Hal Clement - Heavy Planet

Keeping in phase with Barlennan as he switched directions took some doing but the messenger managed it. The commander took his continued presence for granted. “Any further details? When, or what was moving?”

“None, sir. The man simply appeared on the screen without any warning. He said, ‘Something is happening at the Esket . Tell the commander.’ Guzmeen ordered me to bring you back on hurricane priority, so I didn’t hear any more.”

“Those were his exact words? He used our language?”

“No, it was the human speech. His words were←” the runner repeated the phrase, this time in the original tongue. Barlennan could read no more into the words than had been implicit in the translation. “Then we don’t know whether someone slipped up and was seen, or dropped something into the field of the lens, or-”

“I doubt the first, sir. The human could hardly have failed to recognize a person.”

“I suppose not. Well, some sort of detail should be in by the time we get back there.” There wasn’t, however. Boyd Mersereau was not even on the screen by the time Barlennan reached Communications. More surprising, neither was anyone else. The commander looked at Guzmeen suspiciously; the communication of ficer gave the equivalent of a shrug. “He just went, sir, after that one sentence about the lab.” Barlennan, mystified, squeezed the “attention” control. But Boyd Mersereau had other concerns on his mind. Most, but not quite all, involved events on Dhrawn, not the Esket . There were a few matters much closer to home than the giant star-planet. The chief of these was the cooling down of Aucoin. Aucoin was annoyed at not having been brought into the exchanges between Dondragmer and Katini, and the captain and Tebbetts. He was inclined to blame young Hoffman for going ahead with policy-disturbing matters without official approval. However, he did not want to say anything which would annoy Easy. He regarded her, with some justification, as the most nearly indispensable member of the communications group. In consequence, Mersereau and others suffered fallout from the administrator?s deflected ire. This was not too serious, as far as Boyd was concerned. He had years ago classified the pacifying of administrators along with shaving as something which took time but did not demand full attention; it was worth doing at all only because it was usually less trouble in the long run. The real attention-getter, the thing which kept even news from the Esket in the background, was the state of affairs at the Kwembly. Left alone Boyd might have been moderately concerned, but only moderately. The missing Mesklinites weren’t close personal friends of his. He was civilized enough to be bothered by their loss as much as if they had been human, though they were not his brothers or sons. The Kwembly herself was a problem, but a fairly routine one. Land-cruisers had been in trouble before; so far they had always been extricated sooner or later. All in all, Mersereau would have been merely absorbed, not bothered, if left to himself. He was not left to himself. Benj Hoffman felt strongly about the whole matter and had a way of making his feelings clear, not entirely by talking, though he was perfectly willing to talk. Even when silent he radiated sympathy. Boyd would find himself discussing with Dondragmer the progress of the melting-out plan or the chances of another flood in terms of their effect on the missing helmsmen, rather than with reasonable and proper professional detachment. It was annoying. Beetchermarlf and Takoorch, even Kervenser, just weren’t that central to the work; the real question was the survival of the crew. Benj, whether sitting silently beside him or interjecting a few remarks, somehow managed to make objectivity seem callous. Mersereau had no defense against that particular effect; Easy knew perfectly well what was going on, but she did not interfere because she almost entirely shared her son’s feelings. Partly because of her sex and partly because of her own background she felt a very intense sympathy for Beetchermarlf and his companion, and even for Takoorch. She had been caught in a rather similar situation some twenty-five years before, when a concatenation of errors had stranded her in an unmanned research vessel on a high-temperature, high-pressure planet. In fact, she went further than Benj would have dared. Dondragmer might and probably would have sent a ground party to the site of Reffel’s disappearance, since the location was fairly well known; it was unlikely that he would have risked sending one of his three remaining communicators along. Yet Easy, partly by straightforward arguments of her own and partly by using her son’s techniques to swing Mersereau to her view, convinced the captain that the risk of not taking the communicator along would be even greater. This discussion, among many others, was conducted in Aucoin?s absence; even as he argued with Dondragmer, Mersereau was wondering how he would justify the step to planner Aucoin. Nevertheless, he argued on Easy?s side, as Benj suppressed a grin in the background. With this claim on his attention, Boyd scarcely noticed the call from another observer that a couple of objects were moving across the screen which showed the Esket‘ s laboratory. He switched channels briefly and passed the word on to the Settlement, cutting back to the Kwemb/y without waiting for the end of the communication cycle. Later he claimed that he had never been really conscious of the Esket’ s name in the report; he had thought of the message as a routine report from some observer or other; his principal feeling had been one of irritation at being distracted. Some people would have snapped at the observer; Boyd, being the person he was, had taken what seemed to him the quickest and simplest way of disposing of the interruption. He had then quite genuinely forgotten the incident. Benj had paid even less attention. The stranding of the Esket had occurred long before his arrival at the station, and the name meant nothing in particular to him, although his mother had once mentioned her friends Destigmet and Kabremm to him. It was Easy, of course, who had really reacted to the call. She scarcely noticed what Mersereau did or said, and never thought of telling Barlennan herself until more details came in. She moved immediately to a chair commanding a view of the “lost” cruiser’s screens and relegated the rest of the universe to the background. Barlennan’s return call therefore brought him very little information. Easy, to whom it was passed, had seen nothing herself; by the time she had reached her station all motion had ceased. The original observer was only able to say that he had seen two objects, a reel of cable or rope and a short length of pipe, roll across the Esket’ s laboratory floor. It was possible that something might have pushed them, though there had been no sign of life around the vehicle for several terrestrial months; it was equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that something had tilted the Esket to start them rolling. So said the observer, though he could not suggest what specifically might have tipped the monstrous machine. This left Barlennan in a quandary. It was possible that one of Destigmet’s crew had become careless. It was possible that natural causes might be operating, as the humans seemed to prefer to believe. It was also possible, considering what Barlennan himself had just been planning to do, that the whole thing was a piece of human fiction. The commander’s conscience made him attach more weight to this possibility than he might have done otherwise. It was hard to see just what they could expect to accomplish by such a fiction. It could hardly be a trap of any sort; there could be no wrong reaction to the story. Complete mystification was the only possible response. If there were something deeper and more subtle involved, Barlennan had to admit to himself that he couldn?t guess what it was. He didn’t like guessing anyway. It was much easier to take reports at face value, allowing only for the capabilities of the speaker without worrying about possible motives. At times, the commander reflected, Dondragmer’s annoying directness which had made him disapprove of the whole Esket trick had something to be said for it. Yes, he had to assume that the report was truthful. By so doing, he would turn any human trick against its planners. Well then, there was nothing to do except check with Destigmet. That was simply another message to send on the Deedee. Come to think of it, that was another way to check the veracity of the human reports. This report, whatever else could be said for or against its truth, showed signs of having come through quickly. And Mrs. Hoffman must be involved. The thought that Easy’s involvement made the situation a special one was the only idea on the incident Barlennan and Aucoin would have had in common. Of course, the latter hadn’t heard anything about the new Etket incident so far; even Mersereau hadn’t really thought about it. He was still otherwise engaged. “Easy!” Boyd turned from his microphone and called across to her new station. “We seem to have convinced Don. He’s sending a vision set with his six-man search party. He wants to check his own estimate of the distance at which Reffel vanished. He thinks we can pinpoint where his transmitter was. We might have estimated it at the time, but I’m not sure it was recorded. Do you want to take over here while I check up with the mappers, or would you rather go yourself?”