Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  “I realize that. That’s why you’re down there, if you remember; you’re supposed to be a diplomat. I don’t expect miracles—none of us do—and we certainly want Barlennan to stay on good terms with us; but there’s two billion dollars worth of special equipment on that rocket that couldn’t leave the pole, and recordings that are literally priceless. There’s been nothing done in any gravity field even slightly comparable to that one; we must have the records back, even granting that Barlennan couldn’t possibly transport the equipment itself for the most part. There are more research projects stymied and screaming for that data—”

  “I know, and I’ll do my best,” Lackland cut in, “but I could never make the importance of it clear to a native—and I don’t mean to belittle Barlennan’s intelligence; he just hasn’t the background. You keep an eye out for breaks in these winter storms, so he can come up here and study the pictures whenever possible.”

  “Couldn’t you rig some sort of outside shelter next to a window, so he could stay up even during bad weather?”

  “I suggested that once, and he won’t leave his ship and crew at such times. I see his point.”

  “I suppose I do, too. Well, do the best that you can—you know what it means. We should be able to learn more about gravity from that stuff than anyone since Einstein.” Rosten signed off, and the winter’s work began.

  The grounded research rocket, which had landed under remote control near Mesklin’s south pole and had failed to take off after presumably recording its data, had long since been located by its telemetering transmitters. Choosing a sea and/or land route to it from the vicinity of the Bree’s winter quarters, however, was another matter. The ocean travel was not too bad; some forty or forty-five thousand miles of coastal travel, nearly half of it in waters already known to Barlennan’s people, would bring the salvage crew as close to the helpless machine as this particular chain of oceans ever got. That, unfortunately, was some four thousand miles; and there simply were no large rivers near that section of coast which would shorten the overland distance significantly.

  There was such a stream, easily navigable by a vessel like the Bree, passing within fifty miles of the desired spot; but it emptied into an ocean which had no visible connection with that which Barlennan’s people sailed. The latter was a long, narrow, highly irregular chain of seas extending from somewhat north of the equator in the general neighborhood of Lackland’s station almost to the equator on the opposite side of the planet, passing fairly close to the south pole on the way—fairly close, that is, as distances on Mesklin went. The other sea, into which the river near the rocket emptied, was broader and more regular in outline; the river mouth in question was at about its southernmost point, and it also extended to and past the equator, merging at last with the northern ice cap. It lay to the east of the first ocean chain, and appeared to be separated from it by a narrow isthmus extending from pole to equator—narrow, again by Mesklinite standards. As the photographs were gradually pieced together, Lackland decided that the isthmus varied from about two to nearly seven thousand miles in width. The narrow portion was a few thousand miles south of Barlennan’s home country, and was perfectly well known to the commander; for that reason they had started their map-making in that region.

  “What we could use, Barl, is a passage from one of these seas into the other,” remarked Lackland one day. The Mesklinite, sprawled comfortably on his ledge outside the window, gestured agreement silently. It was past midwinter now, and the greater sun becoming perceptibly dimmer as it arched on its swift path across the sky to the north. “Are you sure that your people know of none? After all, most of these pictures were taken in the fall, and you say that the ocean level is much higher in the spring.”

  “We know of none, at any season,” replied the captain. “We know something, but not much, of the ocean you speak of; there are too many different nations on the land between for very much contact to take place. A single caravan would be a couple of years on the journey, and as a rule they don’t travel that far. Goods pass through many hands on such a trip, and it’s a little hard to learn much about their origin by the time our traders see them in the western seaports of the isthmus. If any passage such as we would like exists at all, it must be here near the Rim where the lands are almost completely unexplored. Our map—the one you and I are making—does not go far enough yet. In any case, there is no such passage south of here during the autumn; I have been along the entire coastline as it was then, remember. Perhaps, however, this very coast reaches over to the other sea; we have followed it eastward for several thousand miles, and simply do not know how much farther it goes.”

  “As I remember, it curves north again a couple of thousand miles past the outer cape, Barl—but of course that was in the autumn, too, when I saw it. It’s going to be quite troublesome, this business of making a usable map of your world. It changes too much. I’d be tempted to wait until next autumn so that at least we could use the map we made, but that’s four of my years away. I can’t stay here that long.”

  “You could go back to your own world and rest until the time came—though I would be sorry to see you go.”

  “I’m afraid that would be a rather long journey, Barlennan.”

  “How far?”

  “Weil—your units of distance wouldn’t help much. Let’s see. A ray of light could travel around Mesklin’s ‘rim’ in . . . ah . . . four fifths of a second.” He demonstrated this time interval with his watch, while the native looked on with interest. “The same ray would take a little over eleven of my years; that’s—about two and a quarter of yours, to get from here to my home.”

  “Then your world is too far to see? You never explained these things to me before.”

  “I was not sure we had covered the language problem well enough. No, my world cannot be seen, but I will show you my sun when winter is over and we have moved to the right side of yours.” The last phrase passed completely over Barlennan’s head, but he let it go. The only suns he knew were the bright Belne whose coming and going made day and night, and the fainter Esstes, which was visible in the night sky at this moment. In a little less than half a year, at midsummer, the two would be close together in the sky, and the fainter one hard to see; but Barlennan had never bothered his head about the reason for these motions. He did recall, now that he thought of it, that his great-grandfather had said something about the conjunction of suns formerly occurring in winter instead of summer, but the knowledge seemed unimportant. He decided not to mention it to the Flyer; it hardly seemed germane to the subject of map-making, from which they seemed to have wandered slightly.

  Lackland had put down the photograph he was holding, and seemed immersed in thought. Much of the floor of the room was already covered with loosely-fitted pictures; the region best known to Barlennan was already mapped fairly well. However, there was yet a long, long way to go before the area occupied by the human outpost would be included; and the man was already being troubled by the refusal of the photographs to fit together. Had they been of a spherical or nearly spherical world like Earth or Mars, he could have applied the proper projection correction almost automatically on the smaller map which he was constructing, and which covered a table at one side of the chamber; but Mesklin was not even approximately spherical. As Lackland had long ago recognized, the proportions of the Bowl on the Bree—Barlennan’s equivalent of a terrestrial globe—were approximately right. It was six inches across and one and a quarter deep, and its curvature was smooth but far from uniform.

  To add to the difficulty of matching photographs, much of the planet’s surface was relatively smooth, without really distinctive topographic feature; and even where mountains and valleys existed, the different shadowing of adjacent photographs made comparison a hard job. The habit of the brighter sun of crossing from horizon to horizon in less than nine minutes had seriously disarranged normal photographic procedure; successive pictures in the same series were often illuminated from almost opposite directio
ns.

  “We’re not getting anywhere with this, Barl,” Lackland said wearily. “It was worth a try as long as there might be short cuts, but you say there are none. You’re a sailor, not a caravan master; that four thousand miles overland right where gravity is greatest is going to stump us.”

  “The knowledge that enables you to fly, then, cannot change weight?”

  “It cannot.” Lackland smiled. “The instruments which are on that rocket grounded at your south pole should have readings which might teach us just that, in time. That is why the rocket was sent, Barlennan; the poles of your world have the most terrific surface gravity of any spot in the Universe so far accessible to us. There are a number of other worlds even more massive than yours, and closer to home, but they don’t spin the way Mesklin does; they’re too nearly spherical We wanted measures in that tremendous gravity field—all sorts of measures. The value of the instruments that were designed and sent on that trip cannot be expressed in numbers we both know; when the rocket failed to respond to its take-off signal, it rocked the governments of ten planets. We must have that data, even if we have to dig a canal to get the Bree into the other ocean.”

  “But what sort of devices were on board this rocket?” Barlennan asked. He regretted the question almost in the same instant; the Flyer might wonder at such specific curiosity, and come to suspect the captain’s true intentions. However, Lackland appeared to take the query as natural.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Barl. You simply have no background which would give words like electron and neutrino and magnetism and quantum any meaning at all. The drive mechanism of the rocket might mean a little more to you, but I doubt it.” In spite of Lackland’s apparent freedom from suspicion, Barlennan decided not to pursue the subject.

  “Would it not be well,” he said, “to seek the pictures that show the shore and inland regions east of here? If you really plan to dig a canal, you will have to decide on a route.”

  “I’m afraid I did not mean the canal idea seriously,” Lackland replied. “It would be impractical even for our machines, unless the two bodies of water came almost together. There is still some chance, of course, that they do meet; I don’t pretend to have memorized the whole area. Maybe down next to the ice cap—how much cold can you people stand?”

  “We are uncomfortable when the sea freezes, but we can stand it—if it does not get too much colder. Why?”

  “It’s just possible you may have to crowd the northern ice cap pretty closely. Well see, though. Just a moment; one of these first few pictures in the K-18 series ought to show this neighborhood.” The Flyer riffled through the stack of prints, still taller than Barlennan was long, and eventually extracted a thin sheaf. “One of these—” his voice trailed off for a few moments. “Here we are. This was taken from the inner edge of the ring, Barl, over six hundred miles up, with a narrow-angle telephoto lens. You can see the main shoreline, and the big bay, and here, on the south side of the big one, the little bay where the Bree is beached. This was taken before this station was built—though it wouldn’t show anyway.

  “Now let’s start assembling again. The sheet east of this—” he trailed off again, and the Mesklinite watched in fascination as a readable map of the lands he had not yet reached took form below him.

  For a time it seemed they were to be disappointed, for the shore line gradually curved northward as Lackland had thought; indeed, some twelve hundred miles to the west and four or five hundred north, the ocean seemed to come to an end—the coast curved westward again. A vast river emptied into it at this point, and with some hope at first that this might be a strait leading to the eastern sea Lackland began fitting the pictures that covered the upper reaches of the mighty stream. He was quickly disabused of this idea, by the discovery of an extensive series of rapids some two hundred and fifty miles upstream; east of these, the great river dwindled rapidly. Numerous smaller watercourses emptied into it; apparently it was the main artery for the drainage system of a vast area of the planet. Interested by the speed with which it broke up into smaller rivers, Lackland continued building the map eastward, watched with interest by Barlennan.

  The main stream, as far as it could be distinguished, had shifted direction slightly, flowing from a more southerly direction. Carrying the mosaic of pictures in this direction they found a range of very fair-sized mountains, and the Earthman looked up with a rueful shake of his head. Barlennan had come to understand the meaning of this gesture.

  “Do not stop yet!” the captain expostulated. “There is a similar range along the center of my country, which is a fairly narrow peninsula. At least build the picture far enough to determine how the streams flow on the other side of the mountains.”

  Lackland, though not optimistic—he recalled the South American continent on his own planet too clearly to assume any symmetry of the sort the Mesklinite seemed to expect—complied with the native’s suggestion. The range proved to be fairly narrow, extending roughly east-northeast by west-southwest; and rather to the man’s surprise the numerous “water” courses on the opposite side began very quickly to show a tendency to come together in one vast river. This ran roughly parallel with the range for mile after mile, broadening as it went, and hope began to grow once more. It reached a climax five hundred miles downstream, when what was now a vast estuary merged indistinguishably with the “waters” of the eastern ocean.

  Working feverishly, scarcely stopping for food or even the rest he so badly needed in Mesklin’s savage gravity, Lackland worked on; and eventually the floor of the room was covered by a new map—a rectangle representing some two thousand miles in an east-west line and half as far in the other dimension. The great bay and tiny cove where the Bree was beached showed clearly at its western end; much of the other was occupied by the featureless surface of the eastern sea. Between lay the land barrier.

  It was narrow; at its narrowest, some five hundred miles north of the equator, it was a scant eight hundred miles from coast to coast, and this distance was lessened considerably if one measured from the highest usable points of the principal rivers. Perhaps three hundred miles, part of it over a mountain range, was all that lay between the Bree and a relatively easy path to the distant goal of the Earthmen’s efforts. Three hundred miles; a mere step, as distances on Mesklin went.

  Unfortunately, it was decidedly more than a step to a Mesklinite sailor. The Bree was still in the wrong ocean; Lackland, after staring silently for many minutes at the mosaic about him, said as much to his tiny companion. He expected no answer, or at most a dispirited agreement; his statement was self-evidently true—but the native fooled him.

  “Not if you have more of the metal on which we brought you and the meat back!” was Barlennan’s instantaneous reply.

  VI.

  For another long moment Lackland stared out the window into the sailor’s eyes, while the implications of the little creature’s remark sank into his mind; then he stiffened into something as closely approaching an alert attitude as the gravity permitted.

  “You mean you would be willing to tow the Bree overland on a sled, as you did me?”

  “Not exactly. The ship outweighs us very much, and we would have the same trouble with traction that we did before. What I had in mind was your towing, with another tank.”

  “I see. I—see. It would certainly be possible, unless we hit terrain that the tank couldn’t pass. But would you and your crew be willing to make such a journey? Would the extra trouble and distance from your home be repaid by the little we could do for you?”

  Barlennan extended his pincers in a smile.

  “It would be much better than what we originally planned. There are trading goods that come from the shores of the eastern ocean to our country, by the long caravan routes overland; by the time they reach the ports on our own sea, they are already fabulously expensive, and an honest trader cannot make a decent profit from them. This way, if I picked, them up directly—well, it would be certainly very worth while indeed,
for me. Of course, you would have to promise to bring us back across the isthmus when we returned.”

  “That would certainly be fair enough, Barl; I’m sure my people will gladly agree to it. But how about the land travel itself? This is country you know nothing about, as you have said; might not your crew be afraid of unknown land, and high hills over them, and maybe animals larger than can possibly grow in your part of the world?”

  “We have faced dangers before,” the Mesklinite replied. “I was able to get used to high places—even the top of your tank. As for animals, the Bree is armed with fire, and none that walk on land could be as large as some that swim the oceans.”

  “That’s true enough, Barl. Very well. I was not trying to discourage you, goodness knows; but I wanted to be sure you had thought the matter over before you embarked on such a project. It’s hardly one that can be backed out of in the middle.”

  “That I can readily understand, but you need not fear, Charles. I must return to the ship now; the clouds are gathering again. I will tell the crew what we are going to do; and lest the thoughts of fear should come to any of them, I will remind them that the profits of the voyage will be shared according to rank. There is no member of that crew who would put fear in the way of wealth.”

  “And you?” Lackland chuckled as he asked the question.

  “Oh, I’m not afraid.” The Mesklinite vanished into the night as he spoke the words, and Lackland was never sure just how he meant them. He did not waste too much time in thinking about it; he turned immediately to the larger transmitter and began calling the base on Toorey.

  Rosten, when he heard the new plan, made a number of caustic remarks to the effect that Lackland could certainly be counted on for ideas that would give him use of a tank; even when the younger man pointed out that the idea had been Barlennan’s he was not completely pacified.