by Hal Clement
“Hars, what’s the matter?”
The pilot was actually embarrassed. “Well, Captain, I was wondering whether we could find a slope and get up in air for a little while. We could do with some rest, and it would be better than under methane. I didn’t realize I was thinking out loud.”
Bartlennan thought quickly. Shortage of air—hydrogen—at this point was not actually as serious as shortage of food, but it was certainly much more uncomfortable. It didn’t much matter where they were if one of the rock settlings took place near them. They were as likely to be found in one place as another, after all; and if they really couldn’t get out from under—
“All right. Change the setup. Hars and I will travel side by side, a rope length apart. Sherrer will be at my right, Karondrasee at Hars’ left. It will be harder to keep the line straight, but we’ll be more likely to find an upslope.”
It took some time to rearrange the safety lines, but they were slightly rested when it was done and they were advancing in the new formation. It was harder to travel, however, since they could not be as much help to each other. Even the captain was ready to call a halt where they were when the rope connecting Karondrasee and Hars dragged on the bottom.
There was some sort of bulge. Hope of a sort began to rise as they examined and found a continuing slope. A solid one, of rock. The hope was mostly for comfort, not rescue, but the comfort was that of fresh air. They crowded together and began to creep upward. The slope was very shallow, and not difficult to climb even in their conditions; and for a while all feared that it might not reach the surface.
Fortunately, all but Hars had to stop for rest before they reached surface. With the four huddled together to rest, there was enough slack to let the pilot crawl a little ahead of the others, and in less than five body lengths he broke the surface.
With his encouragement and help, the other three also emerged into air, and relaxed gratefully.
Nearly starved, they were really in no state for rest to do them much good, but they could still enjoy the sensation. Even Barlennan waited much longer than he should have before issuing the order to go on. His mind and conscience argued against giving up, but he knew that more time in air would not really help. Another rock shudder emphasized this, but still he hesitated. Lying still felt so good—
So he had not yet spoken, and not yet decided to, when airborne sounds reached them.
Voices. Not really understandable yet, but obviously broken up into words this time. The four hooted in unison, reflexively. Shorter wave lengths don’t diffract so badly, and sound waves are much shorter in air.
The only real question then was whether Dondragmer’s people would climb down or Barlennan’s climb up, and that was easy to settle.
The distance wasn’t great; the mate’s party could see how close they were to river level, but the captain’s group lacked the needed strength. The members of the net above were out in daylight, able to look down at the spaces below, where they would descend into unknowable depths. Well, not really unknowable; the captain and the others obviously weren’t very far down, but the word was down. But they could climb down.
The mate, still attached to four safety lines, descended with food, and after half a dozen false turns managed to deliver it. Then, one at a time, rested and fed, each with three lines firmly attached to him, the balloonists were partly hauled and partly climbed up to the web. A sailor brought the lines back down for the next rescue, and another one for the next, and when one descended for the last time, he and Barlennan used two ropes apiece to get back to daylight.
There had been some debate about the communicator and the tracker.
The former had been hauled up ahead of the captain on a pair of carefully fastened lines, but the inertial equipment had gone up even earlier, still fastened to Hars. It remained attached to him until everyone had crossed the river to the other communicator; he refused to abandon the duty until the whole group, except the ones still at the rocket, was together.
The Flyers understood, they thought. They certainly didn’t complain. All Barlennan could overhear and understand was another of their theoretical arguments.
“Look, there’s only one explanation. We know that rock is sedimentary—”
“Know?”
“Well, it’s pretty obvious. One of the layers of the plateau, just below the foot of the cliff, has to be ammonia. That’s mineral there. A lot of it was melted by the falling rock, and the Mesklinites smelled it—”
“Smelled something like it.”
“What else could that be?”
“How do I know? I’m not a Mesklinite.”
A third voice cut in. “The two of you are just gabbling. We haven’t seen a layer that looked like ammonia—it’d be white, like ice.”
“It would be ice.”
“All right, but we haven’t seen any.”
“It’s underground at river level.”
“But how could—?”
“That’s what I’m saying! We’ve got to check—I mean, Barlennan’s people have to check—”
“How? They don’t have drills, or shovels, or picks, and you can’t expect a Mesklinite to go tunneling, do you?”
The captain had never heard this verb, but context suggested its meaning, rather too clearly.
“Why not? Barlennan’s had lots of time underground now, and he’s still all right.”
“How do you know he is?”
The captain started to tune out, as usual. Just another of the theory-based wrangles among Flyers, which of course might lead to something later.
Then he saw what the something probably would be. The Flyers were very persuasive beings—
Any being with muscles and a nervous system complex enough to consider alternatives consciously can shudder. Dondragmer was obviously listening, too.
Addendum To Whirligig World
When Mission Of Gravity was finished in late 1952,1 had a perfectly honest degree in astronomy. I nevertheless made a few mistakes, including one in basic physics; I said, somewhere in the story, that the Bree would sail faster with the wind behind her. Predictably, a sailor caught that one.
More seriously, I erroneously took for granted that the figure of rotation which was Mesklin would be an oblate spheroid, and did all the gravity calculation (on a slide rule) assuming that most of its mass was degenerate matter very close to the center. John Campbell told me when he accepted the story that a mathematician had told him that Euler must be spinning in his grave, but 1 still don’t know what theorem I violated.
More usefully, a few years after the story was published, members of the M.I.T. Science Fiction Society (MITSFS) managed to get enough computer time to figure out more nearly what the planet’s shape would be. They were presumably right; all I could console myself with was the realization that I had written the story to give pleasure to people even if that wasn’t quite the specific pleasure I’d had in mind.
I eventually did get a computer, wrote a relevant program in BASIC and came up with an object looking more like the discus used in field and track sports—an object fairly sharply curved at the poles, much flatter in the mid-latitudes, and coming almost to a real edge at the equator. With arbitrarily chosen three gs at the equator, the polar gravity came out to only about 275, as I recall.
I assume that readers with appropriate background knowledge and computer hardware will want to check this. Maybe someone will want to write a book on the things that minor differences in the basic assumptions will do to Mesklin’s shape.
Personally, I wound up doing forty years of high school teaching instead of being an astronomer essentially because of my mathematical weaknesses.
Hal Clement
Milton, MA
March 1999
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Earlier Astounding/Analog stories of Mesklin and Barlennan include Mission of Gravity [April-July 1953] and Star Light (June-September 1970].)
2003
OFFICE POLITICS
The major was no mo
re nervous than usual as he approached the office door. The report he carried should, after all, be quite satisfactory even to Colonel Frooaad, and should be short enough to minimize the risk of the latter’s losing his temper. Not until he was inside the door did Major Slevk begin to worry.
The colonel was watching the door closely, and picking his teeth with his blade of rank. This almost certainly meant that he was hoping to find something to justify losing his temper.
Slevk concealed his reaction as best he could, approached the desk, and saluted.
“You will be glad to learn, Sir, that we have actually captured one of the enemy.”
The colonel laid the dagger on his desk, to Slevk’s relief.
“I had heard a rumor. But captured? Actually alive?”
“At the time, sir. We were able to question him at length. He was not loaded with explosives; he was escorted to the question room by enough private soldiers to justify his sacrifice as cost-effective, had he been suicidal, and you will recall that the Earth people seem willing to destroy themselves if they can take a reasonable number of us with them.”
“Was anything useful learned in the interrogation?”
“We think so, sir, but the interrogators told me emphatically that they would appreciate your judgement on their conclusions.”
“The evidence was ambiguous, then?”
“Yes, sir. Even before the questioning, the situation had peculiar elements.”
“Specifics!” Frooaad’s voice was sharper, and the major took a fresh grip on his courage.
“Unlike the usual human response of blowing up or incinerating themselves when faced with capture, this one arose from a hiding place in front of our advancing squad, raised his hands apparently to show that he was unarmed, and permitted our squad to approach him.”
“All at once?” Frooaad was fingering the blade again.
“No, sir. Orders were strictly obeyed. He was surrounded at a safe distance, approached and searched by the lowest ranking private in the squad, shackled, and led back toward the rear with no other squad members getting any closer. Outside the interrogation office he was searched more carefully by a single expert, and nothing dangerous was found on him or inside him. We had to assume that he would not consider it cost-effective merely to destroy a fluoroscope, and it seemed most unlikely that he would realize the value of the instrument’s operator.”
“I assume he proved familiar with at least one of the human languages we learned before landing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then what were these ambiguous items that were learned from him? And were the interrogators reasonably sure they understood what he said?”
“That is the problem, sir. His words were intrinsically unbelievable, but he could not be persuaded to alter their implications. He claimed that he had deliberately surrendered so that he could persuade us verbally to cease our ‘unprovoked’ attack on his world. He insisted that he believed that war was never worth while, and hoped to convince us of this unrealistic notion. He claimed to have no idea why we had attacked his planet, and appeared honestly ignorant of why his people always destroyed their bodies when facing capture. He insisted that his fellows must be insane. There was only one obvious reason for his holding such an opinion, and this suggested that nothing useful would be learned from him. The interrogators approved the traditional standard practice of returning him to the capturing unit for the regular picnic. It was, after all, the first such event on Earth.”
“And that was the end of it? You have wasted my time with a routine report of no obvious value?” The colonel was toying with his dagger again. “You realize you are not of sufficient rank to have the right to defend yourself in a duel, of course. Or is there something you have so far omitted?”
“The interrogators have reported a very surprising fact, sir, which was not directly learned from the captive. There were over twenty members of the capturing squad who were still alive to take part in the picnic. About a third of them were within a tenth of a year of finishing their draft terms. Not only these, but every other member of the squad signed up for another combat tour immediately after the picnic.”
“Is there an explanation for this admittedly surprising event?”
“A tentative one, sir, on which they would like your opinion.”
“And?”
“It is suggested, sir, that the flesh of these human beings is even more addictive than our own. While none of our anesthetics seems to work on these Earth beings, it seems worth going to even more lengths to capture some of them alive, so that this hypothesis may be tested.”
The colonel had put his dagger down once more as he listened, and was silent for several seconds, his fingers tapping slowly and thoughtfully all around the blade. The major took in a few breaths, with some difficulty. The office door behind him opened, but he knew better than to look away from his superior.
Frooaad finally spoke. “I will consider the suggestion, which I admit is reasonable. You are dismissed. Yes, sergeant?”
“Unofficial visit, Colonel. I have been asked by the members of my squad to express their appreciation of the honor granted by your presence at their recent picnic, and their hope that you had a most pleasant time.”
“You may thank them, and assure them that my visit was most enjoyable. You are dismissed. Major!”
Slevk knew before he turned around that the dagger would be picking his commander’s teeth again, but discipline won.
