Hal Clement - Still River

“More likely in a physics lab than a planetology one, though,” Molly returned. She was about to ask Joe whether he didn’t agree with this point, when she remembered that it would not be tactful to suggest that he take sides in their debate. She was a little surprised to hear his voice anyway.

“We can’t afford to forget how the disciplines interlock,” he pointed out quietly. “Our studies here are no less physics than are those in a particle lab. If anything, we have more factors operating at once on any given observation; our problem would be to recognize the breakthrough when we encountered it, I fear.”

“Well, Charley’s right on one point, anyway. If I could write this up for home and bypass the School sealing, somehow—no, I can see why that wouldn’t be very popular. Bottom in sight yet, Carol?”

“Just. With my light, I think my eyes do better here than yours, though I’m certainly not sure. I’m definitely getting closer, and I can see light and dark as you did, though I’ll have to wait to be sure my light isn’t your dark, I suppose.”

“Not too likely, if her light areas were the metal crystals,” pointed out Jenny.

“True. Here we come. I can’t see where you hit the fluff, Molly, but the stuff is so irregular that it might be any of the hollows. One trouble is that I can’t get this light very far away from myself, so there’s no shadow perspective to speak of. Depth is hard to judge. I won’t try to make any collections until I’m at the edge of the crystals; then maybe I’ll get some of your sticky stuff. No, skip that; I’ll catch up to you and reset your robot first, and we’ll do the research coming back. All right?”

“All right. I hope it won’t be too much longer. This passage is opening out larger and larger, and the wind has dropped so I can’t feel it any more, and the floor is bare rock—the whole thing is boring, and I’m getting rather tired of it for the moment.”

It was still a number of minutes, in spite of her higher speed, before Carol could report the cavern wall in sight ahead of her.

“Have you left the crystal region? I had before I could see the wall.”

“The fluff is gone, yes. There’s something else on the ground, though. You must have been able to see it. It’s white; lighter than the sand on the surface. You’d have gone after it for some of your ice…”

“I didn’t see anything of the sort. It’s white to your eyes; we’ll have to get a real reflection spectrum. Collect it, by all means. I can wait for that.”

“Sure thing.” Carol dropped to the ground, trotting behind the robot, and bent to scoop up some of the white material, bringing it close to her lamp. Then she stopped where she was.

“Molly! It’s not snow or ice, or metal crystals. It’s plastic—muddy—sticky…”

“Prelife?” came Jenny’s eager voice.

“Jenny—Molly—it’s growing. It’s alive.”

“I didn’t see it!” said Molly firmly.

“Of course you didn’t. Not on this planet.” Joe’s voice was equally firm.

“Carol!” Charley almost shrieked. “Are you on your robot?”

“No, but I can see it. Thanks, Charley, I forgot for a minute. There—it’s just going into an opening in the cave wall.

I’ll be up to it in a moment—there. Back on board. You had me scared for a moment, but I knew better than to set this thing to go faster than I could.”

“Does the place match Molly’s description?” There was an impressive silence lasting several seconds before the Shervah’s voice came back.

“No. Not in the least. She didn’t find any life, either.”

“Better stop right now!” exclaimed Charley.

“Thanks. A good idea,” replied the Shervah, almost as tonelessly as Joe’s usual style. “I’ll need to be careful with this rope as I retrace, though there shouldn’t be enough of it to make a real tangle. Can you suggest whether I should go right or left when I get back to the big cave?”

“I take it we were too optimistic about the constancy of the wind,” Molly opined before Charley could react as she feared he might. He could read sarcasm in words, with or without tones.

“That would seem to be it. I think I’ll stop the machine and hunt on foot along the wall; that will be quicker than recoiling rope if I pick the wrong direction first time.”

“Unless you encounter some of that sticky material Molly reported,” interjected Charley.

“That’s a point. I’ll be very careful if anything but bare rock is underfoot. I’m back out of that tunnel and am stopping the robot. There.”

“Bare rock, or more of this live stuff you just reported?” asked Jenny.

“Patches of both. Don’t distract me now. I’m going along the wall, to my left as one faces it. The cave floor is dipping noticeably downhill, and the wall at my side is rough enough and slopes back enough so I think I could climb it in this gravity. You certainly could, Jenny. Now I’m at the bottom of the dip as far as the wall base is concerned, though the floor out to my left is lower still. I think I see a puddle of liquid there—you didn’t spot anything of that sort, either, did you, Molly?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I don’t see how you could have missed it. Our tracks diverged, all right.”

“How deep is the puddle?” came Jenny’s grating tone.

“I can’t tell from here but will find out later if there’s a chance. I’m heading uphill again. I’ll go a little over a kilo this way, and if I don’t find any match with what Molly saw I’ll come back and do the other direction. It’s all bare rock now, none of the living stuff and none of the crystals—I can’t help wondering if they’re alive, too. Ddravgh!”

“Symbol?” queried four voices politely.

“Sorry. Impolite. I stepped on something extremely slippery. Just a moment while I get upright again. Maybe it was water ice, Molly—remember those skating sessions? If one would only fall with decent speed here, there wouldn’t be time for one’s feet to get so far from underneath.”

“What did you slip on? Please collect it!”

“All right, I guess Molly can spare a quarter of a minute. It’s a very thin layer, and not easy to scrape off the rock, but—ah, I don’t have to get it from the rock. I have some on my armor. It’s slimy, not brittle; sorry, Mol, I guess it can’t be your ice.”

“With your mass, and the local gravity and temperature, would even water ice have been slippery?” asked Joe.

“I’m not sure,” the Human replied thoughtfully. “That point didn’t occur to me. I just think of water ice when I think ice, and I think of ice as slippery. Well, it was a nice hope while it lasted.”

“Now relax, Jenny, we’ll get it to you some time,” Carol continued. “I’m traveling again.” She fell silent, and for several minutes no one else found anything to say.

Then the Shervah reported again. “That’s the limit I set to the left. I’m heading back to the robot. There was nothing but that slippery patch to watch out for, so I’m going a lot faster. I’ll reach the machine in a minute or two.”

Rather to Molly’s surprise—her optimism was suffering another setback—this confidence proved justified and the small woman set out on the opposite leg of her journey. Molly’s presumed path was not within this range, either; and once again back at the robot, Carol had to make a decision.

“You should come back and go out again when we make a mapping robot of the sort Joe suggested. It seems there is a complicated set of caves down there, that the winds change capriciously—or at least that we do not yet know the pattern of their changes—and a real map will be needed” was Jenny’s firm opinion. Joe said nothing; rather to Molly’s surprise, Charley was also silent. She herself did not feel very objective at this point. She very much hoped that Carol would not go back, but for purely Human reasons was embarrassed to say anything.