“That chime is surely icicle-based, and the drum-frame is either ice or some sort of rock,” remarked George through their link. “But what is the drum-head made of? From the pattern, it looks like snake skin or fish skin, but it’s too large for that.”
Similarly Richard was trying to analyze the uniform sheets every musician held. “They must be thin slices of rock, that’s exactly what they look like, and they’re covered with tiny squiggles. Can it be they’re reading from them?”
Richard enjoyed the performance, although he was not as absorbed in it as Deirdre; rather, he was hoping that the concert would be brief, so that some of the many questions occurring to him could be asked. George was thinking the same, and when the music ceased he started to speak, only to stop, a little embarrassed, as Deirdre applauded enthusiastically, with her gloved hands. The men copied her gesture then, and the icerug orchestra visibly rippled, whether from amusement or curiosity it was impossible to tell. At any rate, it gave George a moment to rephrase his sentences more formally.
“That is truly splendid music. There are those among us who also make music; their instruments, and the sounds they make, are vastly different from what we have just heard. It illustrates to us how much we can learn, and are eager to learn, from you. We thank you for the pleasure of your music. Rather than interrupt any further with the activities of your day, might we perhaps speak with just a few individuals — scientists or craftsmen — who would be willing to explain to us something of the objects that we are seeing?”
There was no evidence of displeasure in the response of the alien. Deirdre abruptly recalled herself to the reality; human values and reactions had no place among these creatures. While the concert resumed behind them, Golden-Glint escorted the humans from the hall, through an adjacent tunnel and into a much smaller room. Keeping a mental map, Richard surmised that the walls of this under-ice cathedral were many meters thick, and that while they were actually in the first room outside the hall, the rock-lined ice walls were so thick that little of the booming music penetrated here. George noticed this also, and recalling the physical throbbing of the alien drums, speculated with interest on the acoustics of the vaulted ceilings. Deirdre was meanwhile trying to sort out the tangle of colored strands over which they were walking. There seemed to be fewer of them here than in the main tunnel entrance.
As they entered the small side room at the end of the tunnel, Golden-Glint said, “Here you shall meet with a few of our scientists, those who had time to spare to talk with you.”
Once again the humans noticed that the aliens had no expectation of anything of much interest coming to them from these interviews; the icerugs were willing to discuss themselves, apparently finding that reason enough to talk. Separately, each human made a quick mental inventory of what they had brought with them in the way of “trade goods”, hoping to arouse a little curiosity in the icerugs. George waved a questioning hand at a small stack of music plates.
“It is puzzling to us even what sort of material these things are made. When you … erm … Sir Presider, were greeting us so eloquently, the sheet you held appeared to be dissolving as you spoke.”
“Of course,” agreed the alien. “It was not an important speech, so I simply wrote a few notes upon a page of ice I generated from my own fluids. Then I reabsorbed it. Water ice makes a very satisfactory material for such short-term use — strong, readily available, clean, easily inscribed upon, and instantly disposable. Things which must be used many times, like those music plates, are written on thin sheets of stone.” The casual phrase startled the human ears.
“How do you write in stone?” asked Richard. “Have you metals?” The Presider fluidly waved a peacock-colored tentacle in the direction of the small cluster of icerug nodes waiting for them, the red ribbons hanging from its neck band fluttering in response to the motion.
“That, and other questions you may have, will be answered by our distinguished scientists from the Center of Scientific Studies. May I introduce the illustrious and eminent scientists, Eclipse, Bright-Eye, and Dark-Star, all venerable experts in their respective fields. You will now please excuse me, I have other duties to attend to.” The Presider glided rapidly away in a flutter of red ribbons, and the alien identified as Eclipse spoke, its “voice” several tones higher than that of its leader. Eclipse’s skin was a soft beryl in color, and the node was wearing a cape of what looked like white linen cloth, finely woven and fancifully embroidered with designs in different-colored threads.
“Writing on stone is no more difficult than forming the stone into useful shapes in the first place. It is simply a matter of body chemistry, although it takes a great deal more time, dissolving stone rather than ice. Writing — here, I shall show you — goes quite quickly indeed.”
Eclipse, obviously named for the semicircular segment of dark gray in the rim of its yellow iris, glided to what looked like a bookcase that had been carved into the solid wall of the room and picked up one of the stone tablets stacked there on one of the shelves. Then, with a swiftly extended tentacle, the alien added a few characters to the squiggles that closely filled the sheet of rock.
“I merely exude a small amount of…” there was a pause as the translation program in their suits conferred with Josephine through the commsats overhead to get the proper translation through context of the conversation. “…acid that dissolves the rock, and then reabsorb the resulting solution.” There was a pause as the tentacle used for the writing pulled back from the rock sheet, shrank down, and pulsated a few times, while the eye of the node rotated to look down at the tentacle.
“Mmmmm. This rock is quite tasty.” Eclipse then rotated its eye back again until it was looking at the humans, the concave light on its head following the motion of the eye, and continued. “A similar process, using fine threads of flesh, is used by the stone masons to cut rectangular blocks of rock from the bedrock beneath for use in constructing our buildings, and for use by the platemakers who slice writing plates from those blocks for record-keeping purposes.”
George moved closer so he could see what Eclipse was doing. He could barely discern the tiny, intricate designs, and he watched, amazed, as Eclipse’s tentacle tip moved across a bare portion of the stone, leaving a string of finely engraved symbols behind.
“The characters are so tiny!” said George, impressed. “Wouldn’t take much acid to engrave them.”
“The large size of their eyes means they can see quite small features, George,” Deirdre reminded him quietly through their imp link. “Their vision is far superior to ours. I wonder — Cinnamon had me bring along one of her posters to give to the icerugs — shows humans without suits. Think you it would be interesting to share at this time?”
“That’s why we included the poster on this foray,” replied George. “Eclipse and the others are supposed to be various kinds of scientists. Let’s see if any of them are interested in human physiology.”
Deirdre drew the poster in its tube from her chestpack, and unrolled the slender cylinder before the alien’s eye. It was an innocent scene, romantically pastoral in the Maxfield Parrish tradition. It showed a young man and woman strolling through an exotic meadow holding hands, wearing no spacesuits and indeed, very little else. The icerug scientists gathered close with the first suddenness the humans had noticed from them, and tentacles reached out to touch the paper, feeling dexterously along the edges and smoothly over the flat surface.
“This is a most unusual substance,” boomed Eclipse. The picture is mildly interesting, although the colors used are strange — but what is this picture plate made of? Can you return it to the shape of the small container?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Deirdre, demonstrating. The room throbbed with the low tones of several icerugs speaking at once, and an air of excitement grew. The probing tentacles were still careful with the poster, but Deirdre thought it wise to show them the frailty of the new substance. “Look you, it is light and easy to write upon with many tools, but it wil
l tear.” She slowly ripped a small corner from the bottom, and extended it to Eclipse. “Yes, it is much more fragile than rock or ice. But it is larger and thinner and lighter than anything we know — large maps and charts can be made upon it.
“Is it an element only obtainable from your world?” asked Eclipse, holding the fragment of paper up before its large yellow eye in a beryl-colored tentacle.
Deirdre searched her mind for the basics of paper manufacture, while George puzzled that the picture itself was of such little interest to these creatures.
“Paper is made of small fibers. They can be practically any sort of fiber, such as the fibers that make up the threads used to weave your cloaks. If you have plant fibers, like those in seaweed, you can make paper — it is simply a process of making a mesh frame, filling it with a thin layer of pulp … slurry…” She hesitated as her imp warned her that the translation program did not include those words, and Deirdre stopped, seeing the difficulty. With the marking pen she used for labeling sample bags, she sketched on the back of the poster a simple box frame with a screen stretched across it, and above it, a number of layers of criss-crossed threads.
“Paper’s so easy,” murmured Richard. “I’m surprised they’ve not got it already, especially since they make thread to weave cloth.”
“You need a slush of threads and water to make paper,” said Deirdre briefly over their private imp link. “Difficult to imagine here, isn’t it, how to form a slurry at below freezing temperatures?” Still, she persevered. Showing Eclipse the diagram, she started to explain it.
“You start by mixing fine fibers in a container of liquid water. You use a device like this, which passes water, but holds onto the fibers, to extract the fibers from the water to form a thin mat. You press the water out of the mat and dry it with heat. It must be dry, not frozen…”
It was enough. The advanced intelligence of the alien had already sorted several possibilities. Eclipse raised its beryl tentacle which was still holding the torn-off bit of paper.
“This will help, when I have looked at it under a microscope. I shall go now, and with my assistants shall work on trying to duplicate this … paper.” Hearing the human word, spoken in the deep bass voice of the alien, startled Deirdre. She turned to George, who was attempting to give Dark-Star a description of how his braided safety rope was made.
George had cut off a section of the rope and unbraided as strand of the superstrong polymer monofilament line. Dark-Star’s tentacles instantly reached to touch, and flex, and tug on the strong line, while questions came faster than George could respond.
“It is a single long thread, made by extrusion…” his translation program complained, and he tried to simplify his explanation. “A heat-softened compound of the right chemicals is forced through a hole of fine diameter, into a cooling bath, where it hardens into a long thread. Sometimes the compound used is a sticky substance that is forced through the hole into a chemical solution that causes it to change into a hard substance…” George was dismayed to realize that that was about the limit of his knowledge of monofilament lines. There was a moment’s delay, before he remembered Josephine’s inexhaustible references and tapped into them. Unfortunately, they were all too technical to be of much help in his explanation, designed as they were for the use of the Christmas Bush. However, a few understandable phrases — along with another quick sketch by Deirdre of a rather basic extrusion machine — seemed adequate for Dark-Star.
“Coelashark bones and fins, from which we make glues — they have a chemical structure that might be adapted to this purpose. And compounds from seaweed — they are many and varied — we still find new uses for them. Perhaps you would want to see where we work with them?”
As George, Dark-Star, and several other icerugs moved out of the room, Richard noticed that with their withdrawal, the light in the room diminished considerably. Glancing about him, Richard saw that, apart from the glowing spots on the heads of the creatures themselves, no light was available. Of course, since the concave spots shifted around on the spherical head to illuminate the direction that the single eye was looking, there was always enough light for each icerug. Almost as though following his thoughts, the icerug referred to as Bright-Eye bent its large eye with its light blue iris slightly to Richard.
“As you can see, this room becomes dim without a large group of us present.”
Bright-Eye itself was lighter in color than its peers — a rather soft aquamarine, and the swirling woven cloak with the intricate designs was the same shade as its velvety body. “Is your own vision augmented by such light that we cannot see it? Or perhaps you can see without light?”
Richard decided not to admit any human weakness, simply as a precaution; however, he reached for the solar-rechargeable permalight hanging from his belt to show Bright-Eye that humans also had a means of illumination — although it was artificial rather than natural.
Meanwhile, Deirdre rolled up Cinnamon’s poster and stowed it in her chestpack. If the icerugs were not interested in having the picture, Cinnamon would certainly want it back. She understood Richard’s reticence, and was not so critical as she might have been about his decision to display advanced earth technology in the form of the permalight. She watched silently as he played the light about the room, illuminating the farthest corners. The bright white light beaming from the flashlight was much more powerful and projecting than the weak blue bioluminescence of the glowing cavities formed in the icerug bodies. Bright-Eye and the remaining icerugs drew closer, to handle the little torch, turning it off and on as children might.
“Is this a part of your head, which you can separate and carry?” Richard forbore to answer the question directly, but began to dismantle the instrument. “It is a machine, that we make from various metals and chemical compounds. See, the bulb here contains a fine filament, made of tungsten metal. When electricity passes through it…”
“That word was not translated.”
The two humans paused, initially dismayed. Deirdre was now concerned that they were interfering too much with the alien culture’s development. If the icerugs knew nothing about electricity, perhaps too much had already been shown to them. Richard, however, was undaunted and began considering how the icerugs might possibly make a device similar to a flashlight, for they certainly didn’t need to know all about electricity to do so. Without glass for a bulb to hold a vacuum, however, it looked impossible. Still, a long sliver from a nickel-iron asteroid with a high melting point and a reasonable resistance might glow a bright Barnard red color in the reducing atmosphere of Zulu for some time, if fed by a carbon-iron battery. As Richard related his ideas to Bright-Eye, the alien’s superior intelligence ranged widely, considering what it knew of the materials available to it. As it cogitated, its eye wandered higher and higher until it was looking straight up in the air in deep thought, the top portion of its spherical head glowing in a circular halo around its aquamarine eye stalk.
“You say fine fibers of metal are needed to carry this electricity from one place to another. Perhaps gold or mercury would be easiest to form into these … wires. And the generation of energy in something called a battery, using sheets of metal dipped in water containing salt or acid … if indeed this electricity exists, I should be most interested in experimenting with it. A curious fact we have long pondered, regarding metals, is that when we hold two dissimilar ones at the same time, our tentacles experience an extremely sharp and bitter taste.”
As clearly as possible, the humans speculated aloud on various combinations and experiments that might prove fruitful, while the alien’s mind absorbed everything and said little. Finally, Bright-Eye spoke.
“We must go to the laboratory, and plan a logical series of trials. Would you care to come along?” Both humans assented eagerly, and set off behind the quickly traveling alien, relaying to Josephine their progress so George would know where they had gone.
Bright-Eye moved swiftly down a wide, stone-arched tunnel, along the flat
ice floor covered with the skein of icerug threads. The alien seemed disinclined to talk as it moved, and both humans were grateful, as they were moving at a pace which would have made conversation difficult. When they turned into yet another tunnel, this one quite simply hewn out of polished ice, they sped up yet again. The humans saw that the floor of this tunnel now contained only one wide band of aquamarine — evidently this was Bright-Eye’s own territory, and they were now running at such speed that stepping on the velvety ribbon of flesh was unavoidable. Richard puffed out an apology, but the icerug emitted only a sound which their translator interpreted as, “It means nothing.” The alien slowed its speed, then, as though it had observed the effort the humans were making in order to keep up while walking on the slippery flesh. They had traveled nearly a half kilometer, along this deep solitary tunnel, lit only with the glow from Bright-Eye, when Deirdre stumbled, and muttered something about “moving sidewalks”. Richard too found it suddenly difficult to keep his feet, as the colored band on which he was walking seemed to twist and jerk.
Neither person was alarmed; both assumed this jerky motion of the icerug path was yet another manifestation of icerug physiology. Bright-Eye, however, had stopped dead, and the glow from its midsection increased to illuminate the entire tunnel, while its node sank down into its supporting stalk.
“Icequake!” boomed the deep voice of the alien, in obvious panic, its eye rolling around in all directions as it scanned the tunnel walls. Then they all heard the ominous creaking, screaming, crackling sounds of frozen substances under tremendous pressures. Chunks of ice spalled from the walls and ceiling.
“The tunnel is collapsing upon us!” Booming incoherently, the icerug seemed to melt before their eyes, shrinking down on its pedestal in a desperate effort to protect its head and eye from being crushed.
Ocean Under the Ice Page 21