Iceworld

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.

“In other words,” he said at the end of the tale, “there was no trouble until you actually touched this stuff you have decided was hydrogen oxide. That means it’s either, a terrifically good conductor, has an enormous specific heat, a large heat of vaporization, or two or three of those in combination. Right?” Ken admitted, with some surprise, that that was right. He had not summed up the matter so concisely in his own mind. Feth went on: “There is at the moment no way of telling whether there is much of that stuff on Three, but the chances are there is at least some. It follows that the principal danger on that planet seems to be encountering deposits of this chemical. I am quite certain that I can insulate a suit so that you will not suffer excessive heat loss by conduction or convection in atmospheric gases, whatever they are.”

Ken did not voice his growing suspicion that Feth had been more than a mechanic in his time. He kept to the vein of the conversation.

“That seems right. I’ve seen the stuff, and it’s certainly easy to recognize, so there should be no difficulty in avoiding it.”

“You’ve seen the solid form, which sublimed in a near vacuum. Three has a respectable atmospheric pressure, and there may be a liquid phase of the compound. If you see any pools of any sort of liquid whatever, I would advise keeping clear of them.”

“Sound enough — only, if the planet is anything like Sarr, there isn’t a chance in a thousand of landing near open liquid.”

“Our troubles seem to spring mostly from the fact that this planet isn’t anything like Sarr,” Feth pointed out dryly. Ken was forced to admit the justice of this statement, and stored away the rapidly growing stock of information about his companion. Enough of Feth’s former reserve had disappeared to make him seem a completely changed person.

The suits were brought into the shop and gone over with extreme care. The one used on Planet Four appeared to have suffered no damage, and they spent most of the time on the other. The examination this time was much more minute than the one Ken had given it on board the Karella, and one or two new discoveries resulted. Besides the bluish deposit Ken had noted on the metal, which he was now able to show contained oxides, there was a looser encrustation in several more protected spots which gave a definite potassium spectrum — one of the few that Ken could readily recognize — and also a distinct odor of carbon bisulfide when heated. That, to the chemist, was completely inexplicable. He was familiar with gaseous compounds of both elements, but was utterly unable to imagine how there could have been precipitated from them anything capable of remaining solid at “normal” temperature.

Naturally, he was unfamiliar with the makeup of earthly planets, and had not seen the fire whose remains had so puzzled Roger Wing. Even the best imaginations have their limits when data are lacking.

The joints had, as Feth expected, shrunk at the seals, and traces of oxides could be found in the insulation. Apparently some native atmosphere had gotten into the suit, either by diffusion or by outside pressure after the sulfur had frozen.

“Do you think that is likely to happen with the packing properly tightened?” Ken asked, when this point had been checked.

“Not unless the internal heaters fail from some other cause, and in that case you won’t care anyway. The over-tightening cut down the fluid circulation in the temperature equalizing shell, so that at first severe local cooling could take place without causing a sufficiently rapid reaction in the main heaters. The local coils weren’t up to the job, and once the fluid had frozen at the joints of course the rest was only a matter of seconds. I suppose we might use something with a lower freezing point than zinc as an equalizing fluid — potassium or sodium would be best from that point of view, but they’re nasty liquids to handle from chemical considerations. Tin or bismuth are all right that way, but their specific heats are much lower than that of zinc. I suspect the best compromise would be selenium.”

“I see you’ve spent a good deal of time thinking this out. What would be wrong with a low specific heat liquid?”