by Hal Clement
“Fog!” exclaimed the helmsman. “Thin, but that’s what’s blocking the horizon.” Dondragmer gave a gesture of agreement as he reared to a speaking tube.
“Research!” he hooted. “Possible precipitation. Check what it is, and what it could do to this water-ice under us.”
“It will take a while to get a sample, sir,” came the answer. “We’ll be as quick as we can. Are we cleared outside, or will we have to work through the hull?”
The captain paused for a moment, listening to the wind and remembering how it had felt.
“You’re cleared out. Be as quick as you can.”
“On the way, Captain.”
At Dondragmer’s gesture, the first officer cut off the spot, and the three went to the starboard end of the bridge to watch the outside party.
Quick as these were, the haze was becoming more noticeable by the time the lock opened. Two caterpillarlike forms emerged carrying a cylindrical package between them. They made their way forward to a point almost under the watchers, and set up their equipment—essentially a funnel facing into the wind and feeding into a filter. It took several minutes to convince them that they had a big enough sample, but eventually they dismantled the equipment, sealed the filter into a container to preserve it from the lock fluid, and made their way back to the entrance.
“I suppose it will take them a day to decide what it is, now,” grumbled Kervenser.
“I doubt it,” replied the captain. “They’ve been playing with quick tests for water-ammonia solutions. I think Borndender said something about density being enough, with a decent size sample.”
“In that case, why are they taking so long?”
“They could hardly be out of their airsuits yet,” the captain pointed out patiently.
“Why should they get out of them before delivering to the lab? Why couldn’t—”
A hoot from a speaking tube interrupted him. Dondragmer acknowledged.
“Just about pure ammonia, sir. I think it was supercooled liquid drops; it froze into a sort of froth in the filter, and let quite a bit of outside air loose when we melted in here. If you should smell oxygen for the next few minutes, that’s it. It may start icing up the hull, and, if it coats the bridge as it did the filter, it will interfere with your seeing, but that’s all I can guess at right now in the way of trouble.”
It was not all Dondragmer could see, but he acknowledged the information without further comment.
“This sort of thing hasn’t happened since we’ve been here,” he remarked. “I wonder whether it’s some sort of seasonal change coming on us. We are getting closer to this sun. I wish the human crowd had watched this world for a longer time before they sold us on the idea of exploring it for them. It would be so nice to know what comes next.
“Kervenser, start engines. When ready, turn bow into wind and proceed ahead dead slow, if you can still see out. If not, circle as sharply as possible to port, to stay on surface we know. Keep an eye on the treads—figuratively, of course; we can’t see them without going out—and let me know if there’s evidence that anything is sticking to them. Post a man at the stern port; our trail might show something. Understand?”
“The orders—yes, sir. What you’re expecting—no.”
“I may be wrong, and if I’m right there’s probably nothing to do anyway, I don’t like the idea of going outside to clear the treads manually. Just hope.”
“Yes, sir.” Kervenser turned to his task, and as the fusion engines in the Kwembly’s trucks came to life, the captain turned to a block of plastic about four inches high and wide and a foot long, which lay beside his station. He inserted one of his nippers in a small hole in the side of the block, manipulated a control, and began to talk.
II
His voice traveled fast, but it was a long time on the way. The radio waves carrying it sped through Dhrawn’s heavy but quickly thinning atmosphere and through the space beyond for second after second. They weakened as they traveled, but half a minute after they were radiated their energy was still concentrated enough to affect a ten-foot dish antenna. The one they encountered was projecting from a cylinder, some three hundred feet in diameter and half as long, which formed one end of a structure closely resembling a barbell, spinning slowly about an axis perpendicular to its bar and midway between its weights.
The current induced by the waves in the antenna flicked, in a much shorter time, into a pinheadsized bit of tailored crystal which rectified it, enveloped it, used the envelope to modulate an electron stream provided by a finger-sized generator beside it, and thus manipulated an amazingly old-fashioned dynamic cone in a thirty-foot-square room near the center of the cylinder. Just thirty-two seconds after Dondragmer uttered his words they were reproduced for the ears of three of the fifteen human beings seated in the room. He did not know who would be there at the time, and, therefore, spoke the human tongue he had learned rather than his own language; so all three understood him.
“This is an interim report from the Kwembly. We stopped two and a half hours ago for routine maintenance and investigation. Wind was about two hundred cables at the time, from the west, sky partly cloudy. Shortly after we got to work the wind picked up to over three thousand cables—”
One of the human listeners was wearing a puzzled expression, and after a moment managed to catch the eye of another.
“A Mesklinite cable is about two hundred six feet, Boyd,” the latter said softly. “The wind jumped from about five miles an hour to over sixty.”
“Thanks, Easy.” Their attention returned to the speaker.
“Fog has now closed us in completely, and is getting ever thicker. I don’t dare move as I had planned; just in circles to keep the treads from icing. The fog is supercooled ammonia according to my scientists, and the local surface is water snow. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to my research people, but with the temperature in the seventies it seems to me there’s a chance of the fog’s dissolving some of the water ice to make a liquid. I realize this machine is supposed to float, and I don’t suppose the surface would melt very deeply anyway, but I’m wondering whether anyone has thought much about what will happen if a liquid freezes around our treads. I have to admit I never did, and the thought of chipping the ship loose by muscle power isn’t inviting. I know there’s no special equipment on board to handle such a situation, because I assembled and loaded this machine myself. I’m simply calling to report that we might possibly be here a good deal longer than planned. I’ll keep you informed, and if we do get immobilized we’ll be glad of projects to keep our scientists busy. They’ve already done most of the things you set up for an ordinary stop.”
“Thanks, Don,” replied Easy. “We’ll stand by. I’ll ask our observers and aerologists whether they can make a guess about the size of your fog bank, and how long it’s likely to stay around you. They may have some useful material already, since you’ve only been on the night side for a day or so. For that matter, they may even have current pictures; I don’t know all the limits of their instruments. Anyway, I’ll check and let you know.”
The woman opened her microphone switch and turned to the others as her words sped toward Dhrawn.
“I wish I could tell from Don’s voice whether he’s really worried or not,” she remarked. “Every time those people run into something new on that horrible world, I wonder how we ever had the gall to send them there—or how they had the courage to go.”
“They certainly weren’t forced, or tricked, into it, Easy,” pointed out one of her companions. “A Mesklinite who has spent most of his life as a sailor, and covered his home planet from equator to south pole, certainly isn’t naive about any of the aspects of exploring or pioneering. We couldn’t have kidded them if we’d wanted to.”
“I know that in my head, Boyd, but my stomach doesn’t always believe it. When the Kwembly was bogged in sand only five hundred miles from the settlement, I was grinding enamel off my teeth until they worked her loose. When Densigeref’s Smof was
trapped in a cleft by a mud flow that formed under it and let it down, I was almost the only one who backed up Barlennan’s decision to send another of the big land-rovers to the rescue. When the Esket’s crew disappeared with a couple of very good friends of mine, I fought both Alan and Barlennan on the decision not to send a rescue crew—and I still think they were wrong. I know there’s a job to be done, and that the Mesklinites agreed to do it with a clear understanding of its risks, but when one of those crews gets into trouble I just can’t help imagining myself down there with them, and I tend to take their side when there’s an argument about rescue action. I suppose I’ll be fired from this place eventually because of that, but it’s the way I’m made.”
Boyd Mersereau chuckled.
“Don’t worry, Easy. You have that job just because you do react that way. Please remember that if we do disagree strongly with Barlennan or any of his people, we’re six million miles and forty G’s of potential away, and he’s probably going to do what he wants anyway. Whenever it gets to that point, it’s very much to our advantage to have someone up here whom he can regard as being on his side. Don’t change a bit, please.”
“Hm-m-m.” If Elise Hoffman was either pleased or relieved, she failed to show it. “That’s what Ib is always saying, but I’ve been writing him off as prejudiced.”
“I’m sure he is, but that doesn’t necessarily disqualify him from forming a sound opinion. You must believe some things he says.”
“Thanks, Easy,” Dondragmer’s answer interrupted the discussion. He was using his own language this time, which neither of the men understood very well. “I’ll be glad of any word your observers can supply. You needn’t report to Barlennan unless you particularly want to; we aren’t actually in trouble yet, and he has enough on his mind without being bothered by maybe’s. The research suggestions you can send down straight to the lab on Set 2; I’d probably mix them up if I relayed. I’ll sign off now, but we’ll keep all four sets manned.”
The speaker fell silent, and Aucoin, the third human listener, got to his feet, looking at Easy for a translation. She obliged.
“That means work,” he said. “We had a number of longer programs planned for later in the Kwembly‘s trip, but, if Dondragmer may be delayed long where he is, I’d better see which of them would fit now. I got enough of that other speech to suggest that he doesn’t really expect to move soon. I’ll go to Computation first and have them reduce a really precise set of position bearing for him from the shadow satellites, next to Atmospherics for their opinion, and then I’ll be in the planning lab.”
“I may see you in Atmospherics,” replied Easy. “I’m going now to get the information Dondragmer wanted, if you’ll stand watch here, Boyd.”
“All right, for a while. I have some other work to do myself, but I’ll make sure the Kwembly‘s screens are covered. You’d better tell Don who’s here, though, so he won’t send up an emergency message in Stennish or whatever he calls his native language. Come to think of it, though, I suppose sixty seconds extra delay wouldn’t matter much, considering what little we could do for him from here.”
The woman shrugged, spoke a few words of the little sailor’s language into the transmitter, waved to Mersereau, and was gone before Dondragmer received her last phrase. Alan Aucoin had already left.
The meteorology lab was on the “highest” level of the cylinder, enough closer to the spin axis of the station to make a person about ten percent lighter than in the communication room. Facilities for exercise being as limited as they were, powered elevators had been omitted from the station’s design, and intercoms were regarded as strictly emergency equipment. Easy Hoffman had the choice of a spiral stairway at the axis of symmetry of the cylinder or any of several ladders. Since she wasn’t carrying anything, she didn’t bother with the stairs. Her destination was almost directly “above” Communications, and she reached it in less than a minute.
The most prominent features in this room were two twenty-foot-diameter hemispherical maps of Dhrawn. Each was a live vision screen carrying displays of temperature, reference-altitude pressure, wind velocity where it was obtainable, and such other data as could be obtained either from the low-orbiting shadow satellites or the Mesklinite exploring crews. A spot of green light marked the Settlement just north of the equator, and nine fainter yellow sparks scattered closely around it indicated the exploring land-cruisers. Against the background of the gigantic planet their spread made an embarrassingly small display, scattered over a range of some eight thousand miles east and west and twenty or twenty-five thousand north and south, on the western side of what the meteorologists called Low Alpha. Except for two which were well out in the colder regions to the west, all the yellow lights were in a rough arc framing the edge of the Low. The general plan. Easy knew, included ringing that warm area completely with seismic repeaters and other sensing equipment at sites not more than five hundred miles apart; but little more than a quarter of its eighty thousand mile perimeter had so far been covered.
The cost had already been high—not merely in money, which Easy tended to regard simply as a measure of effort expended, but in life. A tenth yellow light, somewhat inside the Low itself, was ringed with red. Seven months—some three and a half of Dhrawn’s days—had passed since there had been any sign of the Esket’s crew, though her transmitters were still sending up pictures of deserted sections of her interior. Easy’s expression tightened briefly as she thought of Destigmet and Kabremm, who had been as good friends as anyone can become without ever meeting personally . . .
“H’lo, Easy,” and “Hi, Mom,” cut into this gloomy train of thought.
“Hello, weathermen,” she responded. “I have a friend who’d like a forecast. Can you help?”
“If it’s for here in the station, yes,” answered Benj Hoffman.
“Don’t be cynical, son. You’re old enough to understand the difference between knowing nothing and not knowing everything.” Neither took the other seriously, though the woman wasn’t quite sure she had used just the right tone. “It’s Dondragmer of the Kwembly.” She pointed to the southernmost of the yellow lights on the map, and quickly outlined the situation. “Alan will be here in a few minutes with a more exact position, if that will help,” she finished.
“Probably not much,” Seumas McDevitt admitted. “If you don’t like cynicism, I’ll have to pick my words carefully; but the light on the screen there should be right within a few hundred miles, and I doubt that we can compute a precise enough forecast for that to make a significant difference.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d have enough material for any predictions at all,” Easy countered. “I understand that weather comes from the west even on this world, and the area to the west has been out of sunlight for days now. Can you see such places well enough to get useful data?”
“Oh, sure.” Benj’s sarcasm had vanished and the enthusiasm which had caused him to put down atmospheric physics as his post-primary tentative was taking over. “We don’t get much of our measurement from reflected sunlight anyway; nearly all is direct radiation from the planet. There’s a lot more emitted than it receives from the sun anyway; you’ve heard the old argument as to whether Dhrawn ought to be called a star or a planet. We can tell ground temperature, a good deal about ground cover, lapse rates, and clouds. Winds are harder—” he hesitated, seeing McDevitt’s eye on him and unable to read the meteorologist’s poker face. The man read the trouble in time and nodded him on before the rush of self-confidence had lost momentum. McDevitt had never been a teacher, but he had the touch.
“Winds are harder because of the little uncertainty in cloud heights and the fact that adiabatic temperature changes often have more to say about the location of clouds than air mass identities do. In that gravity, the air density drops by half about every hundred yards of climb, and that makes for terrific PV changes in temperature—” he paused again, this time eyeing his mother. “Do you know about that sort of thing, or should I slow down?”
>
“I’d hate to have to solve quantitative problems on what you’ve just been saying,” Easy replied, “but I think I have a fair qualitative picture. I get the impression that you’re a little doubtful about telling Don to the nearest minute when his fog is going to clear. Would a report from him on surface pressures and winds be any help? The Kwembly has instruments, you know.”
“It might,” McDevitt admitted as Benj nodded silently. “Can I talk to the Kwembly directly? And will any of them understand me? My Stennish doesn’t exist yet.”
“I’ll translate if I can keep your technical terms straight,” replied Easy. “If you plan to do more than a one-month tour here, though, it would be a good idea to try to pick up the language of our little friends. Many of them know some of ours, but they appreciate it.”
“I know. I plan to. I’d be glad if you’d help me.”
“When I can, certainly; but you’ll see a lot more of Benj.”
“Benj? He came here three weeks ago with me, and hasn’t had any better chance to learn languages than I have. We’ve both been checking out on the local observation and computer nets, and filling in on the project background.” Easy grinned at her son.
“That’s as may be. He’s a language bug like his mother, and I think you’ll find him useful, though I admit he got his Stennish from me rather than the Mesklinites. He insisted on my teaching him something that his sisters wouldn’t be able to listen in on. Write as much of that off to parental pride as you like, but give him a try. Later, that is; I’d like that information for Dondragmer as soon as we can get it. He said the wind was from the west at about sixty miles an hour, if that helps at all.”
The meteorologist pondered a moment.
“I’ll run what we have through integration, with that bit added,” he said finally. “Then we can give him something when we call, and if the numerical details he gives us then are too different we can make another run easily enough. Wait a moment.”