Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Periodically, it went back to the abandoned harness and repeated the careful examination, as though it expected something to happen. Naturally, in an environment having a three hundred seventy degree temperature, about eight hundred atmospheres pressure, and an atmosphere consisting of water heavily laced with oxygen and oxides of sulphur, things started to happen soon enough; and great interest was shown in the progress of the corrosion as it steadily devoured the metal. Some parts lasted longer than others; no doubt the designers had included different alloys, perhaps to check this very point. The robot remained in the general area until the last of the metal and vanished in slime.

  At irregular intervals during this time, the surface of the ground shook violently. Sometimes the shaking was accompanied by the crashes which had first greeted the robot’s “ears”; at other times it was relatively silent. The operators must have been bothered at first; then it became evident that all the hills in the neighborhood were well rounded with no steep cliffs, and the ground itself was free of both cracks and loose stones, so there was little reason to worry about the effect of quakes on the fabulously expensive mechanism.

  A far more interesting event was the appearance of animal life. Most of the creatures were small, but were none the less fascinating for that, if the robot’s actions meant anything. It examined everything that appeared, as closely as it possibly could. Most of the creatures seemed to be scale-armored and eight-limbed; some appeared to live on the local vegetation, others on each other.

  With the harness finally gone, the attention of the robot’s operators was exclusively occupied by the animals for a long time. The investigation was interrupted a number of times, but this was due to loss of control rather than distraction. The lack of visible surface features on Tenebra had prevented the men from getting a very precise measure of its rotation period, and on several occasions the distant ship “set” as far as the important part of the planet was concerned. Trial and error gradually narrowed down the uncertainties in the length of Tenebra’s day, however, and the interruptions in control finally vanished.

  The project of studying a planet three times the diameter of Earth looked rather ridiculous when attempted with a single exploring machine. Had that been the actual plan, of course it would have been ridiculous; but the men had something else in mind. One machine, is not much; a machine with a crew of assistants, particularly if the crew is part of a more or less world-wide culture, is something very different. The operators very definitely hoped to find local help—in spite of the rather extreme environment into which their machine had fallen. They were experienced men, and knew something of the ways of life in the universe.

  However, weeks went by, and then months, with no sign of a creature possessing more than the rudiments of a nervous system. Had the men understood the operation of the lensless, many-spined “eyes” of the local animals they might have been more hopeful; but as it was most of them grew resigned to facing a job of several lifetimes. It was sheer chance that when a thinking creature finally did turn up it was discovered by the robot. Had it been the other way around—if the native had discovered the machine—history could easily have been very different on several planets.

  The creature, when they did see it, was big. It towered fully nine feet in height, and on that planet must have weighed well over a ton. It conformed to the local custom as regarded scales and number of limbs, but it walked erect on two of the appendages, seemed not to be using the next two, and used the upper four for prehension. That was the fact that betrayed its intelligence; two long and two shorter spears, each with a carefully chipped stone head, were being carried in obvious readiness for instant use.

  Perhaps the stone disappointed the human watchers, or perhaps they remembered what happened to metals on this planet and refrained from jumping to conclusions about the culture level suggested by the material. In any case, they watched the native carefully.

  This was easier than it might have been; the present neighborhood, many miles from the original landing point, was a good deal rougher in its contours. The vegetation was both higher and somewhat less brittle, though it was still virtually impossible to avoid leaving a trail where the robot crawled. The men guessed at first that the higher plants had prevented the native from seeing the relatively small machine; then it became apparent that the creature’s attention was fully occupied by something else.

  It was traveling slowly, and apparently trying to leave as little trail as possible. It was also making allowance for the fact that to leave no trail was not practicable; periodically it stopped and built a peculiar arrangement consisting of branches from some of the rarer, springy plants and sharp stone blades which it took in seemingly endless supply from a large leather sack slung about its scaly body.

  The nature of these arrangements was clear enough, after the native had gotten far enough ahead to permit a close inspection. They were booby traps, designed to drive a stone point into the body of anything attempting to follow in the creature’s footsteps. They must have been intended against animals rather than other natives, since they could easily be avoided merely by parallelling the trail instead of following it.

  The fact that the precaution was being taken at all, however, made the whole situation extremely interesting, and the robot was made to follow with all possible caution. The native traveled five or six miles in this fashion, and during this time set about forty of the traps. The robot avoided these without trouble, but several times tripped others which had apparently been set earlier. The blades did no harm to the machine; some of them actually broke against the plastic. It began to look as though the whole neighborhood had been “mined,” however.

  Eventually the trail led to a rounded hill. The native climbed this quickly, and paused at a narrow gully opening near the top. It seemed to be looking around for followers, though no organs of vision had yet been identified by the human watchers. Apparently satisfied, it drew an ellipsoidal object from its sack, examined it carefully with delicate fingers, and then disappeared into the gully.

  In two or three minutes it was back, this time without its grapefruit sized burden. Heading down the hill once more, it avoided with care both its own traps and the others, and set off in a direction different from that of its approach.

  The robot’s operators had to think fast. Should they follow the native, or find out what it had been doing up the hill? The former might seem more logical, since the native was leaving and the hill presumably was not, but the second alternative was the one chosen. After all, it was impossible for the thing to travel without leaving some sort of trail; besides, night was approaching, so it wouldn’t get far. It seemed safe to assume that it shared the characteristic of Tenebra’s other animal life, of collapsing into helplessness a few hours after nightfall.

  Besides, looking at the hilltop shouldn’t take too long. The robot waited until the native was well out of sight, and then moved up the hill toward the gully. This, it turned out, led into a shallow crater, though the hill bore no other resemblance to a volcano; and on the crater floor lay perhaps a hundred ellipsoids similar to that which the native had just left. They were arranged with great care in a single line, and except for that fact were the closest things to loose stones that the men had yet seen on Tenebra. Their actual nature seemed so obvious that no effort was made to dissect one.

  At this point there must have been a lengthy and lively discussion. The robot did nothing for quite a long time. Then it left the crater and went down the hill, picked its way carefully out through the “mine field” on the trail of the native, and settled down to travel.

  This was not quite as easy as it would have been in the daytime, since it was starting to rain and visibility frequently obstructed by the drops. The men had not yet really decided whether it was better, in traveling at night, to follow valleys and remain submerged or stick to ridges and hilltops so as to see occasionally; but in this case the problem was irrelevant. The native had apparently ignored the question, and
settled for something as close to a straight line as it could manage. The trail ran for some ten miles, and ended at a clearing before a cave-studded cliff.

  Details could not be seen well. Not only was the rain still falling, but the darkness was virtually absolute even to the pickups of the robot. More discussion must have resulted from this; it was two or three minutes after the machine’s arrival at the clearing that its lights went on and played briefly over the rock.

  Natives could be seen standing inside the cave mouths, but they made no response to the light. They were either asleep in more or less human fashion, or had succumbed to the usual night-torpor of Tenebra’s animal life.

  No sign of anything above a stone age culture could be seen anywhere about, and after a few minutes of examination the robot cut off most of its lights and headed back toward the hill and crater.

  It moved steadily and purposefully. Once at the hill top, several openings appeared in its sides, and from some of these armlike structures were extended. Ten of the ellipsoids were picked carefully from one end of the line—leaving no betraying gaps—and stowed in the robot’s hull. Then the machine went back down the hill and began a deliberate search for booby traps. From these it removed the stone blades, and such of these as seemed in good condition— many were badly corroded, and some even crumbled when handled—disappeared into other openings in the lump of plastic. Each of these holes was then covered by a lid of the same incredibly stable polymer which formed the body of the machine, so that no one could have told from outside that the storage places were there.

  With this completed, the robot headed away, at the highest speed it could maintain. By the time Altair rose and began turning the bottom of the atmosphere back into gas the machine, the stolen weapons, and the “kidnaped” eggs were far from the crater and still farther from the cave village.

  I

  Nick pushed through the tall plants into the open, stopped, and used several words of the sort Fagin had always refused to translate. He was neither surprised nor bothered to find water ahead of him—it was still early in the morning; it was annoying, however, to find it on each side as well. Sheer bad luck, apparently, had led him straight out along a peninsula, and this was no time for anyone to retrace his steps.

  To be really precise, he didn’t know that he was being followed, of course; but it simply hadn’t occurred to him to doubt that he was. He had spent two days, since his escape, in making as confused and misleading a trail as possible, swinging far to the west before turning back toward home, and he was no more willing than a human being to admit that it might have been wasted effort. True, he had seen not the slightest sign of pursuers. He had been delayed by the usual encounters with impassable ground and wild animals, and none of his captors had caught up; the floating animals and plants which it was never safe to ignore completely had shown no sign of interest in anything behind him; his captors during the time he was with them had. shown themselves to be hunters and trackers of superlative skill. Taking all these facts into account, he might have been excused for supposing that the fact of his continued freedom meant they were not following. He was tempted, but couldn’t bring himself to believe it. They had wanted so badly to make him lead them to Fagin!

  He came to himself with a start, and brought his mind back to the present. Theorizing was useless just now; he must decide whether to retrace his steps along the peninsula, and risk running into his ex-captors, or wait until the lake dried up and chance their catching him. It was hard to decide which was the smaller risk, but there was one check he could make.

  He walked to the water’s edge, looked at the liquid carefully, and then slapped it vigorously. The slow ripples which spread up the edge of the lake and out over its more or less level surface did not interest him; the drops which detached themselves did. He watched as they drifted toward him, settling slowly, and noted with satisfaction that even the largest of them faded out without getting back to the surface. Evidently the lake did not have long to go; he settled down to wait.

  The breeze was picking up slowly as the plants awoke to the new day. He could smell it. He watched eagerly for its effect on the lake—not waves, but the turbulent hollows in the surface which would mark slightly warmer bodies of air passing over it. That would be the sign; from then on, the surface would probably drop faster down the lake bed than he could travel. The breeze should keep the air breathable, as long as he didn’t follow the water too closely—yes, it couldn’t be long now; the very point where he was standing was below the surface level of some parts of the lake. It was drying up.

  The difference increased as he waited, the edge of the water slipping back in ghostly fashion. He followed it with caution, until a wall of water towered on either side. It began to look as though the peninsula were really a ridge across the lake; if so, so much the better.

  Actually, it didn’t quite reach. He had a wait for a quarter of an hour at the ridge’s end while the rest of the lake turned back to air. He was impatient enough to risk breathing the stuff almost too quickly after the change, but managed to get away with it. A few minutes more brought him up the slope to the tall vegetation on the east side of the erstwhile lake. Before plunging among the plants, where he would be able to see nothing but the floaters overhead, he paused a moment to look back across the dry bottom to the point where he had first seen the water—still no pursuers. Another floater or two were drifting his way; he felt for his knives, and slightly regretted the spears he had lost. Still, there was little likelihood of danger from a floater behind him as long as he traveled at a decent speed—and that’s what he’d better be doing. He plunged into the brush.

  Travel was not too difficult; the stuff was flexible enough to be pushed out of the way most of the time. Occasionally he had to cut his way, which was annoying less because of the effort involved than because it meant exposing a knife to the air. Knives were getting rather scarce, and Fagin rather tight with those remaining.

  The morning wore on, still without sight of pursuers. He made unusually good speed much of the time because of a remarkable lack of wild animals—par for a forty-mile walk being four or five fights, while he had only one. However, he more than lost the time gained when he ran into an area rougher than any he had ever seen. The hills were sharp and jagged instead of rounded; there were occasional loose rocks, and from time to time these were sent rolling and tumbling by unusually sharp quakes. In places he had to climb steep cliffs, either up or down; in others, he threaded his way through frighteningly narrow cracks—with no assurance that there was an opening at the other end. Several times there wasn’t, and he had to go back.

  Even here he left a trail, the local plant life being what it was; but with that area behind him he found it even harder to justify the feeling that he was being pursued. If his excaptors really followed through that, they deserved to catch him! But still, however often he let his attention cover his rear, no sign of them appeared.

  The hours passed, Nick traveling at the highest speed he could maintain. The one fight he had scarcely delayed him at all; it was a floater that saw him from ahead and dropped nearly to ground level in time to intercept him. It was a small one, so small that his arms outreached its tentacles; and a quick slash of one of his knives opened enough of its gas-bladders to leave it floundering helplessly behind him. He sheathed the weapon and raced on with scarcely diminished speed, rubbing an arm which had been touched lightly by the thing’s poison.

  The limb had ceased to sting, and Altair was high in the sky, when he finally, found himself in familiar surroundings. He had hunted before this far from the home valley; rapid as changes were, the area was still recognizable. He shifted course a trifle and put on a final burst of speed. For the first time, he felt sure of being able to deliver a report of his capture, and also for the first time he realized that he had not tried to organize one. Just telling what had happened to him, item by item, might take too long; it was important that Fagin and the rest get away quickly. On the oth
er hand, it would take a pretty complete explanation of the state of affairs to convince, the teacher of that fact. Nick unconsciously slowed down as he pondered this problem. He was dragged from this reverie only by the sound of his own name.

  “Nick! Is that really you? Where have you been? We thought you’d slept out once too often!”

  At the first sound, Nick had reached for his knives; but he checked the movement as he recognized the voice.

  “Johnny! It’s good to hear proper talk again. What are you doing this far out? Have the sheep eaten everything closer to home?”

  “No, I’m hunting, not herding.” John Doolittle pushed through the undergrowth into clear view. “But where have you been? It’s been weeks since you went out, and since we stopped looking for you.”

  “You looked for me? That’s bad. Still, I guess it didn’t make any difference, or I’d have known it sooner.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand what you’re talking about. And what did you mean about it’s being good to hear ‘proper talk’ ? What other kind of talk is there? Let’s hear the story.”

  “It’s a long one, and I’ll have to tell everyone as quickly as possible anyway. Come along home; there’s no point telling it twice.” He headed toward the valley they both called “home” without waiting to hear any answer. John “trailed” his spears and followed. Even without Nick’s implication of trouble ahead, he would not willingly have missed the report. Fresh as he was, though, he had difficulty keeping up with the returned explorer; Nick seemed to be in a hurry.