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.
5
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.”
“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
“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
