Noise

by Hal Clement

  Anyway, he told himself, knowing chances didn’t mean much. They were only chances. Wanaka certainly knew them, and had not, apparently, let them influence her decision.

  Mike did briefly wonder whether the crew might have some sort of weapons no one had mentioned. After all, he had been left to solve the ’Oloa problem pretty much by himself, and weapons would likely be another item they wouldn’t want him to mention at the wrong moment. On that one, though, he couldn’t even decide which way even to hope.

  In the meantime, there were other things to do. Fifty meters in from the edge of the unknown patch of pseudolife, there was much less effect from the tsunamis and other surface disturbances. He asked the captain about the fresh water supply and, with her permission, took advantage of the absence of the crew overboard to doff noise armor and enjoy a bath.

  The others had, after all, done the same from time to time. He was pretty sure of this, though he had always been in the cabin when it happened. He tried, in his mind, to connect this privacy attitude with Earthly Polynesian customs, and wasn’t sure he’d made any sense of it.

  At least, it gave him something to think about besides the current shortage of language data.

  Mata grew, and grew, and grew. Wanaka ceased examining the whatever-it-was, though the others did not, and spent most of her time making measurements. The seeds for the protective coating that would stop the growth were ready. Hoani had been told how they were to be used, but didn’t expect to be allowed to help with the operation. He was right about this, but they did let him watch.

  The seeds were far smaller than the one that had carried Mata’s specifications or the one that had controlled the division of the iron-fish. In shape and size, they were coinlike disks about Mike’s index finger joint across, and apparently very sticky, and of four different colors—black, bright red, pale green, and deep yellow. Keo and the captain worked together applying them along the still deck-to-deck hulls, about five meters apart, being careful to work from bow to stern and to apply a given pair of seeds at the same moment on each side. They made no effort to plant a given color at the same moment; Mike guessed that the colors represented different protective coatings, and that it must make no difference in which order these were applied.

  The seeds lost their coloring almost at once, and seemed to spread out and become too thin and/or transparent to stay visible. Whether they were simply changing shape or taking nutrition from the water and actually growing Hoani couldn’t judge at first.

  However, the moment the “planting” was done, captain and mate separated the hulls from the deck sandwiched between them, lifted the latter into position, fastened it with obvious haste, and then began briskly splashing sea water on the sides of the hulls that had been mostly above the surface. Mike decided the stuff must be growing.

  The next step was to work the cabin up onto the new deck and into position, deflate its floats, and fasten its numerous quick-disconnects along the hulls.

  ’Ao had been responsible for the newly grown mast and boom while this had been going on. She had lashed them along Mata’s port hull, but stayed with them just in case. Now all four lifted the mast onto the deck, finally got it upright, and stepped and stayed it.

  Mike had supposed that the original sails would be recovered and used, and was wondering how they would be retrieved from under the jelly. It turned out, however, that a budlike growth he had not really noticed before, about half a cubic meter in volume and now trailing in the water below the deck attached to the latter by a meter-long stem, contained a new set.

  Keo examined this object carefully and reported that it was not quite ripe. The intense activity tapered off. Water had been resupplied from the mysterious growth. Equipment and supplies that had been crowding the cabin were relocated to their former positions on the new deck. The “leaf,” now in its proper place aft of the cabin, was again deployed; there was now room for more charged oxygen cartridges, and at this latitude the leaf was getting less effective; the suns weren’t rising as high in the north.

  Mike Hoani resumed his lonely watch, on a thankfully much more stable deck, and the other three went back to their researches with the apparently lonely water pods.

  And the suns made their noontime passages lower and lower across the northern sky.

  VI

  Amplitude

  It was not too surprising, Mike told himself later with all the clarity of hindsight, that it was he who found the metal. The background knowledge of the other three had operated against them, though his own lack of Kainuian experience had not really helped at first. It was only after two or three baths when, on his own responsibility, he decided to replace the water he had used that it happened. The other adults were asleep. Leaving Hoani on watch alone had become routine since they had in effect moored the ship to the putative metal source, though he was not at the moment alone. ’Ao was at her masthead. Wanaka pointed out afterward that he should not have gone overboard without having someone else on deck who would not have had to call for help if he got into trouble in the sea, but under the circumstances was quite gentle about it.

  It was Hoani’s own slight clumsiness caused partly by his lack of experience and perhaps by a little fatigue that caused the discovery.

  The water pods in this pseudoorganism were large, more than three times the volume of those furnished by the iron-fish that had provided his first mining experience at sea. He had collected perhaps a dozen of them, returning each one by one to the ship, and accepting the help of the child in getting them aboard and then into the breakers. ’Ao had descended to the deck when he went overboard. He was beginning to wonder how many more would be needed, so his attention might have been slightly distracted. Also, he was getting a little tired. The pods weren’t very heavy, especially in the local gravity, but the sound armor was somewhat clumsy even for the natives.

  In spite of the very low weight he started using both hands to extract and lift each pod from its gelatinous receptacle. Since the pods had only one handle, a simple loop of rope-like tissue, his other hand had to reach into the space underneath the water-filled sack to support it.

  And there was another, much smaller pod there. Not attached, but there. In the same pocket as the water. How had the others missed it?

  Obvious enough. One handle had been enough for them; they had not felt underneath, and the reddish jelly was much less transparent than that of the iron-fish.

  ’Ao was at the rail waiting. With his helmet sealed and his hands full, there was no way for him to say anything; but when she saw the tiny—less than ten centimeters long—container, the child, who had taken her full share of the metal search effort since its beginning, made up for his silence both with her own voice and the signal bell. Wanaka and Keo were beside her on the spot in moments, still adjusting face masks.

  Mike climbed aboard without attracting, or distracting, their attention, and looked at his discovery over ’Ao’s head.

  It was little different in shape from the iron, copper, and titanium pods he had seen before. It was soft to the touch, so the contents were probably in powder form like the others. The color was black, which might have been due either to the fineness of the powder or the composition of the envelope. The captain was weighing it thoughtfully in her hands, tossing it from one to the other, but this could hardly be helpful in guessing at density; there would certainly be space between the tiny grains, and there was no telling from outside what fraction of the whole volume this might represent.

  Wanaka finally looked up from the object and caught Mike’s eye. “How did you find this?”

  He told her. She and the mate exchanged glances, but no words, which were superfluous. She simply nodded her head toward the others and gestured to the rail. Both flipped on their helmets and disappeared overboard.

  One fear, that they might have been wasting days by not looking under the water pods, was quickly dispelled, to be replaced gradually by another. In the first half hour of search, neither the child
nor the mate found any more metal.

  Wanaka seemed to be on the point of sending Mike into the sea with them, but visibly changed her mind. Instead, she ordered him to stand watch and joined the searchers herself. It was she, some fifteen minutes later, who found the second pod, under a water sack just as the first had been.

  By sunset, six more had been located. Since no one had tried to keep track of the area covered or of the number of water pods checked, there was no reliable way to guess at the amount of metal that might be available; it was not even certain whether or not any of the water sources had been counted more than once.

  The search was better organized the next morning. Instead of simply groping under each water container and leaving it where it was, the finder removed it from its pit. There was no way to take it all aboard, since the breakers had been filled the day before, and the thought of setting drinkable water adrift would never have occurred to a Kainuian; but since the water itself was fresh, and at this distance from the tropical storm belt the surrounding ocean was quite salty enough even at the surface to let the pods float, they had a compromise. Two hundred meters of line were used, with a pod attached every two meters, to form a ring of water-filled floats; and each new pod thereafter was released inside the ring. By the end of the day, some statistics were available: out of twenty-seven hundred water sites investigated, forty-one had also contained metal. The next day produced a nearly identical ratio.

  No one yet could guess what the metal might be.

  It was rare, obviously. This did not, unfortunately, mean that it was valuable. While the pseudoorganism might have been deliberately designed, in which case the stuff should be worth keeping, pseudolife was little more immune to natural mutations than any other kind. For a little while Wanaka had been thinking, or perhaps dreaming, of something like silicon, but this was ruled out very quickly. Even in powder form, with presumably nothing but water between the grains, the stuff was much too dense. She thought of platinum and its relatives, though these were useful only in small quantities as chemical catalysts on Kainui, but the creature now calming the sea around them differed greatly from any of the royal-metal trappers to be found either in the reference book or anyone’s memory. For one thing, having water and metal in the same pit seemed to be unique.

  Mining boats simply could not carry large amounts of sophisticated analytical equipment like X ray or neutron diffraction cameras or NMR machines. This was a matter of economics, not size. Very rarely a skipper with enough capital might decide to specialize, ship one such device and ignore the commonly traded materials, but Wanaka had never regarded this as a hopeful technique.

  She also lacked any reliable way to decide how far from the equator she should ride this possible Golconda. They were already well south of the latitudes maintained by most cities in this hemisphere. Temperatures were dropping, though not yet far enough to affect either safety or comfort. They were riding with the current and pretty well shielded by the organism itself, so there seemed no risk of a serious collision. The winds were weakening; in a few more degrees of latitude they would be in a belt of calms, she knew. This might make it difficult to get back to a city, Keo pointed out.

  The captain shook her head negatively. There were cities all over the south temperate zone, though not, of course, in the ice floe regions near the poles; and in any case there would be some chance of meeting other ships. If the metal were worth trading, of course…

  The crudest of tests—exposing a small sample of the material to the quite acidic sea water—eliminated the alkali and alkaline-earth metals at once, and made items like zinc and even tin unlikely; density had already ruled out most of the latter anyway.

  Wanaka was becoming irritated. “Mike, you’re a linguist, aren’t you?”

  “If anything, more of a historian, Captain.”

  “Not a chemist.” There was no question mark.

  “Well, Captain, I learned what you might call—”

  “Not a chemist.”

  “No, Captain. I could figure an equilibrium constant if you gave me the electrode potentials involved, but—”

  “Would that help with this problem?”

  “It might, but you—”

  “But I don’t have a handbook with the potentials.”

  “I don’t suppose so, Captain. I have no equipment to measure them, either.”

  “Then we’d both have saved breath if you’d stopped at ‘No’ a few sentences ago.”

  “Yes, Captain. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I’m getting bothered by all this. I know what I should do, but can’t make myself do it. I’m setting a very bad example to ’Ao, too, and I suppose I’m letting you in for more risks than you bargained for.”

  Mike grinned behind his mask, and gestured quickly, “I’m not bothered. There’s nothing that’s happened yet that hasn’t been interesting.” He was not exactly lying, but tact seldom is. Not exactly. “I’ll be able to write an adventure story as well as a thesis.”

  “And you haven’t done anything that was a bad example to me,” ’Ao shrilled, “except that time when—”

  “You asked for that,” Wanaka cut in firmly, “and you’ve earned back more points than you lost then anyway, which was zero. I’m not apologizing for anything. We’re staying with this creature as long as we possibly can, and that could be pretty long, considering the water situation.”

  “Then we’d better keep on collecting this stuff, whatever it is,” pointed out Keo, “and treat it a little more carefully than we have been. The little screen says it’s not very radioactive if at all, but it could be as poisonous as osmium or nickel, say.”

  So they collected carefully, without the help of Mike or of ’Ao, who as a growing child should not be exposed to chemical risks if at all possible. She made no objection, and both of them as the days passed grew a little casual about marine discipline, especially in the matter of conserving fresh water.

  Storms and waterspouts were becoming a little less frequent as their distance from the equator increased; the surface water was saltier as well as cooler, and had a lower vapor pressure. Extremely well-focused sound waves should not, of course, be affected by this factor; but Keo, who had made such a point of their rarity, began to wonder if they might not be favored by it. Twice in the space of a few days they occurred within sight of the ship, once a couple of hundred meters beyond the edge of the metal-maker and once actually within it too close for comfort to the ship, tearing a two-square-meter patch of the jelly loose and hurling it far into the air. The only one to react visibly was ’Ao, who looked down at the mate from her crow’s nest in rather critical fashion the second time.

  The stock of metal grew very slowly, of course, but it did grow, and eventually Wanaka developed a new worry. Did they now have too much of the stuff to be safe? At Muamoku’s latitude, if they decided to go there, the ocean would be decidedly less salty and Mata would float correspondingly lower. Sadly, there was no way of calculating “correspondingly,” since there was no precise measurement of Mata’s depth-versus-displacement function on hand.

  And would it be a good idea to bring the material back to the city at all? The captain found herself developing a touch of Mike’s fear of looking silly, with much better reason for it than he usually had. Spending weeks or seasons collecting something completely useless, however excusable by the circumstances, would certainly make her colleagues and competitors smile behind their masks, and in a city there’d be no masks to hide the smiles.

  Maybe it would be better to get away from this creature and simply cruise around, remaining in deep-south latitudes, of course, but not going as far as the ice, or even the calms, hoping to find another ship rather than a city, and trade off some of this stuff before going home.

  She could tell, with perfect truth, why it might be of unheard of value. The opposite possibility would be obvious to any competent trader, so there would be no need to mention it aloud, and practically any skipper would be willing t
o take at least some of her stock on chance, she was sure.

  So she finally ordered the loading to stop. Plimsoll marks didn’t grow automatically on hulls, and the paint certainly provided none; there was no more magic in nanotechnology or pseudobiology than in “real” life. She and Keo spent some time trying to calibrate Mata’s still unmeasured displacement. Their guesses were based mainly on the assumption that it wouldn’t differ much from Malolo’s. Memory provided some highly imprecise estimates of those.

  It also took a day or so for her really to make up her mind to abandon the vast supply of fresh water now floating in its pods beside her ship. She did not actually let it go, finally; she moored it to the remains of Malolo, still anchored to the nameless organism by her sea-anchor equipment.

  She couldn’t quite decide whether to hope that someone would find it, or not. She wasted no actual time on the question since she had no real faith in the efficacy of hope.

  Mike suspected a little of this, though much less of it came up in conversation. He was mainly going by the length of time it was taking the captain to announce decisions.

  She hesitated only once more. ’Oloa, on request, reported that their latitude was forty-three degrees south, which agreed with the rudely measured apparent height of the noonday suns. Wanaka decided to wait until it was just forty-five before leaving the scene. She offered no explanation, though even Keo raised an eyebrow. ’Ao showed no reaction; Mike wondered whether she was afraid of losing more points, or was genuinely indifferent. He himself would have preferred, by now, to get on with whatever might be going to happen next.

  He was therefore somewhere between relieved and delighted when ’Ao, who was again spending most of her time at Mata’s masthead, called out, “City! A hand south of east!”

  What they all saw was certainly city-sized, looming indistinctly through a kilometer or so of haze. Even to the Earth native, however, and at this distance through the haze, there was something about it that did not suggest human design. It was not very dark in color, rather a light gray, with an occasional brief sparkle that might have meant fabricated metal. Unusually for him, he expressed the doubt aloud.