Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  No one answered. Even Martucci was trying to follow, or even anticipate, mentally Ginger Xalco’s efforts with Theia’s controls. There were faint cheers each time the dark patch which was clearly her target moved a little closer to the screen center, slight gasps and groans when it circled farther away.

  “Ginger! Rocket mode! Full thrust on both pipes!” Belvew suddenly cried. Whether the pilot saw his intent or was merely taking any suggestion no one ever asked. “Flatten the right wing, Eight points camber on the left—and I thought the designer was an idiot to have those handled separately! There!”

  The spin stopped with startling abruptness. “Nose up! Get out of atmosphere! Status, give her a heading for Station intercept while she can still steer!”

  “I have it. Thanks, Gene.”

  “Not worried, were you? Remember you’re not on board.”

  “I did forget. You would have too. And don’t ask me to put on vision, please.” In the privacy of her quarters, Major Xalco wiped her scalp once more. Belvew might have had something to say, but the commander came back to current business first.

  “Sergeant Belvew, I like your imagination. I’ll send your suggestion in as soon as you phrase it more definitely and supply appropriate references. Be careful, as it will be under your own name.”

  “Thanks. Or is that—”

  “That is fairness, whether you are right or wrong.”

  “But—”

  “I will also commend strongly your use of imagination. I would recommend you for a field commission except for one thing.”

  Belvew said nothing, and was invisible, but his question was there.

  “Your imagination needs discipline—a word important in both military and scientific life, as you seem to be forgetting. You are far too sure that your hypothesis must be correct. I am taking the only step I can see to correct that failing.”

  “That’s—what—”

  “I am assuming it will take you some tens of hours to prepare YOUR report. When you have submitted it, I will allow an equal amount of time for you to submit a plausible alternative hypothesis. Both will go in to Earth together. Am I clear?”

  For just a moment Belvew hesitated. It was tempting to point out that he had already spent many hours on his idea, and that it was unlikely for another to occur soon. He was too sensible even to think of suggesting that no other might be possible. But he said nothing. Another fact was staring at him.

  Major Collos was a good officer. She would never, ever order anyone to do something she wouldn’t do herself.

  And that meant she must already have an alternative explanation for Earth’s pandemic and an alternative suggestion for human policy. Already.

  No. She’d never, never bluff.

  Or would she?

  No. Certainly not. It would be Unmilitary. Unscientific. Unprofessional. Uncharacteristic. So she had an idea.

  And Gene Belvew had better come up with one at least as good, on his own, because he’d never learn hers; it would never get on any readable or tappable record until he either managed to obey the order or ran out of time.

  He considered resuming his scan of the chemical memories—lower detail for speed, or higher information?—but settled for pure thinking.

  He didn’t even allow himself to feel either disappointed that the Titan project was probably not yet over or relieved that the human story might not be. Stories never did end, anyway.

  “In orbit. Thanks, Gene,” Ginger’s voice came abruptly. “How do you think it’ll take us to grow a new wing tip? I suppose we’d better check for a possible contamination cause for the break, before we start repairs.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t hear. He didn’t even notice Status working over his broken bones.

  Gene Belvew was back to thinking, and Titanian society was back to normal.

  1998

  OH, NATURAL

  Hal Clement was born in Massachusetts in 1922 He has been a science lover from early childhood, at least partly as a result of a 1930 Buck Rogers panel in which villains were “headed for Mars, 47 million miles away.” He majored in Astronomy at Harvard, and has Master’s Degrees in Education and in Chemistry. He is considered the father of hard science fiction, and his navel Mission of Gravity is generally accepted as the best hard sf novel ever written. This is his fifth appearance in our pages.

  Jaques D’Orrey wriggled a little farther forward and wiped the sweat out of this eyes. The Maine sunlight was merely warm, the sea breeze a hundred fifty meters up was almost cool, but the nearly skin-tight camo suit was hot; its capillaries were not quite up to handling his thermal output.

  Nearly five meters below, extending from the base of the rock where he lay, spread some two thousand square meters of ground. It was studded with small boulders, nearly covered by patches of grass and shrub and almost surrounded by woods. A rabbit could have hidden almost anywhere in the area, but nothing of human size, even D’Orrey’s, could have done so unsuited.

  Camouflage aside, he was occupying the best place in the vicinity to see without being seen; vegetation also topped the rock. He was peering carefully through the leaves of a convenient blueberry bush so that even the suit was just now superfluous. However, he never thought of removing or even opening it; it was habit, and the scene below held all his attention.

  A dozen meters from the foot of the rock a field mouse was sitting up and looking around, evidently suspicious. It had a right to be. Only a few paces from it to D’Orrey’s left, apparently hidden from the small mammal but not from above, lay a timber rattler somewhat over a meter long. It was not coiled for action or announcing its presence audibly, but extended at nearly full length, making the size judgment easy. Its enlarged midsection suggested that it had eaten too recently to be in a hunting mood, though that point might be too abstract for the rodent.

  The intelligence of snakes is also minimal, but not zero. Its silence now did not surprise D’Orrey; what had caught his attention from above was the familiar rattling a moment before. He had heard it clearly and with pleasure. He had been hoping for it. Presumably the mouse had heard also. Something had certainly caught the little creature’s attention.

  “See ‘em?” D’Orrey muttered at just above a whisper. He knew the approximate locations of his helpers, having posted them himself, but wasted no time trying to see them directly from where he now lay. They, too, were suited.

  “The snake, yes. The mouse is pretty small, but filters help.” The incoming voice was little louder in his bud phones than his own had been; Vicki, too was being careful. Snakes are deaf, but most mammals are not.

  “How about you, Pete?”

  “Sure. No trouble.”

  “Does either of you see any other animal?”

  “Not from here,” came the woman’s voice.

  “No. What is there? What are we supposed to see?” The boy was young enough to be bothered by any suggestion that he might be missing something, and spoke loudly enough to betray the feeling.

  “Watch. It’s much better hidden. It’s what I was hoping for. If the other day means anything, you’ll both see it soon.”

  “The snake’s moving,” cut in Vicki. Jaques D’Orrey nodded, quite pointlessly.

  The rattler had indeed started to weave toward the man’s right and slightly away from him. The motion made no difference in his ability to see it from above, but did take it into the mouse’s line of sight. The rodent spotted either the snake itself or the movement at once. It crouched down, drawing together as though to leap away; then, since the menace was not approaching, it froze again and kept watching while the rattler sine-waved onward three or four times its own length, still without drawing any nearer.

  “What goes?” Peter asked, more quietly than before. “It must know it’s there!” Neither adult bothered to criticize the dangling pronouns; the meaning was clear enough, the boy would have defended himself, and this was no time for arguments.

  “Right. You’ll see. Wait,” D’Orrey mutter
ed just loudly enough for his suit’s mike to pick up.

  “When?” The response was louder again and slightly indignant.

  “Ask the snake. Watch.” The biologist’s impatience was as plain as the hacker’s, though the former was ten year’s older.

  The rattler might almost have meant to answer directly. Its line of travel changed. It turned a little to its own right, keeping its distance from the potential prey nearly constant and also holding the animal’s full attention. D’Orrey, with the whole stage visible below him, could see what was coming and was satisfied. He might not believe the impending events himself; he’d certainly doubted them earlier, but at least this time there would be other observers with other instruments. Later he could even hope for records, if equipment were still uncompromised.

  “Three or four more meters,” he whispered.

  “To what?” It was still Peter, of course.

  “You’ll see. It’s happening again. Watch ‘em both.” He was not baiting the eighteen-year-old deliberately; he had hired the fellow more for his demonstrated skills than at his mother’s—D’Orrey’s sister’s—insistence. He simply wanted the others to be at peak alertness, with no more preconceived notions than had been needed to persuade them to come at all.

  The snake poured itself onward, following an arc with the mouse at the center until it was heading almost back toward the rock. The still nearly motionless mammal was almost below the man, the rattler now four or five meters to his right. Even D’Orrey, able to see what the others had not yet spotted, grew a trifle tense, though he was far more concerned for his demonstration than for the welfare of the doomed animal. He was not a vegetarian himself, and would have admitted without hesitation that morally he ranked with the snakes.

  Events climaxed abruptly. The moving reptile turned toward the victim and increased its speed, now rattling loudly. The rodent responded predictably, turning away from the approaching death and leaping toward D’Orrey’s left. The second jump brought it down within centimeters of the second snake, which had been lying motionless, unnoticeable to the prey or the two more distant human beings, coiled and ready. It did not rattle; it merely struck. The mouse saw it in mid-jump, tried too late to change direction, squealed as it felt the fangs, and landed on its side a meter from the already recoiled serpent. It made one more awkward attempt to leap, wriggled briefly, and lay still.

  “I don’t believe this!” came Vicki’s murmur.

  “Neither did I. Watch!” replied the man. Nothing was heard from Peter.

  Both rattlers were now beside the body.

  “They can’t divide it. They have to swallow things whole. Snake teeth don’t cut, and they’d never get enough traction to tear it apart even if they were strong enough. They’ll fight, surely!” whispered the woman.

  “Does that fit with what just happened—team hunting?”

  “No. Of course not. Did they find someone’s dropped knife, maybe? And how would they—”

  “You’re getting wild,” D’Orrey cut in patiently.

  “I certainly am Watching snakes cooperate would drive anyone over the edge. It’s not natural—”

  “That’s what we want to make sure of.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t sneak a false-witness into these glasses?”

  “That’s closer to sanity but no, I didn’t. How could I? You take care of your equipment, don’t you? I haven’t had a chance to get at ‘em—though that could be just because I haven’t been looking for one. Don’t take my word for it—get ‘em checked when we get back, or have Pete do it now. I’m looking for help in a research job, not just confirmation for a Ripley. I had my glasses done after I saw this first, and told the hacker w—pardon, told my respected colleague—I’d seen something I couldn’t believe. I didn’t tell him just what, of course. He said that the smallest false-witness he could design himself which could handle such a job—do the wave patterns, carry the record, allow for changing view line in both planes, be programmed to run only against an appropriate background or in a preplanned inertially locate spot, and coordinate in both barrels of a pair of binoculars at once would be at least peanut size, and that there was nothing anywhere near that big except the regular machinery in the glasses. All that was working as it should; nothing had been sneaked out to make room for a false-witness.”

  “Who was the hacker?” asked the boy, speaking for the first time in several minutes.

  “A colleague, Jerry Chu. Associate Professor at Orono. Why” You know him, I suppose?”

  “Sure, who doesn’t?” It was not obvious whether Peter regarded the name as that of a co-hobbyist or a rival.

  “Trust him? Is he good as I’ve always thought? Do you like him?”

  “Oh, he’s good.” There was a pause. “Maybe too good.” Another pause, then D’Orrey was surprised by a rush of candor. “He made a fool out of me a while ago.”

  “So you don’t trust him.”

  “Well—I guess I trust him. Maybe I was asking for it. But I don’t like him. He’s just a spare-time hacker, anyway; he’s in the bio department, of all things, at Orono.”

  “And what’s wrong with biologists? Your uncle is one, after all. Are we too cooperative with the rest of science, or just not—”

  “Is it all right if I get closer? I can’t see how the snakes are settling who gets the dinner.”

  “Something wrong with your glasses?” D’Orrey had not really expected an answer.

  “I’d like to use my own plain, unsupported eyes. I know no one’s sneaked anything under my eyelids, and if there’s going to be a snake fight I want to believe what I see.”

  “There isn’t, but come on over. Just remember these two may not be the only rattlers in the neighborhood.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “That’s why we are. Keep your untampered-with eyes open, and get on over there if you must.” Vicki allowed some annoyance to creep into her tone, and raised her sending volume enough to make it obvious.

  D’Orrey was right; there was no fight. The action was unbelievable, but happened just as he had seen it before. The rattlers were now together beside the victim, but the larger, the one which had done the herding, watched with apparent indifference as the actual killer proceeded to work its jaws around the corpse and engulf it in ordinary snake fashion. When it had finished, the two wriggled off together to D’Orrey’s left, the smaller leading, and finally disappeared even from his binoculars among the bushes. He waited five minutes longer before speaking.

  “That’s it for now, I expect,” he said in ordinary tones. “I’m closer to the trail. I know it doesn’t seem natural, Vick; that’s why I want to make sure whether it’s technical. Shall we meet right here?” He stood up as he spoke and switched his suit off.

  “All right. At least, all right if I can get out of this tree without tearing anything. I paid for this suit myself,” came the woman’s voice.

  “Are you sure it’s all over? Shouldn’t we follow them? asked Peter.

  “I don’t say it’s over at all. I hope it isn’t. I want to set up close observation on those critters. I want to know whether this was natural and new, or some hacker amusing himself, or what. We’re not ready to do it now, though; we have no food and not much water up here. There’s a lot of planning to do before we can start a real study. Knowing that it really happens, and right around here, was all I hoped for now. We can talk it over on the way back; I’d rather not do it through the suit coms. I’m coming down.” He turned his camouflage back on, since animal behaviorists prefer to be seen by potential subjects as little as possible, and began to make his way carefully down the sloping side of the rock, retracing his original path up. He had more confidence in his suit’s durability than Vicki seemed to, but took no major chances with sharp stones or thorns.

  He was several minutes reaching ground level and getting around to the front of the boulder. Both his companions were approaching, though he had to look carefully in the direction he knew she mu
st be to detect the woman at all; her suit, too, was on. The boy’s was not, and he was walking around and among the bushes as though he felt no concern for his cam unit or anything else.

  “There could be more rattlers around,” D’Orrey pointed out again as calmly as he could. Peter took this as implied criticism, quite correctly, but his response was more impertinent than abashed.

  “I know. And I know there’s snake-bite equipment in the first aid kit, but I’d just as soon they knew I was coming. They can see I’m too big to swallow. Even y—” he broke off; both adults felt they knew why, and were rather pleased. In the week they had been together, and in spite of who was paying the bills, Peter Ben Becker had shown a tendency to make rather perky remarks to and about his uncle, commonly about their seventeen centimeter height difference, which the boy regarded as being in his own favor. D’Orrey had felt that objecting was beneath adult dignity, and was reluctant to have trouble with his older sister. He was pretty sure, however, that Vicki had said something once or twice when he himself was out of hearing.

  If the kid were really trying to curb his wit, all to the good. If he were beginning to realize that there were more valuable personal qualities than height, even better.

  The man just barely stopped himself from switching off his own suit again. The point about letting rattlers know they were coming had been very well taken, but it seemed poor policy to be guided too obviously by the youngster’s advice. In a few seconds he forgot the matter. Vicki’s garment also remained active.

  No more was said until they met at the kill site. Woman and boy examined the area for details they hadn’t been able to see from their trees, but neither found anything which helped answer the obvious questions. The man had seen all he needed. All that really caught his attention was the difference of watching what the others were doing.

  Vicki Kalani’s suit was much like his own, though of different make. Its eyes, like his, were the size of split walnuts studded with hundreds of minute lenses, but she had only two, one on the outer side of each shoulder. D’Orrey’s numbered three, one on top of his head, one between his shoulder blades, and one at his breast bone. Both pattern processors were where the belt buckles would have been had either garment been belted—prolate hemispheres of coppery polymer about eight centimeters by four, thought the man’s was mounted with the long axis vertical. Dr. Kalani’s also fit better, less because her eight centimeter superiority in height made her easier to fit than because her suit’s more sophisticated processor handled warp and woof tension as well as light paths.