Hal Clement - Iceworld

“Nothing much. We were just going to send one out ourselves; our native signalled a short time ago.”

“Can you control two torpedoes at once?”

“Yes, easily. It occurs to me, however, that it might be best for you to keep a mile or two away from our homing station, and make your descent when that part of the planet is in darkness. The natives are diurnal, we are sure; and it would be a pity to scare them off if any of your chemical reactions are bright or noisy or smelly.”

“Or affect some sense we don’t know about. All right; you have a good point. Do you want me to wait until you have finished your trading, or go ahead of you if the chance occurs?”

“I don’t see that it matters much. I don’t remember whether it will be night or day there when the torpedoes arrive overhead; there’s a table for figuring it up in the office, and we’ll check before arrival time. I’d say if it was day, we’d go right down while you waited, and if it’s night you get first shot.”

“All right with me.”

“You’ll have to control from down here — there’s only one unit up in the observatory. It won’t matter, since you’ll be “working blind anyway. I’ll go up and tell them that you’re operating too — we have a relay unit with detection apparatus circling the planet now, and there’s no point in having the observers think the flatlanders are out in space.”

“Have you been getting activity from them?”

“Not much. Within the last three or four years we have picked up some radiation suspiciously like radar, but it’s all been constant frequency so far. We put quarter-wave coatings of plastic with a half-reflecting film of metal on all the torpedoes, and we haven’t had any trouble. They only use a dozen different frequencies, and we’re set up for all of them — when they change, we simply use another drone. I suppose they’ll start using two or more wave lengths in one area or maybe frequency modulation eventually, and we’ll have to get a non-reflective coating. That would be simpler anyway — only it’s more expensive. I learned that when I had the Karella coated. I wonder how we’ll get around it if they learn to pick up infra-red? The torps are enough hotter than the planet to show up like novae, when we happen to start them from the ship just outside the atmosphere.”

“Let ‘em hang in space until they cool off,” Ken and the mechanic replied in chorus. “Or send them all from here, as we’ve been doing,” added the latter. Laj Drai left without further remark.

“That fellow needs a whole scientific college,” the mechanic remarked as the door closed. “He’s so darned suspicious he’ll hire only one man at a time, and usually fires them before long.”

“Then I’m not the first?”

“You’re the first to get this far. There were a couple of others, and he got the idea they were poking into his business, so I never even found out what ideas they had. I’m no scientist, but I’m curious — let’s get this iron cigar into space before he changes his mind about letting it go.”

Ken gestured agreement, but hung back as the mechanic cut the test controller into the main outside beam circuit — two multiphase signals could be handled as easily as one on the beam, and both torpedoes would be close enough together so that one beam would suffice. The mechanic’s information was interesting; it had never occurred to him that others might have preceded him on this job. In a way, that was good — the others had presumably not been narcotics agents, or Rade would have told him. Therefore he had better protective coloration than he had supposed. Drai might even be getting used to having outsiders connected with his project.

But just what did this mechanic know? After all, he had apparently been around for some time, and Drai was certainly not afraid to talk in his presence. Perhaps he might be worked up into a really effective source of information; on the other hand, it might be dangerous to try — quite conceivably one of his minor duties was keeping a watchful eye on Sallman Ken’s behavior. He was a rather taciturn individual and Ken had not given him much attention so far.

At the moment he was all technician. He was draped over the rack in front of the control board, his tentacles resting on the various toggles and verniers, and a rising hum indicated that the tubes were warming. After a moment, he twisted a vernier knob slightly, and the torpedo on which Ken had been working lifted gently from the cradle. He spoke without turning his eyes backward:

“If you’ll go to the far end of the room, I’ll run it down there and we can test the microphone and speaker. I know you don’t plan to use them, but we might as well have them serviceable.”

Ken followed the suggestion, testing first the sound apparatus and then the various recorders and other instruments in the cargo chamber which were intended to tell whether or not any violent chemical reactions took place — photocells and pyrometers, and gas pumps connected to sample flasks and precipitators. Everything appeared in working order and was firmly clamped in place.

Assured of this, the operator guided the little vessel to a tunnel-like air lock in one wall of the room, maneuvered it in, pumped back the air, and drove the torpedo out into the vacuum of Mercury’s surface. Without further ado he sent it hurtling away from the planet, its control keyed in with a master achronic beam running from the station to the relay unit near Earth. No further attention would be needed until it approached the planet.

The mechanic rose from in front of the panel, and turned to Ken.

“I’m going to sleep for a while,” he said. “I’ll be back before arrival time. In case you care, you’ll be making the first landing. It takes one and a half revolutions of Planet Three, more or less, to get the torpedo there when the planets are in their present relative positions — we can’t use overdrive on the drones — and the signal must have come during the local daytime. I’ll see you. Have me paged if you want me for anything.”

Ken gave the equivalent of an affirmative nod.

“All right — and thanks. Your name is Allmer, isn’t it?”

“Right — Feth Allmer.” Without further speech the mechanic disappeared through the door, moving with the fluid ease of a person well accustomed to Mercury’s feeble gravity, and leaving Sallman Ken in a very thoughtful mood behind him.

Almost unconsciously the investigator settled onto the rack deserted by Allmer, and stared blankly at the indicators in front of him. One of his troubles, he reflected ruefully, was his tendency to get interested in two problems at once. In one way, that might be good, of course; the genuine absorption in the problem of Planet Three was the best possible guard against suspicion of his other job; but it didn’t help him to concentrate on that other. For hours now he had thought of practically nothing but his test project, until Allmer’s parting remarks had jarred him back to duty.

He had assumed Allmer was a competent technician, but somehow he had not expected the acuity the elderly fellow had just displayed. Ken himself had missed the implication of Drai’s statement concerning the habits of the natives of the third planet; apparently Drai had not even thought of doing his own reasoning.

But could he be that stupid? He, unlike Ken, knew the distances involved in a flight to that world, and the speed of the torpedoes; he had, on his own word, been trading here for years. What purpose could he have in trying to appear more stupid than he really was?

One possibility certainly existed. Ken might already be under suspicion, and facing a conspiracy to make him betray himself by overconfidence. Still, why in that case had the mechanic betrayed his own intelligence? Perhaps he was building himself up as a possible confidant, in case Ken were to grow communicative. If that were so, Feth was his greatest danger, since he was most in Ken’s company and in best position to serve as a spy. On the other hand, the fellow might be completely innocent even if the group as a whole were engaged in smuggling, and his recent words might have been motivated by a sincere desire to be helpful. There seemed no way of telling at the moment which of these possibilities was the more likely; Ken gave the problem up for the moment as insoluble with the data on hand.