The Best of Hal Clement

by Hal Clement

  * * *

  They went out together, leaving the outer airlock door open—it could have been locked and reopened electrically; but Thrykar had once read of an individual in a position similar to theirs who had returned to his ship to find the power cut off by a burnt-out relay, leaving him in a very embarrassing position. The weather was overcast, as it had been ever since their arrival, but there were signs that the sun might soon break through. The woods were dripping wet, which made them if anything more pleasant for the aliens. The temperature was, from their point of view, cool but not uncomfortable.

  There was plenty of animal life. Although none of the small creatures permitted them to approach at all closely, the two were able to examine them in considerable detail; retinal cells rather smaller than those in the human eye and eyeballs more than three times as large permitted them to distinguish clearly objects for which a human being would have needed a fair-sized opera glass. The bird life was of particular interest to Tes; no such creatures had ever evolved on their watery home planet, and she made quite a collection of castoff feathers.

  The largest animal they saw was a deer. It saw them at the same moment, standing at the edge of the hollow at a point where very few trees grew; it stared at them for fully half a minute trying to digest a new factor in its existence. Then as Tes made a slight motion toward the creature, it turned and bounded off, disappearing at once below the edge of the cup. They hastened toward the spot where it had stood, hoping to catch a final glimpse, but they were far too slow, and nothing was visible among the trees when they got there. Tes turned to her partner.

  “Why isn’t it possible to use an animal like that? It’s easily large enough to take no harm, and must be at least as similar to us as these human beings.” Thrykar rippled a fin negatively.

  “I’m a chemist, not a biologist, and I don’t know the whole story. It has something to do with the degree of development of the donor’s nervous system. It may seem odd that that should affect its blood, but it seems to—remember, every cell of a creature’s body has the chromosomes and genes and whatever else the biologists know about in that line, which make it theoretically possible to grow a new animal of the same sort from any of the cells. I don’t believe it’s been done yet,” he added with a touch of humor, “but who am I to say it can’t be?”

  Tes interrupted him with a gesture.

  “Tell me, Thrykar, is that throbbing noise I hear now the one produced by those pumps? I’m surprised that it should be audible at this distance. Listen.” He did so, wondering for a moment, then gave once more a sign of negation.

  “It’s a machine of some kind, but I can’t say just what. It doesn’t seem to be down there in the town—we’d be hearing it more definitely from that direction. It might be almost anywhere among these mountains—not too far away, of course—with echoes confusing us as to its point of origin. It can’t be an aircraft, because it’s too loud and look out! Don’t move, Tes!” He froze as he spoke, and his wife followed his example. As the last words left his mouth, the pulsing drone increased to a howling roar which, at last, had a definite direction. The eyes of the aliens rolled upward to follow the silvery, winged shape that fled across their field of vision scarcely five hundred feet above them.

  The pilot of the A-26 saw neither the aliens nor their ship. He passed directly above the latter, so that it was out of his direct vision; and although Thrykar and Tes felt horribly conspicuous in the almost clear area where they were standing, the speed of the machine and the pilot’s preoccupation with the task of navigating combined to prevent untimely revelations.

  As the roar faded once more to a drone, Thrykar galvanized into action. He plunged into the hollow toward his ship; and Tes, after a moment’s startled immobility, followed.

  “What’s the matter?” she called after him. “I don’t think he saw us, and anyway it’s too late to do anything about it.”

  “That’s not the trouble,” replied Thrykar as he flung himself up the ramp into the ship. “You should have spotted that yourself. You mentioned something this morning about the tendency of man toward superstition. If he’s in that stage of social development, he shouldn’t have more than the rudiments of any of the physical sciences. The book said as much, as I recall; and I want to check up on that, right now!” He snatched up the volume, which fell open at the already well-thumbed section dealing with Earth, and began to read. Tes, with an effort, forebore to interrupt; but she was not kept waiting long. Her husband looked up presently, and spoke.

  “It’s as I thought. According to this thing, mankind has as one of its most advanced mechanisms the steam-powered locomotive. I saw one last night, you may recall. I assumed without really giving the matter much thought that the quarry pumps were also steam-driven. It says here that animals are even used for hauling or carrying loads over short distances. That all ties in with a culture still influenced by superstition. The book does not mention aircraft—and that machine wasn’t steam-powered. Those were internal-combustion engines. I think now that the pumps in the quarries had similar power plants; and if men can make them at once light and powerful enough to drive aircraft, they know more of molecular physics and chemistry than they should.”

  “But why should that be a man-made ship?” asked Tes. “After all, we are here; why shouldn’t another spaceship have come in at the same time? After all, Earth is a refresher station.”

  “For a variety of reasons,” replied Thrykar. “First, anyone coming here for refreshing would keep out of sight, as we are doing; and that ship flew in plain sight of the town below here, and made racket enough to be heard for miles. Second, that wasn’t a spaceship—you must have seen that it was driven by rotating airfoils and supported by fixed ones. Why should anyone from off the planet go to the trouble of bringing and assembling such a craft here, when they must have infinitely better transportation in the form of their spaceship? No, Tes, that thing was manmade, and there’s something very wrong with the handbook. It’s the latest revision on this sector, too—the Earth material is only sixty or seventy years old. I hope it isn’t so badly off on the biology and physiology end; we certainly don’t want to cause injury to any man.”

  “But what can you do, if the book can’t be trusted?”

  “Feel my way carefully, and go on the evidence already at hand. We can’t very well leave now—you’re safe, as you aren’t of age yet, but I might be in rather bad shape by the time we reached another refresher station. We’ll carry on as planned for the present, and move the ship down to the quarry tonight. I just hope the human race isn’t so far advanced in electronics as they seem to be elsewhere; if they are, we are wide open to detection. I wonder how in blazes the individual who reported on this planet could have come to do such a slipshod job. Failure to measure their chemical or biological advancement is forgivable; those wouldn’t be so obvious; but missing aircraft, and electric lights, and internal-combustion engines in general is a little too much. However,” he left the vexing question, “that is insoluble for the present. The other point that arises, Tes, is the one you mentioned. I’m afraid they won’t bear a superstitious attitude toward our activities, if they become aware of them; and we’ll have to be correspondingly more careful. If you can think of anything that will help between now and nightfall, it will be appreciated.”

  Neither of them did.

  * * *

  Bringing the little craft down the mountainside in the dark was rather more difficult than Thrykar had anticipated. He was afraid to use microwave viewers because of the newborn fear of the scientific ability of the human race; it was necessary to drift downhill at treetop level, straining his eyes through the forward ports, until the slope flattened out. The lights of the town had been visible during the descent, and he had kept well to their left; now he backed fifty feet up the hill, turned on the reflection altimeter—whose tight, vertical beam he hoped would not scatter enough to cause a reaction in any nearby receivers—and crawled along the contour in the gene
ral direction of the lights.

  He had allowed more leeway than was strictly necessary, and was some distance to the north of the quarries; but at last the dial of the altimeter gave a sudden jump, and two aliens looked carefully out of the ports as Thrykar let the ship descend, a foot at a time. At last the hull touched something—and sank in; they were at the first quarry. The ship lifted again, a little higher this time for safety as its course slanted in once more toward the mountain. Again a flicker of the needle; again the cautious descent; but this time it was permitted to sink on down after the hull made contact.

  The ship stopped sinking when it was about three-fourths submerged, and Thrykar guided it carefully to the side of the great pit where he had located the undercut. While the nose continued to bump gently against the granite, he let water into compartment after compartment until the hull was completely under water—he could have used the drive, but preferred to have the ship stable in its hiding place. He did use power to ease into the hollow, which he located by use of an echo-sounder; its impulses would not be detectable out of the body of water in which they were used.

  Leaving Tes to hold the ship in position temporarily, Thrykar plunged out through the airlock and made fast, using metal cables clipped to rings in the hull and extending to bars set into cracks already in the rock. He could have drilled holes specifically for the purpose, but not silently; and the existing facilities were adequate. The work completed, he tapped on the hull to signal Tes. She cut off all power, let the ship settle into stability, and joined Thrykar in the water. It was the first swim she had had since they had started the trip, and they spent the next hour enjoying it.

  A little more time was spent exploring the ground around the quarry and out to the road; then, on the chance that the next day might be more hectic than those preceding, they sought the sleeping tanks. Thrykar, before sliding into the cold water, set an alarm to awaken him shortly before sunrise.

  Before the sun was very high, therefore, he and Tes were at work. They explored once more, this time by daylight, the environs of the pit; and among the bushes, heaps of crushed rock, and broken blocks of granite they found a number of good hiding places.

  None was ideal; they wanted two, more or less visible from each other, commanding views along at least a short stretch of the road passing the quarry. One was very satisfactory in this respect, but unfortunately it was situated on the side away from the town and covered that segment of road which they planned to watch more to insure safety than in expectation of results. On the other side, a space under several blocks was found from which it was possible to view the other hiding place and the quarry itself, but to see the road it was necessary to crawl some twenty yards. As the crawl could be made entirely under fair cover, Thrykar finally selected this space, and stored the gas cylinders and auxiliary equipment therein.

  * * *

  From the point where he could see the road, Tes’ hiding place was invisible; and after a moment’s indecision he called to her. He was sure no human beings were as yet in the neighborhood, but he made his words brief. Then he crawled back to the edge of the quarry. As his station was some distance up the hillside, he was fully sixty feet above the water; but he launched himself over the lip of granite without hesitation, and clove the surface with no more sound than a small stone would have made from the same height.

  He entered the submerged ship, enclosed two of the small communicators such as he had used on the first night in watertight cases, and brought them to the surface. Climbing painfully to where Tes was watching, he gave her one; then he returned to his own place, crossing above the quarry.

  He settled down to his vigil, reasonably sure that the tiny sets were not powerful enough to be picked up outside the immediate vicinity, and relieved of the worry that Tes might see something without being able to warn him.

  They did not have long to wait. Tes was first to signal that something was visible; before Thrykar could move to ask for details, he himself heard the engine of the car. It sped on down the road and into town—an ancient, rickety jalopy, though the aliens had no standard with which to compare it. Two more passed, going in the same direction, during the next fifteen minutes. Each held a single human being—hired men from the farms up the valley, going to town on various errands for their employers, though the watchers had no means of knowing this. After they had passed, nothing happened for nearly an hour.

  At about eight o’clock, however, Tes signaled again; and this time she tapped out the code they had agreed upon to indicate a solitary pedestrian. Thrykar acknowledged the message, but made no move. Again the traveler proved not to be alone; within the next five minutes more than a dozen others passed, both singly and in small groups. They were the first human beings either of the aliens had seen at all clearly, and they were at a considerable distance, though the eyesight of the watchers did much to overcome this handicap. Practically all of them were carrying small parcels and books. They varied in height from about half that of Thrykar to nearly three quarters as tall, though, as individuals of a given size tended to form groups to the exclusion of others, this was not at once obvious to the watching pair.

  And that was all. After those few chattering human beings had passed out of sight and hearing into the town, the road remained deserted. Once only, shortly before noon, one of the automobiles clattered back along it; Thrykar suspected it to be one of those he had seen earlier, but had no proof, as he was not familiar enough with either vehicles or drivers to discern individual differences. As before, there was only one occupant, who was not clearly visible from outside and up. For some seven hours he was the only native of Earth to disrupt the solitude.

  Tes, younger and less patient than her husband, was the first to grow weary in the vigil. Some time after the passage of the lone car, she began tapping out on the communicator, in the general code which he had insisted on her learning in the conformity with the law, a rather irritated question about the expected duration of the watch. Thrykar had been expecting such an outbreak for hours, and was pleasantly surprised at the patience his wife had displayed, so he replied, “One of us should remain on guard until dark, at least; but there is no reason why you shouldn’t go down to the ship for food and rest, if you wish. You might bring me something to eat, also, when you’ve finished.”

  He crawled back to the point from which he could see Tes’ hiding place, and watched her move to the edge of the quarry, poise, and dive; then he returned to his sentry duty.

  His wife had eaten, rested, brought up food for him, and been back at her place for some time before anything else happened. Then it was Thrykar who saw the newcomer; and in the instant of perception he not only informed Tes, but formed a hypothesis which would account for the observed motions of the human beings and implied the possibility of productive action in a very short time.

  The present passer turned out not to be alone; there were two individuals, once more carrying books. Thrykar watched them pass, mulling over his idea; and when they were out of sight he signaled Tes to come over to his hiding place. She came, working her way carefully among the bushes above the quarry, and asked what he wanted.

  “I think I know what is going on now,” he said. “These people we have seen pass apparently live somewhere up the road, and are required for some reason to spend much of the day in town. It is therefore reasonable to assume that they will all be returning the way they went, some time before dark. I am quite sure that the two who just passed were among those who went the other way this morning.

  “Therefore, I want you to watch here, while I work my way down to the place where the little road from this quarry joins the other. You will signal me when more of these people approach; and I, concealed at the roadside, will be able to get a first specimen if and when a solitary human being passes. If others approach while I am at work, you can warn me; but it should take only a few seconds, and the creature need not be unconscious much longer than that. Even if others are following closely, I can arrange mat
ters to seem as though it had a fall or some similar accident. I am assuming that no one will come from the other direction; it’s a chance we have to take, but the amount of traffic so far today seems to justify it.”

  “All right,” replied Tes. “I stay here and watch. I hope it doesn’t take long; I’m getting mortally weary of waiting for something interesting or useful to happen.”

  Thrykar made a gesture of agreement, and gathered his equipment for the move.

  * * *

  Jackie Wade would have sympathized with Tes, had he dreamt of her existence. He, too, was thoroughly bored. Yesterday hadn’t been so bad—the first day of school at least has the element of interest inherent in new classes, possible new teachers, and—stretching a point—even new books; but the second day was just school. Five years of education had not taught Jackie to like it; at the beginning of the sixth, it was simply one of life’s less pleasant necessities.

  He looked, for the hundredth time, at the clock placed by intent at the back of the room. It lacked two minutes of dismissal time; and he began stealthily to gather the few books he planned to take home for appearance’s sake. He had just succeeded in buckling the leather strap about them when the bell rang. He knew better than to make a dash for the door; he waited until the teacher herself had risen, looked over the class, and given verbal permission to depart. Fifteen seconds later he was in front of the school building.

  His brother James, senior to him by two years and taller by nearly a head, joined him a moment later. They started walking slowly toward the country road, and within a minute or two the other dozen or so boys from the valley farms had caught up with them. When the last of these had arrived, Jackie started to increase his pace; but his brother held him back. He looked up in surprise.