Planet for Plunder

by Hal Clement

  “Damn!” he exclaimed fervently. “He’s sending. without direction.”

  “What makes you so sure it’s a him?” asked Candace.

  “All right,” said Hal, a trifle testily. “She’s sending without direction.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Hal honey,” Candace told him. “I was just wondering if we hadn’t jumped the gun in thinking of our friend as an intelligent entity.”

  “He, she or it was smart enough to move around that mountain yesterday,” put in Truck, from the rear seat. “That took brains.”

  “Or machinery,” said Candace.

  “Supposing its nothing more than a machine

  “That,” said Hal, resting his forearms on the wheel in front of him, “raises some mighty interesting possibilities. Let’s say, for the moment, that it is a machine. Obviously, a missile—if that’s what it is—could have reactors that would enable it to avoid a crash—as with the mountain. But if it is a machine, somebody, or some things, had to make it. No intelligent creature would manufacture anything so complex without a purpose, and send it at random through space.”

  “Maybe it’s not from space. Maybe the Commies sent it over to broadcast germs or something,” said Truck.

  “You think of the loveliest ideas,” said Candace. Then, frowning and poking at the sopping ruin of her hair, “If that were true, it wouldn’t be answering us—even with mockery. It would be lying nice and doggo. My money—listen to the girl!—says it’s from space. If it were a missile that goofed, you can be sure the big brains in the Pentagon wouldn’t be kicking up such a fuss.”

  “Well, we aren’t going to solve the problem by sitting here talking about it,” Hal said practically. “We’ve got to hunt until we find it.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Candace asked.

  He told them. They were going to do it on foot, tracking the valley floor and leaving bits of cloth and direction markers whenever they reached the hills, so they would not be forced to retrace their steps. “That way,” he concluded, “we can find out where it isn’t, if nothing else.”

  “We can get good and wet, too,” said Truck.

  Parsons quelled him with a look, and they got busy. They hardly spoke at all, for their thoughts were now completely immediate, grim and serious.

  It was a tedious, unrewarding day of plodding through rain-soaked sand and soil. When, as the sunless daylight waned, they finally returned to the shelter of the jeep, all three of them were exhausted.

  “Another two or three days of this,” Truck complained, “and my legs will be too musclebound for football.” It wasn’t what he’d intended to say. It was merely a quick cover-up to conceal his real emotions.

  “I think I left my feet on the other side of the valley, last time across,” said Candace, falling in with his mood. “Hal honey, where do you suppose it is?”

  “It’s here somewhere,” said Parsons, wishing his own feet would cool off and stop aching. “We just haven’t looked in the right places.”

  “We’d better get back up a hill and do some broadcasting,” said Candace. “I’ll cook us some sort of a meal.”

  “I’m too tired to eat now,” Parsons told her. “But you’re right.” He got the jeep into gear, adding, “Maybe they’ve found it somewhere else.”

  “Happy thought!” said Candace. “But it’s too much to hope for.”

  And theirs was the only report on the alien. Parsons talked to a General Somebody, who had jetted from Washington, D. C., to Butte that afternoon, to be closer to the critical scene. Apparently, the entire world was in a ferment over the possibility of contact with a messenger from an alien race.

  “How are ground conditions?” the general asked.

  “Lousy!” Parsons told him bluntly. He gave him a succinct account of the frustrating day the expedition had endured.

  “You mean, you actually talked with it?” the General asked.

  “You could call it that,” said Hal, and went into a full explanation.

  “Do you think we could get a helicopter in under those blankety-blank clouds?” the General wanted to know. “It would enable us to get a fix on its whereabouts.”

  Parsons looked dismally at the mist that enshrouded hilltop and valley alike. “Not a chance, I’m afraid,” he said. “This stuff is thick and close. We’re snafu-ed, but good!”

  Candace, who was standing by with a plate of hot food, heard this portion of the conversation and said, “Hal honey, maybe if they could get a plane overhead and they knew where we were, we could rig some sort of a fix on our friend. Ask him?”

  “The trouble with that,” said Parsons, “is our pal’s sending doesn’t reach up here. And how are we going to tell where either of us is if we can’t see through the clouds?”

  “What’s that?” the General asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Mrs. Parsons,” said Hal. “She wonders if you couldn’t send a plane over tomorrow to help us get a radio fix on our friend.”

  There was silence. Then, “Tell your wife she gets a large box of filter-tip cigars when this is over. By God! That’s the first really constructive idea that’s come out of this foulup yet. But it will take a bit of doing. Lucky that stuff over you is not much more than two thousand feet. You’ll hear from me in an hour. Signing off and good luck.”

  “What did he say?” Candace asked eagerly, as Parsons flipped the switch and motioned for Truck to stop cranking the battery.

  “He says he’s going to give you a box of choice Havana cigars when we get out of this hole, baby,” Parsons told her, accepting his food. “Mmm! These beans are good! What did you do to them?”

  “Oh—I just let you work up an appetite, that’s all,” said Candace. Then her eyes widened. “You mean he’s actually going to do it?”

  “He’s going to try,” said Hal through a full mouth. He tilted his tin plate to let the rainwater trickle off onto the ground. “If we ever do make sense with this creature, I’m going to ask him to turn off the waterworks.”

  “Amen to that!” said Candace. “I was figuring on working up a sunburn that would last all winter,” said Truck mournfully.

  The general radioed back, on the nose. An air-fix would be attempted the following morning at ten o’clock. It was complicated, but he thought it could be done. “We’ve got to find that thing—or rather, you have to find it. Are you aware that we have an expedition with Weasels on its way to reinforce you?”

  “Weasels!” Parsons was startled. “But we got in here okay in a jeep.”

  “You couldn’t do it now,” the general told him. “Those two days of wet weather have washed out all the trails. But don’t worry. We’ll be getting through to you soon. Just find our friend and see that he doesn’t take off before we open communications.”

  “What’s the verdict to date?” Parsons asked. “Is it extra-terrestrial?”

  “Looks that way. The Russians swear on a stack of Karl Marx they had nothing to do with it.

  They’re talking it up as some new sort of war-mongering frightfulness we’ve developed. Well, I’ll be overhead tomorrow morning.”

  Once again, there was little sleep in the expedition. But their restlessness was not the result of frustration, unrewarding as their day of effort to locate the stranger had been. There was a sense of impending excitement, of discovery lying just ahead of them, a growing awareness of the importance of the position fate had put them in.

  “If they’re right,” Candace mused aloud, “you and I, honey, are the first two humans ever to communicate with a being from another world.”

  “What price communication?” said Hal. “We might as well have been yelling our heads off in Echo Canyon.”

  “How about me?” put in Truck. “Don’t I get to talk to it, too?”

  “Of course, Truck!” Candace said warmly, reacting with quick, feminine sympathy to the young gladiator’s sense of having been left on the outside. “You can talk your varsity team mask off tomorrow.”


  “Gee—thanks, memsahib,” said Truck, feeling his dark inner mood lighten a little.

  He retired into silence, apparently considering the effect of his impending importance on certain members of Candace’s sex. She and Hal exchanged meaningful glances. They were both growing increasingly fond of Truck. He might not be cut out for a Ph.D., but his strength and stamina, his amiability and his quick native intelligence made him a valuable member of the closely-knit team they had become.

  With the coming of the dawn, they rose and broke camp again. They made another descent to the valley floor, handling jeep and trailer with extra care lest an accident damage their radio gear. Certainly, weatherwise, the situation had not improved overnight. Mist and rain were equally heavy, and the once hard-packed ground was slowly turning into a quagmire. It took them more than an hour to get located on a bit of high ground, where they would not become hopelessly bogged down.

  “Let’s see if our friend is still sending,” said Candace.

  They set up shop, and Truck took over the mike. He said, “Hello, out there,” and promptly received a “Hello, out there,” in response.”

  Parsons scowled at the set. “If our pal doesn’t shut up when the General starts sending,” he said, “it’s going to be awfully confused.”

  “We’ll manage,” Candace said confidently.

  The general, as usual, was on time. He said, “I’m somewhere overhead in a helicopter, with another copter standing by. We want a fix on you, first. Then we’ll try for a fix on the alien and at least give you direction.”

  “Hello out there,” said the voice from the stars.

  “Who in hell is that?” the general asked, startled.

  “That,” said Parsons, “is our unexplained visitor. You’ll have to sift if he keeps cutting in.”

  “Okay, Parsons—let’s get busy,” said the general. “Start reeling off a page of statistics—or anything that comes into your head.”

  Parsons complied with the multiplication table. After imitating him at first, the Whatisit apparently gave up and stopped sending. Ten minutes later, the general’s voice came over the receiver.

  “We’ve got you,” he said. “Now, see if you can get the owner of that voice.”

  Parsons raised the unknown visitor, using short, varied sentences. He was, he felt with growing excitement, beginning to learn a little about the alien. Two or three times, when the human speeches were long and intricate, or merely repetitious, it had simply ceased sending. Evidently, some sort of selective mind was at work, determining which phrases merited repetition, and which did not—even though, apparently, none of them made sense to the alien.

  “Okay, Parsons, here it is!” said the general. “Got a compass handy?” He gave the directions concisely, and concluded by saying, “Sorry we can’t give you more. We spot you maybe half a mile apart, but our own location is too unstable to give you a clean estimate of distance. If you follow the direction I just gave you, and keep your eyes open, you ought to find him.”

  “We’ll do our best, General,” said Hal. Then, sighting along the direction-line he had just been given, he exclaimed in dismay, “Damn! This runs right along the hills on the north side of this bowl.”

  “You’ll manage,” said the general, with a confidence Hal, at that moment, was far from feeling. “Good luck. But be careful. He may be dangerous.”

  “Now he tells us!” said Candace, who had appropriated one of the earphones.

  They had to leave the jeep where it was, and scramble, slipping, stumbling, peering vainly through the mist for some sign of the alien. Their progress was abruptly halted when they had covered about a quarter of a mile, and the hillside across which they were moving became split by a sharp declivity.

  “It couldn’t be worse!” muttered Parsons. “We’ll have to work our way around it.”

  Working their way around took them approximately half an hour. They were about halfway up the gentler slope of the far side when Truck, who had lumbered on ahead, let out a yell that echoed from crag to crag like a many-throated summons to battle.

  “Here it is! I’ve found it! Come on, you two! I’ve found it!”

  It was big. Although, in some unexplained manner, it had buried itself in the hillside, so that only a small sector of its top-surface showed above ground, the curve of its dull-grey, irregular and knotty metallic surface revealed a diameter of more than twenty feet. There it sat, immobile, apparently harmless—like a large piece of leaden-hued pewter discarded from a New England farmhouse attic.

  “We found it! We fou-ound it!” Truck chanted, and then suddenly turned deathly pale, as the terrifying significance of the find’s brooding stillness and nearness and alienness was borne in upon him.

  “Get off at once!” Parsons almost shrieked the words. “You don’t know what sort of radiations may be coming from it.” Truck swayed as if in mortal terror and scrambled down. “My God!” he breathed. “I left the Geiger counter back in the trailer.”

  “Get it,” Parsons shot back to him. “And get the jeep as close as you can.” Apparently whatever is inside that thing can only communicate through the radio.”

  “I know—sure,” said Truck. “I—I’ll be right back with the Geiger.”

  He had just turned to carry out the order, when Candace uttered a small shrill scream and cried, “Look! Hal, stay back! It’s boiling the earth around it!”

  Something very strange was happening. Invisible currents were making the once-sandy soil in which the object had settled seethe like boiling water in a kettle. As Parsons pulled his wife quickly away from the area of disturbance, he thought that her use of the word “boiling” had been singularly apt. From a safe distance up the hillside, the three of them watched the ground around the visitor act as solid matter was not supposed to act.

  It was Truck who first sensed the visitor’s intentions. Stabbing a large grimy forefinger at it he announced, “For Pete’s sake, he’s coming up!”

  They looked on in awe as the dull-grey globe that was not from Earth slowly emerged from its bed of soil, looming larger and larger as it rose, and revealing in what appeared to be its nose a pair of opaque, circular objects that looked like eyes.

  VII

  THE STAR-TRAVELER already knew, of course, that he was in a valley, partway up one of the sides. The hills bounding it were not particularly high, especially by the standards of this planet. In fact, the Conservationist had a pretty accurate idea of the dimensions of the Himalayas, distant as they were—though he had been more interested in determining the rate at which they were rising. He gave the local elevations only a passing thought, then sought to examine what lay closer to his vision-outlets—outlets which the Parsons group had quite correctly labeled “eyes.”

  He failed. The details five miles away were clear and clouds of what must be water or ammonia droplets hanging at still greater distances in the atmosphere were still clearer. But, as he brought his attention to objects nearer and nearer to his ship, they grew, shapeless, and increasingly harder to examine.

  Cursing himself for forgetting, he recognized the reason. His eyes were perfectly good instruments—for the purpose toward which they had been designed. They were carefully shaped lenses of calcium fluoride, designed with almost a full hemisphere of field and their curved focal surface was followed faithfully by the photosensitive material of his own flesh. The tiny metallic crystals in his stony tissues would, of course, be affected electrically by light, and, like many of his race, he had learned to interpret the light-images formed by lenses.

  There was just one catch. There was no provision for changing either the shape or the position of the lenses. But actually, why should there be? They were designed to enable him to determine the directions of the stars, whose distances were for all practical purposes always infinite. He had never needed focusing arrangements until now.

  The eyes were a foot across and almost as great in focal length. Objects a hundred yards away were blurs. At six feet they were
scarcely interruptions to the background. He could just tell, by sight, that there were moving objects in his vicinity, and get a vague idea of their size. Beyond that, details were indistinguishable.

  The nearest repair-shop where his. machinery could be modified was about six thousand light-years toward the galactic center. He could, of course, pull his flesh back from one or more of the lenses until the eye involved focused at a distance of a few feet—if the situation would wait for the necessary years or centuries. However, even if the situation did wait, the natives and their machines probably wouldn’t.

  He could wait until they departed, and examine them when they were far enough away. Better than this, he could fly to a distance at which they were reasonably distinct in his sight. The question raised in that connection was, of course, how the natives would react to such a move on his part. However, if he did not move, he would probably learn nothing. Therefore, he resumed his rise from the soil, cleared its surface, and hurled his vessel half a mile upward.

  To observe, and, in effect, to photograph the details of what lay below took only a few microseconds. Then he moved a few hundred yards to one side and repeated the procedure. Three seconds after takeoff, he was settling back into his original location with a fairly clear picture of the strange equipment surrounding it firmly painted in his mind.

  He understood now why the seismic impulses had come in pairs. Each of the machines was supported by two struts, which were so hinged as to permit several degrees of freedom of motion. During his brief period of observation, they had traveled enough—away from the point where his ship had been resting—to permit him to analyze their startling method of travel. This seemed to consist in balancing on one strut, falling in the desired direction, and catching one’s mass with the other before collapsing completely. The process was repeated cyclically.

  It appeared, mathematically, that the value of the planet’s gravitational acceleration would put an upper limit on the rate of travel possible by this means. The agent found himself a little dubious about the engineering advantages of it. If one had to travel on the surface, wheels seemed easier—although an irregular surface might present further difficulties. Few Conservationists, surely, had confronted problems so difficult to resolve.