Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  The bolt had struck the pile of dirt which had been left by the digging machinery at the far lip of the pit, and scattered most of it to the four winds. Perhaps half a ton had slid back into the hole from which it had originally been removed. There was no telling, from above, what the Felodon had done to Mitsuitei. The upper half of the archaeologist’s body was buried completely, and the rest so liberally sprinkled with dirt that it was not at once identifiable.

  The guide, using language strange even to the widely-traveled Lampert, leaped the three meters downward without bothering to use the ladder, seized a projecting leg and tried to draw the little man clear of the soil. Lampert, equally aware of the possible value of time but feeling that he would do little good with a broken leg, made the descent in the normal manner.

  By the time he reached the bottom, McLaughlin had succeeded in dragging Mitsuitei almost completely clear. Lampert started forward to clear the mud from the still hidden face; then he stopped, and his stomach abruptly heaved, as he realized that the face was not hidden.

  It was gone.

  Mitsuitei had removed the headgear and gloves from his protective suit for the normal reason—to see and manipulate better. The exposed head and hands had formed the Felodon’s hasty meal.

  The paleontologists saw the helicopter approaching this time, for they were working outside the tunnel. Between them on the ledge lay a block of stone some five feet long, two high and four wide—over two tons of material, all told, which had been worked out of the hole rather ingeniously by the men. Partial undercuts had been made, rollers worked out of stone by the cutter placed underneath, and the undercutting completed along a plane which sloped slightly upward into the tunnel. Of course the block had run off the rollers once it was out in the open, and the men could no more shift it another centimeter than they could return to Emeraude without the helicopter; but at least it was more or less accessible by air. They were chipping waste rock from the corners when the flyer appeared.

  Sulewayo was first up the ladder, unburdened this time. They expected to have further use for the cutter. He noted that Lampert was alone in the machine, and promptly asked the question the geophysicist had been dreading.

  “Where’s Take? We’ve found something for him!”

  “I’m afraid he won’t appreciate it. He was killed a couple of hours ago by a Felodon.” The news silenced even Sulewayo, and the expression on his junior’s face actually startled Krendall when he climbed through the hatch.

  “Ndomi! What in—” Lampert cut in with the same news he had given a moment before. Krendall reacted similarly; then slowly lowered himself into a seat.

  He did not ask for details. Both men could see that this was not the time to put such a question to the pilot, though neither realized then the personal responsibility that Lampert felt over the incident. Krendall pulled a small fragment of tuff from his pocket, and looked at it thoughtfully.

  Nothing further was said until the helicopter landed once more on the river near the “city.” McLaughlin and the bundle which held what was left of Takehiko Mitsuitei were waiting on the bank, and were loaded aboard without a sound.

  “It’s early. We’ll take him back to Emeraude tonight, and come back for your work tomorrow,” Lampert said, and lifted into the air without waiting for agreement.

  “All right,” replied Krendall, “as long as we come back. I don’t think he’d have wanted us to stop. I’m going to find out about those green threads of his, too.” Lampert nodded in approval. He had already formed a similar determination. For half an hour they flew on in silence.

  The Felodon, half submerged in swamp water a kilometer downstream from the hill, heard the helicopter hum overhead. It seemed totally disinterested. For just a moment its fanged head pointed upward, then settled back again. There was a burn under its jaw, which had been inflicted by metal spraying from the ruined seismic apparatus. It was more comfortable to keep it under water . . .

  “What was it you found, Ndomi, that you thought Take would want to see?” Lampert broke the long silence.

  “It was when we were undercutting to get the block out of the tunnel,” Sulewayo answered. “It’s just some more of his green threads, in the tuff below the fossil. I brought a chunk of the rock showing them—here.” Lampert nodded without taking his main attention from flying.

  “Maybe that fossil of yours was intelligent after all, then,” he said. “It seems to have died under very similar circumstances to Take—just above a set of those green threads. Maybe it was a member of a party like ours.”

  “Maybe. It certainly walked erect. The whole body structure shows that. If its brain were large enough and it had some sort of manipulating appendage I’d say it was virtually human—in capacity, that is. It was more of an amphibian anatomically.”

  “You have the block out in the open. Haven’t you been able to study the head and limbs?”

  “No, damn it.” Krendall took over from his junior. “That was the big disappointment of the whole find. The specimen seems to be perfect except for missing skull and hands. Not a trace of either.”

  The helicopter wavered slightly in its path, then steadied as Lampert forced his attention back to his job. No one said anything for a long time, but everyone was thinking.

  Someone else was thinking too, but wasn’t keeping his thoughts to himself. They were being spoken, and virtually dripped with the thinker’s fury.

  “You sloppy, lazy parasites! I don’t mind being stuck with a job and a deadline, even if it’s a report that’s due in only fifty years and needs about two hundred for a real conclusion. I’d sooner do it all myself than have some of you loose thinkers butting in! But if I’m to give my whole attention to it so I can produce something that won’t be laughed at from here to the Magellanic Clouds, how about some of you watching what goes on on this planet? I didn’t know those creatures were poking around until they began cutting sensor lines! Thirty, the protective life we’ve bred on the surface was your idea; why didn’t you put it to work?”

  The answering words tried to be soothing.

  “Thirty was working—”

  “Dreaming, you mean!”

  “But I put one of the guardians on the job for him; it stopped the digging, didn’t it?”

  “Sure, after a lot of damage had been done. Do you want to come out in the open and repair my wiring—with those space travelers poking around? If they find you at it, the Council won’t just laugh at us; they’ll excommunicate us and let this new species of intelligence clean us out. Why did it take so long for the guardian to do anything?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Well, you were dreaming too, weren’t you. Blast it, you’re here to do constructive thinking, not just to entertain yourself. Haven’t you any self-respect? They actually dug out Sixteen!”

  “What difference will that make? He’s been dead too long to mind it himself, and anyway his brain and sensor connections were decently burned.”

  “But they wouldn’t have had to dig much deeper to get someone who’s not dead, would they, Ninety-Five, my young friend? I suppose when they cut one or two of your sensors you decided it was time to do something. Don’t interrupt! I’m talking! This planet is supposed to be a quiet place where people can expect to spend a decent number of centuries at a time thinking, without being disturbed. If you’re too young or too lazy or just too stupid to do any real thinking yourself, at least you can devote a little time from your casual amusements to making sure that other people can. Shut up! You’ll do some thinking now or find yourself in real trouble! Here’s a problem for you to solve, and see that you solve it!

  “You will get my sensors repaired, making sure not only that you’re not caught at the job by these space travelers but also that they don’t realize it’s been done. In other words, don’t just neatly fill in the hole they made after you’ve finished, so they can’t help knowing they’re not the only intelligences on this world. I don’t know when they’ll be back any better t
han you do, so you’ll have to guess at your own time limit. You can booby-trap your canyon with landslides or anything else to keep yourself from being dug out, but if you fail in either problem and either of us looks likely to be found I personally guarantee you’ll be found in the same shape as Sixteen. Now get to work, and let me think. If you think you can get help or sympathy from anyone else on the planet, good luck to you.”

  A wave of agreement spread along the countless miles of sensor wiring that extended through Viridis’ crust, but Twenty-Five didn’t feel or hear it. He had already taken the myriad of tendrils that terminated his arms away from the mosaic console that formed the end of the vast bundles of greenish threads coming through the walls of his cave, and had settled back in his lounging chair. That report—only fifty years to have it thought out his full attention went back to it.

  END

  HOT PLANET

  Mercury had no atmosphere—everyone knew that. Why was it developing one now?

  I

  THE WIND which had nearly turned the Albireo’s landing into a disaster instead of a mathematical exercise was still playing tunes about the fins and landing legs as Scholssberg made his way down to Deck Five.

  The noise didn’t bother him particularly, though the endless seismic tremors made him dislike, the ladders. But just now he was able to ignore both. He was curious—though not hopeful.

  “Is there anything at all obvious on the last sets of tapes, Joe?”

  Mardikian, the geophysicist, shrugged. “Just what you’d expect . . . on a planet which has at least one quake in each fifty-mile-square area every five minutes.

  You know yourself we had, a nice seismic program set up, but when we touched down we found we couldn’t carry it out. We’ve done our best with the natural tremors—incidentally stealing most of the record tapes the other projects would have used. We have a lot of nice information for the computers back home; but it will take all of them to make any sense out of it.”

  Schlossberg nodded; the words had not been necessary. His astronomical program had been one of those sabotaged by the transfer of tapes to the seismic survey.

  “I just hoped,” he said. “We each have an idea why Mercury developed an atmosphere during the last few decades, but I guess the high school kids on Earth will know whether it’s right before we do. I’m resigned to living in a chess-type universe—few and simple rules, but infinite combinations of them. But it would be nice to know an answer sometime.”

  “So it would. As a matter of fact, Kneed to know a couple right now. From you, How close to finished are the other programs—or what’s left of them?”

  “I’m all set,” replied Schlossberg. “I have a couple of instruments still monitoring the sun just in case, but everything in the revised program is on tape.”

  “Good. Tom, any use asking you?”

  The biologist grimaced. “I’ve been shown two hundred and sixteen different samples of rock and dust. I have examined in detail twelve crystal growths which looked vaguely like vegetation. Nothing was alive or contained living things by any standards I could conscientiously set.”

  Mardikian’s gesture might have meant sympathy. “Camille?”

  “I may as well stop now as any time. I’ll never be through. Tape didn’t make much difference to me, but I wish I knew what weight of specimens I could take home.”

  “Eileen?” Mardikian’s glance at the stratigrapher took the place of the actual question.

  “Cam speaks for me, except that I could have used any more tape you could have spared. What I have is gone.”

  “All right, that leaves me, the tape-thief. The last spools are in the seismographs now, and will start running out in seventeen hours. The tractors will start out on their last rounds in sixteen, and should be back in roughly a week. Will, does that give you enough to figure the weights we rockhounds can have on the return trip?”

  The ALBIREO’S captain nodded. “Close enough. There really hasn’t been much question since it became evident we’d find nothing for the mass tanks here. I’ll have a really precise check in an hour, but I can tell right now that you have about one and a half metric tons to split up among the three of you.

  “Ideal departure time is three hundred ten hours away, as you all know. We can stay here until then, or go into a parking-and-survey orbit at almost any time before then. You have all the survey you need, I should think, from the other time. But suit yourselves.”

  “I’d just as soon be space-sick as seasick,” remarked Camille Burkett. “I still hate to think that the entire planet is as shivery as the spot we picked.”

  Willard Rawson smiled. “You researchers told me where to land after ten days in orbit mapping this rock-ball. I set you just where you asked. If you’d found even five tons of juice we could use in the reaction tanks I could still take you to another one—if you could agree which one. I hate to say ‘Don’t blame me,’ but I can’t think of anything else that fits.”

  “So we sit until the last of the tractors is back with the precious seismo tapes, playing battleship while our back teeth are being shaken out by earthquakes—excuse the word. What a thrill! Glorious adventure!” Zaino, the communications specialist who had been out of a job almost constantly since the landing, spoke sourly. The captain was the only one who saw fit, to answer.

  “If you want adventure, you made a mistake exploring space. The only space adventures I’ve heard of are secondhand stories built on guesswork; the people who really had them weren’t around to tell about it. Unless Dr. Marini discovers a set of Mercurian monsters at the last minute and they invade the ship or cut off one of the tractors, I’m afraid you’ll have to do without adventures.” Zaino grimaced.

  “That sounds funny coming from a spaceman, Captain. I didn’t really mean adventure, though; all I want is something to do besides betting whether the next quake will come in one minute or five. I haven’t even had to fix a suit-radio since we touched down. How about my going out with one of the tractors on this last trip, at least?”

  “It’s all right with me,” replied Rowson, “but Dr. Mardikian runs the professional part of this operation. I require that Spurr, Trackman, Hargedon and Aiello go as drivers, since without them even a minor mechanical problem would be more than an adventure. As I recall it, Dr. Harmon, Dr. Schlossberg, Dr. Marini and Dr. Mardikian are scheduled to go; but if any one of them is willing to let you take his or her place, I certainly don’t mind.”

  The radioman looked around hopefully. The geologists and the biologist shook their heads negatively, firmly and unanimously; but the astronomer pondered for a moment. Zaino watched tensely.

  “It may be all right,” Schlossberg said at last. “What I want to get is a set of wind, gas pressure, gas temperature and gas composition measures around the route. I didn’t expect to be more meteorologist than astronomer when we left Earth, and didn’t have exactly the right equipment. Hargedon and Aiello helped me improvise some, and this is the first chance to use it on Darkside. If you can learn what has to be done with it before starting time, though, you are welcome to my place.”

  THE COMMUNICATOR got to his feet fast enough to leave the deck in Mercury’s, feeble gravity.

  “Lead me to it, Doc. I guess I can learn to read a homemade weathervane!”

  “Is that merely bragging or a challenge?” drawled a voice which had not previously joined the discussion. Zaino flushed a bit.

  “Sorry, Luigi,” he said hastily. “I didn’t mean it just that way. But I still think I can run the stuff.”

  “Likely enough,” Aiello replied. “Remember though, it wasn’t made just for talking into.” Schlossberg, now on his feet, cut in quickly.

  “Come on, Arnie. We’ll have to suit up to see the equipment; it’s outside.”

  He shepherded the radioman to the hatch at one side of the deck and shooed him down toward the engine and air lock levels. Both were silent for some moments; but safely out of earshot of Deck Five the younger man looked up and sp
oke.

  “You needn’t push, Doc. I wasn’t going to make anything of it. Luigi was right, and I asked for it.” The astronomer slowed a bit in his descent.

  “I wasn’t really worried,” he replied, “but we have several months yet before we can get away from each other, and I don’t like talk that could set up grudges. Matter of fact, I’m even a little uneasy about having the girls along, though I’m no misogynist.”

  “Girls? They’re not—”

  “There goes your foot again. Even Harmon is about ten years older than you, I suppose. But they’re girls to me. What’s more important, they no doubt think of themselves as girls.”

  “Even Dr. Burkett? That is—I mean—”

  “Even Dr. Burkett. Here, get into your suit. And maybe you’d better take out the mike. It’ll be enough if you can listen for the next hour or two.” Zaino made no answer, suspecting with some justice that anything he said would be wrong.

  Each made final checks on the other’s suit; then they descended one more level to the airlock. This occupied part of the same deck as the fusion plants, below the wings and reaction mass tanks but above the main engine. Its outer door was just barely big enough to admit a space-suited person. Even with the low air pressure carried by spaceships, a large door area meant large total force on jamb, hinges and locks. It opened onto a small balcony from which a ladder led to the ground. The two men paused on the balcony to look over the landscape.

  This, hadn’t changed noticeably since the last time either had been out, though there might have been some small difference in the volcanic cones a couple of miles away to the northeast. The furrows down the sides of these, which looked as though they had been cut by water but were actually bone-dry ash slides, were always undergoing alteration as gas from below kept blowing fresh scoria fragments out of the craters.