Hal Clement - Fossil

“I’ll have to go back to Pitville with your wife,” he added. “I can’t stay out of touch with Spreadsheet-Thinker for the days it will lake you to get back. There’s no use my talking to your wife, though, until she has the information and I can start writing. She may want to give some guidance in the wording, too, I expect; I suppose it will really be her article, too. We won’t have to wait for Ennissee, though; I’ll simply give him support credit for developing the mole.”

“And operating it.”

“Well, of course.”

“Mightn’t he want to describe some of the under-ice search activities and problems?”

“Well, yes. We’d belter consult him, at that. Do you suppose he can talk while his wing treatment’s going on?”

“Rekchellet could,” Hugh assured him, and rejoined his wife, shaking his head gently. He had encountered jealousy in the exploring field, but it had always seemed to him that there were enough worlds to go around. Greed for publishing credit was not exactly arcana to him, but he had never before met it face on.

The other craft appeared overhead, flashed past trailing its sonic shock wave, slowed, and settled beside the building. The loading took a surprisingly long time, as Janice took extreme precautions to make sure that all Ennissee’s notes remained with the right specimens, or as nearly with them as they already were. Her initial examination had left some doubt about some of them, which the Samian was sometimes but not always able toresolve. Neither of the Erthumoi seemed able to help, though it was hard to be sure with no appropriate translator modules available. They had made trips in the mole, Barrar had said; but they seemed to be mainly muscle and hand labor in Ennissee’s project.

Eventually, however, Janice and Barrar entered the new flier, whose Locrian pilot had never left it, and moments later it had vanished in the east.

Hugh, rather deflated, set up the search arrangements which had been planned earlier in case nothing had been found, and waited for dreary hours while the activities neared and reached their anticlimax. He spent some of the time exploring two or three tunnels made by the mole, whose location had been provided by Barrar, but obtained little information. For one thing, they were extremely steep and smooth-walled; descending them on foot was hazardous, not so much because falls might be dangerous as because return might be impossible. Foresight worked.

The scouring of the area by his flying personnel provided nothing except basic science information; the patterns of the ice surface itself offered fascinating clues to what might be going on below, and Hugh thought a little wistfully about the seismic studies S’Nash had proposed earlier. Maybe, with Barrar revealing himself more widely as a would-be Respected Opinion candidate, something might be done about that without anyone’s having to be underhanded.

But right now, nothing having any imaginable bearing on the Truck Problem was appearing. Actually, it looked as though the problem itself were pretty well solved in all but minor details. Had Barrar, for example, actually been responsible in some subtle way for finding the lost Crotonite? Or was he merely trying to give that impression?

Once again, Hugh felt the acute discomfort of realizing that he could no longer completely trust someone.

Perhaps. The “perhaps” was the worst part.

The trip back to Pitville was a little less boring. There was room for more people on board now, with Janice and much of the food gone; this was fortunate, because the two Erthuma had to be carried.

There was no adequate way to talk with them; their translators seemed to work only between Ennissee’s speech, which none of Hugh’s Crotonite group knew, and their own Erthumoi languages — different ones; they could talk to each other readily enough, but had to use translators. They had kept to themselves during the stay at the explosion site, eating their own supplies — their environment armor was not full-recycling — and sleeping on air cots which were set up in one corner of the building; but when Hugh gathered his flying group and sent them in close formation on an eastward course, with the once again rising Fafnir ahead and to their left, the pair had no trouble interpreting the situation. They pointed to themselves and to Hugh’s aircraft; when Hugh nodded assent, they salvaged some cartons of food from the building and went aboard.

Their lack of appropriate translator modules helped ease the boredom of the flight; Hugh made a serious effort to learn the language of one of them, something he had never really attempted before and had no real idea how to do.

The one who had offered her help in the exercise answered to the name of Mahare Chen. She had a slightly different skin shade and facial shape, especially around the eyes, than the Falgan norm, but Hugh had seen Erthumoi displaying far wider appearance variations and was conscious of this only as a recognition feature. Before they had been exchanging noises and sketches for very long it was clear that she claimed to be from the original home world of the Erthumoi. Hugh had learned a little Swahili as part of required Human History during his basic education, but this proved not to be the right tongue, and progress remained slow.

Rekchellet’s drawing skills proved useful occasionally, but the Crotonite could not remain aboard for long at a time. He left his pad and stylus with Hugh, somewhat reluctantly the latter felt sure, and the equipment did resolve an occasional impasse in hand signs. Mahare was a better artist than Hugh, but far below Rekchellet’s level. Once or twice even S’Nash was of some help by explaining that a particular sketch had produced more humor, or concealed anger, than enlightenment, though it/he could never give a reason for the reaction.

Personal names and most of the immediately appropriate nouns came across fairly quickly. Hugh could name Naxian and Crotonite and human being and Habra in the Erthuma language without making his listener laugh at his accent; he could name the planet and speak of flying and walking and crawling and a few other activities, since the others were not wearing recycling armor and the flier lacked equivalent facilities and had to land occasionally. The world’s name sounded like “I-Bawl;” a Crotonite was a “Snutibat,” and a Naxian an “Eednite.” Sometimes there was more than one word, not surprisingly; when Rekchellet drew the specimen which Janice had taken back to Pitville ahead of them, Mahare called it a “Palaksee” or a “Pilldahn,” though she had called the living Habras “Needulz.” She had also glanced at her companion and laughed for no obvious reason. Hugh had no success relating any of these sounds to his own language; apparently even the comparatively few centuries separating Falga’s population from Earth had allowed, or possibly caused, too much linguistic evolution to permit easy tracing.

The whole flight time was not, by any means, spent at language lessons; Mahare sometimes slept, sometimes chattered at length to her tall male companion through their translators, sometimes sat and thought or simply watched the Habranhan icescape below or sky above as they flew. If there was any connection between the two other than their common employment by Ennissee, It never became obvious.

Both passengers knew the word “Pwanpwan,” and used it often enough to make Hugh realize that they hoped to get there eventually. He assumed that there would be no great difficulty about this, but tried not to make any signs likely to be taken as a promise that he would carry them there either himself or at once.

As it turned out, this was no problem. Hugh reported arrival to Ged as they slanted down toward the lights of Pitville, mentioning his passengers, and did not even have to arrange quarters for them after he landed. The small flier which had brought him and Reekess back from Pwanpwan was waiting beside the warehouse, as was Ged Barrar himself. The Samian shepherded the two Erthumoi aboard with almost discourteous haste, and they were gone before Hugh had a chance to more than wave a farewell.