by Hal Clement
Hugh lowered his speed to let the fliers precede him, and watched them spread out in fan formation, Habras slightly ahead, as had been agreed. He kept his eyes on them, while Janice watched the tracker and reported distance and direction to the selected spot. They knew this might not be a precise location; Rekchellet had seen coordinates on the map, and was reasonably sure he was reading the numbers correctly even though the language was not his own, but there was no way to be sure what sort of trust could be placed in the map itself.
Every kilometer the aircraft’s upper light blinked the corrected distance in a simple improvised code, while the Crotonites winged steadily forward and the faster Habras swept back and forth in front of them, scanning the ice below with eyes and electric senses.
They were a dozen kilometers short of the indicated point when the Crotonite at the left of the line flashed her light back toward the others. Hugh and Janice saw it at the same instant; S’Nash started to speak, and fell silent. A touch on the board left the aircraft floating motionless a few meters above a barely visible ice peak, holding its position against the urge of a feeble breeze. Hugh opened the outer hatch and waited, but no one came aboard. A pair of broad Crotonite wings swept above the canopy after two or three minutes, however, and their owner’s voice came through.
“Miriam felt metal several kilometers in front of her, and the others now agree. They say it’s a large amount, and are sure they could not themselves be felt by another Habra at that distance. They will go no closer until they get your word, Hugh, in case you want to take the aircraft there before they themselves are sensed.”
“We thought of that,” agreed the Erthuma, “but couldn’t see what to do afterward. No, let’s follow Walt’s idea. Let the Habras approach the metal in single line, one far enough behind the next so they can just sense and talk to each other. You Crotonites will follow in the same direction as best you can with your lights out, and I’ll bring up the rear, well to one side, also dark. Whoever is in the lead look for signs of other living beings — Habras. of course, but any others he or she can infer from whatever they sense. If none are detected by the time the leader reaches the object, whatever it is, pass the message and any description back along the line to me as quickly as possible and we’ll come forward to look it over. If anyone living is detected, or any sort of trouble or danger shows up, relay the word back and I’ll be up there with all my lights going three seconds after I get it. That’s why I’ll be staying to one side; I don’t want to run into any of you. But if any emergency message does come through, turn your own lights on again, too, so I’ll be more certain to miss you. All right?”
“All right.” agreed the Crotonite. “It will take several minutes to get your words up to the nearest Habra. I’ll send a double-double flash when that’s done, and you can then be ready for more messages.”
All three of the flier’s occupants were now in the control section, the Erthumoi hunched over the panels, the Naxian behind them partly coiled but reared up enough to see through the windows. The autopilot was now cut out horizontally so that they were drifting slowly with the wind, and Hugh’s fingers were ready to move them in any direction at any speed. Janice’s hands were at the light controls. All three pairs of eyes were looking outside; the interior lights of the flier had been extinguished long before, though she had cut in small riding lights to let any of their companions find the vehicle.
The minutes dragged on. Hugh, realizing from a glance at the tracker that the breeze was drifting them into line behind his crew, gave a brief kick of power to send them five hundred meters to the right. He was almost ready to repeat the maneuver when the promised double flashes of light finally came and he realized that the real wait was only beginning.
He was wrong. Scarcely thirty seconds later a second, blindingly bright blaze came from beyond the crags ahead. It lasted several seconds, lighting up the sky, drowning the stars, and showing eight black spots in silhouette against the suddenly glowing background. One of these was just identifiable as a Crotonite form; the others were presumably the rest of the crew, too distant to see in detail. Hugh did not wait for any other signal.
He sent the aircraft hurtling toward the flash, grateful that the single glimpse of his people allowed him to be sure of missing them all. He had no weapons, and nothing he could have improvised as a weapon other than the craft itself; he wasn’t thinking weapons or deliberate violence; but he was used to accidents, and he intended to place his hull between his people and whatever had produced the flash. It was too bad that Janice was there, it occurred to him later, but he told himself firmly that she was an adult, had come along willingly, and he might have needed her help. He hoped the Naxian would not be a nuisance; he had no idea how any of that race might be expected to face personal risk — had never been sure that S’Nash had regarded the earlier blowing-away episode as risky — and had no time to find out now. This also failed to reach his conscious mind until later.
He did not use full speed, since he had to keep some awareness of how far he was going. He passed the farthest forward of his Habeas in some five seconds, seeing the being easily now that Janice had turned their search and landing lights on full. In five more he brought the vessel to a halt, and his wife swept the air around and the ice below with her beams.
The air was empty, but there was a cloud of dust or steam or both rising from the ground almost straight ahead of them and another two kilometers or so away. Hugh nosed down and headed rapidly toward it without consulting either of his companions, and brought the machine to a halt a hundred meters above the ice.
Whether what they saw was a menace or not was hard to decide at once. Steam was still rising from the extremely flat floor of a crater some thirty meters across and five deep. Beside the pit at a distance of less than twenty meters was a square metal structure about fifteen meters on a side and three high, as featureless as a food box and apparently undamaged. There was no motion in the vicinity but the rising steam — more probably fog, Hugh corrected his thought. The flat bottom of the pit was probably liquid water, at least for the moment. Whether energy was still being released to keep it that way was not yet obvious.
Something had exploded, just as his Habras had started to approach the building.
Hugh had a very low opinion of coincidence, backed by the Erthumoi tendency to recognize it when it wasn’t there.
He spent no more time examining building or crater, but lifted and swung back toward his people. In a few seconds the natives became visible, no longer strung out in a line; they had either never finished that maneuver or had had time to get back together since the blast. Distant, flashing lights showed that the Crotonites were also still in the air, and Hugh hung where he was, hatch open, waiting for the group to reach him.
This took several minutes, as even the nearest Crotonite had been a dozen kilometers or more away. They still lacked room for everyone aboard, so the aircraft was landed and its riders emerged as the winged members of the party settled around them.
“Is everyone all right?”
“We’re getting our sight back slowly,” replied Miriam. “The flash completely blinded all of us; we were flying on electrical sense for minutes, but could see your lights by the time you came back toward us. Do you know what happened?”
“What about you others?” Hugh asked the Crotonites, putting first things first without intending discourtesy. “Do you have alternate flying senses, too, or were you far enough away to avoid being blinded?”
“It wasn’t so much distance as having a hill in the way,” replied Rekchellet. “I suppose that was a booby trap. I still don’t like that (no-symbol-equivalent).”
“We don’t know yet. There’s a building, apparently undamaged, beside what looks like an explosion crater. I was going to suggest we look it over, but your idea makes me wonder if that’s a good idea. I wouldn’t have thought of traps, myself — at least, not really nasty ones like that.”
“I’ve met Erthumoi who wer
e less civilized,” muttered another Crotonite voice.
“I’m sure you have. But what do we do? Ordinarily I’d have searched that building for survivors of the explosion, as normal procedure. Now I’m not so sure I want to go near it, and I certainly can’t let any of you approach it until I’ve…”
“I can. It’s my business,” snapped Rekchellet.
“It’s my business. I’m talking responsibility, not revenge, if that’s what you have in mind. Reekess, is there any use in my arguing about this? Is it just Rekchellet, or am I bucking general Crotonite ethics? Shut up, Rek. I trust you, but you’re excited, and just as likely to be sure you’re right as I would be. Reekess?”
“He has the right, by custom.”
“Even if we’re not sure Ennissee had anything to do with all this?”
“The probability is good enough.”
“All right. Get aboard, Rek. You and S’Nash stay here, Jan — no,” as his wife was about to object, “it’s quite a walk from here. I’ll fly us over to within a couple of hundred meters, set down, and you take the flier back — remember the others don’t have recycling gear, and all the food is in it.”
Janice entered the vehicle without a word, but gestured the Naxian in after her. Hugh frowned, but decided not to make an issue of it; after all, there was no way S’Nash could manage the aircraft. The handlers on its/his armor were far too clumsy, and If it/he chose to shed the armor — possible, in Habranhan environment even in this temperature, though not for very long — the prehensile fringes on the serpentine body were even less facile.
Besides, Janice probably wanted to keep the Naxian in sight. Theories need observational testing.
Hugh and Rekchellet boarded together, the rest of the group waiting silently, and Hugh brought the aircraft back toward the scene of the explosion.
Neither he nor the Crotonite was in any great hurry to commit suicide. They flew low over the crater, confirming that there was liquid water, with needles of ice now growing across its surface, at its bottom. They circled the building a hundred meters away and ten or fifteen off the ice, finding a door on the side away from the crater but no other visible opening. They made one more circle at half the distance, drew back again to a hundred meters, and landed. Hugh and the Crotonite emerged, while Janice silently took the controls. Not until she had lifted off and the flier was dwindling in the distance did the others realize that S’Nash had emerged with them.
There was certainly nothing to be done. There seemed nothing to say. The three approached the door, not at all hastily.
Ten meters away, Hugh remarked, “It would have been handy if one of us were a Locrian. Why didn’t I bring Plant-Biologist along?” There seemed no answer to this, either, and neither of his companions attempted one. They stopped some five meters from the building, and examined the door as carefully as they could from that distance. It showed no peculiarities, and they started forward again.
They failed to reach it.
They were still three or four meters away when the portal opened and three beings emerged.
Two were Erthumoi, neither of whom Hugh had ever to his knowledge seen before, one apparently female, the other a male a head taller than Hugh himself.
The remaining person looked like a slab of leather, supported by a mechanism resembling a headless human skeleton, with the Samian body ensconced in the rib cage. Hugh thought of the report about the truck users which he had received from the seaport what seemed like months ago, rather than ten or twelve Common Days. He tried some spreadsheet thinking of his own, without marked success. He rather expected to see a fourth figure emerge from the still open door, but none had appeared by the time the three were confronting the newcomers from less than two meters away.
Rekchellet, too, had his expectations.
“Where’s Ennissee?” he hissed. “I need words with him.”
“Not here,” came the answer in Samian tones. “We are very glad of your arrival, Hugh. Our communication equipment was in the mole, which for some reason developed power plant trouble, and we have no way of calling for transportation. You must have been close enough to see the explosion. We were greatly worried; we don’t expect Ennissee back for nearly a year, and while the resources of this site should keep us alive, we would all be most uncomfortable. We would be grateful if you could transport us to Pitville.”
“You expect Ennissee back in a year?” Rekchellet asked the question; Hugh was still filling spaces in his mental chart.
“About that. He departed recently, leaving me in charge.”
“Where did he go?”
“To the Naxian biological station. He learned very recently, we understand, that they can provide treatment for injuries he suffered some time ago, and for which he had been using rather unsatisfactory prosthetic equipment.”
Hugh forestalled a second explosion.
It was less difficult than he expected; Rekchellet’s rage subsided almost at once to a cold, controlled fury which held S’Nash’s full and possibly admiring attention. All Hugh really had to say was, “He’ll have a hard time getting away from those growth tanks, won’t he?”
The Crotonite gave the wing-flip equivalent of a nod.
“And when he does, it will be nice that he has no more handicaps. I can meet him in the air.” He relaxed visibly, and Hugh was about to resume courtesies with the Samian who had been speaking, when S’Nash joined the conversation.
“It’s a little surprising to find you this far from Pitville, Ged.” The Erthuma looked down at the Naxian, then up again at the occupant of the skeletonlike walker. The other human figures remained silent, giving no sign they were following the conversation; Hugh recalled the unfamiliar tech translator modules which had been found in the truck, and wondered which if either of them was indeed from the home planet he himself had never seen. There was nothing about either person to attract special attention.
His curiosity was brief, as S’Nash’s words got through to his consciousness. Ged? Barrar couldn’t be out here. The walker looked like his, of course, though Hugh could never have sworn to all the details of the machine, and one Samian looked as much like an excessively thick steak as another. But Ged Barrar must be back at Pitville, making sure that the various details envisioned by Spreadsheet-Thinker were actually occurring as the Locrian decided they should. He was the administrator’s main connection with reality, or had presented that image. But this one had addressed him by name, he suddenly realized, and its next words removed any doubt.
“The various contingency plans feed back very nicely into the main program, and it has been some time since I have had to devote much attention to Pitville — even with Hugh’s conscience and curiosity operating,” the Samian answered calmly.
“It is you!” Hugh muttered.
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry if it surprises you, but I did mention that I had other interests.”
“Not that you were working on them. How does this connect? More important, did you know what was happening to Rekchellet?”
“Not until almost too late. I’m very sorry about that. Ennissee has been useful, but I’m afraid I didn’t fully understand what his injury had done to him. I certainly never supposed that he would only submit himself to Naxian treatment, tempting as it was, until after a — uh — test. It was foolish of me, because I do have some idea of what flying means to your people, Rekchellet. Since he could fly, however, I underestimated his — well, general bitterness.”
Beside Hugh S’Nash stirred briefly. There was no way for the Erthuma to tell whether Barrar perceived this or not. After a moment, the Naxian spoke up.
“I told you myself.”
“So you did. I still underestimated. Perhaps no one but another Crotonite, or perhaps a Habra, and now that I think of it, a Naxian. can really appreciate what a threat or injury to its wings would mean to someone who flies naturally. If you recall, I had already deduced that you have been playing that addictive Naxian game which involves what I can only describ
e in language as ‘composing emotional tunes’ out of the readings you obtain from non-Naxians, and therefore I had reason to doubt your objectivity. If you had actually told Hugh and Janice what you do for amusement when they asked you a year Of so ago, I might have felt otherwise.”
Hugh wondered how the Samian had known about that bit of conversation, but failed to pursue the thought as S’Nash gave its/his answer.
“It’s not exactly a game; it’s normal behavior. And it’s not just with aliens, though you’re a lot less boring than my own people, I admit,” his tones flowed calmly from Hugh’s translator.
Several frames in the Erthuma’s mental spreadsheet filled themselves simultaneously.
Chapter Twelve
And Word Unknown Guide Straighter Than A Print
Barrar resolved the Erthuma’s unuttered wonder.
“S’Nash told me about that question, Hugh, for reasons of its/his own which I understand fairly well. I assure you I wasn’t eavesdropping. Please come inside, now; I have a request. Mahere, Jayree, and I do need transportation, but not just for ourselves. There are things I very much want you to take to Janice so that she can examine and date them. I’d stay here myself rather than have them left.”
The Samian turned back to the building. He said nothing to his Erthumoi companions, but they followed him. Hugh, Rekchellet, and S’Nash, after a brief hesitation on the Naxian’s part, trailed them inside.
There was no air lock; the whole interior was under Habranhan conditions. Its only furnishings were benches and tables, nearly all carrying instruments and tools and specimens. The largest work surface bore a block of ice, and both Hugh and Rekchellet had an inkling of what they were about to see. They were almost right.
It was not a complete Habra body this time, just a portion of thorax, with much of the head and two right wings attached. Even the Erthuma and Crotonite could see that there were differences between this body and the natives they knew; the head was narrower, the remaining eyes much larger. The wings were much shorter than was usual on the natives they had seen, leading to the speculation that this being might have been smaller or at least lighter than they. Hugh could understand Ged’s interest; this had to be a key find in Habranhan prehistory, and a proper description of it would ensure anyone a reputation.