with the captive machine. To a race dependent upon sight, no doubt the idea of flying without it was unthinkable. He wondered, fleetingly, whether he should move a few hundred yards, just to see what effect the act had on them. Then the actions they were already performing caught his attention, and he shelved the notion. He became alarmed at what appeared to be an abrupt change of plan.

  Two of the things were leaving the neighborhood, in a direction more or less toward the other electromagnetic radiator. Making allowances for the difficulty these machines apparently suffered in traveling over uneven terrain, the agent felt reasonably sure that this was their goal. The other two remained near him and settled down to relative motionlessness, as nearly as he could tell. He comforted himself with the thought that whatever plan they were attempting might demand some time to mature.

  Perhaps the departing machines were going after additional equipment, though it appeared their goal might be attained more rapidly by sending other machines from the control point. However, it was quite possible that no others were available—such was likely enough to be the case on any of his own worlds, where only one individual in five hundred was machine-equipped, and over half of these were incapable of locomotion. Pride swelled in him at the thought, but he dismissed it as unworthy.

  His soliloquy was interrupted by something that had not happened to him since his ship had first lifted from the world on which it had been built. The incident itself was minor, but its implications were not. The hull vibration, which he was still applying near all of his above-ground eyes, stopped near one of them.

  He had not stopped it. The command for the carefully planned motion pattern was still flowin
g along his nerves. It should have been inducing the appropriate response in a fairly large group of relays. Something had gone wrong, and it produced a sudden crisis in his thinking.

  The ship, of course, was equipped with a fantastic number of test-circuits, and he began to use them for all they were worth. It took him about three milliseconds to learn a significant fact. All the inoperative relays were close to, or actually within, the compartment where the captive machine was located. Closer checking showed that the trouble was mechanical—the tiny switches were being held in whatever position they had been in when the trouble struck.

  Worse, the paralysis was spreading. It was spreading with a terrifying rapidity. The basic cause was not hard to guess, even with the details far from obvious. The agent instantly unsealed the door barring his captive from the outside world, and felt thankful that the controls involved still functioned.

  The thing lost no time in getting out, and the pilot lost even less in getting the door securely sealed after it. For the time being, he completely ignored what went on outside, while he strove to remedy the weird disability. He was far from consoled by the thought, when it struck him, that he had proved what he wanted to know.

  Something solid had blocked the relays—had, more accurately, formed around their microscopic moving parts. Whatever it was must have come in gas form for he would have felt the localized weight of a liquid, even inside. Most of the interior of his ship, as well as his own flesh, was still far colder than the planet on which he was lying.

  Quite evidently one of the exhaust products of the captive machine, released as a gas, had frozen wherever it touched a cold surface. It might have been either water or one of the oxides of carbon. The agent neither knew nor cared. He proceeded to run as much current as possible through all his test-circuits, with the object of creating enough resistance-heat to evaporate the material.

  The process took long enough to make him doubt seriously that his conclusion could be correct. But eventually the frozen relays began to come back into service. He could have speeded up the process, by going up a few miles and exposing his interior to the lowered pressure, and he knew enough physics to be aware of the fact.

  It spoke strongly for the shock he had received that he never thought of this until evaporation was nearly complete. It was lucky for his peace of mind that he never realized what the liquid water formed in the process might have done to his circuits. Fortunately, formed as it had been, it contained virtually no dissolved electrolytes and caused no shorts.

  He realized, suddenly, that he had permitted his attention to stray from the doings of the nearby machines for what might be an unwise length of time, and at once resumed his listening. Apparently, they were still doing nothing. No seismic impulses were originating in the area where he had last perceived them. That eased his mind a trifle, and he returned to the problem of the material covering his eyes.

  This stuff seemed to be changing slightly in its properties. Its elasticity was increasing, for one thing, and the change seemed to be taking place more rapidly on the side from which the air currents were coming. The agent could think of no explanation for this. He tried differing vibration patterns on the stuff, manipulating them with the skill of an artist—but a long time passed before he had anything approaching success.

  At last, however, a minute flake of the material cracked free and fell away—and could really see! He could actually make out what was going on!

  X

  TO UNDERSTAND what had gone on outside the alien to cause all this on a purely human plane, an observer of the whole would have had to go back to an earlier event entirely of Truck’s doing.

  As Truck spoke, something very definitely was happening to the visitor from outer space. Following the young athlete’s pointing forefinger, the Parsons saw, with astonishment, that a section of the globular metal body was slowly, steadily opening—or was being opened.

  It was circular, perhaps two feet in diameter, and its opening looked unexpectedly simple for a creature, or a machine, capable of interstellar flight. A section of the full, or outer body simply dropped open and outward—apparently on hinges.

  “Like dropped underwear,” Candace murmured, to be instantly quelled by a severely reproving look from her husband.

  His expression remained firm.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he told her. “It seems too simple. But consider this. Any alien using such a device on a strange world must be damned well capable of protecting itself.”

  “Maybe it’s an airlock,” suggested Truck.

  “Maybe,” said Hal Parsons, “but don’t bet on it. It could be anything. We don’t know enough about the nature of this—” He stopped, as Candace clutched his sleeve. “What is it, baby?” he demanded.

  “Hal honey,” she said, panic returning to envelope her like a torrent of water far colder than the rain. “Hal, honey, do you suppose it’s coming out?”

  “It!” Truck suggested. “Why not them. Why not some of those little green men that flyboy was talking about.”

  Parsons stared apprehensively at the opening in an effort to penetrate the darkness within. But he could see nothing—not even a shadow advancing toward them or hovering motionless in the gloom. He looked oddly at Truck and then began to lead his wife toward the jeep.

  “Come on, Candace,” he said.

  “We’d better get the rifle from the trailer—just in case.”

  For an instant, Candace hesitated. She was a self-reliant, wholly modern girl, proud of her ability to handle herself as well as any man, in almost any situation. But her self-reliance crumbled when she looked again at the alien—huge, globular, impervious—with the ominous, gaping door part way up one of its flanks. This, obviously, was not a situation to be handled with reckless assurance.

  She said, “Okay, honey,” in a very meek voice.

  Parsons said, “Better stick with us, Truck.”

  “I want to see what’s going on,” said MacLaurie, in his easy drawl. “Anyway, I don’t figure our little pal here means any harm.”

  “Just how do you figure that?” Parsons asked sharply.

  “If it was going to hurt us, it would have done so long before this,” was Truck’s sage reply.

  “Don’t be foolish, Truck,” said Candace in an urgent tone. “It may have been merely softening us up before it opened that door.”

  Truck silenced her with, “I’ve a hunch you’ve been reading too many science-fiction stories lately, Candace.”

  “Hold tight then until we get back,” Hal commanded. To his wife, in a lower voice he said, “I don’t like leaving him here, either. But his mind’s made up, and someone had better keep an eye on it.”

  “If that’s all he does,” murmured Candace.

  “What’s that?” her husband demanded. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, honey,” she said. But so great was her concern that she glanced several times over her shoulder while en route to the trailer. Fortunately for her peace of mind each time she looked the situation remained unchanged. Truck still stood there, his hands at his waist, his head cocked a little on one side as he regarded the menacing wide-open door.

  “Better hurry, honey,” she urged as they neared the jeep. “Something we can’t cope with may happen any moment now!”

  “So far, damn little has happened,” grunted Parsons. “I’m beginning to wish it would do something menacing. This stalemate is getting on my nerves.”

  “I’m not so much worried about what it may do,” said Candace. “At least, not right now. It’s what Truck may do that’s got me frightened.”

  Hal looked at her skeptically. But he speeded up his motions nevertheless. He got the canvas-covered Winchester out from under the trailer tarpaulin, stuffed a box of bullets into a pants’ pocket and began hurrying back towards the hillside almost at a run.

  They were two-thirds of the way towards their destination when Candace, tagging and slipping a little at his heels, again gripped his arm
convulsively and said, “Hal, he’s going to do it. He’s going insider

  Parsons stopped dead in his tracks and yelled, “Truck! Stay where you are! Do you hear me? Don’t go any nearer until we get there!”

  As they watched, appalled, Truck MacLaurie looked over his shoulder at them. For a moment his grin flashed in the rain. Then moving with a deliberation that masked the speed he was employing—a trick his opponents on the football field had learned to rue, he moved directly toward the round, open door in the alien’s flank, hoisted himself up to it, wriggled a moment or two and vanished inside.

  A moment later, his deep voice rumbled at them through the rain. “I’m all right!” he shouted. “Don’t worry!”

  It was then that, without sound or warning, the open door in the alien’s flank swung shut, sealing Truck inside.

  Hal and Candace exchanged appalled glances and began to run toward the ship. Candace sprinted, stumbling and gasping, directly toward it. She would have hammered on the alien metal barrier with her fists had Hal not restrained her.

  “Easy,” he said in tones that suggested calmness maintained only by the greatest effort. “Easy, baby. There’s no sense of all of us walking into a trap until we see what can be done.”

  “But I can hear him!” she cried. And at that moment audible sounds of something banging on the inside of the alien trap could be heard.

  “Hold it, honey,” said Hal. He continued to restrain her until, finally, she gave up, her face white with horror beneath the mud that caked it. Then he picked up a couple of loose stones and fired them, hard, one after the other at the portion of the hull where the door had opened.

  “I tried to tell you we shouldn’t have left him,” she burst out, looking wildly around for some stones to throw herself. “Honey, we’re responsible for him. We should have made him come with us.”

  “It’s a little late for that now, baby,” said Parsons, breathing heavily as he let fly with another stone.