Hal Clement - Iceworld

“It took two or three hours for the torpedo to make its round trip. I had set up my tent and rounded up some firewood and water by the time it came back, and I found out my guess was right. This time they had put another platinum nugget in one compartment, leaving the others empty; and I was able to remember what I had put in the corresponding space on the previous visit.

“That about tells the story.” Mr. Wing grinned at his son. “I’ve been swapping cigarettes for platinum and indium nuggets for about thirty years now — and you can see why I wanted you to study some astronomy!” Don whistled gently.

“I guess I do, at that. But you haven’t explained this,” he indicated the metal cube on which his father was sitting.

“That came down a little later, grappled to a torpedo, and the original one took off immediately afterwards. I have always supposed they use it to find this spot again. We’ve sort of fallen into a schedule over the years. I’m never here in the winter any more, and they seem to realize that; but from two to three days after I snap this switch off and on a few times, like this,” he demonstrated, “the exchequer gets a shot in the arm.”

Don frowned thoughtfully, and was silent for a time.

“I still don’t see why you keep it a secret,” he said at last. “If the affair is really interplanetary, it’s tremendously important.”

“That’s true, of course. However, if these people wanted contact with mankind in general, they could certainly establish it without any difficulty. It has always seemed to me that their maintaining contact in this fashion was evidence that they did not want their presence generally known; so that if experts began taking their transmitter apart, for example, or sending literature and machinery out to them in an effort to show our state of civilization, they would simply leave.”

“That seems a little far-fetched.”

“Perhaps; but can you offer a better suggestion why they don’t land one of these things in a city? They’re paying tremendous prices for darned small quantities of tobacco — and a corner drug store could stock them for years at their rate of consumption.

“Don’t get me wrong, son; I certainly appreciate the importance of all this, and want very much to find out all I can about these things and their machines; but I want the investigating done by people whom I can trust to be careful not to upset the apple cart. I wish the whole family were seven or eight years older; we’d have a good research team right here. For the moment, though, you and I — principally you — are going to have to do the investigating, while Rog and Edie do the scouting. I expect they’ll sneak over to watch us, of course; Roger’s curiosity is starting to keep him awake nights, and he has the makings of a man of action. I’m wondering whether we don’t find his tracks or Edie’s on the way back — he might have persuaded her to go to town for him. There’s nothing more to be done here, unless you want to look this communicator over more closely; we might as well head back, and find out how enterprising the younger generation is.”

“There’s no hurry, Dad. I’d like to look this thing over for a while. It has some of the earmarks of a short wave transmitter, but there are a lot of things I’d like to get straight.”

“Me, too. I’ve learned a good deal about radios in the last twenty years, but it’s a bit beyond me. Of course, I’ve never dared take off more than the outer casing; there are parts too deeply stowed to be visible, which might be highly informative if we could see them.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. There should be some way to look into it — we ought to dig up one of those dentist’s mirrors.”

“You don’t catch me sticking anything made of metal into a gadget that almost certainly uses astronomical voltages.”

“Well — I suppose not. We could turn it off first, if we were sure which position of that switch were off. We don’t really know whether you’re calling them with a short transmission when you move it, or whether you’re breaking a continuous one. If they use it for homing, it would be the latter; but we can’t be sure.”

“Even if we were, turning it off wouldn’t be enough. Condensers can hold a nasty bite for a long time.”

Don admitted the justice of this point, and spent only a few minutes peering through the openings left by the removal of the plates.

“Most of the inside seems to be blocks of bakelite anyway,” he said at last. “I suppose they have everything sealed in for permanence. I wonder how they expect to service it? I guess you’re right — we may as well go home until the torpedo comes.” He slung the pack that had contained their lunch — or rather, the sandwiches they had eaten in route — over his shoulder, and straightened up. His father nodded in agreement, and they began to retrace their steps down the hillside.

Don was wrapped in thought, and his father forbore to interrupt. He knew how he had reacted to the events he had just described, when he had been very little older than his son was now; also, he had a high opinion of his children’s intelligence, and believed firmly in letting them solve problems for themselves as much as was safe. He reflected somewhat ruefully that nothing he could say would be too much help, in any case.

There was no trace of anyone’s having followed them at any point on the trail home, though they split up to take opposite sides of the scree they had deliberately crossed on the way out. Neither found this very surprising, for it turned out that Edith had made her scheduled patrols and spent the rest of the day with the younger children, while Roger had gone to town as expected. If he had thought of finding a substitute and following his father, nothing had come of it. Mr. Wing was not sure whether he ought to be pleased or disappointed.

Laj Drai found his hired schoolteacher beside one of the torpedoes, checking off its contents with loops of one tentacle. The mechanic was listening as he named off the items.

“Magnesium cell; titanium cell; sodium — oh, hello, Drai. Anything going on?”

“Hard to say. You are setting up a research project, I take it?”

“Just checking some hypotheses. I’ve listed all the elements that would be gaseous under the conditions of Planet Three, and as many compounds as I could find in the Tables. Some are a little doubtful, since I have no pressure data; they might be liquid. Still, if they are there in any quantity, their vapors should be present.

“Then I eliminated as many as possible on theoretical grounds, since I can’t test for everything at once.”

“Theoretical grounds?”

“Yes. For example, while fluorine is still gaseous under those conditions, it’s much too active to be expected in the free state. The same is true of chlorine — which may be liquid — and oxygen. On the other hand, hydrogen seems very likely, along with hydrogen sulfide and other volatile compounds of both those elements. Nitrogen should be present, and the inert gases — though I don’t know how I can test for those.

“I’ve built little cells containing various materials, along with built-in heaters; and I’m going to warm them up one at a time after landing this torpedo and opening it to the atmosphere. Then I’ll bring it back and see what the air did to my samples. I have magnesium and titanium, which should detect the nitrogen, and sodium, and a couple of sulfides which should be reduced if there’s much hydrogen, and so on. The report may not be complete, but we should learn something.”

“So I should say, from what little I know about it Were you planning to send the torpedo out right away?”

“Yes; everything seems to be ready, unless there are complications from your department.”