Hal Clement - Noise

Wanaka took the advice, to the child’s delight. “Right, ’Ao. Quarter sail, Keo; if we do hit anything, we don’t want to hit it hard. Head us to starboard of the big lump. ’Ao, keep us clear of any small ones. There shouldn’t be much ice until we’re farther south, of course, but you’re right. Some of those bits could be floes, and we certainly don’t want to hit the higher stuff.”

A thought struck Hoani, and after a moment he decided it offered an excuse for a question. “You said something, a long time ago, about people who assembled bergs—big ice masses—and rode them into city latitudes to sell for water.”

“So I did. But this is a hundred times as big as anything of that sort I ever heard of. Besides, all that was long ago, early in history. Of course, someone may be playing with some improved technique. That may be why it doesn’t all look like ice.”

“And why I thought it was a city.”

“A bigger berg would lose a lot smaller percentage to melting in a given time,” Mike remarked.

“So it would. On the other hand, a piece of ice that size would lose most of itself to melting before any city could use much of it up. I don’t see why anyone would make one that big. ’Ao, take a look at that thing and see if you can spot any people on it.”

“Can’t, tautai . There’s too much of this smaller stuff floating around us, and I have to watch that. We’re starting to move, so I won’t be able to look out for anything else. Mike has good eyes, though.”

For the first time since reaching adulthood, Mata was moving under her own sail, drifting slowly over the jelly, dragging on it sometimes, but finally reaching not very open sea. Nothing, as far as anyone could tell, was under her keels but water for nearly three thousand vertical kilometers.

The huge drifter was less than a kilometer away by now.

“’Oloa, do you think it’s mostly wind or mostly current?” Wanaka called to the masthead. The doll’s owner answered.

“She’s not sure, since she doesn’t know how deep it goes, but there must be a good deal of deep current. She says to tell you, ‘Three unknowns at least, only one equation.’ I don’t know what she means, but those were the words.”

“I do. Thanks,” shouted Wanaka.

Mike knew, too, and assumed that Keokolo did.

Keo, at the tiller, guided them close enough to one of the small floating objects to give everyone a good look. For a minute or two they examined it silently.

It was about three meters across and extended something over half that distance above the surface. If it had much vertical symmetry, which seemed doubtful, it must be nearly spherical. There was indeed ice covering much of the thing, but under, or inside, that ice was some much darker material. Keo hove to, a few meters from whatever it was, without waiting for orders. Its motion was almost entirely current controlled, apparently, like their own at this point.

“Shall I take a real look, Captain?” asked the mate.

Wanaka shook her head negatively. “Mike,” she said slowly, “take a safety line and see what you can make of it.”

The order made sense. The thing was unfamiliar to the natives; Hoani was as likely as they to make some sense out of it—perhaps more likely. If he got into trouble, Wanaka and Keokolo were much better qualified to help him than he would be to help them. He flipped his helmet forward, latched it, and went overboard. Two or three strokes, even with his limited—by Kainui standards—swimming skills, brought him against the object. He could not, of course, remove his helmet, but the others were close enough to read his fingers. He reported after only a minute or two of examination.

“The light stuff is ice, all right. It should be melting; I suppose it is. It feels a lot colder than the water. What there is above the water line is mostly dark stuff glued together by ice, but just below the surface and as far down as I can see there’s more ice and less of the dark stuff. It’s mostly orange and red in color. Just a minute. It’s either bobbing up and down a lot, or staying put as the waves pass; there’s no telling which.” The others had seen this already, and given up much hope of Mike’s being able to make a detailed examination, but Wanaka made a brief, encouraging gesture.

Mike turned back to the floe for a moment, then faced Mata again with a golf ball-sized fragment that showed no ice coating at all resting on his palm, and held it up for the others to see. “Shall I bring this aboard, or could it be something that shouldn’t touch the hull?”

“Bring it. Just don’t pound on anything with it,” replied the captain. Keo gently pulled Mike back by his safety line, allowing him to give full attention to keeping the specimen from striking the hull. Hoani reached up, handed it to Wanaka, and climbed aboard. Examination was interrupted briefly by a call from the masthead.

“Keo! Maneuver! There’s another one closing in.” The mate sprang to the tiller, and started to work Mata over to a less crowded area. The motions of the floes had a random component; they were high enough to be affected by wind, but no two were more than vaguely alike in shape. The captain stopped him almost at once. “Heave to again. There’s no dodging everything. Look.” She gestured around.

Every two or three meters there floated a dark, apparently ice-free fragment of the red-brown material. The hulls had already struck a number of the pieces, apparently with no damage; the impacts had not been hard enough to attract attention, though Hoani suspected there’d better be another close paint check before long. He lay down on the deck, reached overside, and picked up a much larger ice-free piece. This one crumbled into almost invisibly small particles in his grip.

The fragments that fell back into the water sank at once, to his surprise. He thought about this for a moment while getting back on his feet. The others had not, apparently, seen; the adults were still examining the first specimen, and ’Ao on her masthead wasn’t close enough.

The captain looked up, first at the mate and then at Hoani.

“ ’Amu ,” she said firmly, “but I’ve never seen any just like this. Have you, Keo?”

To Mike, the word was a general Samoan one for coral , but must, he was sure, carry a different meaning here; this ocean was far too acidic for anything made of calcium carbonate, and silica wasn’t an option.

“The big pieces float higher than ice,” he pointed out vocally. The others looked at him quizzically. He lay down once more, reached overboard, and repeated his previous attempt to pick up one of the dark floating fragments. The result was the same, including the behavior of the crumbled bits. Wanaka nodded thoughtfully.

“Full of air cells whose walls break very easily. I wonder why they last as long as they do? That whole piece pulverized under finger pressure, but some of them have hit the hulls time after time without collapsing; and that big chunk you took this one from…I don’t understand. Does this remind you of anything you’ve seen on Earth—or anywhere else?”

Mike had to admit it didn’t.

“Air cells would account for the low overall density,” he admitted slowly, “and the actual cell walls must be a lot denser; but why are they so fragile under one treatment but hold together, as they’d pretty well have to, under storms, waves, hail, and other ways this world of yours can beat things up?”

Since he had merely restated Wanaka’s implicit question, he got no answer.

’Ao called their attention to another bit of data.

“Look! The big piece is turning over!”

It was, though not very rapidly. The side toward Mata was rising, revealing a new ice-coral mixture. Mike wondered briefly whether his removal of a few grams from the near side had upset some remarkably delicate equilibrium, but decided as the turning went on that this couldn’t be the answer. The lump did not stop rolling until it had made something like a third of an overturn. Not an exact half, they all could see, though it was now evident that its overall shape was very nearly a sphere.