by Hal Clement
With the aid of the family, who were able to supply clues on his dates of absence — a diary kept by Edie was very helpful — about two dozen of the dates were fixed with sufficient accuracy to satisfy Don. He immediately went up to his room, carrying the notes he had taken.
From that point the conversation drifted by imperceptible degrees into pure fantasy, and by bed-time a number of wonderful pictures had been drawn about the home life of the fiery visitors. Little Margie’s was the most interesting, if the least accurate.
Sallman Ken, however, was wasting no time on fantasy. He had not yet worked out a really detailed course of action, but certain ideas were gradually taking shape in his mind as he worked.
The moment he entered the Karella and had emerged from his bulky armor, he went into a close conference with Feth. Lee was present at first, even following them to Ken’s quarters where the scientist began; but a glance of understanding passed between Ken and Feth, and the conversation took a remarkably abstruse turn. It had just enough meaning to give the impression that matters of highly advanced physics and chemistry were being covered, in connection with the problem of keeping the seeds — if any — in the soil samples alive and healthy. For a few minutes it looked as though Lee were going to stay and take it, but Feth suddenly had the inspiration to ask the pilot’s opinion of occasional matters. After a little of this, Ordon Lee drifted back to his control room. “He’s not stupid,” Feth said, looking after his retreating form, “but he certainly lacks confidence in his education! Now, what did you want to keep from Drai?”
“It has occurred to me,” Ken said, “that our employer is going to want to hear everything that goes on on Planet Three, as soon as we are in halfway decent communication with the natives. I have some vague ideas about the uses to which those creatures can be put, and I’d rather not have Drai listening in to all our conversations. Since at the moment there’s no way of preventing that, I’d like to know whether it might not be possible to connect me up with the speaker on the torpedo without having everything audible up here as well. It would be best, I suppose, if I could turn your contact on and off at will, so that he’ll hear enough to keep him from getting suspicious.”
“I suppose it could be done, all right,” the mechanic said slowly. “I’m afraid it would take more work than it’s worth, though. Wouldn’t it be a great deal simpler to take another set down with you in the torpedo? You already have means for tuning both transmitter and receiver in the armor, so you could switch from one set to the other whenever you pleased.”
“Wouldn’t they miss the extra set?”
“Not unless Drai starts paying a great deal more attention to the technical supplies than he has in the past.”
“All right, let’s do it that way. Now, let’s see. I already suggested suspending the armor vertically instead of horizontally from the torpedo, so I can be carried around instead of having to lug that hardware against extra gravity, didn’t I?”
“Yes. That will be easy enough.”
“It will have another good point, as well. The only discomfort I’ve felt so far on that planet has been in my feet, in spite of what we feared. This way we can keep them off the ground, so they don’t lose so much by conduction.
“The only other thing I had in mind had to do with torpedo control. Could a unit be made small enough for me to carry, so I could move myself around down there instead of having to tell you where I want to go?”
Feth frowned at this suggestion. “I thought of that, too, while I was trying to keep the torpedo near you this time,” he said. “Frankly, I doubt it — not that the set could be made small enough, but that I could do it with the materials I have at hand. Still, I’ll look into the possibility when we get back to One. I take it you have no objection to Drai’s hearing about these last two suggestions?”
“Of course not. They ought to keep him happy. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he’d take a trip down there himself, once we showed it was safe enough?” Feth smiled broadly at the scientist’s suggestion.
“It would take a better psychologist than either of us to endue him with that much trust in his fellows, I fear. Besides, what good would it do? We wouldn’t gain anything by leaving him there, pleasant as the idea sounds, and there’d be no use trying to threaten him, since he’d never dream of keeping any inconvenient promises you might wring out of him.”
“I didn’t really expect much from the idea. Well, with the other matter understood, I suppose we’d better take those samples back to One before they freeze, and get a vivarium knocked together. If we can grow anything at all, it ought to keep Drai quiet for a little while.”
The torpedo which had transported Ken and his specimens had been allowed to drift to the edge of the repeller field as soon as he had detached himself from it. Feth now returned to the control room and began to monitor the little vessel, holding it close against the hull of the large ship so that it would be dragged along in the Karella’s drive fields; and Lee, at Ken’s request, headed sunward once more. A thousand miles from the surface of Mercury the torpedo was cast loose again, and Feth eased it down to a landing near the caves — a televisor had been set up there some time since, and he was able to guide — the landing with the aid of this. He arranged matters so that about three feet of the torpedo’s nose was in sunlight, while the rest was in the shadow of a large mass of rock. That, he judged, should maintain somewhere near the right temperature for a few hours at least.
As soon as the Karella was grounded, he and Ken adjourned at once to the shop. There, a metal case about a yard square and two feet high was quickly assembled. Feth very carefully welded all seams and tested them against full atmospheric pressure. A glass top was provided, sealed in place with a silicone vacuum wax that was standard equipment on any space ship; this also checked out against a pressure equivalent to an earthly barometric reading of twelve hundred fifty millimeters of mercury. A second, similar case large enough to enclose the first was under construction when Drai appeared. He had evidently noticed at last that the ship was back.
“Well, I understand from Lee that you actually talked to a native. Good work, good work. Did you find out anything about how they make their tofacco?”
“We haven’t learned their language too well, yet,” Feth replied with as little sarcasm as he could manage. “We were operating on a slightly different line of investigation.” He indicated the partly constructed vivarium. Drai frowned at it, as though trying to gather its purpose. “It’s a small chamber where we can reproduce Planet Three’s conditions, we hope; more or less of an experiment. The larger one goes outside, and we’ll maintain a vacuum between the two. Feth says one of the sulfur hexafluoride refrigerators he knocked together years ago will get the temperature low enough, and we got enough of the planet’s air to fill it a couple of times at their pressure.” Drai looked puzzled still.
“But isn’t it a little small for one of the natives? Lee said you’d described them as nearly five feet tall. Besides, I didn’t hear about these plans at all.”
“Natives? I thought you wanted us to grow vegetation. What good would a native do us here?” The master’s face cleared.
“Oh, I see. I didn’t know you’d picked up vegetation already. Still, now that I think of it, it mightn’t be a bad idea to have a native or two. If the race is at all civilized, they could be used for a really stupendous ransom in tofacco — and we could use them in the cave, once it was conditioned, to take care of the tofacco and harvest it Thanks for the idea.”
“I don’t know just how intelligent the natives are, as yet,” replied Ken, “but I don’t think they’re stupid enough to walk into any sort of cage we might leave open for them. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave that as a last resort— we’re going to have trouble enough getting our soil and seeds from their present containers into this thing without exposing them either to our atmosphere or to empty space. It would be a hundred times worse getting a native into one of those caves.”
“I’m sure it would, if they are at all civilized. I don’t see why you’re complaining about that, though — you’re getting it cheap enough now, goodness knows.”
“I don’t mind the price — it’s the quantity. We only get a couple of hundred cylinders a year — one of Three’s years, that is. That doesn’t let us operate on a very large scale. Well, do what you think best — provided you can convince me it’s best, too.” He left on that note, smiling; but the smile seemed to both Feth and Ken to have a rather unpleasant undertone. Feth looked after him a little uneasily, started to return to the job in hand, stopped once more, looked rather apologetically at Ken, and then went after Drai. The scientist remembered that Feth’s last dose of the drug had come some time before his own.
That set him to wondering about when he himself could expect to feel the craving. Feth had said the interval was five or six Sarrian days — which were about thirteen Earthly hours in length. About half a day had been consumed after his first recovery in general talk, checking of the big suits, and travelling out to Three; rather more than a day in the actual tests and the meeting with which they had culminated; another half day since. Looking into the future, at least a full day must pass before the planned meeting with the natives of Three. No one could tell how long that would last, but apparently he had a couple of days’ leeway in any case. He stopped worrying and turned his attention back to the partly completed vivarium.
He was not an expert welder but the specimens waiting patiently two thousand miles away would only last so long, and he did not know how long Feth would be incapacitated. He took the torch and resumed work on the outer case. He had learned from watching Feth how the testing equipment was used, and was pleasantly surprised when his seams proved airtight. That, however, was as far as he could go; the mechanic had made no written plans, and Ken had no idea of his ideas on the attachment of the various refrigerating and pumping mechanisms. He stopped work, therefore, and devoted his mind to the problem he had mentioned to Drai — how to transfer the samples to the beautiful little tank after it was completed.
He spent some time trying to invent a remote-controlled can opener before the solution struck him. Then he kicked himself soundly for not having thought of it before — his double-kneed legs gave him a noticeable advantage in that operation. After that he relaxed until Feth returned, coming as close to sleep as his race ever did.
The mechanic was back in less than four hours, as a matter of fact. He seemed to be in fairly good shape; the tofacco apparently had few visible after-effects, even after years of use, which was a comforting thing to think about.
Ken showed him what had been done on the vivarium during his absence, and Feth expressed approval. He looked a little disappointed, however, at hearing the scientist’s plan for stocking the device; as it turned out, he had had one of his own.
“I don’t know why we were fools enough to get the specimens before we had a place to put them,” Ken said. “We run the risk of ruining them in the cans, and have the transfer problem. We’d have been a lot smarter to make this thing first, and take it down to Three’s surface for stocking on the spot. Why didn’t we?”
“If you want an answer to that, we were probably too eager to make the trip,” was the plausible answer. “Are you going to forget about the specimens we have, then?”
“We might check their temperatures. If those are still reasonable, we might as well take them back to Three and make the transfer there. It will be interesting to see how the seeds, if any, stood their trip — not that anything will be proved if they don’t come up.”
“You could make a microscopic check for anything resembling seed,” Feth suggested, forgetting the situation for a moment.
“Do I cook the specimen or freeze the observer?” queried the scientist in an interested tone. Feth did not pursue the matter. Instead, he turned back to his work, and gradually the vivarium took shape under his* skilled tentacles. Both the refrigerator and the pump were remarkably tiny devices, each solidly attached to a side of the box-like affair. Their controls were simple; an off-on toggle for the pump, and a thermostat dial for the refrigerator.
“I haven’t calibrated that,” Feth said, referring to the latter. “I’m mounting a thermometer inside where it can be seen through the lid, and you’ll just have to fiddle with the knob until it’s right.”
“That’s all right — for supposedly haywire apparatus, you certainly turn out a factory job. There’s nothing to apologize for that I can see.”
There were several hours yet to go before they were actually due at the meeting place on Planet Three. They loafed and talked for a while, Ken’s plan coming gradually into more definite shape as they did so. They discussed the peculiarities of the Planet of Ice. Feth looked through his stock cabinets and reported that there was nothing he could turn into a portable control set so that Ken could handle his own torpedo. It was his turn to kick himself when the scientist suggested that he wire contacts to the controls — he (Ken) did not insist on sending the impulses by radio. Thirty minutes later a torpedo was sitting in the shop with a long cable extending from a tiny opening in its hull, and ending in a small box with half a dozen knobs studding its surface. Ken, manipulating the knobs, found no difficulty in making the projectile do whatever he wanted.
“I guess we’re even in the matter of overlooking the obvious,” he said at last. “Had we better be getting ready to go?”
“I suppose so. By the way, since you can’t read the torpedo’s instruments, maybe you’d better let me navigate you to the ground. Then you can do what you please.”
“That would be best. I certainly could not judge either distance or speed at three thousand miles from the surface.”
They donned space suits, and carried their apparatus out to the Karella. The vivarium they left in the air lock, since it was going to have to be fastened to the torpedo anyway; but Lee found it there a little later and delivered a vitriolic comment on people who obstructed the exits from a space ship. Ken humbly carted the box inside by himself, Feth having gone up to the control room to direct the newly modified torpedo to its cradle.
They were ready to go, except for one thing, and neither of them realized the omission. It was brought home to them only a minute before the planned take-off time, when another space-suited figure glided from the air lock of the station to that of the ship. Lee waited, apparently unsurprised; and a moment later Laj Drai entered the control room.
“We may as well go, if all your apparatus is on board,” he said.
Without comment, Ken nodded to the pilot.
16
Ken paused halfway into his armor to wave all four tentacles in expostulation.
“If you don’t think I know what I’m talking about, why did you hire me?” he asked. “I’ll get and grow plants for you as fast as I can. Our tank is only so big — there are growths down there that wouldn’t fit in this ship, whether you believe it or not. I don’t know any better than you what tofacco looks like when it’s growing — I’m not even as sure as you seem to be that it’s a plant. Just get out of your head the idea that I’m going to pack plants into this case until they have no room to breathe, and try to develop a little patience. It took two thousand years to explore Sarr, and the exploring was a darn sight easier than this!” He resumed the task of sliding into his metal shell.
“You’ll do what you’re told, Mr. Ken. I don’t care how you do it, as I said before; but if we’re not growing tofacco in a reasonable time, someone’s going to be awfully sorry.”
Ken’s response was slightly muffled, as only his head was now protruding from the suit. “That, of course, you can do; I can’t stop you. However, if you’ll let me do this my own way, I honestly think things will go faster. Use your head, after all — who does know this planet?” He paused too briefly for the question to have any but rhetorical significance, and went on: “The
natives, of course. They not only know the planet, they presumably know where the tofacco can be obtained, since they sell it to you. You’ll have to work hard to convince me that there’s any better way of learning what we want to know than getting the information from the natives.”
“But it takes so long to learn a language!”
“True. It also takes quite a while to explore two hundred million square miles of territory, even if you count out the three quarters of it that seems to be flatland — and you can’t really do that; these natives may be on good enough terms with the flatlanders to get the tofacco from them by trade. How about that? I understand you had your fill of exploring the flatlands quite a while ago— what was it, nineteen out of nineteen torpedoes lost, or twenty out of twenty? The percentage was embarrassing in either case.”
“But suppose they don’t want us to learn where it can be obtained? They might be afraid we’d get it ourselves, instead of paying them for it”
“That would not be too stupid of them. Sure, they may suspect just that. I never denied that a certain amount of tact would be needed. If you don’t think I can exercise it, I repeat — do it yourself. We have more suits. I want to go down anyway, to study the place, but come right along — the torpedo will carry you and me and the tank easily enough!”
“I may not be a genius, but I’m not completely insane. I’ll be there by proxy. If I don’t like your tact, you needn’t bother to come back.”
“Don’t you want the suit? I thought they were expensive,” Ken said sweetly, and pulled the massive helmet into place with a clang.
Feth, who had been listening in, dogged the piece in place. He was just a trifle worried; he himself had not talked to Drai like that for years, and still retained unpleasant memories of the last time he had done so. He knew, of course, the purpose behind Ken’s attitude; the scientist wanted to annoy Drai sufficiently so that he would not suspect more than one thing at a time. That one thing was to be exactly what Ken wanted. Feth admitted to himself that that part of the conversation had been well handled. Nevertheless, he was not too sure he liked the expression of Laj Drai’s face as that individual draped himself within easy earshot of the radio.