by James White
While it was charging up the slope toward them, Martin found it difficult to believe that it represented a real threat-he had the ridiculous idea that it was simply a tri-di recording with the sound turned off, and at any moment an instructor’s voice would draw their attention to the interesting anatomical details. Then sound and reality returned as the protection vehicle dropped to the ground with a most unsilent thump between them and their attacker, and they dived through the open entry hatch.
The charging predator struck the other side of the vehicle so hard that they were knocked off their feet. They picked themselves off the floor and tried vainly to strap in as the creature lashed at the upper hull with its twin trunks. The vehicle dropped to the ground, immobilized as its gravity cushion died, and the damage to the external sensors left half of the vision screens showing only white snow. Malfunction lights were winking all over the control console, and they could hear the creature climbing onto the top of the hull.
“What are you waiting for, dammit?” Martin yelled. “Blast it, before it beats you into a heap of scrap!”
One of the still operable screens lit with the reply.
I AM RELUCTANT TO DESTROY THIS CREATURE BECAUSE IT IS A MALE MEMBER OF A SUBSPECIES WHICH IS CLOSE TO EXTINCTION. DAMAGE SUSTAINED SO FAR IS WITHIN THE CAPACITY OF MY SELF-REPAIR SYSTEMS ONCE THE CREATURE REALIZES THAT I AM INEDIBLE AND WITHDRAWS.
Why, Martin raged silently, were intelligent robots so stupid? But it was Beth who spoke first.
“We are edible,” she said, clearly and simply as if speaking to a child. ‘The creature knows we are here and it has organic sensors which will confirm our continued presence within you. The creature will not, therefore, withdraw and we are seriously at risk unless you…”
“Get us out of here!” Martin broke in harshly as the floor heaved alarmingly and for a few seconds became a wall.
OF COURSE. MATTER TRANSMITTER ENGAGED. DESTINATION?
“The lander, stupid.”
They had been sprawled in an untidy heap inside the protector and that, following the split second of indescribable shock as their bodies were dispersed into their individual atoms and reassembled again, was how they arrived in the tender’s control center. He helped Beth to her feet, wondering if there was a single square inch of his body which was not aching. Beth winced as she sat down at the console to set about protecting their lander.
The predator had lost interest in the damaged protection vehicle and was moving slowly in their direction. Martin hoped that it was simply curious about the large, unusual object occupying its territory and not aware, at a distance of nearly half a mile upwind, that they were inside.
Their view of the creature became hazy for an instant as Beth put up the lander’s force shield. Then, with an expression which was distinctly maternal, she signaled the damaged protector for a status report.
EIGHTY PERCENT EXTERNAL SENSORS INOPERABLE. SEVERE DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO UPPER HULL. GRAVITY NEUTRALIZATION GRIDS INOPERABLE. POWER SUPPLY OPTIMUM. PRIORITY IS BEING GIVEN TO REPAIR OF THE GRIDS TO RESTORE MOBILITY. ESTIMATED TIME FOR GRID REPAIRS SEVENTEEN MINUTES. FOR RETURN TO LANDER NINETEEN MINUTES.
“There’s no big hurry,” Beth said. “Make a wide circle on your way back and keep the lander between you and the predator. You don’t want to lose another argument with that thing,”
REVISED ESTIMATE FOR RETURN TO LANDER TWENTY-SIX MINUTES.
But before she could acknowledge, the screen color changed from black to red.
EMERGENCY. MALFUNCTION IN SELF-REPAIR MANIPULATORS. SENSORY INPUT REDUCING. MOVEMENT IN ANY DIRECTION IMPOSSIBLE. THE VEHICLE IS TRAPPED IN A LOCAL LAND SUBSIDENCE. REQUEST ASSISTANCE.
“Maintain transmission of all sensory input, incomplete though it is,” Beth said. “We’ll pull you out of there as soon as possible.” To Martin, she added worriedly, “My initial scan of the landing area did not show any subsurface pockets. I don’t understand how…”
She broke off as the screen lit with the bright, crawling blankness indicative of a receiver which no longer had a signal to receive. The adjacent screen showed the already magnified image of the predator galloping rapidly into close-up.
Then for no apparent reason the creature slowed, veered to the right and came to a halt. It began to move slowly in a tight circle with its head held close to the ground. Then it stopped again and reared up with its forelimbs pawing the air and its twin trunks extended stiffly upward in a narrow V. For the first time since encountering the creature they heard it make a noise, a high-pitched hissing sound which wavered above and below the level of audibility.
“Some sort of courtship dance, I expect,” Beth said doubtfully, “except that there isn’t another one of the beasties within detection range- Now, what!”
Without warning the predator had dropped from sight. It looked as if the ground had opened up and swallowed it.
“I’m absolutely sure there were no subsurface caves this close to the landing area,” she said, slipping into the control position and initiating the take off sequence. “We’ll take a closer look at what happened to that creature on the way to rescuing our protector, and before a subsurface cave opens suddenly under us.”
“Right,” Martin agreed.
A few minutes later the lander was hovering above the fresh subsidence. The cave-in was about thirty feet across and roughly the same depth, and the predator was in the exact center of it. Part of a leg and one trunk lay loosely on the fallen soil, looking as if they had been freshly and very crudely amputated, and they did not need the sensors to tell them that the creature was dead.
When they moved to the subsidence covering the protector robot, Beth signaled it again on the off chance that it had been able to repair its communicator. There was no response.
“I’ll work the tractor beam,” Martin said. “Hold us steady while I uncover your sick friend.”
“No,” Beth said, indicating the sensor displays. She sounded as if she herself did not believe what she was saying. “You can’t help my sick friend because it isn’t there anymore. Apart from a few sections of plating, something or somebody has taken our protector robot apart and gone off with the pieces.”
Martin looked over her shoulder, thinking that their lander could not be undermined and taken apart while it was five hundred feet in the air. But that did not mean that the agency which had dismantled their protector and killed one of the largest and most ferocious native predators had no other surprises up its sleeve.
Under emergency thrust, the lander was already climbing through the upper atmosphere when Martin said unnecessarily, “Let’s get out of here.”
Inside the orbiting mother ship they felt safe but very, very confused.
“At this range I can’t detect anything less massive than a heavy screwdriver,” Beth said, “that’s why I’m losing sensor contact with the components of the robot. Even the parts which do not normally break down, such as the power and gravity nullification generators, are being concealed by increasing depth or intervening aggregations of ore-bearing rock. To get a clearer picture I’d have to soft-land a probe and do a proper sonic scan.”
“I suppose we can afford to lose a probe,” Martin said dryly, “as well as a protector robot.”
“It will detect anything approaching from beneath the surface,” she replied irritably, “in plenty of time for me to Lift it clear.”
Considering the virtually limitless resources of the hypership, the loss would be of little importance-except to Beth, who had a very tidy mind.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that the terrain conceals a life form large enough to ingest surface creatures at will? That predator was literally swallowed up and partially eaten. Maybe it thought our robot was edible, too.”
Beth shook her head. “That’s a bit fanciful. A single beast capable of opening mouths in any desired area of the surface would be large and extremely energy hungry, and the evidence of its presence would be hard to miss. Judging by the way that predator died, it
s killers are hunters and burrowers who operate as a team. For some reason they prefer to work below ground.”
“On the surface they might be at a disadvantage against the predators,” Martin said, “so they have to be sneaky.”
Which was synonymous, they both knew, with the use of intelligence.
“I’m thinking,” Beth said, “of the way the predator’s attack on the lander was diverted, and why. The presence of a large creature or object can be detected by its effect on the surface, but time is needed to undermine the target, during which it must not move away.
“The robot was easy,” she went on, “because it was damaged and motionless. The predator had to be immobilized in a different fashion. The proper scent would do it, released a few hundred yards upwind. Strong, olfactory indications of a female nearby would make it lose interest in attacking the lander, and once it stopped moving, our friends trapped it in their freshly dug pit. But were they the same group who dismantled the protector, or a different one?”
“Does it matter?” Martin asked.
“It matters,” Beth replied. “If there were two groups of hunters and burrowers who are used to trapping their prey in this fashion, the chances are significantly greater that we are dealing with another specialized form of predator. But if it was the same beings responsible for both attacks, they may have thought that our robot had not been able to defend itself against the predator and they may have diverted and destroyed the creature to save the lander from a similar fate. So it matters whether our friends were being guided by a highly evolved instinct pattern, or intelligence and, possibly, friendship.”
Martin was silent for a moment, then he said apologetically, “I should have thought of that. But suppose our friends, realizing that the predator had wrecked our other vehicle, wanted to protect the lander so that they would have an undamaged machine to take apart?”
“That would mean,” Beth replied worriedly, “that they were intelligent but not very friendly.”
“Maybe we are misreading the indications,” he said, switching sides in the argument. “Could there be a geological reason for the sudden appearance of those pits which…”
He broke off. Beth’s disagreement was silent, but plainly evident.
“All right then,” he went on. “We haven’t seen these creatures or found any trace of their existence. We have no idea how they live except that it is underground. The reason why they don’t show themselves is possibly because they are at a disadvantage on the surface. This suggests a small life form, a species of burrower which acts in concert to dismantle large predators and sophisticated robots alike. The latter capability suggests the possession of advanced technology, power sources and communications systems, none of which we have been able to detect. It is impossible to hide the radiation signature of a technologically advanced civilization unless they are hiding deliberately.”
“Deliberately!” Beth said, and laughed. “Living underground as they do, their communication system could be very basic, simply modulated sonics transmitted through a solid medium. When we land the probe I’ll have the answer to that one.”
“Caution where strangers are concerned,” Martin went on, feeling the hair at the back of his neck begin to prickle, “is also a sign of intelligence. The silence down there is complete, and the sound prints of indigenous life forms are already known to them, so that it would be easy to detect the presence of strangers.
“But they were hiding from us,” he ended quietly, “while we were still in space.”
For a long time Beth stared at the pastoral beauty which was pictured on the main screen, then she said, “I think it’s time we reviewed this whole assignment.”
Chapter 13
“SOME vacation!” Beth said when the data had been reviewed. Her tone was one of angry disbelief. “If you remember,” Martin said, trying to be objective, “the supervisor did not actually lie to us when we were assigned Teldi. It did not tell, because it did not know, the whole truth. Maybe it knows even less of the truth this time. Run the searchship data again, please?”
The third and only life bearing planet of a gee-type sun, the world had a near-perfect circular orbit, no axial tilt, no major topological features or temperature variations, all of which explained the absence of seasonal changes and the undramatic weather. The world had a predisposition toward silence and, Martin knew, the ability to hunt or graze quietly would be an important survival characteristic among its fauna. A species which could burrow underground and trap and smother their prey, regardless of size, would have a considerable advantage over the surface dwellers and might well have become the dominant, and intelligent, life form.
‘The searchship carried out the usual surface scan,” Martin said as the material was being presented. “They were looking for surface buildings, sea or airborne craft, power installations and radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. They soft-landed probes to collect animal and vegetable specimens, then moved on to the next system on their list. The probes were not attacked while they were on the ground, so there was no way of knowing that intelligent subsurface life was present.”
“Possible intelligent subsurface life,” Beth said, stressing the first word. “Your conclusion is based on the fact that a robot protector was dismantled without causing its power cell to explode. But remember, our equipment is designed to cause minimum damage and pollution if a curious native tries to take something apart. It is more likely, although much less exciting to think about, that they are nonintelligent creatures with the magpie instinct, and that they were very lucky that the power cell did not blow up in their faces.
“Besides,” she added, “if they’re capable of taking apart a completely alien, to them, mechanism like the protector with safety, they would have to be very highly advanced scientifically, and the associated technology would leave a large and unmistakable radiation signature. There was no such signature.”
‘They were hiding it,” Martin said.
“From the searchship and now from us?” Beth asked quietly. “Aren’t you becoming a trifle paranoid about this?”
As the hypership captain providing technical and moral support to his first-contact specialty, she often took the devil’s advocate position in an argument in order to clarify the situation for both of them.
“People usually hide because they are afraid,” Martin said thoughtfully. “As yet we don’t know why they are afraid. Maybe they had a very bad experience in the past as a result of a visitation from space. The searchship did not land and its investigations were carried out by long-range sensors and probes, which did little more than flatten a few square inches of grass. But there is no sign of the chemical and radioactive pollutants associated with a crash landing by a visiting ship, or other catastrophic malfunction which would have caused widespread damage or loss of life among the natives.
“Maybe they are simple xenophobes,” he went on, “who are afraid of all strangers. I still think they are small, weak or have some other obvious disadvantage which would…”
“It isn’t obvious to me,” Beth said. “Look at what they did to our robot.”
“If we saw one of them it might be,” Martin replied. “I’m still convinced that they are intelligent, technologically advanced, and afraid; that is a tricky combination to deal with.”
Beth was still regarding the data on the main screen as she said, “Suppose these as yet hypothetical people are hiding without realizing that they are hiding. They may be an omnivorous vegetable life form with a fast-growing, controllable system of roots capable of breaking up the soil under their prey and trapping…”
“And they had a sudden and urgent requirement,” Martin broke in, “for mineral trace elements used in the metal of the protector?”
“It’s a possibility,” Beth said lamely.
“I prefer the idea of acute xenophobia,” Martin replied. ‘That presupposes them having a knowledge of off-planet intelligent life, and methods of detecting the approach of such life from
a great distance, and of concealing the detection system along with all the other traces of themselves. They must have something very important to hide, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, come, now,” Beth said, swinging round to face him. “Surety a species with that capability would not want to hide, it would have more than enough technological muscle to defend itself.”
“A good point,” Martin said. “But suppose they can detect our ships only after they leave hyper space, that would reduce the level of their technology by a few notches. And remember, a searchship doesn’t start a planetary scan until it has taken up orbit, so there are several hours between emergence and close approach. Our friends would have time to power down then- equipment and play possum.”
“Switch off their entire civilization, you mean?” Beth said incredulously. ‘They would have to maintain some land of communication channel, which we could detect, otherwise how would they know when we left their system if everything was switched off?”
“A receiver is very hard to detect compared with a transmitter,” Martin said, “so they might know when we left without having to reveal themselves. And their internal communications, if they use sound conducted through subsurface rock strata with relays and boosters for the long-range traffic, would not be detectable from space.
“And I don’t think they switch off everything everywhere,” he went on. “Just in the areas we are likely to notice. On the hemisphere we cannot see, it may be business as usual.
