Hal Clement - Noise

Days later still, and well south of latitude minus forty-five, there appeared yet another of the big mysteries. This one, however, did not rise nearly as high above the sea or appear nearly so spherical as the earlier ones, and ’Ao reported it as “something big” rather than a city. Wanaka, staring unblinkingly at it, shifted Mata ’s heading to an almost straight-in approach. Mike was not alone in imagining a firm-set expression on the hidden mouth. None of them needed imagination to see that this thing was far lighter in color than the others and had many more of the bright, sparkling points that had proven in the others to be ice.

The general opinion, voiced by Keo, was that this was actually much like the others but had recently completed a turnover. Approaching it should be relatively safe.

No one wondered seriously why, if it had just turned over as a result of its formerly submerged ice’s melting, it should now be lighter in color than the earlier ones. Mike, without the benefit of anyone else’s opinion, guessed privately that since they were farther from the equator there might have been more ice in the mixture to start with.

The captain again ordered the doll to calculate as best it could how far into the deep currents this one reached. She got the same nonanswer as before, more quickly this time. The currents were only known very loosely, as calculated from their latitude and generally accepted circulation theory; the depth the object might draw was completely unguessable.

By this time even ’Ao knew about simultaneous equations. She had proved it with a navigation solution—done in her head, to Hoani’s astonishment but no one else’s, apparently—and now boasted several more points on her suit and displayed correspondingly higher morale. She had admitted to him once, when the others were out of hearing, that she hoped sometime to be the youngest shipmaster in history. Mike had, of course, no idea how much farther she had to go along this course, and the child herself was not very specific on the point. He couldn’t help wonder just how clear she was herself about it. By his standards she was a ten-year-old, with a ten-year-old’s vague ideas about adulthood; but her education had certainly followed a different course from that of his own childhood back on Earth. He couldn’t guess what and how much she still had to learn.

No one was greatly worried about overturn risks as they approached the floating object, which was now looking less and less like a city and more and more like a very dirty and wave-worn iceberg. In spite of this change, Wanaka had again ordered ’Ao to keep alert for signs of people and water craft. Everyone else did the same from deck level without orders.

And without success.

There was far less flotsam this time as they approached under greatly reduced sail—Keo and Mike were kept busy trimming, following the captain’s orders from her own station at the tiller. These were sometimes vocal and sometimes in Finger, as the thunder far overhead varied in volume. It was no accident that symbols in that language that had to do with ship handling could always be managed by one—either—hand. What small floating objects there were seemed to consist, to everyone’s surprise, of nearly pure ice. There was coral in occasional pieces of this, but it was lighter in color, much closer to yellow than the dark red they had seen earlier, and surprisingly regular in size and shape. It was much less fragile, too; at Wanaka’s order, Mike gathered several specimens and had no trouble this time with their breaking up.

Keo had been watching very carefully on his own initiative for what he had seen earlier—any signs that this big mass might be rising, however slowly; but they hove to only a few dozen meters from the huge but apparently uninhabited object with no reason other than recent memory to make them worry.

“Keo, the water is very shallow; the ice goes out a lot farther from the water line than we are. Toss two grapnels. Bow and stern.” The mate complied without comment. Wanaka gestured ’Ao down to the deck, without bothering to look up herself. All remained silent for some minutes, examining every detail close enough to be seen clearly through the haze. Mike, still much more conscious of each thunderclap than any native, focused his own attention on items that looked less stable than most, wondering what effect the heavy sound waves might have on them. There were actually very few such features; he felt pretty sure that, however stable the whole mass might be, the lower parts they could now see had spent some time close enough to the water line to have experienced wave action. Most irregularities seemed rounded.

The few exceptions even he could explain. They were far up, almost too high for details to show, but they were possible pits and certainly fragments and shatter marks that might have been left by explosions.

This did not have to indicate habitation, recent or otherwise; as far as he had heard, chemical explosives were not used on Kainui. He had certainly never heard a word recognizably close to that meaning in any locally spoken language, and couldn’t offhand think of any use for such material here—though that, he realized, was not a reliable guide. There would always be lots he didn’t know about the Kainui people.

The explosions could be natural, though. The lowest few hundred meters of Kainui’s atmosphere was much too good a conductor to allow electrical charge to build up locally; all the lightning was higher, ordinarily cloud-to-cloud. ’Ao’s normal duty station was perfectly safe. The organically grown cities, however, had to be grounded to salt water; that, he knew, was one of the principal uses of copper on the planet. The grounds didn’t last very long; they corroded, melted, or otherwise succumbed to electrochemical action.

This city-sized object seemed to extend quite far enough above sea level to be vulnerable to lightning, and lightning striking a surface composed largely of ice would certainly experience explosions. Mike began looking for items that might represent scattered fragments on the lower, presumably wave-smoothed areas.

He said nothing, as usual, hoping that one of the others might make a remark that would tell him how far his planetary ignorance was misguiding him.

The captain eventually spoke, but not very helpfully.

“Mike, I’ve heard that ice is more slippery than a wet deck, even on slopes. Do you have any experience with it?”

“Yes. Lots. You get it on Aotearoa’s South Island, which has many high mountains. I’m a good—” he paused, and had to spend a minute or two getting the basics of skiing and the meaning of “mountain” and the differences between snow and ice across to his listeners. Wanaka finally nodded.

“Will it be hard or dangerous to walk or climb on this thing, then?”

“Quite likely. If there are enough small chips of the coral mixed in as there seemed to be in the others it may be safe enough, but all we’ve seen here are pretty big. I suggest you let me try it first. If I do slip, at least I won’t be taken by surprise.”

“Neither will I,” interjected ’Ao. “I’ve slipped on deck lots of times.”

“On a deck with lots of grab lines, and which is rocking so that downhill turns to uphill before you’ve gone very far. Do you think you’d be safe on one that kept you going downhill for thirty of forty ship lengths, interrupted here and there by a piece of coral big enough and sharp enough and hard enough, if the ones we’ve been picking up here are any indication, to rip off half your armor as you went by—toward the water?”

The child seemed unconvinced, but the captain wasn’t.

“How safe will you be?” she asked Hoani. He shrugged, though his noise armor concealed the gesture pretty well.