by Hal Clement
The answer was as wordless, as emotion-laden, and as information-free as before. It came this time as a series of ticking, hissing whispers. The source was still plainly one of S’Nash’s own people, but something had to be wrong with the sufferer’s vocal apparatus.
“We can’t understand you,” the sentry responded patiently. “If you’re in monitored space, turn vertical.” Rekchcllet’s translator got this message clearly enough, and it was the Crotonite who observed the response.
“There!” he whistled. “Screen seven! It’s still trying to carry that case, but it’s turned tail down. What’s wrong? It looks normal to me.”
“And to me,” answered S’Nash tersely, “but it can’t talk. Get its location! I’ll check depth. We’ll find out who’s working closest and get help there.” As it/he spoke, the Naxian keyed an alarm switch. The instant and most obvious result was a piercing howl of wordless sound. It was audible throughout Pitville and broken into a repeating sequence of long and short bursts which should have needed no translation to tell anyone that a Pit worker was in trouble, details unknown. Hugh Cedar, the Erthumoi safety chief, hearing it at the ski slope two kilometers away, would not have bet any large sum that more than half the staff could read it that completely, however.
The key also initiated other lines of activity. The pumps which fed the trickle of liquid air needed to keep the Pits filled shut off immediately. A set of floodlights flashed on, fully illuminating every liter of the two one-hundred-meter square, half-kilometer deep holes in Habranha’s glacial night hemisphere. Each of the one hundred seventy-five members of the staff currently at the site immediately checked the whereabouts and status of its, her, or his assigned partner or partners, except the one who was now trying to maintain its serpentine body in the vertical attitude S’Nash had ordered. A neutrino transmitter passed the emergency signal to the Diplomacy Guild office at Pwanpwan on Habranha’s ring continent, nearly three thousand kilometers away.
Robots supposedly dedicated to digging reported to Hugh Cedar, from their work stations at the bottom of each pit, in code which rode the siren frequencies and did not affect most translators, as being in rescue mode with full decision capacity engaged.
And Hugh and his wife slid toward the digs from the powdered-ice pile among Pitville’s structures which served as a ski jump. When they had heard the alarm howl, they had simply glanced at each other, nodded, and without bothering to use even the briefest message to one another or the Habras they had been talking to, headed east. As they went, Hugh keyed a query to the watch.
“What’s wrong?” His use of code identified him.
Rekchellet and his fellow sentry had by now learned the position of the troubled Naxian, and the Crotonite responded through the general public speakers.
“Pit One, x twenty-one, y thirty-one, z three ninety-five decreasing slowly. Naxian apparently in trouble, no clear comm. no further details.”
S’Nash, presumably hoping the contradiction would not irritate its/his partner, added one item. “Subject maintaining vertical attitude by request. You should be able to identify it easily.” He expected an indignant whistle, but apparently the Crotonite realized that his “no further details” had been a little hasty and was willing to let the matter pass.
Hugh acknowledged, and the couple headed for Pit One, shedding their skis and going over the edge without diminishing their speed. The fluid was only a little less dense than water — it was maintained carefully at an oxygen-nitrogen proportion which would offset the pressure of the surrounding ice at any given depth — so the impact could have been violent in stronger gravity. Neither Erthuma even noticed the shock, however; all that bothered them was a brief vision blur as bubbles of air, some carried down with their suits and some formed as the armor’s heat boiled the surrounding liquid, momentarily obscured their view. These, however, lifted away or condensed again almost at once, and the couple could look around the now brilliantly lit pool. They extended fins and hand webs and swam rapidly downward toward the indicated spot.
By the time the Erthumoi had reached it, several minutes after the alarm, there were two other Naxians already there. Their snakelike shape allowed them to swim very much faster than human beings, and they had not had nearly as far to come. There was still no difficulty, however, in identifying the one in trouble, or even the basic nature of its problem.
The victim and both its newly arrived fellows were all trying to work on the same area of armor, about half a meter back of the sufferer’s head. Even the wearer could reach the spot with the rather clumsy handlers installed on the Naxian suits, but no one seemed able to do anything about a stream of bubbles which was flowing from the spot.
The bubbles were collapsing again a few centimeters away, with a swirl of heated liquid rising visibly from their vanishing point for about as much farther. Clearly, there was some damage to the thermal insulation of the armor. The instrument case the being had been carrying had now been abandoned and was inking very slowly; the two-meter-plus serpents were rising under their own buoyancy even less rapidly as the Erthumoi approached.
“What can we do?” keyed the woman.
“Do you have any insulation patches?” one of the Naxians asked.
“No.” It would take too long to explain by code that Erthumoi bodies were massive enough to let them — probably — swim to the surface and leave the Pit before losing a dangerous amount of heat from such damage. In any case, the fact that no such help was on hand was the important one; excuses were irrelevant, even if Hugh Cedar was supposed to be in charge of safety.
“Can you supply energy to the area?” The question was in code, and for a moment Hugh failed to see why his wife was asking it. Of course he couldn’t — then he realized that she wasn’t addressing him. The robot had reached the group. How it knew the question was meant for it Hugh never asked — it was a courtesy-rooted standard procedure not to treat robots as rational beings in the presence of non-Erthumoi members of the Six Races, and even when people forgot this the robots themselves usually remembered. However, this one answered promptly.
“No. I am operating at ambient temperature and have only essential heaters for moving parts.”
“We can’t get it/her to the surface fast enough,” cut in one of the Naxians, “and you Erthumoi are even slower swimmers. Sentries, can a rescue craft reach us within, say, forty seconds?”
“No.” S’Nash’s buzzes and Rekchellet’s whistles could be heard as faint background to the translated word.
“Then the armor must be removed, as nearly instantly as possible. If H’Feer can be frozen quickly enough to forestall crystallization, it/she can be saved with suitable treatment. Can you understand me, H’Feer? Do you agree? Are you willing to face the risk and discomfort?”
The response was as wordless as it had been before, but even the Erthumoi interpreted the sounds as whimpers and thought they could read the agony in them. They glanced at each other. Fleetingly, Hugh wondered what having one’s body gradually frozen from midsection to ends might feel like.
The helping Naxians received the victim’s feelings far more strongly, of course, and read them correctly in spite of its/her inability to speak. For once even the Erthumoi were right on an emotional matter. The clumsy handlers on the snakelike beings’ armor reached for the victim’s release catches, and stopped.
“That’s the trouble! It/she’d have done it already, but the release is frozen or jammed somehow! Erthumoi, your grippers are stronger than ours.
Grasp the flaps on either side of the helmet and pull straight apart. The suit should split open lengthwise.”
Hugh seized one of the indicated projections and Janice the other. The woman straddled the serpentine form and, bracing her feet against her husband’s armored chest, pushed as hard as she could.
The suit held. Hugh was about to add his own legs to the system when the robot firmly shoved him aside, grabbed one flap in each of two handlers, made a precise incision at the fron
t of the Naxian’s helmet with one of its ice shavers, and with a single continuous motion split and pulled the armor free of its occupant. There was a brief cloud of bubbles as the air in the suit escaped and liquid contacting flesh boiled; then vision cleared and the burbling hiss died out as a swirling mass of warmer than average liquid air drifted upward from the scene.
The Naxian floated rigid in the grasp of its/her fellows, quick-frozen. It would not have worked fast enough for an Erthuma even had the liquid been helium instead of air, but no part of the slender body was more than a few centimeters from the nearest surface, and heat could escape quickly.
One of the others spoke up. “There’ll probably be severe tissue damage near the injury to the armor, where there has been slow freezing going on for minutes, but at least it/she should live. We will get it/her to the surface, and…”
Hugh interrupted; he had been busy with code. “There will be an aircraft with a liquid air bath at the Pit edge in two minutes, to take H’Feer to Pwanpwan. One of your people should call ahead; I don’t know in any detail the medical work needed. I believe Th’Terro would be best, but if it/she is not available there must be others at your biology station.”
“You are right about Th’Terro, Erthuma Hugh. Thank you for the arrangements.”
“My job.” Hugh keyed. “Sorry I wasn’t set up to accomplish it more quickly. I’ll try to think of other ways to be ready, and will gladly welcome suggestions on other possible precautions and how they may be implemented within the Project’s logistic framework.”
Hugh disliked and was embarrassed by pretentious language, but had found long ago that when hampered by code restraints he usually came out ahead using longer but fewer words. It was much easier to let the translators handle vocabulary than to do his own circumlocutions by hand.
He knew that Janice was storing every precious sentence in her memory to use against him later, but didn’t grudge her that bit of fun. He could usually hold his own in marital repartee.
He watched the accident victim being towed upward for a few seconds, then got back to code work.
“Report and info request from Safety One. Naxian H’Feer thermal injury, receiving help. Director, please report on task interrupted and replacement needed.”
The translator responded at once.
“Cra’eth, Equipment Management. H’Feer was taking a projector to the next window site. It will not be urgently needed until the corresponding window in the other pit has been at least rough-polished, probably in another hour. I can most likely find someone to get it there; I will report within ten minutes to Watch if I succeed and to Administration if I have trouble.”
“Logged at Watch,” another translated voice supplemented, and then went on less formally, “This is Rek, Cedars. It looked from here as though the rescue was actually done by that robot — the digger. Should we keep quiet about it?”
“Quiet, not necessarily. Tactful, yes,” keyed Janice. “Keep an honest log, certainly; we can’t distort data.”
“Of course. Both of us will want to talk to you when we get off watch, though.” “How long will that be?”
“A little over four more hours for me, six for s Nash.”
“You both want to talk it over?”
“Very much,” came the translated voice of the Naxian.
“That could be a little harder. Jan and I could ski again while Rek goes flying for fun; but what do you folks do outdoors — for amusement, that is— around here?”
“I can show you — well, maybe not. I can tell you. You’d have trouble doing it, and I doubt that you’d enjoy it, but I’ll explain some time if you’re really curious. I’ll meet you and Rekchellet at the foot of the west slope of the main waste dump at — let’s say nineteen even.”
“Fine.”
“And please have a robot there, if you can find a way to make its presence convenient and reasonable,” added S’Nash.
“Will an ice worker from the dumps be suitable?” asked Janice.
“I would think so.” The translated voices from the watch station fell silent. Hugh and his wife looked at each other, frankly and intensely puzzled, but decided to say nothing even in code for the time being. They swam, not too quickly, to the surface of the Pit, found one of the numerous ladders, ramps, and scoops which allowed members of the various species working on the Project to emerge when necessary — though in Habranha’s gravity there was never any real trouble about this — and made their way to their own quarters.
These were currently very uncomfortable, being full of pressure fluid, but at least the Erthumoi could remove their armor and enjoy some physical contact. They could also talk privately; vocal cords were still useless, but the microphones which normally picked up and broadcast their code through the structure could be cut off, and, of course, after a few Common Years of married companionship they could bypass code for much of what they wanted to say.
“Does S’Nash actually want to talk to a robot? It’s pretty hard to believe.”
“Not quite as hard as though it were Rek,” Janice answered thoughtfully. “If it/he had asked for the digger who made the rescue, I could believe there was some progress here. I don’t see what it/he can want that could be fulfilled by just any robot, though.”
“Rek was listening, and didn’t object. Maybe…” Hugh’s code cut off, and his expressive hands stopped moving.
“Maybe what?”
“Crotonites are often good technicians, and Rek should have no trouble regarding a robot as a machine — in fact, we know he doesn’t; we’ve known him for a long time now, and for a Crotonite he’s pretty tolerant. He hasn’t called either of us a slug, or even seemed to think of us that way, for three years or more.”
“Habra years, you mean.”
“Naturally.” Hugh drifted upright in the liquid; he had removed his armor since no one would miss a chance to do this even for a few minutes, but he was wearing enough belt and ankle ballast to maintain neutral buoyancy in the dense stuff. He went on, “I don’t think this is Rek’s idea at all, though this sort of guessing does no good. We know him pretty well, and for my money the whole proposal is probably S’Nash’s idea.”
“If Rek didn’t approve, he’d have made it clear when we were asked to meet them. We both know him well enough for that. Rekchellet has become positively fond of you and me…” Janice’s signals carried no trace of smugness, but her facial expression did— “but I don’t think he’s extended that feeling to all Erthumoi, much less to the rest of the Six.”
“Right. We’re building on wind, as Rek would say. Let’s eat and get out to the meeting. Much as I like this project, I wish we could spend a few days without juice. I can do without talking, but eating is supposed to be fun.”
Janice nodded, and they ingested nourishment. The reflexes normally closing the human breathing passage when the owner swallows had been neutralized to allow “breathing” of the diving fluid. Eating, therefore, required extreme care, and was confined to substances loose enough not to need chewing but firm and cohesive enough to go down the esophagus together once started in the right direction. Stuff which broke up like cake crumbs could be dangerous; the coughing reflex had also been blocked since this would have ruptured liquid-filled lungs. Careful and rather skilled work with a hand pump was needed when food went the wrong way. If the person concerned was also wearing an environment suit, the problem could become really complicated, though the Cedars had now faced even this emergency often enough to regard it as more of a nuisance than a catastrophe.
They never went anywhere alone, however, while set up for deep diving, except for office or lab where help was nearby.
Funnels sealed directly to the trachea and extending outside the mouth to allow more control over what did reach the windpipe had been suggested often and tried occasionally, but so far had proved less than satisfactory.
Fed, or at least nourished, the couple resumed and tested their armor, left their quarters, made their way to the m
ain residence air lock, checked out with the watch, and headed west.
They were not wearing skis this time; it was not necessary to climb over the piles of ice dust extracted from the Pits, and the level surfaces of Pitville were not dangerously slippery. This had not always been so, but the dust-fine water snow had now been beaten down within the settlement into a solid, almost clear ice pavement by passing feet, armored bellies, wheels, and treads. At the local temperatures, this ice was barely slippery except under pressures not likely to be provided by an Erthuma body on foot under Habranhan gravity. Powdered finely enough, though, the area of contact between grains or flakes could be small enough for moderate force to provide melting pressure; one could ski, or make snowballs.
The path was nearly dark. Energy was cheap, but lighting equipment had not been wasted except where it was considered important. The brightest object in the sky was Fafnir, currently at a distance which made it about as bright as Earth’s full moon. It hung some fifteen degrees above the northwest horizon, so shadows were long. At the moment, thin clouds from the day side gave the sunlet a vague halo and hid most of the other stars.
Neither Hugh nor Janice was currently paying any particular attention to the sky. They were familiar with it, enjoyed making up constellations for it, and had even invented a zodiac for Fafnir to follow, though they did not expect to be around for the eight hundred or so Common Years it would take the little star to complete that circle. Just now, however, they were too concerned with their path and too curious about the forthcoming meeting to stargaze.
Even the footing wasn’t too much of a problem; it would take a long fall to be dangerous here. Their thoughts were mostly on what was up, but neither had conceived a question or answer interesting enough to be worth the labor of putting into code.