Hal Clement - Noise

“I thought we had a pretty good load now.”

“No. We were asked to put the rest of it ashore before the last launch, and nearly all our other metal as well.”

“And we’re getting them some more? Didn’t ’Ao tell you they had a lot of tethered fish?”

“Yes. It’s not for them. I’m hoping to get us some more.”

Mike, reverting to type, didn’t ask why, but did have another question. “Since we don’t know it’s still there, how long will we look for it?”

“One day. Then close enough to pure north to reach Muamoku latitude as soon as possible.”

Mike’s relieved feelings must have showed on his face, but the captain didn’t seem to notice. He asked permission to sleep and went to the cabin without thinking to ask about the water supply. The trivial thought did slip across his consciousness that the captain obviously would never say “up” north. Kainuian charts weren’t pictorial.

He learned, after waking up many hours later, that the breakers had been essentially full this time; there seemed to have been no effort to drain them again and, he was told, no evidence that the previous emptying had been done by violence. The drain taps must have been used, and since Mike himself had found them closed, shut again by whoever had done the job. That left another minor question or two: why had it been done at all in the first place, and why not again?

It did not occur, and never would have occurred, to Mike that Wanaka and Keo had only his own report as evidence that the tanks had ever been emptied at all, or that the captain would ever have allowed mere courtesy to interfere with getting the answer to an obviously important question, or even that she would have regarded the term “mere courtesy” as an oxymoron like “only theory.”

Aorangi had made a great deal of progress south while they were there. They had sailed for several days longer than on the fish-to-city trip when ’Oloa told them that they were in the neighborhood of the gold source. To Wanaka’s unconcealed delight, this was still afloat and took less than four hours to find.

’Ao was left at the masthead this time, with Mike on deck and only the other two mining. Now that they knew the system, however, things went much faster. The fish still showed no signs of imminent submersion when they had taken aboard all they dared; Mike wondered whether another design flaw was showing up or merely that its leaves were slower picking up energy this far south. He raised the question, but no one could either choose between the possibilities or suggest a better one.

Then at last at Mata headed north. Not exactly north, but a compromise between best sailing speed and shortest distance to the desired parallel, as directed by the doll. ’Ao’s time on the masthead had been wasted; there had been no sign of another ship.

Mike hinted once or twice, but Wanaka offered no explanation why she had collected a cargo with no obvious use. He did not resent the time spent at the fish, however, even though he was having increasingly frequent spells of homesickness. For one reason, he had now been fully and formally accepted into the crew, would receive an appropriate if rather small share of the trip’s profits, and there were plenty of worlds where gold, for various historical and technological reasons, still had significant exchange value. The expense of interstellar travel came mostly from paying off ship construction mortgages; time of flight meant more to freight charges than mass of cargo.

There was one world he knew of less than a hundred parsecs from Kainui where most of the value of any art form stemmed from its permanence. Maybe Wanaka knew about this, too, but Mike as usual chose not to ask. It was not, he told himself, merely that it was embarrassing to have something explained to him when he should have figured it out for himself; there was the triumph of actually figuring it out for himself.

Even he was beginning to feel bored when ’Oloa reported that they were at Muamoku’s latitude, and Mata pointed her bows westward. For all they could know eastward might have been better, but there was no way to tell. The city might have been just out of sight in the haze in either direction, or halfway around the planet. As the doll would have said and even ’Ao now understood too well to ask, “One equation, at least three unknowns.” West was the standard way to go in that stage of a navigation problem, because cities in general had an eastward drift and the odds were slightly in favor of a shorter trip if ships went to meet them.

Mata ’s crew settled down to an almost unvarying, though busy, routine. The tacks were short, since the wind came generally from the northwest, and they did not want to be carried farther than city-spotting distance from the parallel they were following. ’Ao spent most of her waking time at the masthead, though it seemed very unlikely that she would sight anything for which Wanaka would want to dump any of the gold—though maybe, Hoani thought, she hoped to trade some of it for something of more certain value. That would presumably be to ships of other cities. If she had told even her husband about what was in her mind, which Mike considered most probable, the mate had been equally secretive.

It was unlikely that they would meet any homeward bound Muamoku craft, of course, since these would be traveling in the same direction and at comparable speed. Mike had no way of guessing the chances of encountering representatives of any other city. The two they had seen prior to the Aorangi event had both been met in the first few days of their now nearly year-long trip, which would discourage even the most inexperienced and optimistic statistician from risking a public opinion.

They had been tracing the parallel for over four weeks of Kainui days when ’Ao did sight a ship, however. Wanaka and Keo eyed it carefully, since ’Ao had not reported its course along with its presence; maybe it was actually bound for Muamoku as well.

But it wasn’t. ’Ao had not reported the course because it was hove to, and she hadn’t been able to believe her eyes.

“What sort of fish?” the captain finally called.

The child still hesitated, but finally, “I can’t see any,” came back.

“That’s silly. Why else would anyone be hove to in the daytime?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t see anything but the ship itself.”

The adults fell silent. Mike had an idea, but details were still coming together and he didn’t dare announce it yet. Mata ’s crew simply stared, all but Hoani with minds as open as their eyes.

“No signal flags,” the child finally reported.

Mike almost spoke. Wanaka did. “Not pirates, I hope. How many on deck, can you see?”

“Just one. It looks—well, I’d say young. Maybe my size. I can’t be sure, because I don’t know how big the ship is.”

There were a number of clicks that he felt must be audible as drifting items connected in Mike’s brain. He forced himself to speak.

“There’ll be someone else out to take the tiller in a few moments,” he said. “Wait and see. They’ll turn on an intercept heading after that happens.”

“You’re sure? You know they’re pirates?” asked Keo.

“I’m about ninety percent sure of what I said, but I’m equally sure they’re not pirates.”

“Why? Who or what are they? What do you think they want of us?” Wanaka asked.

“Put your trading hat on. You wanted gold, when we first met them.”

“You think these are—but I wanted to sell gold. Then I found out no other city would want to buy it; it’s good for nothing but ballast, and regular cities can use sea water if they need that.”

“But you’ve thought of another use for it, or you wouldn’t have collected another load. I don’t know what you have in mind, but you wouldn’t have mined that fish again just for jewelry.”