by Hal Clement
“Let’s see this place, since we’re so close to it. I might as well learn the worst,” he said at this point in his imagining. Laj Drai gestured to the pilot, and the hull of the Karella rotated slowly. The airless satellite slid out of sight, and stars followed it across the field of view. The ship must have spun a full hundred and eighty degrees before Planet Three itself hung in the apparent center of the port. They must be floating directly between planet and satellite, Ken thought. Not wise if the inhabitants had telescopes.
Since the sun was now behind them, the disc of the great world was fully illuminated. Unlike the bare moon, a fuzziness of outline showed that it possessed an extensive atmosphere, though Ken could not imagine what gases might be present. In spite of the definitely reddish sunlight, most of the surface had a decided blue tint. Details were impossible to make out; the atmosphere was extremely hazy. There were definite patches of white, and green, and brown, but there was no way of telling what any of them represented.
And yet, foggy as it was, there was something about the sight of the world which caused the shiver to caress the scientist’s skin once more. Perhaps it was the things he had been told, and the things he had deduced from the appearance of the sun; perhaps it was nothing objective at all. Whatever it was, the very sight of the world made him shudder, and he turned away abruptly.
“Let’s go to One, and look over that data,” he said, striving to control his voice diaphragm. The pilot obeyed without comment.
Earth, really, is not as bad as all that. Some people are even quite fond of it. Ken, of course, was prejudiced, as anyone is likely to be against a world where water is a liquid — when he has grown up breathing gaseous sulfur and, at rare intervals, drinking molten copper chloride.
2
Roger Wing, for example, would probably have been slightly shocked at Ken’s attitude. He was strongly in favor of Earth, at least the rather small portion which he knew. He had some justification, for the country around Lake Pend’ Oreille is very much worth knowing, particularly in spring and summer. The first glimpse of the lake each June was something to look forward to; all the way up the highway from Hayden Lake the children maintained shrill rivalry over who would be the first to sight the Ear Drop. Even with only four of them this year, the noise was nearly as great as usual; for the absent Donald had never contributed too much to the racket. Roger, left the senior member by his older brother’s absence, was determined to make the most of the opportunity; the more so since it was to last only another forty miles or so. Don was expected to fly to Sandpoint with a friend and meet the family there.
It was, all in all, a hilarious group; and the parents in the front seat had only moderate success in maintaining order. However, the northbound highway from Coeur d’Alene is a good one, and the disturbance in the rear was never really dangerous. The principal interruption occurred when the right rear tire of the station wagon went flat near Cocolalla. John Wing was a little slow in stopping the heavily loaded vehicle, and Roger got the first whiff of the sulfurous odor of burning rubber. He was to became much more familiar with sulfur during the course of the summer.
The children were a little quieter after that — the expression on their father’s face suggested that his patience might not have much farther to go; but the journey was never really silent. The causeway across the tip of Pend’ Oreille was greeted with ringing cheers, which ceased only momentarily while Mr. Wing purchased a new tire in Sandpoint. Then they proceeded to the small airport at the edge of the town, and the noise increased again as the youngsters caught sight of their oldest brother standing beside a Cub on the grass parking area.
He was tall, and rather slim, with dark hair and eyes and a narrow face like his father’s. Roger, who had grown considerably since the last September, discovered to his chagrin that Donald still overtopped him by half a head; but he did not let the annoyance lessen the exuberance of his greeting. Don shook hands with his father and Roger, kissed his mother and sisters, and swung six-year-old Billy to his shoulder. No, the flight from Missoula had not been eventful. Yes, his final grades had been good, if not outstanding. No, he had no luggage except the little handbag beside him — a Cub has sharp load limitations. They might as well continue their journey, and he could answer questions on the way. He tossed the bag at Roger and moved toward the station wagon, Billy still on his shoulder; and with the crowd settled more or less comfortably, they rolled on.
North from Sandpoint; east fork to Kootenai; around the north end of the question-mark-shaped lake to Hope, and on to Clark Fork. There the car was left, in a building that partook of the characteristics of storehouse and garage.
Don and Roger disappeared, and returned with an imposing array of pack and saddle horses. These were accoutered with a speed which suggested the maneuver was not a new one to the family; and the Wings, waving farewell to their acquaintances who had gathered to see them off, headed northward into the woods.
Donald grinned at his father as the town vanished behind them.
“How many campers do you suppose we’ll have this year?”
“It’s hard to say. Most of the folks who know us have come to mind their own business pretty well, and I didn’t notice any strangers in the town; but prospectors seem to turn up when least expected. I don’t mind honest prospecting — it lends protective coloration. It’s the ones who expect to benefit from our ‘strike’ that bother me. You boys will have to scout as usual — though I may want Don with me this time. If you’ve really gotten something out of freshman chemistry, Son, you may be able to help solve a problem or two. If he does go with me, Roger, you’ll have a bigger responsibility than usual.” The boy nodded, eyes shining.
He had only gradually come to realize the tremendous difference between the way his family and those of his schoolmates spent their summers. At first, the tales of trips to ranches, seashores, and mountains had aroused his envy; then he had begun to boast of his own mountain trips. When he finally realized the atmosphere of secrecy that surrounded certain aspects of those trips, his pride had exceeded his powers of restraint — until he had realized that his schoolmates simply didn’t believe that his father had a “secret mine in the mountains.” Pique had silenced his boasts for a while and by the time he had developed a convincing argument he had realized that silence might be better for all concerned.
That had been the spring when he was ten years old. His father had somehow heard about the whole story, and seemed pleased for some reason; that summer he had extended to Roger the responsibility which Don had been carrying alone, of scouting the territory around their summer home before and during Mr. Wing’s trips into the mountains. The find, their father had told him, was his own secret; and for reasons he would explain later it must be kept that way.
That summer and the two following he had continued to make his trips alone; now it looked as though there might be a change. Don, Roger knew, had been told a little just before leaving for college the preceding fall; his courses had been partly selected on the basis of that information — chemistry, astronomy and mathematics. The first seemed logical, but Roger failed to see the point of the others. Certainly astronomy seemed of doubtful value in anything connected with mining.
Still, he would find that out in due course; perhaps sooner than Don had, since their father seemed to be letting down the bars. His problem for the moment was to figure out a way by which one boy could keep himself informed about every person who came within a mile of the summer house in any direction — and farther than that in some directions. Roger, of course, knew the topography of the neighborhood quite well; but he began right then planning a series of exploration jaunts to make more certain of some points. He was a young man who took things seriously, if they were presented to him in that light.
Like anyone else of his own age, however, he tended even more strongly to fly off on the interests of the moment; and he was easily aroused from his reverie when Edie caught him in the face with a fir cone slyly tossed over he
r shoulder. She burst into laughter as he looked around fruitlessly for a means of retaliation — there seemed to be no more cones within reach, and the trail at this point was too narrow for the horses to travel side by side. The pack horse the girl was leading formed, for the time being, an impassable barrier.
“Why don’t you wake up and join the party?” Edith finally gurgled out between spasms of laughter. “You looked as though you’d just remembered leaving your favorite fishpole in Spokane!” Roger assumed a mantle of superiority.
“Of course, you girls have nothing to do between now and September,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of men’s work to be done, though, and I was deciding how to go about it.”
“Men’s work?” The girl raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “I know Dad will be busy, but what’s that to you?” She knew perfectly well what Roger’s summer duties were, but had reasons of her own for speaking as she did. “Does it take a man to stroll around the house on sentry-go a couple of times a day?” Roger stiffened.
“It takes more than a girl to do a good job of it,” he retorted. The words were hardly out when he regretted them; but he had no time to think of a way out of the corner into which he had talked himself.
“Evidence!” Edith responded quietly, and Roger mentally kicked himself. She had been playing for just that. Family rules required that any statement made by a member of the family be backed up with evidence if another member required it — a rule the elder Wing had instituted, with considerable foresight. He was seldom caught by it himself, being a thoughtful man by nature.
“You’ll have to let me try, now,” Edith remarked, “and you’ll have to give me a fair amount of teaching. To be really fair, you’ll have to let Margie try, too—” The last was an afterthought, uttered principally for its explosive effect. Roger almost left his saddle, but before he succeeded in expressing himself a thought struck him. After all, why couldn’t the girls help? He could show them what he and Don had done in the past, and they might very well have ideas of their own. Roger’s masculine pride did not blind him to the fact that girls in general, and his sisters in particular, did have brains. Edie and Marge could both ride, neither was afraid of the woods, and all things considered would probably make extremely useful assistants. Edith was so near to his own age that he could not dismiss her as too young for the work, and even the eight-year-old had at least sense enough to keep quiet when silence was needed and obey orders when argument would be injudicious.
“All right. You can both try it.” Roger brought his cogitation to an end. “Dad won’t mind, I guess, and Mother won’t care if the work gets done. We’ll have a conference tonight.”
The conversation shifted to other matters, and the caravan wound on up the river. Two or three hours out of Clark Fork they crossed the stream and headed eastward toward the Montana border; and there were still several hours of daylight remaining when they reached the “summer cottage.”
It was hardly a cottage. Built well up on a steep hillside, though still below the timber line, it boasted enough rooms to house the Wing family without any fear whatever of crowding. It possessed a gasoline-powered electric plant, a more or less limited supply of running water piped from a spring farther up the hill, and in general bore witness to Mr. Wing’s luck or skill in the prospecting which was supposed to be the source of his income.
A short distance downhill from the dwelling was another building which combined the functions of storehouse and stable. Both structures were solidly built, and had never suffered serious damage from the Northwest winters. The foundation of the house was part of the bedrock core of the mountain, and its walls were well insulated. The family could easily have lived there the year round, and the parents had vague plans of doing so once the children had all finished school.
The first floor consisted of a big room which did duty as dining room and parlor, with a kitchen at one end and bedroom at the other. An open stair well by the kitchen door went down to a basement, containing work benches cluttered with woodworking and radio paraphernalia as well as the wherewithal for various games. The stair to the second floor was at the other end; this was divided into six much smaller rooms, one serving as bedroom for each of the children and the remaining one filled with the various odd articles of furniture and bric-a-brac which are apt to find their way into a spare room over a period of years.
The Wings dismounted by the porch which ran along the front of the dwelling, and promptly dispersed to their various duties. Mrs. Wing and the girls unlocked the front door and disappeared inside. Billy began unscrewing and removing the shutters on the more accessible windows — those along the porch, and the first-floor ones on the uphill side of the dwelling. Mr. Wing and Donald began unloading the pack animals, while Roger took the other horses down to the stable, unsaddled, and fed them.
By sunset, the house had assumed an inhabited air. Everyone had eaten, dishes had been washed, Billy and Marjorie were in bed, and the remaining members of the family had settled down for a few minutes of relaxation in the main room. There had been some debate as to whether the fireplace should be used, which had been won by the affirmatives — not so much because of the temperature, though even a June night can be chilly in the Cabinets, but simply because they liked to sit around a fire.
The parents were ensconced in their respective seats on each side of the stone fireplace. Donald, Roger and Edith sprawled on rugs between; Roger had just put forth the suggestion that the girls help in the scouting job. His father thought for a minute or two.
“Do you know your way around well enough, in directions other than toward town?” he finally asked Edith.
“Not as well as the boys, I suppose, but they had to Learn sometime or other,” she countered.
“True enough. I wouldn’t want you to turn up missing, and your mother can’t be expected to do all the housework herself. Well, Roger seems to have let himself in for proving a point, so let’s put it this way. It will be a week or ten days before I go out for the first time. In that time the two of you, working together, will turn in a satisfactory map of the territory within three miles of this house, and a patrol schedule that will permit Edie’s housework to be done at times satisfactory to your mother. Margie may go with you, but is not to go beyond the half-mile marks alone — the old rules hold for the younger people, still. That is subject to any additions or alterations your mother may see fit to make.” He looked across at his wife, with a half smile on his face. She returned the smile, and nodded.
“That seems all right. Roger has a few duties of his own, I believe; hadn’t they better be included in the last item?”
“Fair enough. Does that suit you, Rog? Edie? all right,” as the two nodded, “time for bed. You seem to have the time for the next few days pretty well filled.” The two youngsters grimaced but obeyed; Don and his parents remained. They talked seriously in low tones far into the night. The four younger children had been asleep for several hours when Donald finally climbed the stairs to his room, but the fact did not lessen his caution. He had no desire to spend the rest of the night ducking Roger’s questions about what had gone on downstairs.
In spite of the rather strenuous day just finished, the entire family was up early the next morning. As a “special favor” to his younger brother, Donald volunteered to take the surplus horses back to town — they kept only a few at the summer house, as fodder was a little difficult to obtain. That left the younger boy free, once the shutters were removed from the upstairs windows, to get out on the mapping job, as far as his own work was concerned. Edith was delayed for a while dusting off china and washing cooking utensils — they had cleaned only enough for a sketchy meal the night before — but Roger conquered any slight distaste he might have had for women’s work and helped out. The sun was not yet very high when they emerged onto the porch, consulted briefly, and started uphill around the house.
The boy carried a small Scout compass and a steel tape which had turned up in the basement worksho
p; his sister had a paper-covered notebook, a school relic still possessed of a few blank pages. Between his father’s teaching and a year in a Scout troop, Roger was sure he could produce a readable map of the stipulated area with no further equipment. He had not considered at all carefully the problem of contours.
High as the Wing house was located, there was still a long climb above it; and both youngsters were quite willing to rest by the time they reached the top. They were willing, too, to sit and look at the view around them, though neither was a stranger to it.
The peaks of the Cabinets extended in all directions except the West. The elevation on which they were located was not high enough to permit them to see very far; but bits of Pend’ Oreille were visible to the southwest and the easily recognized tip of Snowshoe Peak rose between east and south. Strictly speaking, there was no definite timber line; but most of the peaks managed to thrust bare rock through the soil for at least a few hundred feet. The lower slopes were covered with forest, principally the Douglas fir which is so prevalent in the Pacific Northwest. One or two relatively clear areas, relics of forest fires of the last few years, were visible from the children’s point of vantage.
There were a number of points visible within the distance specified by Mr. Wing which looked as though they might serve as reference stations, and presently Roger took out the compass and began taking bearings on as many of these as he could. Edith was already making a free-hand sketch map of their surroundings, and the bearings were entered on this. Distances would come later; Roger knew neither his own altitude nor those of the points he was measuring, and could not have used the information had he possessed it. He knew no trigonometry and had no means of measuring angles of depression.
Details began to crowd the rough chart even before they left the hilltop; and presently the two were completely absorbed in their task. Mrs. Wing was not particularly surprised when they came in late for dinner.