by Hal Clement
The agent began to decelerate again, now matching his velocity with that of the planet itself. At the same time, he began a more detailed analysis of the surface, refining it constantly as the distance diminished. The water he already knew about. He had supposed the gaseous envelope to consist of methane and water vapor, with perhaps some ammonia, formed at the same time as the rest of the planet. But his instruments told a different story.
Earth had lost its primary atmosphere. The tragedy had occurred before the first member of the agent’s race had ventured away from his own planetary system. The agent found the free oxygen, and swore again. He knew what that meant—photosynthesis. The planet was infected by those carbon compounds that behaved almost like life, except for their ferociously rapid rate of reaction.
They were not very dangerous, of course, but due care had to be exercised, and constant vigilance maintained. A good many planets in the liquid-ammonia-liquid-water temperature range had them, and techniques had long since been worked out for conducting analysis, and even for mining in their presence, destructive as they often were to machinery.
The Conservation vessel, naturally, was constructed of alloys reasonably proof against any attack by free oxygen or the usual run of the carbon compounds. In fact, if this world had any unique developments of the latter the agent could always lift his ship out of the atmosphere. Such a retreat seemed to put a stop to the growth of photosynthetic life.
It never occurred to the agent that concealment might be in order. In the first place, he was on a perfectly legal mission. In the second, equally of course, he didn’t think that there might be anyone on the planet to observe his arrival.
Oxygen being what it is, he had automatically classified the world as uninhabited and uninhabitable. As a result, the events of the half-second following his machine’s penetration of Earth’s ozone layer demanded a rather drastic revision of his outlook.
The radar beams, for an instant, made him suppose that another ship was on this world, and was trying to communicate with him. He had almost begun to answer before he realized that the radiation was not modulated, and could hardly be speech—or, more accurately, that its modulation was too simple and regular to represent words. Even though such radiation did not mean intelligence, however, it obviously did imply the presence of life.
Somehow, an organism must have evolved in an oxygen atmosphere with the ability to reduce metal oxides or sulfides, and keep them reduced to free metal. At the moment, it seemed to be a low order of life. But if it continued to develop as the agent’s own species had done, this corner of the galaxy might become rather an interesting place in time. A man might have drawn a somewhat similar conclusion from hearing the chirp of a cricket under analogous circumstances.
At first, the agent supposed the radiation to have meaning similar to that of the cricket’s chirp, too—it came and it went, regularly and monotonously, from a seemingly fixed source, and had an apparent willingness to go on until the sun cooled. But, a few milliseconds after the first pulses struck his receptors, others began to come in. They shared the simplicity of pattern shown by the first, but there were more of them.
As the ship moved, and its distance from some of the sources changed, it became evident that the waves were being directed in beams, rather than broadcast in all directions—and that the beams were following the ship. Intelligent or not, something was at least aware of his presence.
A score of hypotheses ran through the agent’s mind during the next few milliseconds, for thought can move rapidly, when the neurons involved are of metal, and the impulses they carry are electronic currents, rather than potential differences between the surfaces of a colloid membrane. But none of these theories managed to satisfy him.
Even he could not continue to theorize at the moment, either—for the hull of his vessel was glowing bright red, and the surface of the planet was coming up rather rapidly to meet him. He had to land within the next few seconds, assuming that he did not want to do his theorizing hanging motionless in the atmosphere.
The outer surface of his hull was a trifle hard to manage at its present temperature. But none of the myriads of relays further in had been affected and the sliver of metal obeyed his thoughts as it always had, slowing to a dead halt a few yards above the surface and then settling down for a landing while the agent analyzed the material directly underneath.
It was pure luck that there was no vegetation below him—luck, at least, for any local fire-fighters. The hot walls did respond to control, albeit a trifle sluggishly. Particles of sand and clay, coming in contact with the hull began to dance, like bits of sawdust on a vibrating plate. And like sawdust, the dance carried them into a particular pattern.
The pattern took the form of a hollow under the hull, while the excess soil heaped up around it on all sides. The ship eased gently downward into the crater thus formed, which deepened as it continued to sink. The settling of the vessel, and the deepening of the hole, continued for perhaps twenty feet, before the hull touched solid rock.
When it did, more relays moved, and the rock itself flowed away in fine dust. This continued for only another foot, and then the ship was resting in a perfectly fitting cradle of stone, and the displaced soil was drifting back around it, covering its still red-hot circumference. The sand smoothed itself into a low mound which almost, but not quite, covered the vessel.
Had the agent cared about concealment, of course, he could have dug a little deeper—but all he wanted was good contact with bedrock. There was much mapping to do, and the matter of local life would have to wait until it was done.
II
IT WAS ONE of the new, triangular, floating radar installations, some two hundred miles northeast of the Virginia Capes, that first picked up the track of the interstellar visitor. Since the vessel was still well up in the Photosphere, far too high for even the latest model planes, the report was worded, . . . Unidentified Flying Object, altitude (tent.) 50 mi. plus, speed (tent.) 3,600 mph, direction northwest by west . . .
The ever-watchful, and supersensitive network, set up to guard the lives and property of a continent, responded with an instant alert. In the central communications hall of a huge building near Washington, D.C., worried experts and officials gathered around plotting boards or stood in tight-lipped silence before a gigantic map on which reports were automatically registered in moving beams of light. The International situation was hardly tense enough to make probable an immediate enemy action. But in a Cold War period there could be no let-up of suspicion or instant readiness to act.
“The damned thing, whatever it is, is headed straight for Chicago,” growled a grey-haired brigadier general, whose face was seamed and leathery from hundreds of air-combat hours.
“She’s coming down, too,” replied a civilian expert, frowning at the latest reports, which were coming in with increased rapidity as the strange aerial object swept over thickly populated sections of the country. “Altitude only thirty miles over Akron. And she’s losing speed by the minute.”
“That’s what worries me,” replied the brigadier unhappily. “If it were a meteor it would be picking up speed. It would be blazing like a comet, even in broad daylight.”
“Nobody has yet developed a long-range missile control that will brake an enemy aircraft over the target,” said a third member of the high-echelon group, one who wore the light grey-blue of a naval officer in summer uniform. He spoke quietly, almost shyly, but his chest, beyond a highly-colored array of battle and medal-ribbons, carried the heavy silver wings of a command pilot.
“I don’t like it,” said the brigadier, thrusting his hands deep in his trouser pockets. “Just because we don’t have this sort of long-range missile control, doesn’t mean that they haven’t come up with it. All those scientists they’ve been turning out—and the hotshots they grabbed when they moved into Germany, in nineteen forty-five—” He let it hang there.
“Lord knows, meteors have been known to act freakishly,” said the naval a
ir officer.
At this point, Great Lakes Station came in with a report that put the UFO, still slowing, still descending, at a point well west of Chicago. There was a general sigh of relief.
But the brigadier remained unhappy. “We’ll have to alert every interceptor group in the Northwest,” he said quietly. “At the rate that mystery crate is coming down, we’ll be able to track up after it any minute now—shooting.”
It was the civilian who voiced the thought that had been in all their minds—the thought which none of the others had dared to put into words. He said, “That’s going to do us a hell of a lot of good, if she turns out to be a flying saucer. She’ll simply take off and zoom out of range.”
Nobody answered him, though long looks were exchanged. Then they all went back to checking reports, to planning the interception that seemed to grow more possible with each passing minute. The path of the object seemed to be turning more directly west as its speed continued to lessen, and its altitude to abate. Interceptor command groups within range of its path were ordered to stand by for scramble. Unfortunately, as the object came within Nike range, it was in a part of the continent where no rocket interceptors had been installed.
Then came a phone call from more than 2,000 miles away—from the lips of the general commanding the nation’s Intercontinental Bombing Command. In accordance with their routine of constant test-missions, a squadron of B-52’s, much too high for civilian observation, had been carrying out an overnight mock-bombing flight from its home field, in Texas, to a uranium mining complex far up in Northwestern Canada, near Great Slave Lake. Currently, they were making their return journey back to Texas.
Said the commanding general, his voice curiously crisp despite its nasal Midwestern drawl, “Three of my observers just spotted your UFO, flying a course a few points north of due west. It was two miles above them, moving at more than fifteen hundred. It was round and red-hot.”
“You mean round—like a saucer?” the brigadier asked, his voice breaking.
“No—it was round like a cannonball. And hotter than an H-bomb!” was the response.
When he had hung up, Minneapolis came in. Object safely past, still descending, still losing speed . . . Bismarck, North Dakota, had the object heading due west. Then came a ground observer report from Miles City, Montana, and another from Billings. In both cases, it had been seen as a round, red-hot object, streaking westward across the sky.
Then, nothing . . .
It was a rough day for the Radar Network.
IT WAS ALSO, as events were to confirm, a rough day for Field Expedition Seven, Summer of 1957, Montana University of Mines, Departments of Geology and Climatology.
Measured by its human components the expedition was a modest one and consisted of Assistant Professor Harold Parsons, his wife, Candace, and a Climatology Fellow, and Field Worker Donald MacLaurie, known to the regional sportswriters as Truck.
Their equipment consisted of one jeep with two-wheel trailer, two tents that had just been stowed away for daytime travel, canned food supplies, and an assortment of tools and instruments, including a Geiger counter bootlegged by Truck MacLaurie and currently the subject of argument between Truck and Professor Parsons.
“Listen, Truck,” Parsons said, with all the patience he could muster. “This is a university field expedition, not a uranium hunt. If you want the credit you’ll need to play football this fall, you’ll keep that click-box out of sight and out of mind. We’re here in the hills to study variations in surface clues to copper-ore formations—that is, I am here for that purpose. With your help, of course—if help is just the proper word for it. Candace is here to study cloud formations in the hills, for long-range precipitation effect on mining operations at Butte and Anaconda. I’m hoping you’ll learn enough about geology to enable me to give you that credit, come September—without putting a permanent mortgage on my professional integrity.”
“Golly, Doc—I only intended to try her out during my spare time,” protested Truck.
“What I’m trying to say, Truck, is this. There isn’t going to be any spare time on this trip.” Parsons paused, and added with a trace of acid, “You’re not back sleeping in classroom now. You’re in the field!
Parsons didn’t have to look at his wife to know how she was reacting to his lecture. Not that Candace would show disapproval in the presence of an outsider. But he was all too familiar with the slight blankness of usually alert and sympathetic brown eyes, the invisible aura of coolness that surrounded her. There were moments when he wished she weren’t quite so sympathetic and outgoing in her relations with people. It only made his own diffidence more pronounced.
Nor was he helped by the fact that, though he stood a wiry six feet one in his socks, he had to look upward to meet Truck MacLaurie’s large and blandly childish blue eyes. He also felt hampered by the fact that, while he himself was close to thirty, and Truck a mere twenty-two, the big ox looked about five years his senior.
He was about to cut it short and say, “All right, let’s get started,”—when the UFO passed, whizzing, over their heads.
It could not have been more than a mile above them, and it was round as a gigantic egg from some monster bird, red hot as a cooking stone in some giant’s barbecue-pit. It was traveling like a bat out of hell, due west, and it was falling fast. Even at that distance, it left in its wake a lingering sense of tremendous heat.
“Golly!” said Truck, following the object’s progress with open disbelief. “It’s gonna crash that crummy hill, head-on!”
The expedition of three had made camp, the night before, close to the center of an arid valley in the eastern foothills of the Rockies, roughly halfway between the mining communities of Brown and Hamilton. And camped there they still were, in a district where even the decaying remnants of ghost mining communities were scarce. It was rough, wild country—about as rough and wild as Rocky Mountain foothill country can ever get.
The western end of the valley was blocked by a range of minor hills whose topmost peak rose no more than five thousand feet from the valley floor. Unerringly, the speeding object appeared headed for this peak. Looking on with a mixture of amazement and disbelief which precluded horror, Parsons tried to remind himself that perspective played strange tricks, and that the object, whatever its nature, was undoubtedly on a course that must carry it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles before it crashed into the rugged terrain.
Then, unaccountably, the object swerved to the south, avoiding collision as neatly as a plane skillfully piloted by a crack ace. It disappeared around the peak, not over it, and vanished from sight behind the ragged mountain wall.
Then, there was nothing . . . no crash, no explosion. Nothing at all!
“Hal honey,” said Candace Parsons, “will you, for the love of Osiris or whatever gods you worship, light me a cigarette?”
Not another word was spoken for almost two minutes. The three of them stood there, spellbound, staring at the wall of hills, waiting for something, for anything. But there was nothing.
Again, it was Candace Parsons who broke the silence. She was a trim, long-legged girl, with soft brown hair with a texture so fine that it defied shop and home permanents alike. She was remarkable, too, in that her figure and appearance remained pleasantly female, despite her all-over ranginess and the disfigurement of camping clothes.
She said, “Since neither of you geniuses has any idea of what it is, I think we ought to report it, don’t you?”
Parsons nodded. He stepped on his own cigarette and ground it out in the sandy soil. “Perhaps if that damned transmitter of ours can clear those hills we came through yesterday . . .” He let the sentence trail off, and with Truck MacLaurie went back to the jeep.
The two of them broke the radio out of the trailer and set it up in the open. After fifteen minutes, it became clear that they were not going to get through. Parsons disconnected the transmitter and nodded to Truck to cease winding the battery. He looked at the football player al
most pleadingly.
“No, Doc,” said Truck. “If you think I’m gonna wheel this buggy back over the hills while you and Candace have all the fun . . . Well, the answer is no. Let the credits fall where they will.”
“Why, Truck!” exclaimed Candace, who had taken a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at a Midwestern university one year before her interests had veered to Parsons and Climatology. “That’s almost poetical.”
She saw the way both men were looking at her and shook her head. “I’m not going back either,” she added firmly. “I’ve always wanted to look at a UFO, and if you think I’m passing up this chance—”
Parsons squinted at the hills ahead. He said, “Okay, Bounty mutineers. Let’s put this show on the road. We can run up the transmitter when we hit the next range of hills, and maybe get a message through to Hamilton or Stevensville.”
A moment later, as they took their places in the jeep, he asked: “Candace, you wouldn’t kid me, would you?”
“Who’s kidding?” she countered. “That thing didn’t look like a flying saucer, but it didn’t look man-made either. And who ever heard of a meteor with sense enough to detour around a mountaintop?”
“Maybe it’s a good thing I brought the click-box along after all,” said Truck, who was massively filling the rear seat of the jeep. “You can’t tell what that thing may be radiating when we find it.”
“If we find it!” Parsons said quietly, steering the rugged little vehicle neady around a treacherous rock outcropping that lay concealed by a mask of brush.
The object, whatever it was, had flashed over the valley in less than a minute. Covering the same distance by ground had taken the expedition almost all day.