Hal Clement - Noise

They wandered for half a day over the plateau without finding anything more to cause deep thought. They found two more craters, both nearly full of hailstones. There seemed no particular reason to retrace their original path up, since there had been no arrangement about where to meet Mata , and with breathing, eating, and drinking stores running rather low the pair finally just headed downhill—with normal care, of course. If the ship were continuing to circumnavigate the berg, they’d be spotted soon enough, they assumed. If it weren’t; or didn’t seem to be, they’d have to decide for themselves when to start their own circumambulation. At least, there’d be no question about which way to go; the captain had assured them she’d circle to the right as she saw the ice mass, so going to their right was their safer alternative.

Actually, both were out of food when the catamaran hove into view. She was only a short distance from the ice, and ’Ao saw them from her masthead almost as soon as they sighted the vessel.

What the men did not see was the pods that had been left around the berg’s circumference to mark the water line. Keo noticed their absence first, and wondered aloud whether they had served their purpose in the last two-plus days and been recovered, or had been lost in some way. The latter was no worry, except as a matter of policy, of course; there was even more fresh hail on the berg than they had realized before, though it would have to be carried an inconvenient distance. Keo was more concerned than Mike, of course, his upbringing being what it had been.

They were more than a hundred meters from the edge, but the ice between was smooth. They took the easiest way to the water, still roped together of course. Neither was able to keep from a certain amount of spinning, and Mike almost failed to close his helmet in time. Their joint splash impressed ’Ao more than it did the captain, but they were aboard in moments. Mike let the mate report first. He did it tersely, and ended with a question.

“Are we still heading south?”

“Yes, more or less. About one-sixty. At more than two meters a second now, ’Oloa says.”

“What happened to the markers?”

“We recovered them when they started to float. You don’t have to make up your mind now, Mike; this thing is sinking. And waves aren’t the only things that can round off the ice, I expect you now realize.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Waterspouts, rain, and probably things I haven’t thought of yet. And it’s sinking because a lot of ice is melting down below.”

“And it’s going south because?”

Mike was silent for some seconds.

“Because it’s got a better grip on the deep currents!” ’Ao offered.

“If it’s melting enough down below to sink, how is it reaching farther down?” asked Wanaka. The child was silent in her turn. She even glanced at Mike, who had nothing to say either.

Keo expressed a thought with no obvious connection to the problem. “Hadn’t we better get away from here?”

“I—don’t—think—so,” the captain answered slowly and thoughtfully. “Maybe staying around will give us our best chance of finding out what our cargo is worth.” All waited for some seconds for a more detailed explanation, but the next one to speak was the child, in very excited tones.

“You think there are people here!” she exclaimed.

“Unless you or Mike or Keo can come up with a purely natural answer to what’s been happening, yes. You can’t disprove miracles, of course, but sane people don’t count on them. If you can’t find a simple natural explanation, people are the next best. Always.”

“So do we tie up, or keep circling?” asked Keo practically.

“Circle. I certainly want to talk to anyone here, but I want us to have a choice, too. Besides, we don’t know how much up-and-down oscillation this thing may have at max.”

“When do you expect to see the people?” asked ’Ao.

“About an hour after they see us, if they haven’t already. That’s another reason to keep moving. I can’t guess where they are, except it’s probably not on this chunk of ice, and don’t know which way they’ll be coming from, and if we tie up it could be on just the wrong side.”

“Why don’t you think they’re on the berg?” asked Keokolo.

“Because you and Mike and ’Ao didn’t find any sign of them except the evidence that this thing was grown.”

“But there’s something like four square kilometers there, a lot of it too bumpy to let us see anyone else from more than a few meters, even without the haze. The fact that we didn’t see any tunnel openings doesn’t mean a thing.”

“But if there are people here they’ll maintain some sort of watch, and they’d have seen us long ago.”

“Maybe they did, and are just hoping we’ll go away again,” suggested ’Ao. That thought stopped the captain for a moment, and probably earned the child a few more points.

“That might be,” Wanaka said slowly. “The iceberg-sellers, I’ve heard, didn’t like either guests or passengers; there were tricks to maneuvering them they didn’t want others to know. Still, if there’s anything this piece of ice doesn’t resemble, it’s a water-for-sale chunk. For one thing, it’s far too big. If there are people here hoping we’ll go away, they can change their minds when we don’t.” It wasn’t quite an order, but was certainly a clear decision.

But even Wanaka began to wonder as the days went by, Mata and the berg drove ever southward, and the temperature began to drop farther and farther.

The ice continued to sink; they attempted no actual measurements, but Mike estimated that a good dozen vertical meters of ice had settled below the water level since their first trip “ashore.” The best evidence was the change in the shoreline; from a relatively smooth oval, it had become indented with more than a dozen bays—they were not nearly steep-walled enough to be called fjords—reaching two or three hundred meters toward the interior.

There had also been enough thunderstorms and waterspouts to confirm the notion that these could be responsible for rounding off the berg’s humps and projections; waves weren’t necessary, though they might help. The berg was definitely melting; excursions by swimmers suggested that Mata could easily have collected a full cargo of melted-out coral spikes if anyone could have seen any value in them.

The spikes were still floating when they melted free; they were still less dense than the water, though that could simply mean that the surface layers of the ocean were now noticeably saltier. Mata was certainly floating a trifle higher. The berg was sinking nevertheless, so an even more impressive amount of ice must be melting. The southward speed was increasing, no longer by very much but enough to make it harder to understand why the melting berg could get a better grip on any deep current. The wind certainly wasn’t helping; there was practically none of that now. The ship was reaching the mid-latitude zone of calms, and there was less and less free choice involved in Wanaka’s still solid determination to stay with the shrinking, sinking growth—as she still claimed it to be. It was now by far the largest source of fresh water within reach, though of course there were still thunderstorms enough to prevent worry. Even in a zone of calms and with lower temperature, water vapor is less dense than air—especially Kainui’s air—and an ocean needs very little outside heat to spawn thunderheads.

The real surprises came when they were on the west side of the ice. These were, first, the sight of four sailing craft appearing almost simultaneously through the haze in a formation that neatly cut Mata off from the open sea; and moments later more than a dozen sound-armored human forms walking easily toward them on the ice from the opposite direction. Mike’s first, unvoiced, question was how such a maneuver could possibly have been timed, considering Kainui’s long-range communication problems. What the other adults were thinking he had no idea, and it didn’t occur to him to wonder about ’Ao or her doll.