by Larry Niven
“Sit down on the deck. This will not be pleasant, you know.”
Hraou-Captain, who had stood like a pillar, turned his enormous body and growled a command. The telepath raised his head. Eyes glazed by the drug that called forth his total abilities came to a focus.
In their different ways, the three humans readied for what was about to happen. They’d have sundering headaches for hours afterward, too.
13
Small though it was, at its distance from Prima the sun showed more than half again the disc which Sol presents to Earth. Blotches of darkness pocked its sullen red. Corona shimmered around the limb, not quite drowned out of naked-eye vision.
Yoshii ignored it. His attention was on the planet which Fido circled in high orbit. Radar, spectroscope, optical amplifier, and a compact array of other instruments fed data to a computer which spun forth interpretations on screen and printout. Click and whirr passed low through the rustling ventilation, the sometimes uneven human breath within the control cabin. Body warmth and a hint of sweat tinged the air.
Yoshii’s gaze kept drifting from the equipment, out a port of the globe itself. “Unbelievable,” he murmured.
Airless, it stood sharp-edged athwart the stars, but the illuminated side was nearly a blank, even at first and last quarter when shadows were long. Then a few traces of hill and dale might appear, like time-worn Chinese brush strokes. Otherwise there was yellowish-white smoothness, with ill-defined areas of faint gray, brown, or blue. The whole world could almost have been a latex ball, crudely made for a child of the giants.
“What now?” Carita asked. She floated, harnessed in her seat, her back to him. They had turned off the gravity polarizer and were weightless, to eliminate that source of detectability. Her attention was clamped to the long-range radar with which she swept the sky, to and fro as the boat swung around.
“Oh, everything,” said the Belter.
“Any ideas? You’ve had more chance to think, these past hours, than I have.”
“Well, a few things look obvious, but I wouldn’t make book on their being what they seem.”
“Why don’t you give me a rundown?” proposed the Jinxian. “Never mind if you repeat what I’ve already heard. We should try putting things in context.”
Yoshii plunged into talk. It was an escape of sorts from their troubles, from not knowing what the fate of Shep and those aboard her might be.
“The planet’s about the mass of Earth but only about half as dense. Must be largely silicate, some aluminum, not enough iron to form a core. Whatever atmosphere and hydrosphere it once outgassed, it lost—weak gravity, and temperatures around 400 K at the hottest part of the day. That day equals 131 of Earth’s; two-thirds rotational lock, like Mercury. No more gas comes out, because vulcanism, tectonics, all geology ended long ago. Unless you want to count meteoroid erosion wearing down the surface; and I’d guess hardly any objects are left that might fall on these planets.
“Then what is that stuff mantling the surface? The computer can’t figure it out. Shadows of what relief there is indicate it’s thin, a few centimeters deep, with local variations. Reflection spectra suggest carbon compounds but that’s not certain. It just lies there, you see, doesn’t do anything. Try analyzing a lump of some solid plastic across a distance. Is that what we have here, a natural polymer? I wish I knew more organic chemistry.”
“Can’t help you, Juan,” Carita said. “All I remember from my class in it, aside from the stinks in the lab, is that the human sex hormones are much the same, except that the female is ketonic and the male is alcoholic.”
“We’ll have time to look and think further, of course.” Yoshii sighed. “Time and time and time. I never stopped to imagine how what fugitives mostly do is sit. Hiding, huddling, while—” He broke off and struggled for self-command.
“And we don’t dare let down our guard long enough to take a little recreation,” Carita grumbled.
Yoshii reddened. “Uh, if we could, I—well—”
She chuckled and said ruefully, “I know. The fair Laurinda. Don’t worry, your virtue will be safe with me till you realize it can’t make any possible diff—Hold!” she roared.
He tensed where he floated. “What?”
“Quiet. No, secure things and get harnessed.”
For humming minutes she studied the screen and meters before her. Yoshii readied himself. Seated at her side he could see the grimness grow. Pale hair waved around sable skin when at last she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “somebody’s bound this way. From the direction of the sun. About ten million klicks off. He barely registered at first, but it’s getting stronger by the minute. He’s boosting fast. We’d tear our hull apart if we tried to match him, supposing we had that kind of power. Definitely making for Prima.”
“What . . . is it?”
“What but a kzin ship with a monster engine? I’m afraid they’ve caught on to our strategy.” Carita’s tone grew wintry. “I’d rather not hear just how they did.”
“G-guesswork?” Yoshii faltered.
“Maybe. I don’t know kzin psych. How close to us can they make themselves think?” She turned her head to clamp her vision on him. “Well, maybe the skipper’s plan failed and it’s actually drawn the bandits to us. Or maybe it’s the one thing that can save us.
Saxtorph’s words drawled through memory: “We don’t know how much search capability the kzin have, but a naval vessel means auxiliaries, plus whatever civilian craft they can press into service. A boat out in the middle of the far yonder, drifting free, would be near-as-damn impossible to find. But as soon as she accelerates back toward where her crew might do something real, she screams the announcement to any alert, properly organized watchers—optical track, neutrino emission, the whole works till she’s in effective radar range. After that she’s sold to the licorice man, as they say in Denmark. On the other hand, if she can get down onto a planetary surface, she can probably make herself almost as invisible as out in the deep. A worldful of topography, which the kzinti cannot have had time or personnel to map in anything but the sketchiest way. So how about one of ours goes to Prima, the other to Tertia, and lies low in orbit? Immediately when we get wind of trouble, we drop down into the best hidey-hole the planet has got, and wait things out.”
(It had been the most reasonable idea that was broached.)
“You’ve been doing our latest studies,” Carita went on. “Found any prospective burrows? The kzinti may or may not have acquired us by now. Maybe not. That vessel may not be as well equipped to scan as this prospector, and she’s probably a good deal bigger. But they’re closing in fast, I tell you.”
Yoshii made a shushing gesture, swiveled his seat, and evoked pictures, profiles, data tabulations. Shortly he nodded. “I think we have a pretty respectable chance.” Pointing: “See here. Prima isn’t all an unbroken plain. This range, its small valleys—and on the night side, too.”
Carita whistled. “Hey, boy, we live right!”
“I’ll set up for a detailed scan and drop into low orbit to make it. We should find some cleft we can back straight down into. The kzinti would have to arc immediately above and be on the lookout for that exact spot to see us.” Yoshii said nothing about what a feat of piloting he had in mind. He was a Belter. She had almost comparable experience, together with Jinxian reflexes.
14
“Yah, I do think our best bet is to land and snuggle in.” Saxtorph’s look ranged through the port and across the planet, following an onward sweep of daylight as Shep orbited around to the side of the sun.
That disc was less than half the size of Sol’s at Earth, its coal-glow light little more than one one-hundredth. Nevertheless Tertia shone so brightly as to dazzle surrounding stars out of sight. Edges softened by atmosphere, it was bestrewn with glaciers, long streaks and broad plains and frozen seas bluishly aglimmer from pole to pole. Bared rock reached darkling on mountainsides or reared in tablelands. Five Terrestrial masses had been convulsed enough as they set
tled toward equilibrium that the last of the heights they thrust upward had not worn away entirely during the post-tectonic eons.
The glaciers were water, with some frozen carbon dioxide overlying them in the antarctic zone where winter now reigned. The air, about twice as dense as Earth’s, was almost entirely nitrogen, the oxygen in it insufficient to sustain fire or life. It was utterly clear save where slow winds raised swirls of glitter, dust storms whose dust was fine ice.
A small moon, inmost of four, hove into view. It sheened reddish-yellow, like amber. The largest, Luna-size, was visible, too, patched with the same hue, ashen where highlands were uncovered. It had no craters; spalling and cosmic sand had long since done away with them.
“But, but on the surface we’ll see only half the sky at best,” Laurinda ventured. “And atmospherics will . . . hinder the seeing.”
Saxtorph nodded. “True. Ordinarily I’d opt for staying in space in hopes of early warning. That does have its own drawbacks, though. A kzin search vessel could likelier than not detect us the moment we commenced boost. Since we might not be able to skedaddle flat-out from them, we’d probably drop planetside. That’s the whole idea of being where we are, remember? If we did it right, the ratcats wouldn’t know where we’d squatted, but they’d know we were someplace yonder for sure, and that would be a bigger help to them than they deserve.”
“Treacherous terrain for landing,” Dorcas warned.
Saxtorph nodded again. “Indeed. Which means we’ll be smart to take our time while we’ve still got it, come down cautiously and settle in thoroughly. As for knowing when a spacecraft is in the neighborhood, at a minimum there’s our neutrino detector. It’s not what you’d call precise, but it will pick up an operating fusion generator within a couple million klicks, clear through the body of the planet.”
He paused before adding, “I realize this isn’t quite what we intended when we said goodbye. But we didn’t know what Tertia is like. Doctrine exists to be modified as circumstances dictate. I’d guess the sensible thing for Juan and Carita to do is quite different.”
Laurinda’s fingers twisted together. She turned her face from the other two.
“I vote with you,” Dorcas declared. They had been considering tactics for hours, while they gained knowledge of the world they had reached. “What are the specs of a landing site? Safe ground; concealment from anything except an unlikely observation from directly overhead, unless we can avoid that too; but we don’t want to be in a radio shadow, because we hope for—we expect—a broadcast message in the fairly near future.”
“Don’t forget defensibility,” Saxtorph reminded.
“What?” asked Laurinda, startled. “How can we possibly—”
The man grinned. “I didn’t tell you, honey, because it’s not a thing to blab about, but Dorcas and I always travel with a few weapons. I took them along packed among my personal effects. Managed to slip Carita a rifle and some ammo when nobody else was looking. That leaves us with another rifle, a Pournelle rapid-fire automatic, choice of solid or explosive shells; a .38-caliber machine pistol with detachable stock; and a 9-mm. mulekiller.”
“Plus a certain amount of blasting sticks,” Dorcas informed him.
Saxtorph goggled. “Huh?” He guffawed. “That’s my nice little wifey. The standard mining equipment aboard includes knives, geologists’ hammers, crowbars, and such, useful for mayhem.” He sobered. “Not that we want a fight. God, no! But if we’re able to give a good account of ourselves—it might make a difference.”
“A single small warhead will make a much bigger difference, unless we have dispersal and concealment capability,” Dorcas observed. “All right, let’s take a close look at what topographical data we’ve collected.”
The choice was wide, but decision was quick. Shep dropped out of orbit and made for a point about 30 degrees north latitude. It was at midafternoon, which was a factor. Lengthening shadows would bring out details, while daylight would remain—in a rotation period of 40 hours, 37-plus minutes—for preliminary exploration of the vicinity.
A mesa loomed stark, thinly powdered with ice crystals, above a glacier that had flowed under its own weight, down from the heights, until a jumble of hills beneath had brought it to a halt. As it descended, the glacier had gouged a deep, almost sheer-walled coulee through slopes and steeps. The bottom was talus, under a dusting of sand, but solid; with gravity a third higher than on Earth, and epochs of time, shards and particles had settled into gridlock.
Or so the humans reasoned. The last few minutes of maneuver were very intent, very quiet except for an occasional low word of business. Saxtorph, manning the console, was prepared to cram on emergency boost at the first quiver of awryness. But Dorcas talked him down and Shep grounded firmly. For a while, nobody spoke or moved. Then husband and wife unharnessed and kissed. After a moment, Laurinda made it a threeway embrace.
Saxtorph peered out. The canyon walls laid gloom over stone. “You ladies unlimber this and stow that while I go take a gander,” he said. “Yes, dear, I won’t be gone long and I will be careful.”
His added weight dragged at him, but not too badly. It wasn’t more than physiology could take, even a Belter’s or a Crashlander’s, and distributed over the whole body. The women would get used to it, sort of, and in fact it ought to be valuable, continuous exercise in the cramped quarters of the boat. The spacesuit did feel pretty heavy.
He cycled through and stood for a few minutes learning to see the landscape. Every cue was alien, subtly or utterly, light, shadow, shapes. The cobbles underfoot were smooth as those on a beach. They and the rubble along the sides and the cliffs above were tawny-gray, sparked with bits of what might be mica but was likelier something strange—diamond dust? Several crags survived, eroded to laciness. The lower end of the gorge, not far off, was blocked by a wall of glacier. Above reached purple sky. An ice-devil whirled on the heights. Wind whittered.
Saxtorph decided his party had better plant an antenna and relay inconspicuously up there. Any messages ought to be on a number of simultaneous bands, at least one of which could blanket a Tertian hemisphere, but the signal would be tenuous and these depths might screen it out altogether. He walked carefully from the arrowhead of the boat to the right-hand side and started downslope, looking for safe routes to the top. Lateral ravines appeared to offer them.
Abruptly he halted. What the flapping hellfire?
He stooped and stared. Could it be—? No, some freak of nature. He wasn’t qualified to identify a fossil.
He went on. By the time he had tentatively found the path he wanted, he was so near the glacier that he continued. It lifted high, not grimy like its counterparts on terrestroid planets but clear, polished glassy-smooth, a cold and mysterious blue. Whatever mineral grains once lay on it had sunken to the bottom, and—
And—
Saxtorph stood moveless. The time was long before he breathed, “Oh. My. God.”
From within the ice, the top half of a skull stared at him. It could only be that, unhuman though it was. And other bones were scattered behind, and shaped stones, and pieces of what was most surely earthenware—
Chill possessed him from within. How old were those remnants?
Big Tertia must in its youth have had a still denser atmosphere than now, greenhouse effect, heat from a contracting interior, and . . . those molecules that are the kernel from which life grows, perhaps evolved not here but in interstellar space, organics which the wan sun did not destroy as they drifted inward . . . . Life arose. It liberated oxygen. It gave birth to beings that made tools and dreams. But meanwhile the planetary core congealed and chilled, the oceans began to freeze, plants died, nothing replaced the oxygen that surface rocks bound fast. . . . Without copper, tin, gold, iron, any metal they could know for what it was, the dwellers had never gone beyond their late stone age, never had a chance to develop the science that might have saved them or at least have let them understand what was happening. . . .
Saxtorph
shuddered. He turned and hastened back to the boat.
15
Unsure what kind of surface awaited them, Carita and Yoshii descended on the polarizer and made a feather-soft landing. They were poised to spring instantly back upward. All they felt was a slight resilience, more on their instruments than in their bones. It damped out and Fido rested quiet.
“Elastic?” Yoshii wondered. “Or viscous, or what?”
“Never mind, we’ll investigate later, right now we’re down safe,” Carita replied. She wiped her brow. “Hoo, but I need a stiff drink and a hot shower!”
Yoshii leered at her. “In the opposite order, please.” She cuffed him lightly. The horseplay turned into mutual unharnessing and a hug.
“Hey-y,” she purred, “you really do want to celebrate, don’t you? Later, we’ll share that shower.”
His arms dropped. She released him in her turn and he made a stumbling backward step. “I, I’m sorry, I didn’t intend—Well, we should take a good look outside, shouldn’t we?”
The Jinxian was briefly silent before she smiled wryly and shrugged. “Okay. I’ll forgive you this time if you’ll fix dinner. Your yakitori tacos are always consoling. You’re right, anyway.”
They turned off the fluoros and peered forth. As their eyes adapted, they saw well enough through airlessness, by the thronging stars and the cold rush of the Milky Way. Bowl-shaped, the dell in which they were parked curved some 50 meters wide to heights twice as far above the bottom. Fido sat close to one side; direct sunlight would only touch her for a small part of the day, weeks hence. Every edge and lump was rounded off by the covering of the planet. In this illumination it appeared pale gray.