Hal Clement - Iceworld

Sallman Ken, however, was wasting no time on fantasy. He had not yet worked out a really detailed course of action, but certain ideas were gradually taking shape in his mind as he worked.

The moment he entered the Karella and had emerged from his bulky armor, he went into a close conference with Feth. Lee was present at first, even following them to Ken’s quarters where the scientist began; but a glance of understanding passed between Ken and Feth, and the conversation took a remarkably abstruse turn. It had just enough meaning to give the impression that matters of highly advanced physics and chemistry were being covered, in connection with the problem of keeping the seeds — if any — in the soil samples alive and healthy. For a few minutes it looked as though Lee were going to stay and take it, but Feth suddenly had the inspiration to ask the pilot’s opinion of occasional matters. After a little of this, Ordon Lee drifted back to his control room. “He’s not stupid,” Feth said, looking after his retreating form, “but he certainly lacks confidence in his education! Now, what did you want to keep from Drai?”

“It has occurred to me,” Ken said, “that our employer is going to want to hear everything that goes on on Planet Three, as soon as we are in halfway decent communication with the natives. I have some vague ideas about the uses to which those creatures can be put, and I’d rather not have Drai listening in to all our conversations. Since at the moment there’s no way of preventing that, I’d like to know whether it might not be possible to connect me up with the speaker on the torpedo without having everything audible up here as well. It would be best, I suppose, if I could turn your contact on and off at will, so that he’ll hear enough to keep him from getting suspicious.”

“I suppose it could be done, all right,” the mechanic said slowly. “I’m afraid it would take more work than it’s worth, though. Wouldn’t it be a great deal simpler to take another set down with you in the torpedo? You already have means for tuning both transmitter and receiver in the armor, so you could switch from one set to the other whenever you pleased.”

“Wouldn’t they miss the extra set?”

“Not unless Drai starts paying a great deal more attention to the technical supplies than he has in the past.”

“All right, let’s do it that way. Now, let’s see. I already suggested suspending the armor vertically instead of horizontally from the torpedo, so I can be carried around instead of having to lug that hardware against extra gravity, didn’t I?”

“Yes. That will be easy enough.”

“It will have another good point, as well. The only discomfort I’ve felt so far on that planet has been in my feet, in spite of what we feared. This way we can keep them off the ground, so they don’t lose so much by conduction.

“The only other thing I had in mind had to do with torpedo control. Could a unit be made small enough for me to carry, so I could move myself around down there instead of having to tell you where I want to go?”

Feth frowned at this suggestion. “I thought of that, too, while I was trying to keep the torpedo near you this time,” he said. “Frankly, I doubt it — not that the set could be made small enough, but that I could do it with the materials I have at hand. Still, I’ll look into the possibility when we get back to One. I take it you have no objection to Drai’s hearing about these last two suggestions?”

“Of course not. They ought to keep him happy. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he’d take a trip down there himself, once we showed it was safe enough?” Feth smiled broadly at the scientist’s suggestion.

“It would take a better psychologist than either of us to endue him with that much trust in his fellows, I fear. Besides, what good would it do? We wouldn’t gain anything by leaving him there, pleasant as the idea sounds, and there’d be no use trying to threaten him, since he’d never dream of keeping any inconvenient promises you might wring out of him.”

“I didn’t really expect much from the idea. Well, with the other matter understood, I suppose we’d better take those samples back to One before they freeze, and get a vivarium knocked together. If we can grow anything at all, it ought to keep Drai quiet for a little while.”

The torpedo which had transported Ken and his specimens had been allowed to drift to the edge of the repeller field as soon as he had detached himself from it. Feth now returned to the control room and began to monitor the little vessel, holding it close against the hull of the large ship so that it would be dragged along in the Karella’s drive fields; and Lee, at Ken’s request, headed sunward once more. A thousand miles from the surface of Mercury the torpedo was cast loose again, and Feth eased it down to a landing near the caves — a televisor had been set up there some time since, and he was able to guide — the landing with the aid of this. He arranged matters so that about three feet of the torpedo’s nose was in sunlight, while the rest was in the shadow of a large mass of rock. That, he judged, should maintain somewhere near the right temperature for a few hours at least.

As soon as the Karella was grounded, he and Ken adjourned at once to the shop. There, a metal case about a yard square and two feet high was quickly assembled. Feth very carefully welded all seams and tested them against full atmospheric pressure. A glass top was provided, sealed in place with a silicone vacuum wax that was standard equipment on any space ship; this also checked out against a pressure equivalent to an earthly barometric reading of twelve hundred fifty millimeters of mercury. A second, similar case large enough to enclose the first was under construction when Drai appeared. He had evidently noticed at last that the ship was back.

“Well, I understand from Lee that you actually talked to a native. Good work, good work. Did you find out anything about how they make their tofacco?”

“We haven’t learned their language too well, yet,” Feth replied with as little sarcasm as he could manage. “We were operating on a slightly different line of investigation.” He indicated the partly constructed vivarium. Drai frowned at it, as though trying to gather its purpose. “It’s a small chamber where we can reproduce Planet Three’s conditions, we hope; more or less of an experiment. The larger one goes outside, and we’ll maintain a vacuum between the two. Feth says one of the sulfur hexafluoride refrigerators he knocked together years ago will get the temperature low enough, and we got enough of the planet’s air to fill it a couple of times at their pressure.” Drai looked puzzled still.

“But isn’t it a little small for one of the natives? Lee said you’d described them as nearly five feet tall. Besides, I didn’t hear about these plans at all.”

“Natives? I thought you wanted us to grow vegetation. What good would a native do us here?” The master’s face cleared.

“Oh, I see. I didn’t know you’d picked up vegetation already. Still, now that I think of it, it mightn’t be a bad idea to have a native or two. If the race is at all civilized, they could be used for a really stupendous ransom in tofacco — and we could use them in the cave, once it was conditioned, to take care of the tofacco and harvest it Thanks for the idea.”

“I don’t know just how intelligent the natives are, as yet,” replied Ken, “but I don’t think they’re stupid enough to walk into any sort of cage we might leave open for them. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave that as a last resort— we’re going to have trouble enough getting our soil and seeds from their present containers into this thing without exposing them either to our atmosphere or to empty space. It would be a hundred times worse getting a native into one of those caves.”