Hal Clement - Iceworld

A thought suddenly struck Ken.

“How about the stuff you get from the natives? Doesn’t that give any clue? Could I work with some of it?” Laj Drai cut in at this point.

“You said you were not a specialist. We have tried to get the stuff analyzed by people who were, without success. After all, if it were possible to synthesize the material, do you think we’d be going to all this trouble to trade for it? That’s why we want you to get the planetary conditions for us — when you’ve done that, we’ll figure out a means of getting seeds from the natives and growing our own.”

“I see,” Ken replied. The statement was certainly reasonable enough, and did not necessarily imply anything about the nature of the material they were discussing.

It did not refute anything, either.

Ken thought that one over for a time, letting his eyes wander over the exposed machinery as he did so. He had a few more questions in mind, but he wanted to dodge anything that might be interpreted as unhealthy curiosity, if these people actually were drug-runners.

“What do these natives get from you for this product?” he asked finally. “Is it a manufactured article they can’t make, or a substance they don’t have? In the latter case, I might be able to draw some conclusions about the planet.” Drai sent a ripple down his tentacles, in a gesture equivalent to a human shrug.

“It’s material — heavy metals that don’t sulfide easily. We’ve been giving them platinum-group nuggets most of the time — they’re easiest to come by; there’s an outcropping of the stuff only a short distance from this station, and it’s easy to send a man out to blast off a few pieces. I don’t know what they use them for — for all I know they may worship the torpedo, and use the nuggets as priests’ insignia. I can’t say that I care, as long as they keep filling their end of the bargain.” Ken made the gesture of agreement, and spoke of something which had caught his attention during the last speech.

“What in the Galaxy is a loudspeaker and microphone doing in that thing? Surely they don’t work at the temperatures you mentioned — and you can’t be speaking to these natives!”

The technician answered the first question.

“It works, all right. It’s a crystal outfit without vacuum tubes, and should work in liquid hydrogen.”

Drai supplemented the other answer. “We don’t exactly talk to them, but they can apparently hear and produce sounds more or less similar to those of our speech.”

“But how could you ever have worked out a common language, or even a code, without visual contact? Maybe, unless you think it’s none of my business and will not be any help in what is, you’d better give me the whole story from the beginning.”

“Maybe I had,” Laj Drai said slowly, draping his pliant form over a convenient rack. “I have already mentioned that contact was made some twenty years ago— our years, that is; it would be nearer thirty for the natives of Planet Three.

“The Karella was simply cruising, without any particular object in view, when her previous owner happened to notice the rather peculiar color of Planet Three. You must have remarked that bluish tint yourself. He put the ship into an orbit at a safe distance beyond the atmosphere, and began sending down torpedoes. He knew better than to go down himself — there was never any doubt about the ghastly temperature conditions of the place.

“Well, he lost five projectiles in a row. Every one lost its vision connection in the upper atmosphere, since no one had bothered to think of the effect of the temperature on hot glass. Being a stubborn character, he sent them on down on long-wave instruments, and every one went out sooner or later; he was never sure even whether they had reached the surface. He had some fair engineers and plenty of torpedoes, though, and kept making changes and sending the results down. It finally became evident that most of them were reaching the surface— and going out of action the instant they did so. Something was either smashing them mechanically or playing the deuce with their electrical components.

“Up to then, the attempts had all been to make the landings on one of the relatively smooth, bluish areas; they seemed the least complicated. However, someone got the idea that this steady loss of machines could not be due to chance; somewhere there was intelligent intervention. To test the idea, a torpedo was sent down with every sort of detecting and protecting device that could be stuffed aboard — including a silver mesh over the entire surface, connected to the generators and capable of blocking any outside frequency which might be employed to interfere with control. A constantly changing control frequency was used from our end. It had automatic heat control — I tell you, it had everything. Nothing natural and darned little that was artificial should have been able to interfere with that machine; but it went out like the others, just as the reflection altimeter reported it as almost touching the surface.

“That was enough for the boss. He accepted as a working theory the idea that a race lived on the flatter parts of the planet; a race that did not want visitors. The next torpedo was sent to one of the darker, rougher areas that could be seen from space, the idea being that these beings might avoid such areas. He seems to have been right, for this time the landing was successful. At any rate, the instruments said the machine was down, it proved impossible to drive it lower, and it stayed put with power off.

“That was encouraging, but then no one could think of what to do. We still couldn’t see, and were not certain for some time whether or not the microphone was working. It was decided not to use the loudspeaker for a while. There was a faint humming sound being picked up whose intensity varied without apparent system, which we finally decided might be wind rather than electrical trouble, and once or twice some brief, harsh, quite indescribable noises which have not yet been identified; the best guess is that they may have been the voices of living creatures.

“We kept listening for a full rotation of the planet— nearly two of our days — and heard nothing else except a very faint buzzing, equally faint scratching sounds, and an irregular tapping that might or might not have been the footsteps of a hoofed creature on a hard surface. You may listen to the records we made, if you like, but you’d better have company around when you do. There’s something weird and unnerving about those noises out of nothing.

“I forgot to mention that the cargo port of the torpedo had been opened on landing, and microphones and weight detectors set to tell us if anything went in. Nothing did, however — a little surprising if there were small forms of wild life; the opening would have made a natural-looking shelter for them.

“Nothing even remotely suggestive of intelligence was heard during that rotation; and it was finally decided to use the loudspeaker. Someone worked out a schedule— starting at minimum power, repeating a tape for one rotation of the planet, then repeating with doubled output and so on until we reached the maximum which could be attained with that equipment. The program was followed, except that the boss was getting impatient and arranged to make the step-up each quarter rotation instead of the suggested time. Some humorist recorded a poem on the tape, and we started broadcasting.

“The first result was a complete cessation of the sounds we had tentatively associated with life forms. Presumably they were small animals, and were scared away by the noise. The wind, if that’s what it was, continued as expected. The first time we increased the noise, after a quarter rotation of the planet, we began to get a faint echo. That suggested that the sound was at least not being muffled very close to the speaker, and if any intelligent beings came within a considerable radius they would hear it.