Hal Clement - Fossil

“I wish I’d been with him when you made the suggestion.”

“I’m sure you’d have enjoyed yourself. I suggest you visit Ged and see whether he’ll include you in the group. It’s a pity you can’t influence feelings.” The Naxian’s answer was slightly hesitant.

“You have a procedure called tact which I’ve been watching you use with Crotonites. I am not sure of my own expertise in it, of course, but trying it on a Samian will at least be interesting. Thank you very much, Hugh.” The Naxian left, apparently deep in thought.

S’Nash was lucky, luckier than either Erthuma felt that it/he had a right to be, on two counts. It/he arrived at Barrar’s office just as the Samian, in his slow way, finally got around to calling the Naxian hospital. He was hoping, without regard for Rekchellet’s desires, to get from Ennissee where the frozen bodies had been found; and S’Nash was able to enjoy his reaction when the Naxians assured him they had no Crotonite under treatment. Ged’s next call was to the Guild office, which informed him casually that Ennissee, still with his prosthesis, had left Habranha long before on a Crotonite hyperjump vessel. For once, even a Samian was easy to read, S’Nash said later.

It/he then practiced tact by offering to tell Rekchellet this news so as to spare Barrar the touchy task, and Samian gratitude got the Naxian a place in the forthcoming expedition, after only a little argument.

Whereupon S’Nash went in search of Rekchellet and broke the news of Ennisee’s departure. The results were all it/he could have hoped, even to a momentary thrill of fear for its/his own safety. The Erthumoi admitted they would like to have watched.

In spite of their low speed, two trucks were used for the search; they would want to bring the bodies back if they found them. Hugh and Janice took turns driving one. Rekchellet taught them what he knew of the autodriver, but they seldom bothered to engage it, merely allowing it to record their path. It had been decided not to bring Ennissee’s former helpers along, and the other truck was handled by Barrar, with S’Nash, and two of Counter-of-Supplies Erthumoi stock handlers to furnish muscle. Rekchellet and one Habra, Miriam — Ted was enjoying Pit work too much to come along — accompanied the vehicles but seldom entered them. Plant-Biologist rode with Hugh and Janice since it was fairly likely that the bodies would once more have been covered by drifting ice dust. The Locrian liked to discuss his subject, but got little chance, since his Erthumoi companions were reveling in the new freedom of their vocal cords.

The area described was about three hundred kilometers north and a little east of Pitville, not too far from open ocean. The notion that the victims they were seeking had perished in a more or less ordinary Habranhan storm seemed reasonable. The Erthumoi had learned from their native friends that this was not very unusual; the disappearance of even a large party near the terminator would probably not have gotten into history.

Chen and Spear had given detailed descriptions of the landscape where the discovery had been made, and it seemed unusual enough to offer little trouble. The spot was at the foot of a nearly vertical cliff, some three hundred meters high and several kilometers long, extending northeast-southwest, faulting had not, as far as anyone had seen, played a large part in forming the topography of the Solid Ocean. This was what had attracted Ennissee’s attention in the first place; much of his early searching had consisted of examining the cliff face, and much of the testing of his mole had been at its base.

Finding what seemed to be the right neighborhood proved easy enough. Narrowing the search down from that point turned out to be more awkward, however.

About half the five kilometer length of the cliff had — not exactly collapsed, but seemed to have been partly melted. Rekchellet’s immediate conclusion was that Ennissee had come back with a heavy duty heat beam to destroy traces of his work. This appeared much less likely to the others, but argument seemed pointless. Habranha’s chaotic weather might very well have brought a mass of warm air, or even a heavy rainstorm, even this far beyond the terminator. The Crotonite asked sarcastically why a cliff which must have stood for hundreds of Common Years — even he did not claim thousands, on this world — should pick the present moment to get itself destroyed. He was not impressed by Hugh’s answer that one time on Habranha was as likely as any other, and that he was showing a rather Erthumoi attitude toward coincidence. This silenced, but did not convince, him.

After some hours at the still undisturbed part of the cliff face, one of the mole’s test tunnels was found, and a little later another. The separation of the two could be matched with the detailed instructions given by Chen and Spear, and led the party to the edge of what would have been called a talus slope on a silicate world. The upper part of the cliff had been partly melted, but much had simply broken away; jagged ice boulders extended a hundred meters from the cliff’s foot and formed a heap lying against the vertical face.

Half an hour of careful searching by the Locrian, who was in turn being carefully watched by Janice, revealed a suspicious object at approximately ground level under the heap only a short distance from the escarpment’s foot. Even Plant-Biologist could not see distinctly through that much broken and tumbled ice, to the Erthuma’s intense interest, and a difficult and dangerous job of digging had to be started. There were no heat projectors with the group. There were no picks, either, to Hugh’s disgust; it should have been obvious, he growled loudly, that something besides shovels would be required. Not all the ice on Habranha was fine dust. The shovels were strong enough to be used for chipping, but progress was slow until Rekchellet flew back to Pitville and had two picks improvised in the shop there. No one was willing to wait until a sweeper with a heat beam could be driven to the site, and none of the sweepers would fit through the lock of an aircraft.

Since Hugh had provided careful specifications, the tools brought back had two disadvantages. They were light enough for Rekchellet to carry in flight, which meant that they were too light to make full use of Erthumoi muscles; and they were too heavy as well as having poorly shaped handles for anyone but the Erthumoi.

They took turns digging. S’Nash and Barrar watched, Plant-Biologist climbed about and over the heap in search of a spot from which he could see into it more clearly, and the fliers scoured the area from above in the faint hope of learning that tunneling would not be needed after all.

Three or four hours of chipping and prying brought the diggers close enough to allow the Locrian to state with certainty that a number of Habra forms were indeed embedded in the ice ahead, so that the party was either at the right place or one equally worth examining.

Rekchellet promptly pointed out that Ennissee was obviously responsible for the melting and general cliff damage, just as he had claimed earlier; this time even Barrar wondered whether he might be right. The nondiggers now congregated around the mouth of the tunnel and as far inside as they could get. Barrar and Miriam could now make themselves useful carrying ice fragments away from the digging face, and strained their various senses to determine details of what still lay some meters ahead.

Plant-Biologist informed them happily that the Habra forms were surrounded and more or less intermingled with tumbleweeds and other local vegetation, and thereafter focused most of his attention on this material. Miriam was beginning to get some details of the Habra bodies through her electrical senses.