Hal Clement - Iceworld

He found himself unable to take his eyes from the dwindling object, now a rather elongated ellipsoid. It continued to shrink remorselessly, and suddenly there was something else visible in the yellow — the end of a small white cylinder. As the last of the protective box vanished, this began to turn brown and then black over its entire surface, and a spherical cloud of smoke enveloped it. For an instant a wild hope flashed in Ken’s mind; the thing had to burn, and a fire will not maintain itself in weightless flight. It requires a forced draft. Perhaps this one would smother itself out — but the cloud of smoke continued to swell. Apparently the thing had been impregnated with chips of frozen air in anticipation of this situation.

Now the edges of the smoke cloud were becoming fuzzy and ill-defined as diffusion carried its particles through the room. Ken caught the first traces of a sweetish odor, and tried to hold his breath; but he was too late. The determination to make the effort was his last coherent thought.

“So they decided to keep you.” There might or might not have been a faint trace of sympathy in Feth Allmer’s tone. “I’m not very surprised. When Drai raised a dust storm with me for telling you how far away Sarr was, I knew you must have been doing some probing on your own. What are you, Commerce or Narcotics?” Ken made no answer.

He was not feeling much like talking, as a matter of fact. He could remember just enough of his drug-induced slumber to realize things about himself which no conscientious being should be forced to consider. He had dreamed he was enjoying sights and pleasures whose recollection now gave him only disgust — and yet under the disgust was the hideous feeling that there had been pleasure, and there might be pleasure again. There is no real possibility of describing the sensations of a drug addict, either while he is under the influence of his narcotic or during the deadly craving just before the substance becomes a physical necessity; but at this moment, less than an hour after he had emerged from its influence, there may be some chance of his frame of mind being understandable. Feth certainly understood, but apparently chose not to dwell on that point.

“It doesn’t matter now which you were, or whether the whole gang knows it,” he went on after waiting in vain for Ken’s answer. “It won’t worry anyone. They know you’re ours for good, regardless of what you may think at the moment. Wait until the craving comes on— you’ll see.”

“How long will that be?” The point was of sufficient interest to Ken to overcome his lethargy.

“Five to six days; it varies a little with the subject. Let me warn you now — don’t cross Laj Drai, ever. He really has the ship. If he keeps the tofacco from you for even half an hour after the craving comes on, you’ll never forget it. I still haven’t gotten over his believing that I told you where we were.” Again surprise caused Ken to speak.

“You? Are you—?”

“A sniffer? Yes. They got me years ago, just like you, when I began to get an idea of what this was all about. I didn’t know where this system was, but my job required me to get engineering supplies occasionally, and they didn’t want me talking.”

“That was why you didn’t speak to me outside the observatory, just after we got back from the caves?”

“You saw me come out of the office? I never knew you were there. Yes, that was the reason, all right.” Feth’s normally dour features grew even grimmer at the memory. Ken went back to his own gloomy thought, which gradually crystallized into a resolve. He hesitated for a time before deciding to mention it aloud, but was unable to see what harm could result.

“Maybe you can’t get out from under this stuff — I don’t know; but I’ll certainly try.”

“Of course you will. So did I.”

“Well, even if I can’t Drai needn’t think I’m going to help him mass produce this hellish stuff. He can keep me under his power, but he can’t compel me to think.”

“He could, if he knew you weren’t. Remember what I told you — not a single open act of rebellion is worth the effort. I don’t know that he actually enjoys holding out on a sniffer, but he certainly never hesitates if he thinks there’s need — and you’re guilty until proved innocent. If I were you, I’d go right on developing those caves.”

“Maybe you would. At least, I’ll see to it that the caves never do him any good.”

Feth was silent for a moment. If he felt any anger at the implication in Ken’s statement, his voice did not betray it, however.

“That, of course, is the way to do it. I am rather surprised that you have attached no importance to the fact that Drai has made no progress exploring Planet Three for the seventeen years I have been with him.”

For nearly a minute Ken stared at the mechanic, while his mental picture of the older being underwent a gradual but complete readjustment.

“No,” he said at last, “I never thought of that at all. I should have, too — I did think that some of the obstacles to investigation of the planet seemed rather odd. You mean you engineered the television tube failures, and all such things?”

“The tubes, yes. That was easy enough — just make sure there were strains in the glass before the torpedo took off.”

“But you weren’t here when the original torpedoes were lost, were you?”

“No, that was natural enough. The radar impulses we pick up are real, too; I don’t know whether this idea of a hostile race living on the blue plains of Planet Three is true or not, but there seems to be some justification for the theory. I’ve been tempted once or twice to put the wrong thickness of anti-radar coating on a torpedo so that they’d know we were getting in — but then I remember that that might stop the supply of tofacco entirely. Wait a few days before you think too hardly of me for that.” Ken nodded slowly in understanding, then looked up suddenly as another idea struck him.

“Say, then the failure of that suit we sent to Three was not natural?”

“I’m afraid not.” Feth smiled a trifle. “I overtightened the packing seals at knees, hips and handler joints while you were looking on. They contracted enough to let air out, I imagine — I haven’t seen the suit, remember. I didn’t want you walking around on that planet — you could do too much for this gang in an awfully short time, I imagine.”

“But surely that doesn’t matter now? Can’t we find an excuse for repeating the test?”

“Why? I thought you weren’t going to help.”

“I’m not, but there’s an awfully big step between getting a first hand look at the planet and taking living specimens of tofacco away from it. If you sent a person to make one landing on Sarr, what would be the chance of his landing within sight of a Gree bush? or, if he did, of your finding it out against his wish?”

“The first point isn’t so good; this tofacco might be all over the place like Mekko —the difficulty would be to miss a patch of it. Your second consideration, however, now has weight.” He really smiled, for the first time since Ken had known him. “I see you are a scientist after all. No narcotics agent would care in the least about the planet, under the circumstances. Well, I expect the experiment can be repeated more successfully, though I wouldn’t make the dive myself for anything I can think of.”

“I’ll bet you would — for one thing,” Ken replied. Feth’s smile disappeared.

“Yes — just one,” he agreed soberly. “But I see no chance of that. It would take a competent medical researcher years, even on Sarr with all his facilities. What hope would we have here?”

“I don’t know, but neither of us is senile,” retorted Ken. “It’ll be a few years yet before I give up hope. Let’s look at that suit you fixed, and the one I wore on Four. They may tell us something of what we’ll have to guard against.” This was the first Feth had heard of the sortie on Mars, and he said so. Ken told of his experience in detail, while the mechanic listened carefully.