Hal Clement - Fossil

“Where did you find it? How deep?” he asked. “Let me call Jan; she’ll want to see it.”

“Then you’ll carry it back and do the measuring for me? Wonderful! But I didn’t find it myself. Ennissee did.”

Rekchellet stiffened, and his wings spread slightly.

“Where?” repeated the Erthuma. “And I suppose he found the other one, that was left in the truck, too?”

“Yes. We wanted that dated without having Spreadsheet-Thinker bothered. Has that been done, by the way?”

“Jan has figures,” Hugh evaded. “What about this one? Can we see the site?”

“I’m afraid not. Our means of reaching it is gone.” Barrar paused, possibly for effect. “It was under the ice at a depth of two hundred sixteen point four one kilometers.”

Hugh and Rekchellet were not just startled. They were more dumbfounded; perhaps reasonably, S’Nash seemed more interested in watching them than in pondering Ged’s statement. Hugh glanced at the other Erthumoi to see how the words affected them, and judged that they were not even listening. They had found seats across the single room and were waiting with apparent indifference. It would hardly be news to them.

“How did you get a shaft that deep? It can’t be anywhere near here; there are no pump buildings or waste piles or…”

“There was no shaft. Ennissee had financed the development of a digging vehicle which could carry explorers, usually him and one of his Erthuma helpers. It had seismic and other sensing equipment to tell of fossils or other objects nearby, and such details as its depth below the surface. He collected a great deal of material at various depths from this area, mostly root fragments, but there are a few entire bushes, too. Everything is in this building. Janice must examine it all. This specimen, however, is the prize.

“It was the mole — the digging machine — which destroyed itself just before your arrival. I do not look forward to telling Ennissee.”

“You don’t know what caused it to blow? Was anyone in it, or using it, at the time?”

“No one was aboard, and its power was off except for minor things like maintenance heaters.”

“Did it have any sort of automatic control, like the truck?”

“Oh, yes. Ennissee sometimes sent it down on test trips unoccupied. It also had remote control, and could be operated from here.” The Samian stepped over to another worktable bearing an obvious directing console and several vision screens.

“Did you ever go down in it yourself? And did you ever pilot it yourself?”

“Yes to both, though not on really deep journeys.”

“I suppose it had a standard fusion unit for its basic power.”

“So I always assumed. I don’t really know, but it seems likely. What else could there be?”

“Those aren’t supposed to be dangerous. I wonder what could have happened.” Hugh was frowning, and it did not require a Naxian to perceive his mystification. He thought for several seconds while his fingers rested. Then, “Did Ennissee have a training simulator to go with these controls, or did he teach you on actual trips?” It was a last-hope question.

“I learned by driving the real machine, under his supervision. It was not difficult.” There was another pause.

“Did he teach you any emergency procedures?”

“No. I have no idea what emergencies he had envisioned, nor what he would have done about them.”

The last hope seemed to be gone. Hugh could not believe that any rational being would design a machine without backup equipment for the more predictable sorts of failure, but he had no specimen of the machine to examine in the hope of guessing what was predictable. Equipment, even fusers, did sometimes malfunction. The trouble was that the mechanisms which used the fusion-produced energy were more usually at fault, and the fact that the building he now occupied was still intact suggested strongly that the explosion had not been nuclear. However, no further look at the explosion crater seemed likely to furnish informative remains.

“All right,” said Hugh. “Get your specimens and their documentation together. We’ll get the flier back and load them aboard. I’m afraid it will be pretty crowded; we still have a lot of food. What would you have done, Ged, if we hadn’t shown up? Wouldn’t Spreadsheet-Thinker be missing you fairly soon?”

“There was a transmitter in the mole. There are several people at Pitville who could have come for me in a flier when I called. Without communication, as I said when you arrived, I was in trouble.”

“Are you going to let Spreadsheet-Thinker add this project to her picture, now that it seems to be finished?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Eventually, yes,but I’d prefer to wait until I get detailed measurements from Janice…”

“And have written your own report, crediting her and Ennissee, of course.”

“Naturally.” Not for the first time, Hugh wished he had the Naxian power. He hated himself for it, but was beginning to feel that he couldn’t trust anyone, and wishing that he had more of his wife’s built-in civilization. He said no more, but went outside and gestured to the aircraft waiting a few hundred meters away and forty or fifty above the ice. It approached immediately; Janice had been watching.

He boarded, and as quickly as possible summed up what had just happened. His wife, who should have been delighted, frowned thoughtfully.

“It sounds exciting, but you don’t like coincidences any better than I do. I take it you want me to be very, very critical of all this material.”

“I do. A plausible motive isn’t enough for a conviction, of course. I never cared any more for Ennissee, from what I heard of him, than Rek does; but Ged and S’Nash I’ve always thought were pretty sound people. I don’t like suddenly having to wonder which one is less reliable.”

Janice nodded silently, and rearranged her features to show proper interest for this Samian’s benefit as they entered the building. This was presumably a waste of time with S’Nash, but within moments of her seeing the fragmentary Habra body the Erthuma no longer had to pretend. Her full attention and interest went into examining it for many minutes.

“I’m not a biologist,” she said, looking up at last, “and Plant-Biologist will have to get his eye into this; but as far as I’m concerned, the sooner we’re back at Pitville the better. Tell you what — maybe we could send for another flier? This one has to stay with the Habras and Crotonites, of course. Maybe you should stay out here with them anyway, Honey. You came to look around, and haven’t spent much time at it.”

“Getting rid of me?”

“Oh, no. Come back whenever you’re ready. I just didn’t want you to feel you’d wasted the flight and food and time. You haven’t as far as I’m concerned, but I didn’t think you’d be satisfied.” She kept a perfectly straight face. Hugh glanced at the Naxian, but it/he chose not to be helpful.

“All right.” Hugh could play any games his wife could, he felt sure. “Ennissee is presumably tied down for a while, so Rekchellet’s in no hurry. The others expected to stay a while anyway. We’d better ask, though — Ged, did your borer start any holes at other places around here? Ones we could check? It would be nice to know what disturbance it made of the ice it went through, and that sort of thing. Maybe we should get some ice specimens from the inside of its holes for Jan to test. Maybe she should stay and get them herself.”

“Oh, no. You can do that perfectly well.” Janice looked again at the icebound material still on the benches. “I’ll wait until you’ve called for another transport before I move this…”

“It might be better to have Ged call,” Hugh keyed. The Samian showed no Erthuma-detectable reaction to the implication even he must have perceived, but set his walker in motion toward the flier. Hugh, embarrassed, found himself following close behind, hoping that his motive was not obvious. They went aboard, and within five minutes Ged announced that another machine, large enough to hold Janice and the specimens, would be with them shortly. How the administrative head had reacted to the new information, which Ged had tent along with the request, was not mentioned.