Hal Clement: Hot Planet

“And that came through clearly enough!” remarked Hargedon as he swung the tractor around. “I’ve been awake for fourteen hours, driving off and on for ten of them. I’m about to drive for another six; and then I’m to stand by for more.”

“Would you like me to do some of the driving?” asked Zaino.

“I guess you’ll have to, whether I like it or not,” was the rather lukewarm reply. “I’ll keep on for a while though — until we’re back in better light. You get at your radio job.”

Zaino tried. Hour after hour he juggled from one band to another. Once he had Hargedon stop while he went out to attach a makeshift antenna which, he hoped, would change his output from broadcast to some sort of beam; after this he kept probing the sky with the “beam,” first listening to the Albireo’s broadcast in an effort to find projecting wisps of ionosphere and then, whenever he thought he had one, switching on his transmitter and driving his own message at it.

Not once did he complain about lack of equipment or remark how much better he could do once he was back at the ship.

Hargedon’s silence began to carry an undercurrent of approval not usual in people who spent much time with Zaino. The technician made no further reference to the suggestion of switching drivers. They came in sight of the Albireo and doubled the chasm with Hargedon still at the wheel, Zaino still at his radio and both of them still uncertain whether any of the calls had gotten through.

Both had to admit, even before they could see the ship, that Burkett had had a right to be impressed.

The smoke column showed starkly against the sky, blowing back over the tractor and blocking the sunlight which would otherwise have glared into the driver’s eyes. Fine particles fell from it in a steady shower; looking back, the men could see tracks left by their vehicle in the deposit which had already fallen.

As they approached the ship the dark pillar grew denser and narrower, while the particles raining from it became coarser. In some places the ash was drifting into fairly deep piles, giving Hargedon some anxiety about possible concealed cracks. The last part of the trip, along the edge of the great chasm and around its end, was really dangerous, cracks running from its sides were definitely spreading. The two men reached the Albireo later than Hargedon had promised, and found Burkett waiting impatiently with a pile of apparatus beside her.

She didn’t wait for them to get out before starting to organize.

“There isn’t much here. We’ll take off just enough of what you’re carrying to make room for this. No — wait. I’ll have to check some of your equipment; I’m going to need one of Milt Schlossberg’s gadgets, I think, so leave that on. We’ll take—”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” cut in Hargedon. “Our suits need servicing, or at least mine will if you want me to drive you. Perhaps Arnie can help you load for a while, if you don’t think it’s too important for him to get at the radio—”

“Of course. Excuse me. I should have had someone out here to help me with this. You two go on in. Ren, please get back as soon as you can. I can do the work here; none of this stuff is very heavy.”

Zaino hesitated as he swung out of the cab. True, there wasn’t too much to be moved, and it wasn’t very heavy in Mercury’s gravity, and he really should be at the radio; but the thirty-nine-year-old mineralogist was a middle-aged lady by his standards, and shouldn’t be allowed to carry heavy packages. .

“Get along, Arnie!” the middle-aged lady interrupted this train of thought. “Eric and Eileen are getting farther away and harder to reach every second you dawdle!”

He got, though he couldn’t help looking northeast as he went rather than where he was going.

The towering menace in that direction would have claimed anyone’s attention. The pillar of sable ash was rising straighter, as though the wind were having less effect on it. An equally black cone had risen into sight beyond Northeast Spur — a cone that must have grown to some two thousand feet in roughly ten hours. It had far steeper sides than the cinder mounds near it; it couldn’t be made of the same loose ash. Perhaps it consisted of half-melted particles which were fusing together as they fell — that might be what Burkett had meant by “spatter-cone.” Still, if that were the case, the material fountaining from the cone’s top should be lighting the plain with its incandescence rather than casting an inky shadow for its entire height.

Well, that was a problem for the geologists; Zaino climbed aboard and settled to his task.

The trouble was that he could do very little more here than he could in the tractor. He could have improvised longer-wave transmitting coils whose radiations would have diffracted a little more effectively beyond the horizon, but the receiver on the missing vehicle would not have detected them. He had more power at his disposal, but could only beam it into empty space with his better antennae. He had better equipment for locating any projecting wisps of charged gas which might reflect his waves, but he was already located under a solid roof of the stuff — the Albireo was technically on Brightside. Bouncing his beam from this layer still didn’t give him the range he needed, as he had found both by calculation and trial.

What he really needed was a relay satellite. The target was simply too far around Mercury’s sharp curve by now for anything less.

Zaino’s final gesture was to set his transmission beam on the lowest frequency the tractor would pick up, aim it as close to the vehicle’s direction as he could calculate from map and itinerary and set the recorded return message going. He told Rowson as much.

“Can’t think of anything else?” the captain asked. “Well neither can I, but of course it’s not my field. I’d give a year’s pay if I could. How long before they should be back in range?”

“About four days. A hundred hours, give or take a few. They’ll be heading back anyway by that time.”

“Of course. Well, keep trying.”

“I am — or rather, the equipment is. I don’t see what else I can do unless a really bright idea should suddenly sprout. Is there anywhere else I could be useful? I’m as likely to have ideas working as just sitting.”

“We can keep you busy, all right. But how about taking a transmitter up one of those mountains? That would get your wave farther.”

“Not as far as it’s going already. I’m bouncing it off the ion layer, which is higher than any mountain we’ve seen on Mercury even if it’s nowhere near as high as Earth’s.”

“Hmph. All right.”

“I could help Ren and Dr. Burkett, I could hang on outside the tractor—”

“They’ve already gone. You’d better call them, though, and keep a log of what they do.”

“All right,” Zaino turned back to his board and with no trouble raised the tractor carrying Hargedon and the mineralogist. The latter had been trying to call the Albireo and had some acid comments about radio operators who slept on the job.

“There’s only one of me, and I’ve been trying to get the Darkside team,” he pointed out. “Have you found anything new about this lava flood?”

“Flow, not flood,” corrected the professional automatically. “We’re not in sight of it yet. We’ve just rounded the corner that takes us out of your sight. It’s over a mile yet, and a couple of more corners, before we get to the spot where I left it. Of course, it will be closer than that by now. It was spreading at perhaps a hundred yards an hour then. That’s one figure we must refine. Of course, I’ll try to get samples, too. I wish there were some way to get samples of the central cone. The whole thing is the queerest volcano I’ve ever heard of. Have you gotten Eileen started back?”