“The problem,” Beth said seriously, “will be how you will feel if they don’t show themselves because they aren’t there. I can see you going all broody on me and needing lots of nontechnical support.”
“You’re trying to change the subject,” Martin said.
“I’m trying to give myself time to think,” she replied. A few seconds later she went on, “First, let’s forget about complicated maneuvers like pretending to leave, waiting for an indeterminate time to lull them into a false sense of security, and then jumping out of hyperspace as close to the planet as we can manage. For operational reasons that would not be all that close, and the emergence itself makes an awful lot of radio frequency noise which our hypothetical friends would be sure to detect. Instead, let’s use the present proximity to the planet to our own advantage, and act now.”
Unresolved questions bothered her tidy, impatient mind.
Martin did not reply, and she continued. “Right now we are in synchronous orbit with one hemisphere constantly in view. Suppose we launch a couple of large probes toward the surface after dark, but programmed only to make the greatest possible noise in the visible and radio frequency spectra so that our friends will be blinded, confused, and distracted for several minutes. During that period we will apply maximum thrust on a course which will take us past the edge of the planetary disk as we now see it, with just enough altitude to avoid burning up in atmosphere.
“I haven’t tried this idea on the main computer yet,” she went on, a tinge of excitement creeping into her voice, “and a ship this size isn’t supposed to go in for such melodramatic maneuvering, but with the gravity compensators at maximum and the drive on emergency overload, I think we could manage about eight gees. As we pass over the presently visible horizon to the hidden side, we kill the probe interference and switch off everything but our receptors. We should then get a picture of whatever is happening on the other side of the planet as we coast out and away, and it should happen too quickly for them to switch off everything and hide themselves.
“They will know what we are doing by then,” she ended, “but even if they are expecting such a message, it must take a little time to warn an entire hemisphere to initiate an immediate radio silence.”
“You’re the Ship Handler One,” Martin said, smiling. “And if the other hemisphere is silent, too, I shall reluctantly admit the possibility that there is nobody there.”
They would not get a second chance to pull this particular trick and so the preparations took several hours. Most of the time was taken up programming the lander, unmanned for this mission, and the probes so that it would appear that a widespread and thorough investigation of the hemisphere below them was taking place during the hours of darkness. Success depended on whether or not their visible and radio frequency fireworks blinded the surface observers to what was really going on.
When the hypership finally began to move, all of the natives attention, they hoped, was being focused on the darkside diversion.
From inside the control module, the power being expended to accelerate the tremendous ship was not apparent, because the gravity compensators were matching the acceleration so closely that the deck remained steady beneath their feet. The only motion visible was on the forward displays which showed the planet’s edge expanding slowly, then not so slowly, until it was rushing up at them and all they could see was the pinkish gray sunrise line bisecting the screen.
A faint vibration against the soles of their feet told of the hypership encountering the soft vacuum that was the upper atmosphere, and a number of stress and temperature sensors winked red eyes at them. Beth insisted that they were merely polite warnings, not indications of an imminent catastrophic malfunction, and ignored them.
The sunrise line flashed past below them, the power was cut and the ship coasted spaceward again, the daylight side of the planet unrolling and shrinking rapidly in their rear screen. She reversed the image to black, the better to show up any points or areas of radiation which might be present.
For several minutes they studied the screen before Martin broke the silence.
“Well?”
Beth cleared her throat and said, “The natives display a very fast reaction time. Virtually everything was switched off within the first three minutes of their seeing us and realizing what we were doing. Some of the areas are still radiating, which could mean that their communications are at fault or that they now know that we know about them and further attempts at concealment are useless. We can study this material later, but right now I would say that these traces indicate power sources which are well below ground, and a few which are sharply defined and weaker, and are probably surface sensory equipment…”
The screen showed only a few widely scattered points and smudges of light now, but Martin was remembering how it had looked a few minutes earlier, when the reversed dayside image had been pockmarked as if by some ghostly plague.
“…And I’m glad there is somebody down there,” Beth went on, “because I hate it when you brood. Now I won’t have to be especially nice to you.”
Martin laughed. “That was a terrific job you did just then, and I want to be especially nice to you.”
“Sometimes,” Beth said, “I can’t win.”
It was some time later when she said, “I suppose we should report back with the news that this planet contains indigenous intelligent life and that we are not, after all, on vacation. But if we did that, the supervisor would probably say that we know the situation here better than anyone else, and we’d be sent straight back to carry out the first contact and assessment procedures. We may as well save ourselves the round trip.”
She was hoping, Martin could see, for an argument.
The risks encountered while trying to establish communication with a completely alien race were major and varied. For Martin especially it would be no vacation, and Beth was beginning to show her concern.
“What can they be afraid of,” she said in a baffled voice, “to act this way?”
“When we know that,” Martin said, “I have the feeling that, we’ll know everything.”
The recent game of hide and seek had proved that there was a highly advanced culture on, or rather under the surface of, this world beneath them-advanced enough to detect and react to a ship operating in their solar system. They had a knowledge of astronomy, at least, and therefore the philosophical acceptance of the idea that there might be other intelligent species among the stars. In every advanced culture there were a few beings who were actively interested in contact with off-worlders, while the majority minded its own more mundane business. But all of these people had hidden themselves at the first approach of a visitor from space.
That was very bad. Xenophobia of the kind being displayed here, unless there was a very good reason for it, would be an absolute bar to this culture achieving Federation citizenship.
“Let’s return to our original station,” Martin said. ‘The natives are used to us being there, and it might be more reassuring to them if we resumed contact where it was broken off, where they stole our protector.”
Chapter 14
Now that they knew what they were looking for and were going after it with sensors which penetrated the surface, they could see a number of underground tunnel systems, caverns, lakes, and rivers whose courses were far too straight to be natural. The complete absence of the outward signs of large-scale cultivation bothered them, until Beth noticed that certain areas of vegetation looked unhealthy, although not actually dying, while identical and adjacent plants were completely free of infection. Specimens retrieved showed die affected vegetation to be an edible root which was being cultivated and farmed from below the surface-but selectively, so as not to kill the plant by removing all of its roots. A combination of year-round growth and a chemical assist ensured that the plant would recover and its missing roots regrow.
One by one their questions were being answered, except for the really important one.
Why were these people hiding?
“When we see them,” Martin said firmly, “we’ll know whether or not their fear is based on physical weakness, and talking to them will tell us something about the way they think. All we have to do now is devise a safe method of letting me see and talk to them.”
It was decided that the landers touchdown would be overt but not noisy-the world was extremely quiet and the natives might prefer it that way. But even if the approach was well-mannered by Earth-human standards, there
