Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  Stars and station alike faded from view as the trio entered the brightly lighted communication room. Guzmeen saw Barlennan and instantly reported, “No further news of either flier.”

  “What reports have you had from Dondragmer between the time the Kwembly ran aground and now—the last hundred and thirty hours or so? Do you know how long ago Don’s first officer disappeared?”

  “Only roughly, sir, to the last question. The incident was reported, but nothing specific was said about how recently it had happened. I took for granted it had just occurred, but didn’t ask. The two disappearances were reported quite close together—less than an hour apart.”

  “And you didn’t wonder when the second one came in why we heard about both disappearances so nearly simultaneously, even though they must have occurred some time apart?”

  “Yes, sir. I started wondering about a quarter of an hour before you did, when the last message came in. I don’t have any explanation, but I thought I’d leave it to you to ask the humans if you think one is needed.”

  Bendivence cut in. “Do you suppose Don failed to report the first disappearance because it resulted from a mistake, and he hoped to be able to minimize it by reporting disappearance and recovery at the same time as a minor incident?” Barlennan looked at the speaker speculatively, but lost no time in answering.

  “No, I don’t suppose that. Dondragmer and I don’t always agree on everything, but there are some things that neither of us would do.”

  “Even if an immediate report couldn’t really make a difference? After all, neither we nor the human beings could really help even after we’d heard the news.”

  “Even then.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “I do. Take my word for it; I haven’t time for a detailed explanation, and I doubt that I could compose one anyway. If Dondragmer failed to make that initial report, he had a very good reason; and personally I doubt very much that the failure was his. Guz, which humans gave you the reports? Was it always the same one?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t recognize all their voices, and they often didn’t bother to identify themselves. About half the time nowadays the reports come in human language. Most of the rest come from the Hoffman humans. There are others who speak our language, but those two seem the only ones who do it comfortably. With the young one particularly, I got the impression that he’d been talking a lot with the Kwembly, and I assumed that if there were casual chatter going on, nothing much serious could be happening.”

  “All right. I’d probably have done the same. I’ll use the set; I have a couple of questions to put to the humans.” Barlennan took his place in front of the pickup, the speaker on watch making way for him without being ordered. The screen was blank. The captain squeezed the “attention” control and waited patiently for the minute to pass. He could have started talking at once, since it was a safe bet that whoever was at the other end would lose no time readying his receiver, but Barlennan wanted to see who was there. If the delay made anyone suspicious, he’d have to live with it.

  The face which did appear was unfamiliar to him. Even fifty Earth-years of acquaintance with human beings had not sufficed to educate him in such matters as family resemblance, though no human being would have failed to guess that Benj was Easy’s son. Actually, the fifty years had not supplied many different people for comparison; fewer than two score men, and no women, had ever landed on Mesklin. Guzmeen recognized the boy, but was spared the need to tell Barlennan by Benj himself.

  “Benj Hoffman here,” the image spoke. “Nothing has come from the Kwembly since Mother called you about twenty minutes ago, and there are no engineers or scientists in this room at the moment. If you have questions which need technical answers, tell me so I can call the right one. If it’s just a matter of detail in what’s been happening, I’ve been here in the comm room most of the time for the last seven hours and can probably tell you. I’m waiting.”

  “I have two questions,” Barlennan responded. “One of them you can probably answer, the other I don’t know. The first has to do with the second disappearance. I am wondering how far from the Kwembly the second helicopter was when it ceased communicating; or if you don’t know the distance, perhaps you can tell me how long its pilot had been searching.

  “The second does depend on a bit of your technology which I don’t know, but you may. Is there any possibility of your seeing lights such as those on the helicopters from where you are? I suppose it couldn’t be done by your unaided eyes any more than it could be done by mine, but you have many optical devices which I know little about, and probably some which I’ve never heard of. I’m standing by.”

  Benj’s screened image held up one finger and nodded just as Barlennan finished speaking, but the boy waited for the other question to reach him before he spoke.

  “I can answer your first question, and Mr. Cavanaugh has gone to find someone who can take care of the second,” were his opening words. “Kervenser started out on his scouting flight about eleven hours ago. It wasn’t realized that he must be in trouble until about eight hours later, when everything popped at once—Kervenser and his flier gone, the Kwembly frozen in, and Beetchermarlf and Takoorch somewhere under the ice—at least, no one knows that’s where they are but they were working under the hull and there’s no other place anyone can think of for them to be. One of the sailors—Reffel—took up the other flier with a vision set to look for Kervenser, and searched very close to the Kwembly for a while. Then we suggested that he move out to where an accident to Kervenser wouldn’t have been seen or heard from the cruiser, which he did, and, of course, Dondragmer lost sight of him from the bridge. Then we got into a discussion with the captain and everyone up here got interested, and it turned out that no one was watching Reffel’s screen for several minutes. Then someone noticed that the screen had gone completely blank—not no-signal-blank but nolight black—and that was that.”

  Barlennan glanced at Guzmeen and the scientists. None of them spoke, but none of them needed to. No one had been watching the screen when Reffel used the shutter! It was not the sort of luck one counted on.

  Benj was still speaking.

  “The sound wasn’t on, of course, since no one had been talking with Reffel, and no one has any idea what happened. This was just before my mother called you, less than half an hour ago. That would make something like two and a half hours between the two disappearances. We’ll have to wait for your other answer, since Mr. Cavanaugh isn’t back yet.”

  Barlennan was a little bewildered by the arithmetic, since the boy had used Mesklinite number-words with human number-background, but got it straight with a few seconds of thought.

  “I’m not complaining,” he returned, “but I gather from what you say that over two hours passed between the Kwembly’s freezing in and Kervenser’s disappearance, and our being told about it. Do you know why that might have happened? I realize, of course, that there was nothing I could have done, but there was some understanding about keeping me up to date with the land-cruisers. Of course, I don’t know just what your job is at the station, and you may not have that information; but I hear from my communications man that you have been talking a lot to the Kwembly, so you may be able to help. I’m waiting.”

  Barlennan had several motives behind his closing remark. One was obvious enough; he wanted to learn more about Benj Hoffman, especially since the latter was good with the Mesklinite language and, if Guz were right, seemed to want to talk to Mesklinites. Maybe he would be like the other Hoffman, a second sympathy-center in the station. If so, it would be important to know just how much weight he could swing.

  Also, the commander wanted to check unobtrusively on Guzmeen’s notion that Benj had been chattering with Kwembly crew members. Finally, even Barlennan could tell that Benj was young for a human being doing serious work—his selection of words and general narrative style had been a giveaway. That fact might well be put to good use if a reasonably close relationship could be established. />
  The boy’s answer, when it finally came, was inconclusive one way, but promising in another.

  “I don’t know why you weren’t told about Kervenser and the freeze-up right away,” he said. “Personally, I thought you had been. I’d been talking a lot with Beetchermarlf—I guess you know him; one of Don’s helmsmen; the one you can talk with and not just listen to—and when I heard he’d disappeared I was concentrating on what could be done about it. I wasn’t here in the comm room quite all the time; it’s not my duty station—I just come when I can talk with Beetch. I admit someone should have told you sooner, and if you like I’ll try to find out who should have and why he didn’t. My mother ought to know, or Mr. Mersereau.

  “I don’t know how much explaining I’d better supply about the background to my job here. On Earth, when someone finishes basic education—the sort of thing everyone has to get, like reading and physics and sociology—he has to work as unskilled labor on some essential job for two to three of our years before he is eligible for either specialized or general higher education. Nobody says it right out, but everyone knows that the people you work for have the main say in what you can do afterward. Nominally I’m assigned to the aerology lab here as a sort of picker-upper and hey-you; actually anyone in the station who yells first and loudest gets me. I must admit they don’t make my life very hard. I’ve been able to spend a lot of time talking to Beetch the last few days.”

  Barlennan was able with fifty years experience to translate without effort the thought behind a human being’s use of the word day.

  “Of course,” the boy went on, “knowing your language helps. My mother’s a language nut, and I picked it up from her. She started on yours ten years ago when Dad was first connected with the Dhrawn project. I’ll probably be doing comm work semiofficially a good deal of the time from now on. Here comes Mr. Cavanaugh with one of the astronomers whose name I think is Tebbetts. They’ll answer your question about seeing lights, and I’ll try to find out about the other business.”

  Benj’s face was replaced on the screen by that of the astronomer—a set of broad, dark features which rather surprised Barlennan. He had never, as it happened, seen a bearded human being, though he was used to wide variations in cranial hair. Tebbetts’ was a small Vandyke adornment quite compatible with a space helmet, but it made a drastic difference to the Mesklinite’s eye. Barlennan decided that asking the astronomer about it would be tactless; it might be better to get the information from Benj later. There was nothing to be gained by embarrassing anyone.

  The facial extension, to the commander’s relief, did not interfere with its owner’s diction, and Tebbetts had evidently been given the question already. He started to talk at once, using the human speech.

  “We can detect from here any of the artificial lights you have, including the portables, though we might have trouble with beamed ones not pointed our way. We’d use regular equipment—photomultiplier mosaics behind appropriate objective; anything you’re likely to need could be set up in a few minutes. What do you want us to do?”

  This question caught Barlennan by surprise. He had, in the few minutes since discussing the matter with his scientists, been growing more and more certain that the men would deny being able to detect such lights. Certainly if the commander had been a little more foresighted he would not have answered as he did—in fact, he was regretting what he said well before the words reached the station.

  “You should have no trouble spotting our land-cruiser Kwembly; you already know its location better than I do, and its bridge lights would be on. Its two helicopters have just disappeared, and they normally carry lights. I’d like to have you scan the area within, say, two hundred miles of the Kwembly as carefully as you can for other lights, and tell both me and Dondragmer the positions of any you find. Would that take long?”

  The message lag was quite long enough to let Barlennan realize how he had slipped. There was nothing to be done about it now, of course, but to hope, though that word is a bad translation of the nearest possible Mesklinite attitude. The answer did cause him to brighten up a little; maybe the slip wasn’t too serious—as long as the human beings didn’t find more than two other lights near the Kwembly!

  “I’m afraid I was thinking merely of detecting lights,” said Tebbetts. “Pinpointing the sources will be harder, especially from here. I’m pretty sure we can solve your problem, though . . . that is, if your missing helis are shining their lights. If you think they may have crashed, I shouldn’t think there’d be much chance of light, but I’ll get right to it.”

  “How about their power plants?” asked Barlennan, determined to learn the worst now that he had started. “Aren’t there other radiations than light given off in nuclear reactions?”

  By the time this question reached the station Tebbetts had left according to his promise, but fortunately Benj was able to supply the answer—the information happened to be basic to the Project, which had been carefully explained to him right after his arrival.

  “The fusion converters give off neutrinos which we can detect, but we can’t spot their source exactly,” he told the commander. “That’s what the shadow satellites are for. They detect neutrinos, which are practically all coming from the sun. The power plants on Dhrawn and up here don’t count for much against that, even if it isn’t much of a sun. The computers keep track of where the satellites are, and especially whether the planet is between a given one and the sun, so there’s a measure of the neutrino absorption through different parts of the planet, in a few years we hope to have a statistical X ray of Dhrawn—maybe that isn’t a good analogy for you. I mean a good idea of the density and composition of the planet’s insides. They’re still arguing, you know, whether Dhrawn should be called a planet or a star, and whether the extra heat is from hydrogen fusion in the middle or radioactivity near the surface.

  “But I’m sure as can be that they couldn’t find your missing fliers from their neutrino emission, even if all their converters are still on.”

  Barlennan managed to conceal his glee at this news, and merely answered, “Thanks. We can’t have everything. I take it you’ll tell me when your astronomer finds anything, or when he is sure he’ll find nothing; I’d like to know if I have to stop counting on that. I’m through talking for now, Benj, but call here if anything comes up on either the fliers or those friends of yours—after all, I’m concerned about them, though perhaps not the way you are about Beetchermarlf. Takoorch is the one I remember.”

  Barlennan, with more direct contact with human beings and, to be honest, more selfish reasons to develop such skills, had been able to read more accurately between the lines of Benj’s talk and obtain a more nearly correct picture of the boy’s feelings than Dondragmer had. It would, he was sure, be useful; but he put it from his mind as he turned away from the communicator.

  “That could be both better and worse,” he remarked to the two scientists. “It’s certainly just as well we didn’t set up that blinker system for night communication; they’d have seen us certainly.”

  “Not certainly,” objected Deeslenver. “The human said they could spot such lights, but there was no suggestion that they made a habit of looking for them. If it takes instruments, I’d bet the instruments are busy on more important things.”

  “So would I, if the stakes weren’t so high,” returned Barlennan. “Anyway, we wouldn’t dare use it now, because we know they’ll be looking this way with the best machines they have. We just asked them to.”

  “But they won’t be looking here. They’ll be searching the neighborhood of the Kwembly, millions of cables from here.”

  “Think of yourself back home looking up at Toorey. If you were supposed to examine one part of it closely with a telescope, how much of a slip would it take to make you glance at another?”

  Deeslenver conceded the point with a gesture.

  “Then we either wait for sunrise, or fly a special if we want to use the Esket as you suggested. I admit I haven’t
thought of anything else. I haven’t even thought of what we might do there which would make a good test.”

  “It shouldn’t matter too much. The real question would be how soon, and how accurately and completely, the human beings do report whatever we set up for them to see. I’ll think of something in the next couple of hours. Aren’t you researchers setting up for a flight to leave soon, anyway?”

  “Not that soon,” said Bendivence. “Also, I don’t agree with you that details don’t matter. You don’t want them to get the idea that we could possibly have anything to do with what they see happen at the Esket, and they certainly aren’t stupid.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean that they should. It will be something natural, making full allowance for the fact that the human beings know even less than we do about what’s natural on this world. You get back to the labs and tell everyone who has equipment to get onto the Deedee that departure time has been moved ahead. I’ll have a written message for Destigmet in two hours.”

  “All right.” The scientists vanished through the door, and Barlennan followed them more slowly. He was just beginning to realize how valid Bendivence’s point was. What could be made to happen, in range of one of the Esket’s vision transmitters, which would not suggest that there were Mesklinites in the neighborhood, but which would attract human interest—and tempt the big creatures to edit their reports? Could he think of such a thing without knowing why the reports were being held up? Or, for that matter, without being quite sure that they were?

  It was still possible that the delay on the Kwembly matter had been a genuine oversight; as the young human had suggested, each person might have thought that someone else had attended to the matter. To Barlennan’s sailor’s viewpoint this smacked of gross incompetence and inexcusable disorganization; but it would not be the first time he had suspected human beings—not as a species, of course, but on an individual basis—of these qualities.