Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “All right. Thirty kilos ahead of where they are now, they should turn thirty degrees to the right. Another ten kilos will take them into a valley narrow enough to be scary; they should wait, if they feel any temblors, until things seem to quiet down, and then get through as fast as possible. I can’t resolve the area well enough to guess how fast that would be. Once through they can slow down if they want—there’ll be no risk of rockfalls for a while. Seventy more kilos will take them past the lake, and they can slant to the left as convenient. That will bring them back to the original path sooner or later. They can check whether there’s a river in it now. I’d like to know; I’ve seen plenty of what looked like little lakes, plus the big one at the native transmission site, but nothing that looked like flowing water—it wouldn’t be water, you know what I mean—so far. Got it?”

  Ben had been making a sketch map as Sen spoke. He used a polymer sheet and an electric stylus, rather than pencil and paper, since the Nest was also under seven-plus gees and its personnel had the same need of flotation as the drivers. Most of the personnel referred to their rest-and-recreation periods in the orbiting station farther out from the star as “drying-out” sessions, although much of the time in them was spent in baths. Recycling equipment is never quite perfect.

  “I think so.” Cloud held his product in front of the pickup—his station was more than a hundred meters from Senatsu’s—for her to check.

  “Close as I can put it,” she agreed. “See if you can get it through to the girls.” Nic and his companion lacked the visual connection, but listened with critical interest as the word went out. Ben didn’t have to include them in his transmission net, but it never occurred to him not to. Both drivers looked at each other and nodded slowly as the first message ended; the mental picture they got from it matched the one they had formed from Senatsu’s words. They didn’t actually stop listening as Ben set a record of his words repeating again and again to the relay/observation satellites, but most of their attention went back to the Quarterback as they resumed travel. They were now only an hour or so from Nest, but that was no reason to ease up on caution. They could die just as easily and completely at or inside the station’s entry lock as anywhere else on the world.

  Fallen rock areas. Risk-of-falling-rock regions. Puddles to be avoided—the liquid could easily be something that would freeze on wheels or in tracks if the temperature dropped a Kelvin or two. It could even be a subcooled liquid waiting to freeze on contact; such things did occur, and there was no way to tell just by looking. Stands of organisms which could be smashed through, but which would also produce liquid. Some of these were quite tall; Erni had never visited Earth and was not reminded of Saguaro Reserve, but most worlds with life have xerophytes. Usually the biggest growths were widely enough spaced to avoid easily, but some of the others grew in nearly solid mats.

  The men had often driven over the present area, and both noticed that some fairly tall specimens seemed now to cluster along the outward path they had crushed a day or so earlier. Possibly these used the remains of other organisms as nourishment. If so, they grew fast.

  Nothing corresponding to animal life ever showed itself, and many seriously doubted its presence; but some of the “plants” showed stumps where trunks, branches, or twigs had obviously been severed, though the detached fragments could seldom be seen. Tendrils would still be lashing, as though their owners had been disturbed by something moments before the Quarterback passed.

  Some of the Nest personnel were beginning to suspect that the number of plantlike growths and patches within ten or fifteen kilometers of the station was increasing as the days passed, but no one had yet made a careful study of the possibility. It might be interesting, but was not yet obviously important.

  Quartermaster was in a relatively open space when Ben’s voice caused Erni to cut drive reflexively.

  “They’re turning, she thinks.” The lack of nouns bothered neither driver; they didn’t even bother to ask, “Which way?” They simply floated at their stations and listened. The oxygen monitor in Quarterback recorded a sharp drop in breathing rate, but not for long enough to cause it to report an emergency. Cloud would probably not have been bothered by such an alarm anyway; unlike the monitor, he was human.

  Senatsu improvised quickly. The atmosphere was fairly clear around her target at the moment, and she was able to set up an interferometric tie between the tanker’s reflector and a nearby bright spot—a stationary one, she hoped. This let her measure the relative motions of the two within a few centimeters per second. It took less than half a minute to show that Jellyseal’s direction of motion was changing, and another minute and a half established that the machine had straightened out on a new course thirty degrees to the right of the earlier one.

  Coincidences do happen, but human minds tend to doubt even the real ones. For the first time in many hours, Quarterback’s drivers really relaxed. The remaining distance back to Nest was covered calmly and happily, though neither man remembered later much of the conversation which passed. With anyone.

  The reception lock had been readied for them, its water pumped into a standby tank, and the doors opened as they approached. Dominic eased the runabout inside and powered down as the door sealed. The two waited while water flowed back, pushing the local air which had entered with them out through the roof vents, and was tested. As usual, more time was needed to neutralize the sulfuric and sulfurous acids and to precipitate and filter out the fluorides formed when the air had met the liquid, but at last they could open their own outer seal, check their personal breathing kits, and swim to one of the personnel locks occupying two walls of the “garage.” Erni pointedly allowed Dominic to precede him into the main part of the structure, though the latter was not entirely happy at receiving attention due to age. Fifteen years out of fifty wasn’t that much of a difference, and he was the taller and stronger of the two.

  Of course, it was a relief to know the youngster had stopped worrying enough to be polite.

  Jellyseal had been about a month—more parochially, seven years—on its way to the native city, or settlement, or camp, or whatever it might be. By the end of the first day after the return of the no-longer-anxious husbands, it seemed likely that about as long would be needed for its return. Perhaps, Senatsu remarked hesitantly, a little bit less. “They’re making slightly better time right now than they did going out, but they’re still on the sun side, and will be for days yet. They can see better, after all. When they get to the real terminator we can find out how much they have to slow down. They’ll be easier for me to see in the dark, too.”

  This remark was no surprise to her listeners. The tanker of course carried corner reflectors for the microwave beams from the satellites, and with less reflected sunlight, and thermal and biological emission from the planet’s surface the contrast between vehicle and surroundings would be a lot better. All this except the greater plant emission on the day side had been discovered, and much of it predicted, long before. Nic and Erni, together as usual and just returned from a test drive, simply nodded at Senatsu’s report, and went on about their routine work.

  Much of this involved the preparation of the second tanker, already being called Candlegrease. Most of the staff were from colony worlds where conditions were still fairly primitive, and in any case human educators had had the importance of detailed history knowledge forced on them after the species began to scatter. Candles had no more disappeared from humanity’s cultural memory than had cooking—including making jelly.

  It had occurred to several people that towing a paraffin tank as a trailer might involve less trouble in a number of ways, and possibly even be safer for the crew, than driving one as a tank truck. It was taken for granted that another load of hydrocarbons would go to the natives, even though no one yet knew what value the material now coming back might turn out to have. There was a natural sympathy for the needs of researchers, and at the very least whatever it was couldn’t help but supply information about the
natives themselves. Jellyseal’s slow approach was being watched with interest by everyone, not just the waiting husbands.

  Nearly all the labored communication with the native city dealt with science; most of the linguistic progress that had been made so far had come from computer correlation between human vehicle motions, which the natives seemed able to observe even at great distances, and radiation emitted and received from the observing satellites. Discussions tended to consist of comments about orbital perturbations and precessions and their connection with the planet’s internal structure. Computers at Nest were gradually building a detailed map of Halfbaked’s inner density distribution and, more slowly, a chart of its mantle currents. Not surprisingly for a planet a hundred and seventy-seven times Earth’s mass, almost five times its radius, and over seven times its surface gravity, plate tectonics was occurring at what the planetary physicists considered meteorological speed; and the plates themselves were state- or city rather than continent-size. This made travel interesting and mapmaking an ongoing process. Since the establishment of Nest, one couple who had arrived as meteorologists had shifted over to crustal dynamics and been welcomed. They had been rather glad to make the change, though a little embarrassed at flinching from a challenge. Halfbaked’s atmosphere had a dozen major components, mainly but not only fluorides and oxides of sulfur and silicon, varying in completely chaotic fashion in relative amounts with time and location and ready to change phase with small variations in temperature, pressure, input from the sun, and each other’s concentration.

  Reliance on miracles was not, of course, a useful solution to any problem; but some of the staff occasionally, and of course very privately, felt slightly tempted. After all, the supernatural could hardly be much less useful at prediction than the math models produced so far.

  So what talk there was with the natives tended to be on the physical and material rather than emotional planes. Even mathematical abstractions, critical as they were to chemical discussion, were not progressing well. It was not even certain that the others knew—or cared—about the returning tanker.

  Tricia Whirley Feather, responsible for the final steps in guessing what the computer-derived translation attempts might actually mean, was just about certain the paraffin shipment had been received and appreciated. She had no idea whatever what, if anything, was being sent back in exchange. She was not at all certain that the concept of “exchange” was clear to the natives.

  But Candlegrease was nevertheless being grown and modified outside in the Halfbaked environment, where the more serious planning errors should show up quickly. An overpowered and overweight runabout, named Annie from another ancient literary source, and intended to tow the carrier, had been more or less finished. At least it was driveable and Erni and Dominic were testing it. There was little general doubt that these two would make the second trip, though Ben had some personal reservations. These were finally resolved almost by accident.

  The regular planetological work of the station was kept up, of course. More than two dozen satellites, in orbits out to about ten thousand kilometers above the surface, were cooperating with a seismic net slowly spreading out from Nest in working out the planet’s internal structure, surface details, and atmospheric behavior. Progress was at about two doctoral theses per hour, Ben Cloud estimated.

  And, presumably, each hour was also bringing Jessi Ware Icewall and Maria Flood Yucca seventy or eighty kilometers closer to their husbands. Jellyseal was making good speed.

  She was also getting close to the dark side.

  Actual construction of the new tanker system was going well enough, whenever decisions could be made; pseudolife techniques had taken most of the delays and difficulties out of actually making things. The problems of designing them remained, however. Ideas which seemed great by themselves would turn out to be incompatible with other equally wonderful ones when people attempted to grow them together. Whole assemblies which had promised well in computer simulation were embarrassing failures when grown and tried out. The communication lapse from Jelly was more than worrisome; her crew, who had the ordinary skills at pseudolife design even if they were not actually experts, presumably had far more knowledge relevant to the problem than anyone else on the planet.

  The supposedly straightforward problem of traction on unknown surfaces for a vehicle expected to tow several times its own weight was attaining Primary status. Erni, Dominic, and several other sets of drivers were kept busy on test runs which ran, too often, straight into a new problem. Sometimes they didn’t think of their wives for whole hours, though they never failed to check in with Senatsu when they came back in.

  “They’ll be seeing the last of the sun in an hour or two,” the analyst remarked at one of these meetings when the return distance still to be covered had shrunk to about thirty thousand kilometers geodesic. “They’re already a lot easier to spot, and don’t seem to be having any trouble finding their way. They’ve swerved two or three times, but never very far, and apparently for things like that fault of yours.

  That, by the way, is now about three meters high and seems to be still growing; it’s lucky it’s not on their return path. I’ve suggested that Ben send someone out to see how much horizontal shift it’s shown. I can’t tell from satellite—can’t get sharp enough ground motion details without a set of retroreflectors at a known location. Want to make the run?”

  Dominic shrugged. “Okay with us, if Ben calls it. We might as well be doing something.”

  “You are already, it seems to me. Well, we’ll let him call it. If he thinks you’ll be better off growing up with Candlegrease and Annie then someone else can go. Or no one, of course, if he doesn’t think it’s important enough.”

  Cloud, after only a second or two of thought, decided the information was important enough to rate a close look, and six hours later—people still had to sleep—Quarterback was heading away from Nest on a Hotpole bearing of about seventy degrees, with her usual drivers aboard.

  Some changes along the track could be seen almost at once. The tall growths which seemed to be springing up where vegetation had been crushed on their first trip out were now much taller. What had looked like two-meter stalks of deep red, dark brown, and dead black asparagus now resembled giant saguaros with, in many cases, the bases of what had been .separate stalks now grown together. A former clump or thicket now seemed like a single plant with multiple branches probing upward. Neither driver liked the idea of trying to plow through these, so progress became much slower and less direct. Sometimes they had to retrace some distance and try a new route. Eventually they settled for paralleling their former path rather than trying to follow it.

  They speculated over the chance that the organisms they had casually pulped the first trip out might be serving as food for saprophytes, and reported the idea back to Ben. Ten minutes later he told them to collect specimens. The xenobiologists also wanted data. Life on a virtually hydrogen-free world needed investigating. Especially life whose carbon content far exceeded ninety percent, as well as zero hydrogen.

  Collecting would have slowed them even more, but Erni and Nic decided to do it on the way back and rolled on, with the fence of organ pipes to their right and a relatively clear path ahead.

  The quakes produced by the still active fault made themselves felt well before the actual structure came in sight, and Quarterback was slowed accordingly. The operators stopped a short distance from the scarp, which was now, as Senatsu had reported, over two meters high. The big saprophytes, if that’s what they were, were not doing very well in the quake area, and no longer formed a barrier. It was therefore possible to follow the verge to the right for several kilometers; but no practical way down could be found. Neither man trusted the structure of their vehicle enough to drive over the edge under local gravity, even without the problem of getting back up. Also, even if the body had survived, the impact would probably have treated the men like dynamited fish.

  Servobugs—waldo-controlled pseudolife vehicle
s ranging from ten centimeters to half a meter in length and eight kilograms to nearly eight hundred in weight—were of course cheap, and they wasted one of the smallest and presumably sturdiest in a test drop over the edge. It did not survive, but the sacrifice was considered worthwhile.

  At this point Senatsu made another report, changing Ben’s plans and frustrating several xenobiologists. Jellyseal had passed out of the sunlit zone, and seemed to be having trouble finding its way. Guidance information had been sent from Nest as before.

  This time it was not followed.

  Requests to stop and perform specific maneuvers to show that Nest’s messages were being received also went unheeded, or at least unanswered.

  Ben, knowing his personnel, promptly suggested that Quarterback drop its present mission and try to intercept the tanker. After all, things might as well be official, and the husbands would certainly do this anyway. Senatsu and her helpers would do their best to provide guidance starting from the runabout’s current position.

  There was no need to go back to Nest for supplies, since all the vehicles had full recycling capacity and adequate energy sources. Knowing this had discouraged Cloud from even thinking of sending anyone but the two husbands. Upon hearing of the new behavior, and without even waiting for the first guidance messages, Erni swung their vehicle Hoteast—a quadrant to the right of the line toward Hotpole—and slanted away from the scarp. Haste was not exactly a priority with the two drivers, since they would be many days on the way whatever the machine driven by their wives might do, but there would be no delay. Worry was back in charge.

  The geodesic connecting the two vehicles of course no longer crossed into Hotside, rather to Ben’s annoyance. He wanted more detailed information about the problems of driving in sunlight, for use in future mission planning. His nature, however, was practical as well as sympathetic, and he made no suggestion to either Senatsu or the Quarterback’s drivers about slanting a bit to the left if opportunity occurred. Two or three times in the next weeks he had brief hopes that the only practical path the mappers could find might lead a little way into sunlight, but each time he was disappointed.