Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “Left. Slow—left more—slow slow.”

  “Slowing. Turning.” Pam was plainly addressing their guide. Then, “Close to the copse, Erni, I think it means.”

  “I think so too.” Icewall veered very slightly to the right until the big tank was scarcely a meter from the edge of the patch of growth, then even more slightly left so they were moving parallel to it.

  “Stop.”

  “That’s it, I guess,” Nic added his voice.

  “That’s it.” The guide omitted the man’s last two words. Its intelligence seemed to include a computerlike memory.

  “Now we wait?” asked Erni, free from his driving.

  “Wait. Observe.”

  “Is that dandelion seed anywhere near us yet?” asked Akmet. “That’s what ‘observe’ was last used on, as I remember. I’d say it was ten or twelve kilos back by now, unless the wind was really helpful.”

  “Observe.”

  No one had time to ask what. From somewhere near the middle of the copse a duplicate of the “seed” popped upward and began to gyrate like the other as the wind took it. It was followed by several others. All four pairs of eyes were fastened on them, some through the finders of video recorders. Akmet was giving a vocal report to Nest in all the detail he could; there was no video contact through the biological static even via satellite at this distance. Ben and others were asking for clarification, forcing Treefern to repeat himself with additional words. His wife approved; this should help the natives’ vocabulary.

  They were never able to decide whether the new seeds were a deliberate attempt to capture their attention. Neither of the Treeferns believed that the natives could possibly have worked out that much about human psychology, especially in view of what their own minds turned out to be like. Nic, and even more Erni, were much less sure of this. In any case, either accidentally, incidentally, or deliberately, their attention was held while branches writhed out of the tangle to the tank and its tug and began to feel their way around and over the vehicle bodies, among wheels and treads, around emergency controls meant only for bugs and rescuers.

  Both machines were enveloped in a loose, open cocoon of branches, some of them two or three centimeters thick, before anyone noticed. Again the question later was whether all Annie’s windows being covered last was intentional or not. After all, the natives could have inferred the purpose of windows from their experience with Jellyseal.

  Erni’s cry of surprise as he saw what was happening was followed by prompt startup and an effort to break out of the cocoon. Pam’s “Hold it!” preceded the guide’s voice by only a fraction of a second.

  “Stop. Observing.” Erni stopped, less because he cared about obeying a nonhuman than because the brief effort had shown they were in no obvious danger, the branches were not nearly strong enough to fight fusion engines. Many of them had pulled apart, and the attention of the watchers was now held by seeing these rejoin the main tangle, not apparently caring where the joining occurred.

  “Observing. Go later.” Pam spoke tentatively; the native seized on the new word.

  “Observe. Go later.” Erni’s hands dropped from the controls, but his attention did not return to the gyrating dandelion seeds. Neither did Nic’s. Both wondered how much of this their wives had experienced—there was, after all, no telling when the communication link had broken.

  It must have been farther Hotnorth, both realized. They had talked to their wives often, of course, and there had been descriptions of landscape with the sun almost above the horizon. The women had wondered why clouds seemed to be as numerous, large, and dense as ever in spite of the rising temperature. Not even Dominic had risked a guess at the time.

  “They’re hijackers! They’re playing with emergency drain valves!” Akmet, who had deployed a bug and was using its eye, cried suddenly.

  “They’ll be sorry,” answered Erni dryly. “Get your bug ready to close anything they open.”

  “Will it—they—whatever—let me close enough?”

  “They won’t be able to stop you, I’d guess. But I’ll be ready to roll if we have to.”

  Pam uttered just one word, for the benefit of their guide. “Danger!”

  There was no answer at once; perhaps the native had been unable to untangle her word from the two men’s transmissions. Pam waited a few seconds before repeating her warning. Still no answer from outside, or the city ahead, or wherever the messages were originating.

  “Those things are being controlled by the natives, the way the stuff that drove jelly was!” exclaimed Erni. Nic had an even wilder idea, but kept it to himself for the moment. For one reason, it seemed silly.

  A set of millimeter-thick tendrils had been concentrating on one relief valve. There was no instrument to tell the crew how much force was being applied, and the cock itself was safetied to prevent its being turned accidentally. The four people watched the bug’s monitor screen in fascination as the cotter pin was straightened, worked free, and dropped to the ground.

  The tendrils played further with the valve, and found almost at once which way it would move. The paraffin was not entirely melted yet, though the temperature had been rising; but there was quite enough liquid just inside the wall to find its way through the opening. The watchers saw a drop, and then several more, emerge and almost at once disappear as vapor.

  The results were not surprising. Pam controlled herself with no trouble—it was not yet clear whether sympathy was in order—and made sure the new word was understood.

  “Danger! Danger!”

  The association should have been clear enough. There was no flame at first, but the hydrocarbon produced volumes of grey and black smoke. It was anyone’s guess what compounds, from hydrogen fluoride on up, were being made. Within seconds the branches immersed in them appeared to stiffen; at least they ceased moving. Their colors changed spectacularly. No one had seen bright green, yellow, or orange on Halfbaked until now. The branches that turned yellow did flame a moment later and also went off in smoke, leaving no visible ash. None of the watchers was a chemist; none tried to guess what might be forming. Akmet did his best to paint a verbal picture for the listeners at Nest, but this was not detailed enough for an analysis.

  There was no objection, from inside or out, when Erni jerked the tug into motion and pulled away from the site. The bug stayed, but two of the witnesses preferred to use the windows with their broader field of view. Wind was spreading and diluting the smoke, but the stuff was still deadly; fully a quarter of the copse was now visibly affected.

  “Hydrogen compounds. Danger.” Pam knew the natives had the first word already in memory, and took the opportunity to add “compounds,” which might not be.

  “Are you after my job?” came Tricia’s voice, with no tone of resentment.

  “Just grabbing opportunity while I can see what’s happening.”

  “Hydrogen compounds. Danger. Observed.” The native was starting to handle tenses.

  “I guess they grow machinery the way we do. I wonder how much time and material that test cost them,” remarked Erni. Nic once again made no comment, possibly because there was no time; their guide resumed instructions almost at once.

  “Observed. Go.”

  “Which way?” asked Erni. There was no answer until Pam tried.

  “Right? Straight? Left?” The first and last words were known; the middle one might be inferred from context. Perhaps it was, perhaps the native was testing it.

  “Straight.”

  Erni obeyed. At the moment Annie was heading thirty degrees or so west of Hotnorth, the sun ahead and to their right. They had gone about half a kilometer when the command “Right” came. Erni altered heading about five degrees, and received a repeat order as he straightened out. This kept on until they were once more heading almost at the tiny visible slice of sun.

  Once convinced they had the direction right, Pam asked, “How far?”

  “Five thousand three hundred twenty-two kilometers.”

  No
one spoke, either in the tug or back at Nest. Senatsu had no need to point out that the distance and direction corresponded to the source of Jellyseal’s last communication, as well as the native transmissions. Halfbaked seemed much too large for this to be coincidence. They drove on, but the hours were now less boring.

  Nothing changed significantly except for the slow rising of the sun ahead of them. Patches of plant life were sometimes numerous, sometimes cactuslike, sometimes absent. Clouds varied at least as much. The ever-flickering lightning was less obvious in sunlight, but didn’t seem actually to be decreasing. Quakes made themselves felt, and sometimes forced changes in route not foreseen either by Senatsu or their native guide. Wind alternately roared and whispered, mostly from behind but sometimes gusting from other random directions violently enough for the driver to feel. Erni and Nic, with more experience than the others, wondered aloud what the return might be like with a much lighter tank in tow. The thought of having it blown from their control was unpleasant. So was the idea of ballasting it with some local liquid which might freeze before they reached Nest. The advisability of abandoning the tank was considered, both among the crew and with Ben; it would, after all, be small loss.

  The problem was tabled until the situation actually had to be faced, with some silent reservations in Nic’s mind. He was uneasy about waiting until decision was forced on them by experience, who sometimes starts her courses with the final exam.

  The Hotnorth route became no straighter as the sun rose higher. It became evident that the distance estimated by their guide had not included necessary detours. Whenever Tricia or Pam asked how far they had yet to go, the answer was larger than that obtained by subtracting the current odometer reading from the last advice.

  This of course made it more obvious than ever that the goal their guide meant was indeed the “city” where the women, as not even their husbands doubted now, must have died.

  This fact alone was enough to relieve the boredom; everyone, driving or not, remained alert for new and different phenomena. However likely it might be that it had occurred while unloading, the fact remained that something unforeseen had happened. This is no surprise in the exploration business, and explorers are strongly motivated to collect facts which may assist foresight. And, if at all possible, to make sense of them.

  Time stretched on. The four were in no danger as far as food, oxygen, water, and waste disposal were concerned—there was no shortage of energy. Nevertheless, conversation began to deal more and more often with the next drying-out session, which would include bathing facilities under one gravity. The tiny imperfections in recycling equipment were making themselves felt.

  It was known from Jellyseal’s reports that the last two thousand or so kilometers had been on fairly level ground where high speeds were reasonably safe. It was also known that this fact could change quickly on a world with county-sized tectonic plates. Luckily, the warning that it had changed came early. The original Quarterback crew had experienced it before, but this time the deeplights were no help. With the sun up and ahead of them, these were not in use. Only the increasing intensity of the temblors gave a clue to what was happening. Nic, who was driving when he recognized it, slowed abruptly.

  “Send a bug out ahead!” he ordered to no one in particular. “I think we’re near another epicenter!”

  “Maybe it’s behind us,” suggested the woman.

  “Maybe it is, and maybe to one side or the other, but I’d rather not take even a twenty-five percent chance of going over a half-meter ledge. If ground is rising ahead okay, we’ll see it in time; but I wouldn’t guarantee to spot a drop even with all four of us watching.”

  All four were, but it was Akmet guiding a servobug who located the active fault, and issued the warning which brought Candlegrease to a firm halt.

  An immediate question came from their guide, who seemed to have them under constant observation even though they had never located him, her, it, or them. Communication had improved a great deal in the last few weeks as the native(s) had joined increasingly in conversations between the vehicle and Nest.

  “Why stop now?”

  “Danger. Scarp here. Watch.” Pam turned to her husband. “Drive the bug over the edge, so they can see what happens.”

  Akmet obeyed, with spectacular results; the drop was a full meter and a half.

  “No hydrogen in the bug.”

  “Right. Bug smashed. Lots of—much—hydrogen in Candlegrease, and Candlegrease would smash worse. You want hydrogen, but not here.”

  “Right.”

  “We need to pass the scarp without smashing Candlegrease. How far must we go, and which way?”

  “How high the scarp for no danger?”

  “About fifteen centimeters.”

  “About unclear.”

  “Not exact. Don’t know exactly. That should be safe.”

  “Left forty-five kilometers to ten-centimeter scarp. Right twenty-seven. About.”

  “We’ll go right—wait.”

  Ben’s voice had cut in. “You have seismic thumpers in the bug hold. How about trying to flatten the slope? It might save time.”

  Erni brightened visibly. “Worth trying. We wouldn’t even have to waste bugs. Three or four sets of shots should tell us whether it’ll work or not.”

  Pam said tersely to their guide, “Wait. Observe.”

  “Waiting.”

  Actually, it didn’t wait. Erni was the first to notice; Nic and Pam were deploying bugs, and Akmet was occupied at the communicator adding details to the description of their surroundings—anything which might help Senatsu in her interpretation of radar and other microwave observations was more than welcome at Nest. Erni alone was looking through a window when one of the blackish blowing objects again made itself noticeable.

  It was far larger than the general run of jetsam to which everyone had gotten accustomed. This one had not been noticed before because, as they now realized, it had been riding far higher than the rest of the material, high enough so that only careful study would have revealed its shape. Now it came down abruptly, in a sort of fluttering swoop, and hung a few meters above the wreckage of the bug in a wavering hover. They knew now that they had seen it, or something like it, before.

  It had surprisingly slender wings, whose span Erni estimated as fully ten meters, and which bent alarmingly in the turbulence of the heavy atmosphere. They supported a cucumber-shaped body a meter and a half in length, with a three-meter tail projecting from what was presumably its rear. The tail was terminated by conventional empennage for aircraft, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, rudder and elevators. Erni’s warning cry called the others’ attention to the arrival, and the bugs stopped moving as their operators looked.

  “A glider!” exclaimed Akmet. “In this gravity?”

  “Think of the atmosphere,” pointed out Dominic.

  “I’m thinking strength of materials,” was the dry rejoinder.

  “I suppose that’s where they’ve been watching us from,” Pam added thoughtfully. “It gives us some idea of their size, anyway. I wonder how many it’s carrying.”

  “Or whether it’s remote controlled like Jelly,” Nic pointed out. Pam admitted she hadn’t thought of that.

  No windows or lenses,” Erni submitted.

  “Those wings seem to have very complex frameworks. They could also be microwave and/or radar antennae,” was Akmet’s remark, reminding the rest that conclusions were still premature and providing the morally requisite alternative hypothesis.

  “Let’s not bury the bug; it seems to want to look it over. We’ll shift fifty or sixty meters before we try to knock the cliff down.” Erni acted on his own words, driving the Annie and dragging Candlegrease to the right as he spoke. No one objected. Three bugs followed with their loads of thumpers.

  These were not simply packets of explosive; they were meant to be recoverable and reusable, though this was not always possible. They were hammerlike devices which did carry explosive charges, and wer
e designed to transmit efficiently the jolt of the blast on their tops to the substrate. Ten of them were set up a meter apart and equally far from the cliff edge; a similar row was placed a meter farther back, and a third at a similar distance. The bugs then retreated—they were cheap, but there seemed no point in wanton waste—and the thumpers fired on one command.

  No one expected the wave pattern they set up to be recognizable at Nest, thousands of kilometers away, through the endless seismic static, though the computers there were alerted for it. The desired result was a collapse of the cliff face, but no one noticed for several seconds whether this had happened or not. As the charges thundered, the wavering motion of the glider ceased and it dived violently out of sight, as far as anyone could tell almost onto the wreckage of the sacrificed bug. Pam saw it go, and cried out the news as the impact echoed the blast.

  “Watch out with the next shot! We don’t want to bury it!”

  It was clear enough there would have to be a next shot, quite possibly several.

  The face of the scarp had collapsed in satisfactory fashion, but the slope of rubble was still far too steep for safety. This, however, was not what surprised the four.

  “Bury still unclear.”

  Pam recovered almost at once. Either they were being observed from somewhere else, or the occupant of the glider had not been disabled by what should have been a seven-gravity crash, or—

  Nic’s own idea was gaining weight. So was Erni’s.

  “Observe new rock. Wait.” The woman’s answer to the native was prompt, and even Erni saw what she meant.

  “Observing. Waiting.”

  “Set up the next shot, boys.”

  The cliff had crumbled for a width of some twenty-five meters, to a distance varying from ten to fifteen meters back from its original lip. On the second shot the distance back more than doubled.