Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  The test certainly had to be made, and the Esket’s transmitters must surely be possible tools for the purpose. As far as Barlennan knew, these were still active. Naturally, care had been taken that no one enter their field of view since the “loss” of the cruiser, and it had been long since any human being had made mention of them. They would have been shuttered rather than avoided, since this obviously left the Mesklinites at the place much greater freedom of action; but the idea of the shutters had not occurred until after Destigmet had departed with his instructions to set up a second Settlement unknown to the human beings.

  As Barlennan remembered, one of the transmitters had been at the usual spot on the bridge, one in the laboratory, one in the hangar where the helicopters were kept—these had been carefully arranged to be out on routine flights when the “catastrophe” occurred—and the fourth in the life-support section, though not covering the entrance. It had been necessary to take much of the equipment from this chamber, of course.

  With all the planning, the situation was still inconvenient; having the lab and life rooms out of bounds, or at best possible to visit with only the greatest care, had caused Destigmet and his first officer, Kabremm, much annoyance. They had more than once requested permission to shutter the sets, since the technique had been invented. Barlennan had refused, not wanting to call human attention back to the Esket but now—well, maybe the same net could take two fish. The sudden blanking of one, or perhaps all four, of those screens would certainly be noticed from above. Whether the humans would feel any inclination to” hide the event from the Settlement there was no way of telling; one could only try.

  The more he thought it over, the better the plan sounded. Barlennan felt the glow familiar to every intelligent being, regardless of species, who has solved a major problem unassisted. He enjoyed it for fully half a minute. At the end of that time, another of Guzmeen’s runners caught up with him.

  “Commander!” The messenger fell into step beside him in the nearly dark corridor. “Guzmeen says that you should come back to Communications at once. One of the human beings—the one called Mersereau—is on the screen. Guz says he ought to be excited, but isn’t, because he’s reporting something going on at the Esket—something is moving in the laboratory!”

  X

  Keeping in phase with Barlennan as he switched directions took some doing, but the messenger managed it. The commander took his continued presence for granted.

  “Any further details? When, or what was moving?”

  “None, sir. The man simply appeared on the screen without any warning. He said, ‘Something is happening at the Esket. Tell the commander.’ Guzmeen ordered me to bring you back on hurricane priority, so I didn’t hear any more.”

  “Those were his exact words? He used our language?”

  “No, it was the human speech. His words were—” the runner repeated the phrase, this time in the original tongue. Barlennan could read no more into the words than had been implicit in the translation.

  “Then we don’t know whether someone slipped up and was seen, or dropped something into the field of the lens, or—”

  “I doubt the first, sir. The human could hardly have failed to recognize a person.”

  “I suppose not. Well, some sort of detail should be in by the time we get back there.

  There wasn’t, however. Boyd Mersereau was not even on the screen by the time Barlennan reached Communications. More surprising, neither was anyone else. The commander looked at Guzmeen suspiciously; the communication officer gave the equivalent of a shrug. “He just went, sir, after that one sentence about the lab.”

  Barlennan, mystified, squeezed the “attention” control.

  But Boyd Mersereau had other things on his mind. Most, but not quite all, were concerned with events on Dhrawn, but not with the Esket; and there were a few matters much closer than the giant star-planet.

  The chief of these was the cooling down of Aucoin. The planner was annoyed at not having been brought into the exchanges between Dondragmer and Katini, and the captain and Tebbetts. He was inclined to blame young Hoffman for going ahead with policy-disturbing matters without official approval. However, he did not want to say anything which would annoy Easy; he regarded her, with some justification, as the most nearly indispensable member of the communications group. In consequence, Mersereau and others received some fallout from the administrator’s deflected ire.

  This was not too serious, as far as Boyd was concerned. He had years before pigeonholed the pacifying of administrators along with shaving—something which took up time but did not demand full attention, and worth doing at all only because it was usually less trouble in the long run. The real attention-getter, the thing which kept even news from the Esket in the background, was the state of affairs at the Kwembly . . .

  By himself he might have been moderately concerned, but only moderately. The missing Mesklinites weren’t close personal friends of his. He was civilized enough not to be any less bothered by their loss than if they had been human, but it was not as though they were his brothers or sons.

  The Kwembly herself was a problem, but a fairly routine one. Land-cruisers had been in trouble before, and so far had always been extricated sooner or later. So, all in all, Mersereau would have been merely absorbed, not bothered, if left to himself.

  He was not left to himself. Benj Hoffman felt much more strongly about the whole matter, and had a way of making his feelings clear. This wasn’t entirely by talking, though he was perfectly willing to talk. Even when silent he empathized. Boyd would find himself discussing with Dondragmer the progress of the melting-out plan, or the chances of another flood in terms of their effect on the missing helmsmen, rather than with reasonable and proper professional detachment. It was annoying. Beetchermarlf and Takoorch, and even Kervenser, just weren’t that central to the work, and the real question was the survival of the crew. Benj, sitting silently beside him, or, at most, interjecting a few remarks or questions, somehow managed to make objectivity seem like callousness; and Mersereau, who had never raised any children of his own, had no defense against that particular treatment. Easy knew perfectly well what was going on, but she did not interfere because she shared almost perfectly her son’s feelings. Partly because of her sex and partly because of her own background she felt a very intense sympathy for Beetchermarlf and his companion, and even for Takoorch. She had been caught in a rather similar situation some twenty-five years before, when a concatenation of errors had stranded her in an unmanned research vessel on a high-temperature, high-pressure planet.

  In fact, she went to greater lengths than Benj had dared. Dondragmer might—probably would—have sent out a ground party to the site of Reffel’s disappearance, since the location was fairly well known; but it was unlikely that he would have risked sending one of his three remaining communicators along. Easy, partly by straightforward argument in her own name and partly by using her son’s techniques to swing Mersereau to the same side, convinced the captain that the risk of not taking the equipment along would be even greater. This discussion, like so many of the others, was conducted in Aucoin’s absence, and, even as he argued with Dondragmer, Mersereau was wondering how he would justify this one to the planner. Nevertheless, he argued on Easy’s side, with Benj almost grinning in the background.

  With this claim on his attention, Boyd scarcely noticed the call from another observer that a couple of objects were moving across the screen which showed the Esket’s laboratory. He switched channels briefly and passed the word on to the Settlement, cutting back to the Kwembly without waiting for the end of the communication cycle. Later he claimed that he had never been really conscious of the Esket’s name in the report; he had thought of the message as a routine report from some observer or other, and his principal feeling had been one of irritation at being distracted. Some people would have snapped at the observer; Boyd, being the person he was, had taken what seemed to him the quickest and simplest way of disposing of the interrupt
ion. He had then quite genuinely forgotten the incident.

  Benj had paid even less attention. The Esket incident had occurred long before his arrival at the station, and the name meant nothing in particular to him, although his mother had once mentioned her friends Destigmet and Kabremm to him.

  It was Easy, of course, who had really reacted to the call. She scarcely noticed what Mersereau did or said, and never thought of telling Barlennan herself until more details came in. She moved immediately to a chair commanding a view of the “lost” cruiser’s screens and relegated the rest of the universe to background status.

  Barlennan’s return call, therefore, brought him very little information. Easy, to whom it was passed, had seen nothing herself; by the time she had reached her new station all motion had ceased. The original observer was only able to say that he had seen two objects, a reel of cable, or rope, and a short length of pipe, roll across the Esket’s laboratory floor. It was possible that something might have pushed them, though there had been no sign of life around the vehicle for several terrestrial months; it was equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that something had tilted the Esket to start them rolling. So said the observer, though he could not suggest specifically what might have tipped the monstrous machine.

  This left Barlennan in a quandary. It was possible that one of Destigmet’s crew had become careless. It was possible that natural causes might be operating, as the humans seemed to prefer to believe. It was also possible, considering what Barlennan himself had just been planning to do, that the whole thing was a piece of human fiction. The commander’s conscience made him attach rather more weight to this possibility than he might have done in other circumstances.

  It was hard to see just what they could expect to accomplish by such a fiction, of course. It could hardly be a trap of any sort; there could be no wrong reaction to the story. Complete mystification was the only possible response. If there were something deeper and more subtle involved, Barlennan had to admit to himself that he couldn’t guess what it was.

  And he didn’t like guessing anyway. It was so much easier to be able to take reports at face value, allowing only for the capabilities of the speaker and not worrying about his possible motives. At times, the commander reflected, the annoying straightforwardness of Dondragmer which made him disapprove of the whole Esket trick had something to be said for it.

  Really, all one could do was assume-that the report was a truthful one; that should, at least, cause anything underhanded on the human side to backfire on its planners. In that case, there was nothing to do except check with Destigmet. That was simply another message to send on the Deedee.

  Come to think of it, this was another potential check on the accuracy of the human reports. Certainly this one, whatever else could be said for or against it, showed signs of having come through quickly. Of course, Mrs. Hoffman was involved this time.

  The thought that Easy’s involvement made the situation a special one was probably the only idea Barlennan and Aucoin would have had in common just then. Of course, the latter hadn’t heard anything about the new Esket incident so far, and even Mersereau hadn’t really thought about it. He was still otherwise engaged.

  “Easy!” Boyd turned from his microphone and called across to her new station. “We seem to have convinced Don. He’s sending a vision set with his six-man search party. He wants to check his own estimate of the distance to where Reffel vanished, and assumes that we can pinpoint where his transmitter was. I know we could have at the time, but I’m not sure that would have been recorded. Do you want to take over here while I check up with the mappers, or would you rather go yourself?”

  “I want to watch here a little longer. Benj can go up, if he can stand leaving the screens for a minute.” She looked only half-questioningly at the boy, and he nodded and disappeared at once. He was gone rather longer than expected, and returned with a somewhat crestfallen appearance.

  “They said they’d gladly give me the map made from the first part of Reffel’s flight, before I had told him to go on out to where he could barely see the Kwembly. All they could say about where he disappeared was that it must be off that map, which covers the width of the valley for about a mile westward of the cruiser.”

  Mersereau grunted in annoyance. “I’d forgotten about that.” He turned back to his microphone to relay this not very helpful information to Dondragmer.

  The captain was neither particularly surprised nor greatly disturbed. He had already discussed his own estimate of the distance and direction involved with Stakendee, who was leading the search party.

  “I suppose the human beings were right about having you take the set along,” the captain had remarked. “It will be a nuisance to carry and I don’t much like risking its loss, but having it will cut down the risk of losing you. I’m still concerned about a repetition of the flood that brought us here, and the people up above can’t give us any definite prediction—though they seem to agree that there should indeed be a flood season coming. With the set, they’ll be able to warn you if they get any definite information, and you’ll be able to tell me, through them, if you do find anything.”

  “I’m not sure in my own mind what’s best to do if a flood does come,” said Stakendee. “Of course if we’re close to the Kwembly we’ll do our best to get back aboard, and I suppose if we’re really distant we’d make for the north side of the valley, which seems to be nearer. In a borderline case, though, I’m not sure which would be best; surviving the flood would do us little good if the ship got washed a year’s walk farther downstream.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” replied the captain, “and I still don’t have an answer. If we’re washed away again there’s the very large chance the ship will be ruined. I can’t decide whether we should take time to get life-support equipment out and set up on the valley side even before we go on with trying to melt her out. Your own point is a good one, and maybe I should have it there for your sake as well as ours. Well, I’ll solve it. Get on your way. The sooner this is done, the less we’ll have to worry about floods.”

  Stakendee gestured agreement, and five minutes later Dondragmer saw him and his group emerge from the main lock. The communicator gave the party a grotesque appearance; the block of plastic, four inches high and wide and twelve in length, was being carried litter fashion by two of the searchers. The three-foot poles were only two inches apart, supported on yokes at the mid-point of the eighteen-inch-long bodies of the bearers. The poles and yokes had been fashioned from ship’s stores; the Mesklinite equivalent of lumber, of which literally tons filled some of the store compartments, formed another of the incongruities which the nuclear-powered cruiser offered in such profusion.

  The search party rounded the bow of the Kwembly, which was facing northwest, and proceeded straight west. Dondragmer watched its lights for a few minutes as they wound around and over the boulders, but had to turn to other matters long before they were out of sight.

  Elongated figures were swarming over the hull working the radiator bar loose. Dondragmer had not liked to give the order for such destructive activity; but he had weighed as best he could the relative risks of doing it or of leaving it undone, and after reaching a decision he was not sufficiently human to keep on worrying whether or not it had been a good one. Just as most human beings thought of Drommians as typically paranoid, most Mesklinites who knew them at all thought of human beings as typically vacillating. Dondragmer, the decision made and the order given, simply watched to make sure that a minimum of damage was done to the hull. From the bridge he was unable to see over its curve to the point, far astern, where the conductors came through; he would have to go outside a little later to oversee that part of the work. Maybe it would be even better to take a vision set outside and let the human engineers supervise it. Of course, with the communication delay it would be difficult for them to stop a serious error in time.

  For the moment, though, the job could be left in Praffen’s nippers. The p
roblem the captain had mentioned to Stakendee needed more thought. The life-support equipment was easy to dismount, and he could spare the men to transport it without cutting into the ice-removal project too badly; but, if a flood came while it was ashore and carried the Kwembly a long distance, things might become awkward. The system was a closed-cycle one using Mesklinite plants, depending on the fusion converters for its prime energy. By its nature, it had just about the right amount of vegetation to take care of the crew—had there been much more, there would not have been enough Mesklinites to take care of the plants. It might be possible to carry part of it away and leave the rest, and expand each half to take care of the whole crew whenever circumstances forced the decision between ship and shore; it would be easy enough to make more tanks, but growing either culture up to a population sufficient to supply hydrogen for the whole crew might be a little tense on time.

  In a way it was too bad that all the communication went through the human station. One of the major and primary tasks of the Esket crew was to modify the old system, or to produce a new one, with much more flexibility in the number of people it could take care of; and for all Dondragmer knew, this end might have been accomplished months ago.

  His musings were interrupted by the communicator.

  “Captain! Benj Hoffman here. Would it be too much trouble to set up one of the viewers so that we could watch your men work on the melting project? Maybe the one on the bridge would do if you just slid it out to starboard and faced it aft.”

  “That will be easy enough,” replied the captain. “I was thinking perhaps it would be well for some of you people to watch the work.”

  Since the set weighed less than five hundred pounds in Dhrawn’s gravity, it was only its rather awkward dimensions which gave him trouble; he faced about the same problem as a man trying to move an empty refrigerator carton. By pushing it along the deck, rather than trying to pick it up, he worked it into a good position in a few seconds. In due course, the boy’s acknowledgment came back.