Fossil (1993)

by Hal Clement

  Since Hugh had provided careful specifications, the tools brought back had two disadvantages. They were light enough for Rekchellet to carry in flight, which meant that they were too light to make full use of Erthumoi muscles; and they were too heavy as well as having poorly shaped handles for anyone but the Erthumoi.

  They took turns digging. S’Nash and Barrar watched, Plant-Biologist climbed about and over the heap in search of a spot from which he could see into it more clearly, and the fliers scoured the area from above in the faint hope of learning that tunneling would not be needed after all.

  Three or four hours of chipping and prying brought the diggers close enough to allow the Locrian to state with certainty that a number of Habra forms were indeed embedded in the ice ahead, so that the party was either at the right place or one equally worth examining.

  Rekchellet promptly pointed out that Ennissee was obviously responsible for the melting and general cliff damage, just as he had claimed earlier; this time even Barrar wondered whether he might be right. The nondiggers now congregated around the mouth of the tunnel and as far inside as they could get. Barrar and Miriam could now make themselves useful carrying ice fragments away from the digging face, and strained their various senses to determine details of what still lay some meters ahead.

  Plant-Biologist informed them happily that the Habra forms were surrounded and more or less intermingled with tumbleweeds and other local vegetation, and thereafter focused most of his attention on this material. Miriam was beginning to get some details of the Habra bodies through her electrical senses.

  A meter or so short of the nearest body the work had to slow down. The Locrian reported that the ice a little beyond the corpses contained a large, tightly packed bundle of plant remains of the azide variety, so that a pick blow might cause an explosion of possibly inconvenient magnitude. No one. they agreed, wanted to risk destruction of the specimens after all their work, and also Plant-Biologist wanted to study the tangle itself; the vegetation did not resemble at all closely any solid Ocean forms he had seen, he claimed.

  Janice was fascinated; the biologist must have been able to observe near-microscopic details of tissue to identify the chemical nature of the things. Or could he sense the chemistry itself?

  Conceivably the Habras ahead had accumulated the growths for some reason — perhaps to blast a shelter for themselves into the face of the cliff, Rekchellet suggested. It seemed to Janice a little early for hypothesizing, but she agreed that the idea had possibilities. S’Nash absorbed another lesson in tact.

  Work became slow and cautious, the small metal spikes which were carried on the truck to work ice out of its tracks replacing the heavier tools. There were enough of these to let everyone work, and the tunnel end began to widen in both directions. In spite of the danger, most of the crew stayed as close as they could to the inner end of the tunnel. Plant-Biologist’s desire to examine the plants as closely as possible in case they did explode before he reached them overrode any fear he may have felt: S’Nash watched the Locrian for reasons Hugh and his wife could now easily guess; Janice’s attention was divided between the two while she mulled over developing theories. Even Barrar, anxious to miss nothing, crowded among the others and distracted the Locrian with questions about the Habra bodies which even the others could now see fairly clearly through the ice. He was not visibly taking notes, but Hugh felt sure his “body” incorporated recording equipment.

  The bodies, all with wings folded back, were grouped next to the mass of vegetation as though they had died together while pushing it toward the cliff. They were not, as far as even the Locrian could see, wearing any protective equipment — certainly nothing like that now employed by Ted, Miriam, and their fellows. They might indeed have been a group blown long ago away from the sun and over the Solid Ocean in one of Habranha’s storms, dying while seeking shelter against or inside the cliff.

  But what had killed them all at once? The bodies were not crushed or visibly injured, any more than the one Janice had already examined; they had certainly not been under an avalanche or anything like one. They were not, for the most part, in physical contact, so an electrical jolt from the plants could hardly have caught them all at once.

  Barrar suggested that a sudden gust of ultrachilled air, not strong enough to blow them away but cold enough to kill or paralyze them until they were buried in an ordinary drift was conceivable. The bodies would have to be examined in detail to test this, and native help would be needed; no one else, except possibly the Naxians in the orbiting station, knew just what effects freezing might have on Habras. Since the plan was to secure all the corpses anyway, this hypothesis had no effect on procedure. The work went on slowly.

  Digging around and over the bodies was tedious but not too difficult. Digging under to free them for transport was another matter. S’Nash was drafted, in spite of the clumsiness of its/his handlers, since work space could be excavated much more easily for its/his slender form.

  Once his head was out of sight under the body, Janice tried another experiment. She was reasonably sure by now that a Naxian had to see its subject to read emotions. S’Nash could not see them now, and it was easy, snuggling next to Hugh even in armor, to assure a burst of emotion. As she had hoped, there was no obvious reaction from under the ice block.

  Of course, S’Nash might have guessed what she was up to; no one ever performs the final experiment — the one which removes all possible doubt. This, the Erthuma reflected ruefully, is why science never gets past theory. But she could be pretty sure, now, about Naxians. The Locrians, though—

  She let her own incidental flutter of emotion die down — she had been depending mostly on Hugh’s for the experiment — and turned her attention back to Plant-Biologist. Hugh enjoyed his own until S’Nash reported that it/ he had removed all the ice below the corpse except for supporting pillars at each corner of the block. These should remain until it/he emerged.

  Two or three minutes later the first specimen was moving slowly back down the tunnel. In due time it was followed by a second, and a third, and a fourth. There were ten more bodies, but Plant-Biologist now wanted to take out the much larger and less tractable block containing the mass of plants. Ged disagreed, pointing out the risk to the other specimens. The Naxian’s eyes were swiveling around the group as though it/he wanted to keep them all in view at once, and Janice felt once more the glow of another fact supporting her ideas. She felt morally sure of her Naxian theory, and didn’t care whether S’Nash fully grasped the source of her feeling; she simply enjoyed it while the argument finally climaxed.

  The Locrian won. It was obvious that the whole tunnel would have to be widened to accommodate this specimen, and the two Erthumoi from the supply station cheerfully volunteered to take the picks to this job. The rest, with reputations for scientific interest more or less at stake, began to work their way around the tangle of frozen vegetation with the smaller tools. They were very, very cautious, wary of projecting blades and stems which might actually be in the way of their strokes, and had not completed the job by the time the heavy labor on the tunnel was finished.

  No one suggested that the picks be brought back, and their wielders did nol volunteer; with no comment but a simple “All done,” they went back to their truck to eat and rest. It was another hour before the botany specimen was ready to move.

  Hugh and Janice provided most of the motive power, though Barrar’s mechanical body helped. The Locrian’s physical strength would have made practically no difference and it would have been sensible for him to get outside first, but he walked slowly beside the moving mass, examining it and making frequent comments which Hugh hoped the Samian was recording since he himself understood less than half of what was being said.

  Outside, it was quickly decided that the material already collected should go back to the Pitville laboratories as quickly as safety allowed, while most of the party should resume digging around the other specimens.

  Barrar, of course, wanted t
o stay; everything about the digging itself should be recorded, since there was no way of guessing what aspect of position and orientation of the specimens might turn out to be important. The Samian did, Hugh realized, have some scientific competence; maybe there was hope for his paper after all.

  The Locrian, just as obviously, would be returning with his plants. Neither flier had any wish to ride; they would stay to do what they could.

  Hugh and Janice offered to drive, enthusiastically enough to attract S’Nash’s attention, since the other two Erthumoi were enough to do the heavy digging which was now presumably safe. S’Nash, after eyeing them for several seconds as they were entering the truck after Plant-Biologist, suddenly decided that he would return to Pitville, too.

  Janice blocked its/his way politely but firmly.

  “You’ll be needed to undercut those blocks. Getting them out will take much longer without you, and you know it.”

  The golden eyes fixed themselves on the Erthuma.

  “That’s not your reason for wanting me to stay. Your feelings are…”

  “Are our own business. We like you, S’Nash, but would rather you weren’t along this trip.”

  The Naxian became almost outspoken, in spite of its/his increasing grasp of tact.

  “But why should you mind me’? You have a Locrian with you. You can keep me up in the control room if you…”

  Janice interrupted. “You miss the point, friend, and thanks for letting me know you have to see us to read our feelings. You understand our basic Erthumoi attitudes quite well, but I want Plant-Biologist with us. I don’t care what fie sees; I’m observing him.”

  Epilogue

  More than a hundred kilometers below the nearest sunlight, a river of ice worked its way slowly toward the Liquid Ocean. Where it met the water its fate differed from year to year and from hour to hour; sometimes its face simply melted smoothly away; sometime a tongue of glassy solid projected a kilometer or two into the liquid before cracking gently off; sometimes stranger things happened.

  For some Common Years now the river had borne more than its usual load of sediment blown from the warm hemisphere. The ice was denser than usual and the river was not only traveling sunward but trying to sink a little deeper into its surroundings. This had several results.

  Some of the sediment was fairly soluble, and dropped the melting point of the ice. Just a little. As the river sank, the pressure increased. Just a little. However, the river was flowing along the pressure/ temperature boundary between two of ice’s solid phases, and that little was enough.

  As the mass of ice and impurities groped into the Liquid Ocean, one of the much faster random currents sweeping along the nearly vertical face between Solid and Liquid chanced to be just a trifle colder than the solid, and began to absorb heat from it.

  For perhaps a year or two, this merely cooled the ice and moved it more definitely across the phase boundary. Nothing impressive occurred until, with no warning, the shift started at a point just where the tongue of river emerged from the Solid. Perhaps some living creature exploded against it; perhaps some still colder jet of water played briefly at it; many things could have been the cause.

  A crack started in the river, and a second later the several cubic kilometers of ice were drifting free. The part of the river still surrounded by solid was shrinking, yielding to the pressure of ice around it.

  Growing smaller.

  A shock wave spread from the interface as the two kinds of solid hunted for a new equilibrium. The speed of waves in ice is slow by seismic standards, but not by humans ones. It was less than a minute before Hugh Cedar felt the wave.

  An Erthuma-high pile of ice shavings a hundred meters from the cliff face marked where the Ice Badger V had clawed its way out of sight. Barrar was learning, Hugh reflected; this tunnel went down at a very modest slope, and spikes on one’s soles made it easy to follow without much danger.

  The Badger, of course, traveled much faster than a walk, even here. He could make a running slide every minute or two and probably keep it in sight, but had no intention of taking such chances with his armor. Besides, there was too much to check along the walls of the tunnel. This mole, at least, was leaving walls smooth enough to see through, though there was nothing in the ice so far to attract attention. Even the Samian was losing some of his fossil hunting hopes; Five and her predecessors had collectively bored over twenty kilometers of tunnel without sighting a specimen worth keeping.

  Ged was not giving up, of course. To the amusement of the Erthumoi and fascination of S’Nash, he had developed a deep interest in the mechanical problems which had afflicted each of the present machine’s predecessors, and contributed more and better ideas for modification as each model developed. Unfortunately, in spite of several frightening experiences, he remained casual by Hugh’s standards about safety procedures.

  “I don’t really take chances,” the Samian insisted after being melted out of the cliff face with Badger II. “Exploration and research have certain built-in dangers, which I recognize, of course; but if one postpones action until these are all evaluated and countered, how will anything ever be done?”

  “I’m not suggesting we foresee them all,” Hugh had answered with some annoyance, “but carrying spare parts for a few of the mechanical items under really heavy strain, like your scraper blades, isn’t being overcautious.”

  “I had the spare blades. I thought of that possibility. There was no way, though, to get outside to install them; the port could not be opened against the ice. Obviously we will have to move the entrance to the rear of the mole, so we can escape into the tunnel if necessary.” Hugh had agreed, and forborne to ask why this had only now become obvious.

  Five, however, seemed to be doing well. Barrar had promised not to descend more than fifty meters until he had bored an untroubled hundred kilometers with the same mole, and Hugh consoled himself with the reflection that he could be rescued from that depth by conventional equipment.

  All the testing had so far been done near the mass-kill site they had examined earlier. The cause of this prehistoric disaster was not yet clear, but the terrain was unusual enough to encourage the hope that it might have shared some of the responsibility; and even that small chance had kept in the Samian’s mind the hope that what had happened once might happen again.

  The mole was out of sight ahead, now; its driver was testing the steering equipment, the main purpose of the present run. Hugh rounded a fairly tight lefthand bend in the tunnel, but failed to see the machine; another turn, this time to the right, started only a dozen meters further on. He followed, without considering particularly in which direction he and the mole were now heading.

  An hour later, after a dozen more turns both horizontal and vertical — once the Erthuma had had to use the radio to warn Ged’s copilot about descending too far — he finally caught sight of the polymer shell. Barrar and his crew had stopped. There had been no call by the Habra on board, so presumably there was nothing wrong; Hugh did not increase his pace. It took him a minute or so to reach the machine, but rather than open the hatch leading inside he brought the microphone to his face. There was no reason to go in; the place was cramped enough already. A meter from the white hull, he started to speak.

  Before a word emerged, the tunnel floor suddenly struck his feet. Then the ceiling two meters above struck his head — no, he decided moments later when his head cleared, the ceiling simply hadn’t moved fast enough to get out of his way. Something had hurled him violently upward, and even through his helmet his skull must have come close to major damage. His head hurt, but after a moment that claimed very little of his attention.

  Where the Badger had been, a meter from where he stood, there was a smooth wall of ice. Like that surrounding the tunnel, this was very clear, and it took Hugh only a few seconds to see the mole, now some ten meters to his right and six below. At almost the same moment Miriam’s voice came from his translator.

  “Hugh, can you hear me? Do you know
what happened?”

  “I hear you, all right. I can guess what happened. The cliff just got a bit higher, or maybe lower. I hope higher.”

  “Why does it make any difference?”

  “If the Badger is all right, it won’t. If the shock crippled you, maybe a lot. If the cliff went up, I went with it, and the fault will have cut the tunnel somewhere behind me. I wasn’t keeping track of where we went, and I don’t know which way I’m facing, but I hope very much it’s northwest. That puts you inside the cliff, but leaves me a way to walk out — unless there were more twists and turns in your path than I remember. Is the mole working?”

  “Ged’s testing it. Power is on.” Hugh felt a steady vibration, hoped that it wasn’t an aftershock, and relaxed as the mole moved slowly away from him through the ice.

  “We’ll come around and pick you up, Ged says,” came the Habra’s voice. “You needn’t worry about which way we’re facing.”

  Hugh was not completely reassured, but watched as the vehicle drew away from him and became progressively harder to see. It was managing to turn, slowly, so steering as well as drive seemed to be working.

  For several minutes it was almost out of sight and changing direction; its radius of turn was at least fifty meters. At last it seemed to be heading back toward him, and he called Miriam. She acknowledged, and the mole grew clearer until he could see the motion of its diggers.

  “Up a bit. Either you went down or I went up.” He held his breath until he could see that vertical steering was also still working.