Iceworld

“It would have to be circulated much faster, and I don’t know whether the pumps would handle it — both those metals are a good deal denser than zinc, too. Selenium is still pretty bad in specific heat, but its lower density will help the pumps. The only trouble is getting it. Well, it was just a thought — the zinc should stay liquid if nothing special goes wrong. We can try it on the next test, anyway.”

“Have you thought about how you are going to justify this next trial, when Drai asks how come?”

“Not in detail. He won’t ask. He likes to boast that he doesn’t know any science — then he gloats about hiring brains when he needs them. We’ll simply say that we have found a way around the cause of the first failure — which is certainly true enough.”

“Could we sneak a televisor down on the next test, so we could see what goes on?”

“I don’t see how we could conceal it — any signal we can receive down here can be picked up as well or better in the observatory. I suppose we might say that you had an idea in that line too, and we were testing it out.”

“We could — only perhaps it would be better to separate ideas a little. It wouldn’t help if Drai began to think you were a fool. People too often connect fools and knaves in figures of speech, and it would be a pity to have him thinking along those lines.”

“Thanks — I was hoping you’d keep that point in mind. It doesn’t matter much anyway — I don’t see why we can’t take the Karella out near Three and make the tests from there. That would take only a matter of minutes, and you could make the dive right away if things went well. I know it will be several days before the ship will be wanted — more likely several weeks. They get eight or ten loads of tofacco from the planet during the ‘season’ and several days elapse between each load. Since all the trading is done by torpedo, Lee has a nice idle time of it.”

“That will be better. I still don’t much like free fall, but a few hours of that will certainly be better than days of waiting. Go ahead and put it up to Drai. One other thing — let’s bring more than one suit this time. I was a little worried for a while, there, out on Four.”

“A good point. I’ll check three suits, and then call Drai.” Conversation lapsed, and for the next few hours a remarkable amount of constructive work was accomplished. The three units of armor received an honest preservice check this time, and Feth was no slacker. Pumps, valves, tanks, joints, heating coils — everything was tested, separately and in all combinations.

“A real outfit would spray them with liquid mercury as a final trick,” Feth said as he stepped back from the last suit, “but we don’t have it, ana we don’t have any place to try it, and it wouldn’t check as cold as these are going to have to take anyway. I’ll see what Drai has to say about using the ship — we certainly can’t run three torpedoes at once, and I’d like to be sure all these suits are serviceable before any one of them is worn on Three.” He was putting away his tools as he spoke. That accomplished, he half turned toward the communicator, then appeared to think better of it.

“I’ll talk to him in person. Drai’s a funny chap,” he said, and left the shop.

He was back in a very few minutes, grinning.

“We can go,” he said. “He was very particular about the plural. You haven’t been through a period of tofacco-need yet, and he is afraid you’d get funny ideas alone. He is sure that I’ll have you back here in time for my next dose. He didn’t say all this, you understand, but it wasn’t hard to tell what he had in mind.”

“Couldn’t we smuggle enough tofacco aboard to get us back to Sarr?”

“Speaking for myself, I couldn’t get there. I understand you don’t know the direction yourself. Furthermore, if Drai himself can’t smuggle the stuff onto Sarr, how do you expect me to get it past his eyes? I can’t carry a refrigerator on my back, and you know what happens if the stuff warms up.”

“All right — we’ll play the game as it’s dealt for a while. Let’s go.”

Half an hour later, the Karella headed out into the icy dark. At about the same time, Roger Wing began to feel cold himself, and decided to give up the watch for that night. He was beginning to feel a little discouraged, and as he crawled through his bedroom window a short time later — with elaborate precautions of silence — and stowed the rope under his bed, he was wondering seriously if he should continue the vigil. Perhaps the strange visitor would never return, and the longer he waited to get his father’s opinion, the harder it would be to show any concrete evidence of what had happened.

He fell asleep over the problem — somewhere about the time the test torpedo entered atmosphere a few miles above him.

13

The Karella hung poised deep in Earth’s shadow, well beyond measurable air pressure. The spherical compass tuned to the transmitter on the planet far below pointed in a direction that would have been straight down had there been any weight. Ordon Lee was reading, with an occasional glance at his beloved indicator board whenever a light blinked. This was fairly often, for Ken and Feth had put the testing of cold-armor on a mass-production basis. One of the suits had already returned and been checked; Feth was now in the open air lock, clad in an ordinary space suit, detaching the second from the cargo rings and putting the third in its place. He was in touch with Ken, at the torpedo controls, by radio. The scientist was holding the torpedo as well as he could partly inside the lock, which had not been designed for such maneuvers and was not large enough for the full length of the projectile. Feth was having his troubles from the same fact, and the lock-obstruction light on Lee’s board was flashing hysterically.

With the torpedo once more plunging toward the dark surface below, things quieted down a little — but only a little. Feth brought the second suit inside, necessarily closing the outer door in the process and occasioning another pattern of colored light to disturb the pilot’s reading. Then there was nothing but the fading proximity light as the torpedo receded, and the burden of divided attention was shifted to Ken. He had to stay at his controls, but he wanted desperately to see what Feth was doing. He already knew that the first of the suits was wearable — its interior temperature had dropped about forty degrees, which represented an actual heat loss his own metabolism could easily make up; and there was a governor on the heater unit which Feth had deliberately set down so that the heat loss should be measurable. With that limitation removed, he should be as comfortable on the Planet of Ice as anyone could expect to be while encased in nearly three hundred pounds of metal.

Knowing this, he was less worried about the second suit; but he found that he was still unable to concentrate completely on the job in hand. He was quite startled when a buzzer sounded on his own board, which proved to be announcing the fact that his torpedo had encountered outside pressure. As Ken had not reduced its speed to anything like a safe value, he was quite busy for a while; and when he had finally landed the messenger — safely, he hoped — Feth had finished his work. There were now two usable suits.

That removed the greatest load from the minds of both scientist and mechanic, and they were not too disappointed when the third unit failed its test. Ken had a suspicion of the reason — Feth found that leakage had occurred at leg and “sleeve” joints, which would have been put under considerable stress by high acceleration. He did not volunteer this idea, and Feth asked no questions. Ken had an uneasy idea that the mechanic with the rather surprising chemical and physical background might have figured the matter out for himself, however.

This worry, if it could be dignified by such a name, was quickly submerged in the flurry of final preparations for the descent. Ordon Lee still refused flatly to lower his ship into the heat-trap of Earth’s atmosphere, even after the success of two of the suits; it would therefore be necessary for Ken to ride down as the empty armor had done — clamped to the outside of a torpedo. The attachments would have to be modified so that he could manipulate them himself, and that took a little time. Ken ate a good meal, and took the unusual precaution of drinking — the Sarrians manufactured nearly all the liquid they needed in their own tissues.

If the scientist felt any slight doubts as he stepped into the metallic bulk which was to be his only shield for the next few hours from the ghastliest environment he could imagine, his pride prevented them from showing. He was silent as Feth carefully dogged the upper section in place — entry was effected through the top — and listened with a tiny stethoscope to each of the equalizer pumps as they were turned on. Satisfied, he nodded approval at the armored scientist, and Ken reached out, seized a stanchion with one of his handlers, and pulled his personal tank into motion toward the air lock. He had to wait in the corridor while Feth redonned his own suit, and