Iceworld

by Hal Clement

  From the control room port, Drai and the pilot watched Ken’s hasty trip back to the scene of his earlier trouble. He followed his earlier trail, which was still clearly visible, and carefully avoided touching the whiteness with any part of his armor. Arrived at the point where his cooling boots had been unable to boil their way down to solid ground, he stopped. The watchers were unable to make out his actions in detail, but apparently he set some object on the ground, and began rolling it about as the white substance evaporated from around it. Presently this ceased to happen, as its temperature fell to that of its surroundings; then Ken appeared to pick it up and separate it into two parts. Into one of these he scooped a quantity of the mysterious stuff, using an ordinary spoon. Then the two halves of the thing were fastened together again, and the scientist beat a hasty retreat toward the air lock.

  Drai was promptly headed for the inner door of the chamber, expecting to see what was going on; but the portal remained closed. He heard the hissing of air as pressure was brought up, and then nothing. He waited for some minutes, wondering more and more, and finally went slowly back to the control room. He kept looking back as he went, but the valve remained sealed.

  As he entered the control room, however, Lee had something to report.

  “He’s pumping the lock down again,” the pilot said, gesturing to a flaring violet light on the board. Both Sarrians turned to the port of the side toward the airlock, Lee keeping one eye on the indicator that would tell them when the outer door opened. It flashed in a matter of seconds, and the watchers crowded eagerly against the transparent panel, expecting Ken’s armored figure to appear. Again, however, nothing seemed to happen.

  “What in the Galaxy is the fellow up to?” Drai asked the world at large, after a minute or so. Lee treated the question as rhetorical, but did shift part of his attention back to the control board. Even here, however, fully five minutes passed without anything occurring; then the outer door closed again. Calling Drai’s attention to this, he looked expectantly at the pressure indicator, which obediently flashed a report of rising pressure. They waited no longer, but headed down the corridor side by side.

  This time Ken appeared to have finished his work; the inner door was open when they reached it. He had not permitted his suit to get so cold this time, it seemed; only a light dew dimmed its polish. Within a minute or so Lee was able to help him emerge. He was wearing a satisfied expression, which did not escape the watchers.

  “You found out what it was!” Drai stated, rather than asked.

  “I found out something which will let me figure out what it is, very shortly,” replied Ken.

  “But what did you do? Why did you go out twice?”

  “You must have seen me putting a sample into the pressure bomb. I sealed it in, and brought it inside so it would all evaporate and so that the pressure gauge on the bomb would be at a temperature where I could trust it. I read the pressure at several temperatures, and weighed the bomb with the sample. I had already weighed it empty — or rather, with the near-vacuum this planet uses for air inside it. The second time I opened the door was to let off the sample, and to make a check at the same temperature with a sample of the planet’s air — after all, it must have contributed a little to the pressure the first time.”

  “But what good would all that do?”

  “Without going into a lot of detail, it enabled me to find out the molecular weight of the substance. I did not expect that to be very conclusive, but as it happened I think it will be; it’s so small that there aren’t many possible elements in it — certainly nothing above fluorine, and I think nothing above oxygen. I’ll concede that I may be off a unit or so in my determination, since the apparatus and observing conditions were not exactly ideal, but I don’t think it can be much worse than that.”

  “But what is it?”

  “The molecular weight? Between eighteen and nineteen, I got.”

  “What has that weight, though?”

  “Nothing at all common. I’ll have to look through the handbook, as I said. Only the very rarest elements are that light”

  “If they’re so rare, maybe the stuff is not so important for life after all.” Ken looked at Drai to see if he were serious.

  “In the first place,” he pointed out, seeing that the other had not been joking, “mere rarity doesn’t prove that life doesn’t need it. We use quite respectable quantities of fluorine in our bodies, not to mention zinc, arsenic and copper. This other form of life may well do the same. In the second place, just because an element is rare on Sarr doesn’t prove it would be so on Planet Three — it’s a much bigger world, and could easily have held considerable quantities of the lighter elements during its original formation, even if they had been there as uncombined gases.” The group had been walking toward Ken’s room, where he had stored most of his apparatus, as they talked. Reaching it at this point, they entered. Ken draped himself without apology on the only rack, and began to flip through the pages of the chemical handbook, in the section devoted to inorganic compounds. He realized that his mysterious substance could contain carbon, but it certainly could not contain more than one atom per molecule, so there was no danger of its being a really complex organic material.

  There were, in fact, just eight elements likely to be present; and the laws of chemistry would put considerable restriction on the possible combinations of those eight. The lightest of these was hydrogen, of course; and to the hydrogen compounds Ken turned, since they came first in that section of the handbook.

  Drai had moved to a position from which he could oversee the pages that Ken was reading; the less interested or less excitable Lee stayed near the door and waited silently. He was more prepared than his employer for a long wait while the scientist made his search; and he was correspondingly more surprised when Ken, almost as soon as he began reading, suddenly stiffened in a fashion which indicated he had found something of interest. Drai saw the action as well.

  “What is it?” he asked at once. Both Ken and Lee realized that the “it” referred to the substance, not the cause of Ken’s interest; Drai assumed without thought that his scientist had found what he was seeking.

  “Just a moment. There’s something that doesn’t quite agree — but the rest is too perfect — wait a minute—” Ken’s voice trailed off for a moment; then, “Of course. This is under normal pressure.” He looked up from the book.

  “This appears to be the stuff — it’s almost completely unknown on Sarr, because of its low molecular weight— most of it must have escaped from the atmosphere eons ago, if it ever was present. According to this handbook, it should be liquid through quite a temperature range, but that’s under our atmospheric pressure. It’s quite reasonable that it should sublime the way it did in this vacuum.”

  “But what is it?”

  “One of the oxides of hydrogen — H2O, apparently. If it proves to be essential for the form of growth you’re interested in, we’re going to have a very interesting time handling it.”

  “We have cargo shells that can be kept at outside conditions, and towed outside the ship,” Drai pointed out.

  “I assumed you did,” replied Ken. “However, normal ‘outside’ conditions in the space near Planet One would almost certainly cause this stuff to volatilize just as it did from the comparatively faint heat radiating from my armor. Your shells will have to be sealed airtight, and you will, as I said, have an interesting time transferring their contents to any cave we may pick.”

  Laj Drai looked startled for several seconds. Then he appeared to remember something, and his expression changed to one of satisfaction.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure that one out. That’s what scientists are for, aren’t they?” It was Ken’s turn to look startled, though he had known Drai long enough by this time to have expected something of the sort.

  “Don’t you ever solve your own problems?” he asked, a trifle sourly. Drai nodded slowly.

  “Yes, sometimes. I l
ike to think them over for quite a while, though, and if they’re scientific ones I don’t have the knowledge to think with. That’s why I hire people like you and Feth. Thanks for reminding me — I do have a problem at the moment, on which I have spent a good deal of thought. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll attend to the finishing touches. You can stay here and work on this one.”

  “There’s nothing more we can do on this planet for the present.”

  “That I can believe. We’ll head back for Planet One and the rest of your laboratory facilities. Come on, Lee— we’ll leave the scientist to his science.”

  Ken, unsuspicious by nature, did not even look up as the two left his room. He had just found ammonia on the list, and was wondering whether his measurement could have been far enough off to permit the true molecular weight to be only seventeen. Melting-point data finally reassured him. For safety’s sake, however, he went through all the hydrogen, lithium, beryllium, boron, nitrogen, and oxygen compounds that were listed in the handbook. The faint disturbance incident to the vessel’s takeoff did not bother him at all. The silent opening of his door made no impression on him, either.

  In fact, the door had closed again with a crisp snap before anything outside the printed pages registered on his consciousness. Then a voice, coincident with the closing door, suddenly shattered the silence.

  “Sallman Ken!” The mechanical speaker over the entrance boomed the words; the voice was that of Laj Drai. “I said when we parted a moment ago that I occasionally solve my own problems. Unfortunately, you have come to represent a problem. There seems to be only one solution which will not destroy your usefulness. In a way I regret to employ it, but you have really only your own unwarranted curiosity to thank. When you wake up, we will talk again — you can tell me what you think of our commercial product!” The voice ceased, with a click which indicated that the microphone had been switched off.

  Ken, fully aroused, had dropped the book and risen to his feet — or rather, left his rack and floated away from the floor, since they were in weightless flight. His eyes roved rapidly to all quarters of the room in search of something that might furnish meaning to Drai’s rather ominous words. Several seconds passed before he saw it — a rectangular yellow brick, floating in the air near the door. For a moment he did not recognize it, and pushed against a wall to bring himself nearer to it; then, as he felt the chill emanating from the thing, he tried futilely to check his drift.

  Already the brick was losing shape, its corners rounding with the heat and puffing off into vapor. It was frozen sulfur — harmless enough in itself if contact were avoided, but terrifying when considered with his background of knowledge and suspicion. With a frantic flailing of his tentacles, he managed to set up enough of an air current to cause the thing to drift out of his path; but an equally anxious look about the room for something which might serve as a gas mask disclosed nothing.

  He found himself unable to take his eyes from the dwindling object, now a rather elongated ellipsoid. It continued to shrink remorselessly, and suddenly there was something else visible in the yellow — the end of a small white cylinder. As the last of the protective box vanished, this began to turn brown and then black over its entire surface, and a spherical cloud of smoke enveloped it. For an instant a wild hope flashed in Ken’s mind; the thing had to burn, and a fire will not maintain itself in weightless flight. It requires a forced draft. Perhaps this one would smother itself out — but the cloud of smoke continued to swell. Apparently the thing had been impregnated with chips of frozen air in anticipation of this situation.

  Now the edges of the smoke cloud were becoming fuzzy and ill-defined as diffusion carried its particles through the room. Ken caught the first traces of a sweetish odor, and tried to hold his breath; but he was too late. The determination to make the effort was his last coherent thought.

  12

  “So they decided to keep you.” There might or might not have been a faint trace of sympathy in Feth Allmer’s tone. “I’m not very surprised. When Drai raised a dust storm with me for telling you how far away Sarr was, I knew you must have been doing some probing on your own. What are you, Commerce or Narcotics?” Ken made no answer.

  He was not feeling much like talking, as a matter of fact. He could remember just enough of his drug-induced slumber to realize things about himself which no conscientious being should be forced to consider. He had dreamed he was enjoying sights and pleasures whose recollection now gave him only disgust — and yet under the disgust was the hideous feeling that there had been pleasure, and there might be pleasure again. There is no real possibility of describing the sensations of a drug addict, either while he is under the influence of his narcotic or during the deadly craving just before the substance becomes a physical necessity; but at this moment, less than an hour after he had emerged from its influence, there may be some chance of his frame of mind being understandable. Feth certainly understood, but apparently chose not to dwell on that point.

  “It doesn’t matter now which you were, or whether the whole gang knows it,” he went on after waiting in vain for Ken’s answer. “It won’t worry anyone. They know you’re ours for good, regardless of what you may think at the moment. Wait until the craving comes on— you’ll see.”

  “How long will that be?” The point was of sufficient interest to Ken to overcome his lethargy.

  “Five to six days; it varies a little with the subject. Let me warn you now — don’t cross Laj Drai, ever. He really has the ship. If he keeps the tofacco from you for even half an hour after the craving comes on, you’ll never forget it. I still haven’t gotten over his believing that I told you where we were.” Again surprise caused Ken to speak.

  “You? Are you—?”

  “A sniffer? Yes. They got me years ago, just like you, when I began to get an idea of what this was all about. I didn’t know where this system was, but my job required me to get engineering supplies occasionally, and they didn’t want me talking.”

  “That was why you didn’t speak to me outside the observatory, just after we got back from the caves?”

  “You saw me come out of the office? I never knew you were there. Yes, that was the reason, all right.” Feth’s normally dour features grew even grimmer at the memory. Ken went back to his own gloomy thought, which gradually crystallized into a resolve. He hesitated for a time before deciding to mention it aloud, but was unable to see what harm could result.

  “Maybe you can’t get out from under this stuff — I don’t know; but I’ll certainly try.”

  “Of course you will. So did I.”

  “Well, even if I can’t Drai needn’t think I’m going to help him mass produce this hellish stuff. He can keep me under his power, but he can’t compel me to think.”

  “He could, if he knew you weren’t. Remember what I told you — not a single open act of rebellion is worth the effort. I don’t know that he actually enjoys holding out on a sniffer, but he certainly never hesitates if he thinks there’s need — and you’re guilty until proved innocent. If I were you, I’d go right on developing those caves.”

  “Maybe you would. At least, I’ll see to it that the caves never do him any good.”

  Feth was silent for a moment. If he felt any anger at the implication in Ken’s statement, his voice did not betray it, however.

  “That, of course, is the way to do it. I am rather surprised that you have attached no importance to the fact that Drai has made no progress exploring Planet Three for the seventeen years I have been with him.”

  For nearly a minute Ken stared at the mechanic, while his mental picture of the older being underwent a gradual but complete readjustment.

  “No,” he said at last, “I never thought of that at all. I should have, too — I did think that some of the obstacles to investigation of the planet seemed rather odd. You mean you engineered the television tube failures, and all such things?”

  “The tubes, yes. That was easy enough — just make sure there were strains in the g
lass before the torpedo took off.”

  “But you weren’t here when the original torpedoes were lost, were you?”

  “No, that was natural enough. The radar impulses we pick up are real, too; I don’t know whether this idea of a hostile race living on the blue plains of Planet Three is true or not, but there seems to be some justification for the theory. I’ve been tempted once or twice to put the wrong thickness of anti-radar coating on a torpedo so that they’d know we were getting in — but then I remember that that might stop the supply of tofacco entirely. Wait a few days before you think too hardly of me for that.” Ken nodded slowly in understanding, then looked up suddenly as another idea struck him.

  “Say, then the failure of that suit we sent to Three was not natural?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Feth smiled a trifle. “I overtightened the packing seals at knees, hips and handler joints while you were looking on. They contracted enough to let air out, I imagine — I haven’t seen the suit, remember. I didn’t want you walking around on that planet — you could do too much for this gang in an awfully short time, I imagine.”

  “But surely that doesn’t matter now? Can’t we find an excuse for repeating the test?”

  “Why? I thought you weren’t going to help.”

  “I’m not, but there’s an awfully big step between getting a first hand look at the planet and taking living specimens of tofacco away from it. If you sent a person to make one landing on Sarr, what would be the chance of his landing within sight of a Gree bush? or, if he did, of your finding it out against his wish?”

  “The first point isn’t so good; this tofacco might be all over the place like Mekko—the difficulty would be to miss a patch of it. Your second consideration, however, now has weight.” He really smiled, for the first time since Ken had known him. “I see you are a scientist after all. No narcotics agent would care in the least about the planet, under the circumstances. Well, I expect the experiment can be repeated more successfully, though I wouldn’t make the dive myself for anything I can think of.”