by Hal Clement
“Do you have a balance between makers and eaters?” asked Feth. “Suppose these plants are all—what would you call them? oxidizers?—and you don’t have the corresponding reducers. I should think you’d need a balance of some sort, with any sort of life—otherwise you’d have perpetual motion.”
“I can’t tell that, of course, until we try. Still, I might go down this mountain a little farther and try to pick up a wider variety. There are still some empty cans.”
“Another point—I don’t recall your making any arrangement to keep them at the proper temperature. I know they’re almost as cold as outer space, but there’s a difference between almost and all the way.”
“We’ll leave the cans in the torpedo until we get back to One. With no air, they’ll change temperature very slowly, and we can leave the torpedo somewhere on the twilight zone of One where it’ll stay about the right temperature until we can build a chamber with thermostats and a refrigerator—it won’t be very large; I have only a couple of cubic yards of air.”
“All right, I guess you win. Have you seen any animal life? I’ve heard the old buzzing once or twice.”
“Have you? I hadn’t noticed it.”
“I’ll call you if I hear it again.” He fell silent, and Ken resumed his laborious journey downhill.
With frequent rests, Ken finally succeeded in filling and sealing all his containers and depositing them in the cargo space of the torpedo. He was interrupted once by Feth, who reported that the buzzing was again audible; but even though Ken himself could hear it when he listened, he was unable to find the source. Flies are not very large creatures, and the light was very dim anyway by Sarrian standards. Since there was nothing very appetizing even for a fly in the cargo compartment above which the microphone was located, the buzzing presently ceased.
Ken took a final look at the landscape, describing everything as completely as he could so that the record being made far above would be useful. The peaks stood out far more prominently now, since some of them were higher than he was. By ignoring the vegetation with which their slopes were clothed and imagining that it was sunset just after a particularly good dust storm, he was even able to find something almost homelike in the scene—there were times when even Sarr’s blue-white sun could look as dull as the luminary of this icy world. At such times, of course, there was always a wind which would put Earth’s wildest hurricane to shame, and the silence around him was out of place on that score; but for just a moment his imagination was able to carry him across two hundred parsecs of emptiness to a world of warmth and life.
He came to himself with a little start. This place was nothing like home—it wasn’t exactly dead, but it should be; dead as the vacuum of space it so greatly resembled. Its cold was beginning to creep into him, mentally in the form of a return of the horror he had felt the first time he had seen the planet and physically by a slight ache in his feet. Even the engineering miracle he was wearing could not keep out the fingers of the cold indefinitely. He started to call Feth, to have the torpedo lifted so that he could get at the chains and clamps; but the request was not uttered.
As suddenly as it had done a few days before, a human voice cut sharply through the stillness of the Planet of Ice.
(To Be Concluded)
ICEWORLD
Third of Three parts. The fundamental requirements for an intelligent living being are not oxygen, water, sulfur vapor or any material at all—but an immaterial vastly more necessary!
Law enforcement agencies of the planet Sarr are becoming troubled over the appearance of a new, nameless drug. It has not been reaching the planet itself; it keeps only under extreme refrigeration, and the necessary apparatus is too bulky for easy smuggling. However, its use on spaceships within the system indicates that only a single dose is needed to produce addiction; it is therefore possible at any time for a customs group to be enslaved, opening the planet wide to invasion by the narcotic.
Sallman Ken is asked to co-operate with the enforcement agency in locating the source of the drug. A non-scheduled space carrier line has come under suspicion; Ken answers their advertisement for a chemical engineer—he is scientist enough to carry such a role for a time at least—and is transported in a sealed room on one of their carriers for several days. When he is finally allowed to see out, the ship is in the vicinity of a dwarf sun. Ken is informed by his employer, Laj Drai, that his job is to improve communication with the natives of one of his star’s planets. Apparently the world contains two races. One inhabiting the fiat, blue-tinted areas that cover most of the world’s surface is hostile, since all remote-controlled torpedoes descending in these areas have been destroyed; the other, dwelling in the more rugged regions, is sufficiently friendly to have undertaken limited trade with the Sarrians. Drai’s people cannot descend to the planet themselves in any suit they have been able to devise—the low temperature is too much for their engineering; the planet’s temperature is actually well below the freezing point of the sulfur the Sarrians breathe. Ken accepts, with the hope that this world may prove the source of the drug. He sets to work with the aid of Feth Allmer, a mechanic in Drai’s employ.
The cold planet is actually Earth and the person who has been trading secretly with the Sarrians is named Wing. He is in the habit of spending summers at his home in the Rockies northeast of Lake Pend ‘Oreille, near the Montana-Idaho border; the homing transmitter of the Sarrians, to which they direct their remote-controlled torpedoes, is on a peak a few miles to the east. His wife has a good idea of the source of their income—the Sarrians pay in platinum and iridium nuggets—as has his oldest son Donald; but thirteen-year-old Roger Wing is determined to find out what lies behind the mysterious trips of his father into the forest. On one of his attempts he is caught in the woods by nightfall a short distance west of the Sarrian transmitter.
Ken and Feth have loaded a torpedo with chemical equipment to test Earth’s atmosphere. The torpedo lands within earshot of the spot where Roger is sleeping; he watches with surprise as samples of various metals are healed to incandescence in the little vessel’s cargo compartment. The sodium, magnesium, and titanium burn; other metals oxide slightly or not at all. As the light of the magnesium fire dies out Roger voices his amazement, and the torpedo’s microphones carry his voice to Ken and Feth far above. In the attempted conversation that follows, Ken mentions the word “Gold” knowing that that is sometimes used in trade with the natives of Earth. Misunderstanding him, Roger uses his wrist watch in an attempt to illuminate the now nearly dark cargo compartment, sees the crucible containing the still nearly molten gold, attempts to seize it, and is burned. Dropping the watch, he jumps back from the torpedo, and Ken starts the machine back toward the base on Mercury. It arrives, is warmed to bearable temperature, and opened.
Up to this time, Ken had assumed that the natives of this part of Earth are little better than savages—that they may even take the visiting torpedoes as supernatural phenomena. However, Roger’s watch puts an abrupt end to that idea. They are evidently capable of delicate machine work, at least; and if really good communication can be set up, their own enforcement agencies may conceivably be able to help Ken with his problem. His suspicion that Drai is actually the individual he wants, and that the substance the Earth natives call “tobacco” is actually the drug he seeks, is growing steadily. He conceals the watch from Drai. He enters Drai’s office during the latter’s absence, and obtains data concerning Earth’s location in space; but Drai’s suspicions are aroused. He contaminates the air of Ken’s room with tobacco, thus confirming the investigator’s suspicions but rendering him a helpless addict of the drug.
Ken learns that Allmer is in the same situation; and the two determine to work together. A suit is devised as protection against Earth’s frightful cold, and tested on Mars. It is successful, until Ken wades into a layer of frost; the latent heat of fusion and vaporization of water is too much for his insulation, and he barely succeeds in returning to his ship. Judging that this while material is the same a
s that which is visible about the poles of Earth, he decides that it is reasonably safe to visit any other region of the planet.
Drai, satisfied that Ken is in his power because of the drug, approves the journey, particularly when Ken makes the suggestion that the tobacco Drai obtains might be an organic product which they could collect for themselves and learn to grow on Mercury. The armor is attached to the outside of a torpedo—it is too large to go inside—and Ken makes the descent, Allmer guiding the carrier down to a point near the transmitter in the Rockies. Ken lands on a mountain top and attempts to gather some local vegetation; but the temperature of his armor is sufficient to ignite everything organic that he touches. He is about to leave when he hears a human voice.
PART 3
XIV.
It was not, in the end, his own discouragement which caused the cessation of Roger’s nocturnal watchings. The night on which the Sarrians tested the armor was, indeed, the last of these journeys; but this was owing to reasons beyond the boy’s control. When he descended in the morning, his father met him and accompanied him outside. There he pointed out certain footprints. Then they went up to Roger’s room together, and the rope came to light. Mr. Wing concluded the proceedings with a request for an explanation.
“Don’t get the idea that anyone tattled,” he added. “I don’t know whether you have anyone in your confidence, even. Both your mother and I saw that you were getting most of your sleep done daytimes. Well, what’s the story?”
Roger never even thought of lying. The family custom of proving questionable statements on challenge had taught him, as it had the other children, to recognize evidence and forego useless denial. The only question in his mind was whether to tell or not. He knew there would be no punishment if he refused; but also, there would be no help from his father on a problem that was decidedly beyond his own abilities, and there would most certainly be no more night journeys in search of landing torpedoes. He told what had happened, with all the detail the near-eidetic memory of childhood could evoke. His father was silent for a minute or two when he had finished.
“We’ll say nothing about your following Don and me,” he said at last. “You were never told in so many words not to, and curiosity is a healthy trait. Of course you let yourself get caught in the woods at night without food, water or light, and that is a more serious matter in view of the fact that you’re supposed to know better. However, the story being as interesting as it is, I guess we’ll suspend sentence on that offense.” Roger grinned.
“What would the sentence have been?”
“The logical one would be restriction to the half-mile circle for a week or two. You certainly behaved like a six-year-old. Let’s consider that that’s hanging over your head, and go on to more immediate matters. I suppose Edie knows all about this?”
“She knows about what happened that night. Not about the times I’ve gone out since.”
“All right. After breakfast, get her and come with me. We have a number of things to talk over.”
It turned out that Don was also at the meeting. This was held in a little natural amphitheater a few yards uphill from the house, which had been fitted with split-log benches. Mr. Wing wasted no time, but told the younger children the same story he had told Donald a few days before. Then Roger repeated his tale, mostly for his older brother’s benefit. Don had, of course, seen a Sarrian torpedo by this time, as he had been present when the first load of tobacco had been delivered a few days before; and there seemed to be little doubt that the structure Roger had encountered was of the same origin.
“I don’t understand why they’re shifting their base of operations after all these years.” Mr. Wing looked puzzled. “They’ve been coming back to that same gadget which we think is a directional transmitter every summer since before Don was born.”
“You don’t really know that they haven’t landed anywhere else, though,” pointed out Donald. “It just happened that Roger met one of their torpedoes. There might have been any number of others, anywhere on the earth.”
“That’s true, of course. Rog, you didn’t find any traces of other landings on these night walks of yours, did you?”
“I’m not sure, Dad. There’s a little patch of bushes all by itself on a hilltop out that way, that’s been burnt over. I couldn’t find any sign of a campfire, and there haven’t been any thunderstorms. I thought maybe one of the things had dropped something like the thing that burned my hand, and started the fire; but I couldn’t find anything of the sort. I don’t really know what started it.”
“I see. Then to sum up, we’ve been trading with creatures not native to this world for a long time; we may or may not be the only ones doing so; on at least one occasion they sent down a craft whose primary mission does not seem to have been trade.”
“Unless the light that Rog saw was intended to attract attention, as it did,” cut in Donald.
“In that case they would hardly have had their gold too hot to be touched. Furthermore, I’ve always refused gold—regular prospectors are competition enough without starting a rush of amateurs.”
“We don’t know that other people, if there have been any, felt the same way. But I guess you’re right about the temperature. They must have been conducting an experiment of their own, and the offer to trade was an afterthought when they heard Rog’s voice.”
“It was a dirty trick,” commented Roger.
“It may have been unintentional. Their knowledge of our language is extremely limited, and apparently they can’t see down here. Either they don’t know about television or can’t mount a transmitter in those torpedoes. Besides, if you came on them unexpectedly, they may have forgotten in the excitement of the moment that the gold would be hot. You said it was another container which was providing the light. However, that’s a point there’s not much use discussing.
“I had not planned to take this step until both Roger and Edie were older, and had had training enough to be of more help; but the matter seems to have been taken out of my control in that respect. What I want to do, and will need the help of all of you in doing, is to find out where these things are from, what sort of people are running them—and, if possible, how they work. I don’t have to tell you how important that knowledge would be. I have never tried to get outside experts on the job, because, as I told Don, I was afraid they’d let curiosity overcome prudence. I don’t want the torpedoes scared away by any hasty action. I’m too old to learn a new trade, for one thing.”
“Nuts!” It was Edie’s first contribution to the discussion, though she had listened intently to all that had gone before.
“What are we going to do?” Roger asked, rather more practically.
“First of all, you two will come with us the next time we trade. I may take the younger kids along too, only it’s quite a walk for them. You can listen in, watch, and generally see the whole thing for yourselves. After that, ideas will be in order. I was hoping, Rog, that you’d be an electronics expert by the time this happened. However, we’ll use what we have.”
“Maybe my trouble the other night could be put to use,” Roger suggested. “If they want tobacco badly enough to pay for it in platinum and iridium, they might Be in a mood to apologize.”
“Supposing they realize they hurt you, and could think of a way to transmit the apology. I won’t refuse an extra nugget or two if they choose to send them, but that won’t be very informative.”
“I suppose that’s so. Well, anyway, I’m going to go over the whole neighborhood of where I saw it and where you do your trading, by daylight. If they’ve made any other landings in the woods, I’ll find ‘em—that one broke a lot of branches, and left a dent in the ground the shape of the torpedo.”
If you think it’s worth doing,” remarked Don. “Why should they have landed in this neighborhood? Earth’s a pretty big place.”
“They did once, and I bet I know why!” retorted Roger. “That transmitter is right here! If you were exploring a new world or a new country e
ven, would you make one landing here and another five hundred miles away? You would not. You’d get to know one neighborhood first, and plant an outpost, and then spread out from there.”
There was silence for two or three minutes while the others absorbed this.
“You’re assuming, then,” said Mr. Wing at last, “that after twenty years of mere trading, they suddenly are starting to explore? Why didn’t they do it sooner?”
“Unfair question.”
“True enough. All right, it’s certainly a usable working hypothesis. You may go ahead with your exploring—so may Edie if she wants. I’m not sold enough on your idea to spend the effort myself, but in a day or two I’ll signal for another torpedo. That will give you time to do any looking you want, I suppose?”
“Well—” Roger’s recent mapping activities had given him a much clearer idea than he had formerly held just what the examining of one square mile meant. “We can look around a bit, anyway. I’m going right now, if no one has any real ideas. Coming, Edie? The girl stood up silently, and followed him back to the house. Their father watched them go with some amusement.
“I wish I didn’t have a nagging worry about Rog’s theory,” he said suddenly to Donald. “He might just be right—these creatures might be tired of paying for tobacco and they certainly know more of physical science than we do.”
“They’ll have a fine time looking for the living weed in this neighborhood,” replied his son. “They’ll do better to stay on peaceful terms.”
“Just tell ‘em that, will you?” murmured Mr. Wing.
Roger and his sister wasted no time. This time there was no mistake in the matter of food; they hastily prepared some sandwiches—their mother had long since resigned herself to the fact that raids on the pantry were inseparable from common-sense rules of forest life—and with a canteen of water apiece they set out eastward. Billy and Marge were playing somewhere out of sight, so there was no trouble about leaving them home. Their father’s description had been clear enough so that they had no trouble in finding the Sarrian transmitter, and from there the two began their search.