by Hal Clement
“And that’s your beacon!” remarked Little after a few moments of silence. “Well, it certainly earns the name.”
“You can get our location now?” asked Arthur. I should think you wouldn’t need to say much but ‘Near S Doradus,’ from the looks of that thing.”
“Wrong, blast it,” answered Leo. “When I said I could judge brightness to a tenth of a magnitude, I was thinking of decent stars with visual mags between zero and plus six. For this thing, I don’t know whether it’s minus five or minus fifteen—whether the blasted thing is three quarters of a parsec or eighty parsecs away. I’ll get the direction, though, and maybe I’ll find a way to measure the brightness. I’ll look after that, you people worry about what to do with it if I get it. Good night.”
The dismissal was rather pointed, and Leo turned his full attention to the pad on which he was computing, so Little and Arthur silently retired. So did all but one of the guards who had been watching, invisible in the shadow of the superstructure.
Dr. Little opened his eyes with a start and realized it was full daylight. It had been the first sleep under normal gravity in several weeks, and his body had made the most of it. The other two sleeping bags were empty, but the Dennis brothers were both present. They were by the window, removing a piece of canvas that had apparently been draped across it. Little sat up.
“What are you fellows up to now?” he asked. “Leo, don’t you ever sleep?”
“Sure, when necessary. You have been sleeping for twelve hours, Doc. Did we wake you up?”
“Twelve hours! No, it was probably my conscience. What’s the idea of window curtains? We haven’t even a door, so it can’t be privacy.”
“We were screening out the sunlight Leo didn’t want,” answered Arthur. “He was trying to get the sun’s spectrum, and just wanted a narrow beam through the grating.”
“Did you get it?”
“Sure.” It was Leo speaking again. “And we found a use for the razor. The edges of the blades are good for making a slit for the beam. This fellow, of course, didn’t have anything in that wonderful testing kit that would do. By the way, Art, have you still got the kit, or did our friends take it last night?”
“Someone poked around in it,” Arthur answered, “but they left it here. Maybe they thought there was nothing in it that we could put to use.”
“I think they would have left it, anyway,” remarked the doctor, grinning at the expressions of unbelief on the two faces.
Leo walked over to his brother’s sleeping bag and took the kit box from the pack. “You know best, Doc. In that case, I’m going to have a look, and find out if there’s anything useful that Art forgot to mention—Art, you dope!”
“What’s wrong now?” asked the technician, without moving.
“The welder and the stroboscope you spoke of—they’re gone! And you said the guards must have decided the stuff was harmless. What do we do now?”
“The welder and stroboscope are in my pockets, and have been since last night. You thought of the stuff’s being taken, didn’t you? And did you ever think of anything without my beating you to it? You worry about your own department; I can take care of mine, I hope.” The last phrase was stimulated by an amused glance from the doctor.
They strolled out into the mixed crowd of humans and pentapods in the corridor, and Arthur went over to the kitchen. He appeared to have taken on permanently the job of cook’s helper. Little located the quartermaster, and began discussing the day’s possibilities. They seemed to be few. Most of the crew were specialists of one sort or another, experts in the fields of knowledge and activity necessary to fly and fight an interstellar cruiser; but one and all were hampered by lack of materials and tools. The only way to get these appeared to be theft, at which the crew of the Gomeisa were not specialists. The only advice Little could give was that the men should do their best to smuggle in materials, to the exclusion of other occupations, and anyone who had a workable idea should let the others know what he needed to work it. Not very helpful, since everybody already had that idea. It looked as though time would pass rather boringly.
It did. The men wandered more or less freely about the roof and the corridors of the building below, and occasionally went out to the supply piles for material they wanted. To Magill’s surprise, but not to Little’s, they were allowed to take even pieces of scientific apparatus without interference.
“I don’t get it,” said the quartermaster when a man reported bringing in a portable atomic melting furnace. “Anyone could see that that was a dangerous tool in the hands of a prisoner. Why do they let us get away with it?”
“To me,” answered Little, “that is the least puzzling factor. The treatment we are getting shows that there can be only one reason for our capture—to learn from us. Naturally, we must be allowed access to tools and scientific equipment. Then they watch our efforts to escape, and help themselves to the results of our labor. What is so puzzling about that?”
Magill was silent for several minutes. “Put that way,” he said at last, “it’s obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. That, I suppose, is why you said they weren’t a conceited race—they go to such lengths to take the knowledge of others. But what happens if they’re a little slow in taking a weapon away from us?”
“Apparently they are prepared to take that risk. They have succeeded so far with the Vegans, and they have all our standard weapons, you’ll note. That ability of theirs to guess the purpose of our actions is our chief bugbear. It’s unusual; most of the time it’s almost impossible for two races meeting for the first time to understand even each other’s standard gestures, let alone natural, unstereotyped face and body motions. But do your best with that in mind.”
Little did not say that, with the aid of the information given by the Vegans, he had been able to deduce the reason for the almost telepathic guessing ability of the pentapods; and he did not mention the plan that he and the Dennis brothers were trying to put into operation. If Magill went ahead with ideas of his own, it would probably occupy much of the attention of their guards. Not that Little wanted it all occupied.
The reports of the men who had wandered through the building agreed with the statements of the Vegans—most places were permitted, below ground was not, some rooms were locked, and some were open but the men had been kept out. One room, on the top floor almost directly below the prison quarters, appeared to be a communications office—which was a natural situation, if the roof had originally been used as a landing platform. The purpose of most of the others was not clear. Little did some wandering himself, and personally checked most of the information.
That evening the Vegans ate with the men; their own supplies had given out long before, of course, and they had been living on food supplied by the pentapods. It was evidently harmless, but far from enjoyable, according to the Vegans. Arthur Dennis served the food to them at their doorway, and brought the mess kits back to the kitchen after the meal. The guards usually withdrew some distance while the men were eating; the odors evidently did not appeal to them. Consequently, there was none of the creatures in the kitchen when Arthur brought back the kit. His self-assigned position as cook’s helper was becoming constantly more useful, he reflected.
Days in prison tend to be rather boring. Nights are better because one can sleep and forget the boredom for a while; but from this night on Arthur Dennis knew he would sleep very little, though he planned to trade his sleeping bag for one several sizes larger and retire completely into it. He decided to develop the habit of keeping his face partly covered by the canvas flap, and have his companions emulate him to make the action seem more natural. He was jubilant when the others came to the room.
“I have an icon tube, Doc,” he said from the depths of the sleeping bag. “That’s what worried me most. I can build the second-order converter from the stuff I already had, and I can probably dig up enough from the other boys to make the tube connections. It’s lucky they let us keep the hand lights.
I don’t know how I’d put this stuff together in the dark.”
“How did you get the tube?” asked Little. “I didn’t see you go downstairs all day, and I don’t think many of the men knew about the guards’ having let a good deal of apparatus by without trouble, so they wouldn’t have done it for you.”
Arthur grinned in the darkness. “Since I didn’t have the Vegan technique we mentioned, I bet one of the Vegans fifty Union credits it couldn’t be done—thus implying my doubt of his story of smuggling up a neutrino unit. He slipped it into his mess kit this evening after the meal, and I got it in the kitchen. He was a little touchy about my rudeness, but I apologized this evening and he’s cooled off. I pay the bet if and when we reach a Union planet and can get some money.” The technician ceased speaking, and the flap fell again across the opening of the bag.
Silence fell throughout the room, broken by the even breathing of two people and the occasional almost inaudible footfalls of the guard outside. Once or twice a shadow fell across the doorway as one of the creatures looked in, but it defeated its own purpose by blocking the light, and saw nothing. Dennis was careful, anyway, and allowed no motion to show through the padded canvas of the sleeping bag.
He was not interrupted that night, and worked for two or three hours before placing the partly completed unit in his kit and going to sleep.
The next morning it occurred to Little that the Vegans might have some idea of the probable length of stay of the ship. After the morning meal he squatted in front of the doorway of their quarters and questioned the creatures.
“They usually remain about ten days,” was the answer. “But it is impossible to tell for sure. This is the first time prisoners have been brought since we came. We didn’t notice how long they stayed on our arrival—we were too worried about other things.”
“How long do they remain away, usually?”
“There is no ‘usually’ about it, the duration is absolutely unpredictable as far as we can see. Sometimes the ship is gone for only a day, sometimes for several weeks. It is evidently not a patrol cruiser with a regular beat.”
Little thanked the creature and left, to ponder the effect of the new facts on his plans. He returned almost at once, to ask another question:
“Does the garrison of the fort appear to expect the ship at any time before its actual arrival?”
“Not obviously, if at all,” was the answer.
Little nodded, satisfied. He sought out the Dennis brothers. Leo was in their sleeping room, trying to manufacture a photometer from the lenses of a pair of dark goggles an atomic engineer had found in his pocket. The doctor located Arthur and brought him back to the room, and asked if either one knew anything about geletane.
“Not much,” answered Leo. “I gathered that it was more than an ordinary anesthetic when I heard you had lived through an exposure to space while under its influence.”
“Right,” nodded Little. “It produces, to put it crudely, suspended animation. It is adsorbed, apparently, on all the cell surfaces in the body, foreign bacteria included, and seals them from chemical influence. One would expect that to produce death, since the destruction of the gas film could not start the vital processes again; but the patient always revives. I could put my finger on ten different theses in the New York Medical Library, each suggesting a different mechanism and none completely satisfactory. The film, when it breaks, seems to do so everywhere at once, and there is an abnormal amount of carbon dioxide in the blood immediately thereafter; but the whole process is not thoroughly understood.
“It seems, however, that the cell walls themselves tend to cause the breakdown of the film; and if a person exposed to the gas is exercising violently, that action is increased to a point where he is not affected at all. If he holds his breath, and otherwise suspends body activity, it gets him almost instantly. The gas, as you can see, has an all-or-none nature. I wanted you to understand this, because it is possible we may have to use the gas in the near future. Think it over.” The brothers kept their faces nearly expressionless, but it was perceptible that they thought the matter over with some pleasure. Arthur, slightly the more imaginative of the two, immediately assumed that the gassing was to take place when the communicator was finished, so that they would have a chance to use it.
With this pleasant prospect in mind, Arthur worked even longer that night. The converter was completed, and he began to construct a support for the tube and its connections before he was forced to sleep. Again, his work apparently went undetected by the ever-prowling guards. His hopes showed so clearly on his face the next morning that his brother kicked him firmly and ungently in the shins as a reminder of the unbelievable expression-comprehension of the pentapods.
He reported to Little that the device would probably be completed that night. The doctor nodded and said:
“Good work, Art. We probably had another week before the ship left, but this is better than I expected. As soon as Leo gets his photometer done and finds our distance from S Doradus, things should start to pop; and that should be fairly soon.” In this statement Little was half right; things started happening quite soon, but they did not wait for the navigator’s mate to complete his tasks.
The doctor found Leo seated on one of the steps which lined the outer wall. He was examining closely an object, consisting chiefly of several small fragments of darkened glass, which proved to be his photometer; and like his brother, he was obviously in good humor.
“All done, Doc,” he said on sighting Little. “I can measure tonight—calibrate this thing on stars I can estimate, and then do the beacon. It’s lucky I already know its absolute magnitude. What do you think are the chances of that gadget of Art’s reaching a Union receiver?”
Little smiled without speaking, and shrugged his shoulders. His opinion was that the question was unimportant, but it would not do to say so. He might be misunderstood. He fully believed that they would be caught the moment they attempted to start broadcasting. Without committing himself, he admonished Leo not to lose the photometer, and went in search of Magill.
To that officer he spoke earnestly for several minutes, making several requests which were granted only after persuasion. One of them had to do with the disposal of kitchen waste, and for once the doctor’s interest was not in sanitation.
The rest of the day passed in as boring a fashion as had the two preceding.
Evening found the three conspirators in their room, planning the night’s activities. Arthur, of course, would remain to “sleep.” They found difficulty in deciding whether Little should remain with him, or accompany Leo on his astronomical expedition. If he went without an obvious purpose, the guards might wonder why he was the only curious sightseer and why Arthur didn’t go, too; if he remained, they might wonder why he behaved differently from the previous occasion, and investigate the sleepers. Even the insight Little had gained into their thought processes could throw no light on this question.
Finally, he accompanied Leo, carrying the latter’s pencil and pad to provide himself with an excuse. As on the previous occasion, none of the guards followed them through the door. They took up their former station by the wall and seated themselves on the steps until S Doradus should rise. The moon was only a little past first quarter, and the beacon would not rise tonight until some two hours after the eclipse, so they had a wait of nearly four hours. They had chosen to come out early, to avoid falling asleep and missing their chance.
For the first time since their arrival on the planet, there were clouds in the sky. These provided matter for conversation and anxiety for nearly three hours, as they completely covered the heavens on two occasions; but by the time the waning moon was sinking low in the east they had disappeared. The remaining time before observation could be started was passed in silence.
As the glow on the eastern horizon warned of the mighty star’s advent, Leo went to work. Each of the fragments of glass he had obtained from the engineer’s goggles was tested in turn, a star viewed through th
e darkened glass being compared with another seen directly. Little noted the results on the pad, though there was little need. The lenses had originally been very evenly darkened, and as nearly as Leo could estimate, a single thickness of the glass cut about three and five-tenths magnitudes from the brightness of an object.
When the beacon rose, his only task was to find the number of layers necessary to reduce its apparent brightness to that of a star lying in the range where his own judgment was good. The method obviously gave room for error, which increased with each additional thickness used, but it was better than guessing; and anyway, as Leo remarked, since S Doradus is an irregular variable, the best instruments in Civilization would still have left them with a probable error of over half a magnitude.
He measured and computed. “Art was almost right, at that,” he remarked finally. “ ‘Near S Doradus’ would almost be enough. I get an apparent magnitude of minus fourteen, which means a distance of just under one parsec.” He took a fresh sheet of paper from the pad and wrote rapidly. “Here,” he said, handing it to Little, “is the complete specification of our position, to two decimal places—I can’t guess closer. It also includes the type of this planet and sun in standard terms, and a rough idea of our latitude on the planet. If you broadcast that and anyone hears you, they’ll find us.”
“And he can go right ahead and broadcast it, as soon as the rubbernecks are out of the way,” broke in a new voice. “The gadget’s done. I haven’t tested it, naturally, but it can’t help working. Say the word, Doc.”
Little shook his head. “Not tonight. We must arrange some way to keep the broadcast from being too obvious. Come on to bed and we’ll talk as we go. It would be too bad to slip up now.”
They arose and walked slowly toward the lighted doorway.
“It seems to me that we only need to gas the guards in the immediate neighborhood, and lock ourselves into the quarters with them outside. There are no outside catches on the main doors, and I could seal the elevator panel with the welder—I didn’t use it for the broadcaster, and it should stand the overload long enough.”