Heavy Planet

by Hal Clement

  “Just a—”

  “Wait, Chief.” Lackland cut short Rosten’s expostulation. “I know Barl better than you do. Let me talk.” He and Rosten could see each other in their respective screens, and for a moment the expedition’s leader simply glared. Then he realized the situation and subsided. “Right, Charlie. Tell him.”

  “Barl, you seemed to have some contempt in your tone when you referred to our excuse for not explaining our machines to you. Believe me, we were not trying to fool you. They are complicated; so complicated that the men who design and build them spend nearly half their lives first learning the laws that make them operate and the arts of their actual manufacture. We did not mean to belittle the knowledge of your people, either; it is true that we know more, but it is only because we have had longer in which to learn. “Now, as I understand it, you want to learn about the machines in this rocket as you take it apart. Please, Barl, take my word as the sincerest truth when I tell you first that I for one could not do it, since I do not understand a single one of them; and second, that not one would do you the least good if you did comprehend it. The best I can say right now is that they are machines for measuring things that cannot be seen or heard or felt or tasted?things you would have to see in operation in other ways for a long time before you could even begin to understand. That is not meant as insult; what I say is almost as true for me, and I have grown up from childhood surrounded by and even using those forces. I do not understand them. I do not expect to understand them before I die; the science we have covers so much knowledge that no one man can even begin to learn all of it, and I must be satisfied with the field I do know?and perhaps add to it what little one man may in a lifetime. “We cannot accept your bargain, Barl, because it is physically impossible to carry out our side of it.” Barlennan could not smile in the human sense, and he carefully refrained from giving his own version of one. He answered as gravely as Lackland had spoken. “You can do your part, Charles, though you do not know it. “When I first started this trip, all the things you have just said were true, and more. I fully intended to find this rocket with your help, and then place the radios where you could see nothing and proceed to dismantle the machine itself, learning all your science in the process. “Slowly I came to realize that all you have said is true. I learned that you were not keeping knowledge from me deliberately when you taught us so quickly and carefully about the laws and techniques used by the glider-makers on that island. I learned it still more surely when you helped Dondragmer make the differential pulley. I was expecting you to bring up those points in your speech just now; why didn’t you? They were good ones. “It was actually when you were teaching us about the gliders that I began to have a slight understanding of what was meant by your term ‘science.’ I realized, before the end of that episode, that a device so simple you people had long since ceased to use it actually called for an understanding of more of the universe’s laws than any of my people realized existed. You said specifically at one point, while apologizing for a lack of exact information, that gliders of that sort had been used by your people more than two hundred years ago. I can guess how much more you know now — guess just enough to let me realize what I can’t know. “But you can still do what I want. You have done a little already, in showing us the differential hoist. I do not understand it, and neither does Dondragmer, who spent much more time with it; but we are both sure it is some sort of relative to the levers we have been using all our lives. We want to start at the beginning, knowing fully that we cannot learn all you know in our lifetimes. We do hope to learn enough to understand how you have found these things out. Even I can see it is not just guesswork, or even philosophizing like the learned ones who tell us that Mesklin is a bowl. I am willing at this point to admit you are right; but I would like to know how you found out the same fact for your own world. I am sure you knew before you left its surface and could see it all at once. I want to know why the Bree floats, and why the canoe did the same, for a while. I want to know what crushed the canoe. I want to know why the wind blows down the cleft all the time — no, I didn’t understand your explanation. I want to know why we are warmest in winter when we can’t see the sun for the longest time. I want to know why a fire glows, and why flame dust kills. I want my children or theirs, if I ever have any, to know what makes this radio work, and your tank, and someday this rocket. I want to know much — more than I can learn, no doubt; but if I can start my people learning for themselves, the way you must have — well, I’d be willing to stop selling at a profit.” Neither Lackland nor Rosten found anything to say for a long moment. Rosten broke the silence. “Barlennan, if you learned what you want, and began to teach your people, would you tell them where the knowledge came from? Do you think it would be good for them to know?”

  “For some, yes; they would want to know about other worlds, and people who had used the same way to knowledge they were starting on. Others — well, we have a lot of people who let the rest pull the load for them. If they knew, they wouldn’t bother to do any learning themselves; they’d just ask for anything particular they wanted to know — as I did at first; and they’d never realize you weren’t telling them because you couldn’t. They’d think you were trying to cheat them. I suppose if I told anyone, that sort would find out sooner or later, and — well, I guess it would be better to let them think I’m the genius. Or Don; they’d be more likely to believe it of him.” Rosten’s answer was brief and to the point. “You’ve made a deal.”

  20: FLIGHT OF THE BREE

  A gleaming skeleton of metal rose eight feet above a flat-topped mound of rock and earth. Mesklinites were busily attacking another row of plates whose upper fastenings had just been laid bare. Others were pushing the freshly removed dirt and pebbles to the edge of the mound. Still others moved back and forth along a well-marked road that led off into the desert, those who approached dragging flat, wheeled carts loaded with supplies, those departing usually hauling similar carts empty. The scene was one of activity; practically everyone seemed to have a definite purpose. There were two radio sets in evidence now, one on the mound where an Earthman was directing the dismantling from his distant vantage point and the other some distance away. Dondragmer was in front of the second set, engaged in animated conversation with the distant being he could not see. The sun still circled endlessly, but was very gradually descending now and swelling very, very slowly. “I am afraid,” the mate said, “that we will have serious trouble checking on what you tell us about the bending of light. Reflection I can understand; the mirrors I made from metal plates of your rocket made that very clear. It is too bad that the device from which you let us take the lens was dropped in the process; we have nothing like your glass, I am afraid.”

  “Even a reasonably large piece of the lens will do, Don,” the voice came from the speaker. It was not Lackland’s voice; he was an expert teacher, he had found, but sometimes yielded the microphone to a specialist. “Any piece will bend the light, and even make an image — but wait; that comes later.”Try to find what’s left of that hunk of glass, Don, if your gravity didn’t powder it when the set landed.” Dondragmer turned from the set with a word of agreement; then turned back as he thought of another point. “Perhaps you could tell what this ‘glass’ is made of, and whether it takes very much heat? We have good hot fires, you know. Also there is the material set over the Bowl — ice, I think Charles called it. Would that do?”

  “Yes, I know about your fires, though I’m darned if I see how you do burn plants in a hydrogen atmosphere, even with a little meat thrown in. For the rest, ice should certainly do, if you can find any. I don?t know what the sand of your river is made of, but you can try melting it in one of your hottest fires and see what comes out. I certainly don?t guarantee anything, though; I simply say that on Earth and the rest of the worlds I know ordinary sand will make a sort of glass, which is greatly improved with other ingredients. I?m darned if I can see either how to describe those ingredients to you or suggest where the
y might be found, though.? “Thank you; I will have someone try the fire. In the meantime, I will search for a piece of lens, though I fear the blow when it struck left little usable. We should not have tried to take the device apart near the edge of the mound; the thing you called a ‘barrel’ rolled much too easily.” Once more the mate left the radio, and immediately encountered Barlennan. “It’s about time for your watch to get on the plates,” the captain said. “I’m going down to the river. Is there anything your work needs?” Dondragmer mentioned the suggestion about sand. “You can carry up the little bit I’ll need, I should think, without getting the fire too hot; or did you plan on a full load of other things?”

  “No plans; I’m taking the trip mainly for fun. Now that the spring wind has died out and we get breezes in every old direction, a little navigation practice might be useful. What good is a captain who can’t steer his ship?”

  “Fair enough. Did the Flyers tell you what this deck of machines was for?”

  “They did pretty well, but if I were really convinced about this spacebending business I’d have swallowed it more easily. They finished up with the old line about words not really being enough to describe it. What else beside words can you use, in the name of the Suns?”

  “I’ve been wondering myself; I think it’s another aspect of this quantitycode they call mathematics. I like mechanics best myself; you can do something with it from the very beginning.” He waved an arm toward one of the carts and another toward the place where the differential pulley was lying. “It would certainly seem so. We’ll have a lot to take home — and some, I guess, we’d better not be too hasty in spreading about.” He gestured at what he meant, and the mate agreed soberly. “Nothing to keep us from playing with it now, though.” The captain went his way, and Dondragmer looked after him with a mixture of seriousness and amusement, he rather wished that Reejaaren were around; he had never liked the islander, and perhaps now he would be a little less convinced that the Bree’s crew was composed exclusively of liars. That sort of reflection was a waste of time, however. He had work to do. Pulling plates off the metal monster was less fun than being told how to do experiments, but his half of the bargain had to be fulfilled. He started up the mound, calling his watch after him. Barlennan went on to the Bree. She was already prepared for the trip, two sailors aboard and her fire hot. The great expanse of shimmering, nearly transparent fabric amused him; like the mate, he was thinking of Reejaaren, though in this case it was of what the interpreter?s reaction would be if he saw the use to which his material was being put. Not possible to trust sewn seams, indeed! Barlennan?s own people knew a thing or two, even without friendly Flyers to tell them. He had patched sails with the stuff before they were ten thousand miles from the island where it had been obtained, and his seams had held even in front of the valley of wind. He slipped through the opening in the rail, made sure it was secured behind him, and glanced into the fire pit, which was lined with metal foil from a condenser the Flyers had donated. All the cordage seemed sound and taut; he nodded to the crewmen. One heaped another few sticks on the glowing, flameless fire in the pit; the other released the moorings. Gently, her forty-foot sphere of fabric bulging with hot air, the new Bree lifted from the plateau and drifted riverward on the light breeze.

  UNDER

  “That looks all right. Come aboard, Cookie. Then reach out and light it. Hars, lift — NOW!” Neither crewman acknowledged the orders verbally; they acted. Karondrasee whipped aboard in normal centipede fashion, scooped a coal from the lifting fire into the long spoon waiting for the purpose beside the furnace, reached through the handiest crenellation in the Bree’s mostly solid gunwale, and steadied the burning fragment over the frayed-out end of rope fuse beside the basket. He wasn’t bothered by the form of address; there was need for haste, “Cookie” was shorter than “Flight Engineer,” the duties overlapped heavily, and he was filling both of them. He was, however, annoyed and uneasy for other reasons; he had had to spend many days treating the three lengths of cord with meat juice and, as he saw it, wasting two of them. As cook of the old Bree’s crew he was used to seeing the results of his labors vanish, but he disliked seeing them burn up. That was the annoying part. He was uneasy as well, because things might not work this time as they had on the two test burns. The first had not been dangerous, of course; it had simply served to show whether his juice treatment would really turn rope into a useful fuse. That sample was short enough to need only a day or so to make. The second test should either not have worked at all or produced a simple, harmless fire fountain. By doing the latter it had encouraged everyone. Now the third and potentially most dangerous trial was under way. The captain seemed unsure, too. He was watching the fuse as closely as Karondrasee was. So was Sherrer. Hars was not. He was tending his lifting fire and eyeing the tensely swollen bag of the third Bree. He knew enough about the present test to want the ship to lift quickly, but if it rose too quickly, that would of course be the captain’s fault. Hars was obeying orders. That last thought was also in Barlennan’s mind, and he was watching the delivery of the bit of fire tensely. If he had given Hars his order too soon— Strictly speaking, he had. He felt the basket’s deck stir under him, and saw the figures on the Flyers’ instrument change. He would have stopped breathing for a moment if he had been a breather. Karondrasee, however, also knew the plan, knew what would have to be done if the fuse failed to light, and certainly didn’t want to get out and push the coal to the right place while the balloon rose without him. As he saw his spoon rising slowly from its target, he tipped it over without waiting for an order. No one actually saw the coal drop; falling, here, was much too fast for even Mesklinite vision. Cook and captain did see, as the air below it was compressed enough to speed its combustion rate by perhaps an order of magnitude, a sudden flash on the ground half an inch to one side of the fuse end. Before either could comment or even curse, the rope ignited — apparently from radiation, but conceivably from a flying spark, though neither witness could vouch for the latter. They didn’t really care; the wadded rope-end was starting to glow, and that was all that mattered. “Lighted all right?”

  “Yes.” Barlennan didn’t bother to look at the block of polymer from which the question had emerged. “Hars, up as fast as you can. Never mind checking wind. I’d like to keep on this side of the rock to see what happens, but getting to the other may be safer and staying out of reach will be safest of all. I wish someone knew what ‘out of reach’ was, but if we do blow that way up will mean a lot more than sideways.”

  “Right, Captain. Up it is.” Up it was. Not rapidly; it took a lot of lift to start an upward motion near Mesklin’s south pole, even though once started acceleration tended to be high. That was why more than a thousand feet of fuse had been laid out, and the original test of its burn rate had been made. “Please keep this eye aimed at the rock, wherever we go.” The block spoke again. “Right. Sherrer will see to it,” the captain responded, still without looking at the communicator. “We have you blocked up far enough to look over the rail already, and he’ll wedge the back up more if it’s needed.”

  “Are you set to turn it too, or will it be easier to rotate the whole balloon?”

  “Much easier, though it’ll cost a little lift. It will also make it unnecessary for you to look across the fire. Don’t worry yet, it should take half a day to burn down.”

  “I never worry. I just wonder.” Jeanette Parkos, who had taken up Charles Lackland’s communication duties when health had forced him to return to Earth, was rich in comments like that. She had greatly improved Barlennan’s Spacelang in the last few thousand days, and to his surprise and in spite of her alien hearing and vocal limitations she already spoke Stennish much more fluently and clearly than her predecessor ever had. “I’d appreciate a bit of down tilt whenever Sherrer can provide it,” she now suggested.?I can?t see up to the horizon, but I can?t see down enough for anything within a couple of miles, either. You?re a lot closer to the rock than that, according to
the tracker readout, and I hope you?re closer still when it goes. I sometimes wish this thing had a wider field of view. Of course, I sometimes wish it could zoom closer too.? Barlennan was not entirely sure that he shared the hope, though he wanted a good view himself. The Flyer was on Toorey, Mesklin’s inner moon. Her communicator would let her see what went on. The closer to the rock the better for her, but nothing could, presumably, happen to her at that distance. Barlennan lacked both the distance and the seeing equipment, and wasn’t sure which he missed more. The Flyers had assured him that there couldn’t possibly be enough energy in the propellant cell now being tested to lift the rock above it any significant distance, but the Flyers had been wrong before. He remembered vividly the Foucault pendulum fiasco; they had been certain it would give a convincing demonstration, this close to the pole, that Mesklin rather than the sky was doing the spinning. Unfortunately no one, native or alien, had been able to observe the six-inch pendulum’s plane of motion; its period was too short, and like any tuning fork its vibration had been damped out by the air a few seconds after it had been started. They had all heard it, of course. None of the Flyers seemed to remember that now. Barlennan had not seen an explosive in action since Lackland had used his tank’s gun so many thousands of days before, since the previous cell test had produced only the hoped-for fire fountain; but he had been told in detail how such substances were used elsewhere in the universe. These accounts, and a vivid memory of the effect of the shells Lackland had used, left him wondering why no one seemed to worry about the behavior of pieces of the rock. Unlike Jeanette, Barlennan was a rather efficient worrier; he had not raised the question with her because he knew the aliens were extremely knowledgeable in spite of their occasional slips, and he still didn’t like to look ignorant. Answers beginning with “Of course” bothered him, especially in front of his crew, most of whom were now fairly fluent in the alien common language. “Can you tell if it’s still burning, and how far it has to go?” the Flyer queried. “’Fraid not. The fire doesn’t give any light to speak of by daylight. Too bad there’s no night now — though if there were, we’d have to plan pretty tightly so the fire would reach the cell by daylight and we could see what happens to the rock.”