feet, in spite of what we feared. This way we can keep them off the ground, so they don’t lose so much by conduction.
“The only other thing I had in mind had to do with torpedo control. Could a unit be made small enough for me to carry, so I could move myself around down there instead of having to tell you where I want to go?”
Feth frowned at this suggestion. “I thought of that, too, while I was trying to keep the torpedo near you this time,” he said. “Frankly, I doubt it — not that the set could be made small enough, but that I could do it with the materials I have at hand. Still, I’ll look into the possibility when we get back to One. I take it you have no objection to Drai’s hearing about these last two suggestions?”
“Of course not. They ought to keep him happy. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he’d take a trip down there himself, once we showed it was safe enough?” Feth smiled broadly at the scientist’s suggestion.
“It would take a better psychologist than either of us to endue him with that much trust in his fellows, I fear. Besides, what good would it do? We wouldn’t gain anything by leaving him there, pleasant as the idea sounds, and there’d be no use trying to threaten him, since he’d never dream of keeping any inconvenient promises you might wring out of him.”
“I didn’t really expect much from the idea. Well, with the other matter understood, I suppose we’d better take those samples back to One before they freeze, and get a vivarium knocked together. If we can grow anything at all, it ought to keep Drai quiet for a little while.”
The torpedo which had transported Ken and his specimens had been allowed to drift to the edge of the repeller field as soon as he had detached himself from it. Feth now returned to the control room and began to monitor the little vessel, holding it close against the hull of the large ship so that it would be dragged along in the
As soon as the
“Well, I understand from Lee that you actually talked to a native. Good work, good work. Did you find out anything about how they make their tofacco?”
“We haven’t learned their language too well, yet,” Feth replied with as little sarcasm as he could manage. “We were operating on a slightly different line of investigation.” He indicated the partly constructed vivarium. Drai frowned at it, as though trying to gather its purpose. “It’s a small chamber where we can reproduce Planet Three’s conditions, we hope; more or less of an experiment. The larger one goes outside, and we’ll maintain a vacuum between the two. Feth says one of the sulfur hexafluoride refrigerators he knocked together years ago will get the temperature low enough, and we got enough of the planet’s air to fill it a couple of times at their pressure.” Drai looked puzzled still.
“But isn’t it a little small for one of the natives? Lee said you’d described them as nearly five feet tall. Besides, I didn’t hear about these plans at all.”
“Natives? I thought you wanted us to grow vegetation. What good would a native do us here?” The master’s face cleared.
“Oh, I see. I didn’t know you’d picked up vegetation already. Still, now that I think of it, it mightn’t be a bad idea to have a native or two. If the race is at all civilized, they could be used for a really stupendous ransom in tofacco — and we could use them in the cave, once it was conditioned, to take care of the tofacco and harvest it Thanks for the idea.”
“I don’t know just how intelligent the natives are, as yet,” replied Ken, “but I don’t think they’re stupid enough to walk into any sort of cage we might leave open for them. If you don’t mind, I’ll leave that as a last resort— we’re going to have trouble enough getting our soil and seeds from their present containers into this thing without exposing them either to our atmosphere or to empty space. It would be a hundred times worse getting a native into one of those caves.”
“Well, you may be right. I still think it would get us more tofacco, though.”
“I’m sure it would, if they are at all civilized. I don’t see why you’re complaining about that, though — you’re getting it cheap enough now, goodness knows.”
“I don’t mind the price — it’s the quantity. We only get a couple of hundred cylinders a year — one of Three’s years, that is. That doesn’t let us operate on a very large scale. Well, do what you think best — provided you can convince me it’s best, too.” He left on that note, smiling; but the smile seemed to both Feth and Ken to have a rather unpleasant undertone. Feth looked after him a little uneasily, started to return to the job in hand, stopped once more, looked rather apologetically at Ken, and then went after Drai. The scientist remembered that Feth’s last dose of the drug had come some time before his own.
That set him to wondering about when he himself could expect to feel the craving. Feth had said the interval was five or six Sarrian days — which were about thirteen Earthly hours in length. About half a day had been consumed after his first recovery in general talk, checking of the big suits, and travelling out to Three; rather more than a day in the actual tests and the meeting with which they had culminated; another half day since. Looking into the future, at least a full day must pass before the planned meeting with the natives of Three. No one could tell how long that would last, but apparently he had a couple of days’ leeway in any case. He stopped worrying and turned his attention back to the partly completed vivarium.
He was not an expert welder but the specimens waiting patiently two thousand miles away would only last so long, and he did not know how long Feth would be incapacitated. He took the torch and resumed work on the outer case. He had learned from watching Feth how the testing equipment was used, and was pleasantly surprised when his seams proved airtight. That, however, was as far as he could go; the mechanic had made no written plans, and Ken had no idea of his ideas on the attachment of the various refrigerating and pumping mechanisms. He stopped work, therefore, and devoted his mind to the problem he had mentioned to Drai — how to transfer the samples to the beautiful little tank after it was completed.
He spent some time trying to invent a remote-controlled can opener before the solution struck him. Then he kicked himself soundly for not having thought of it before — his double-kneed legs gave him a noticeable advantage in that operation. After that he relaxed until Feth returned, coming as close to sleep as his race ever did.
The mechanic was back in less than four hours, as a matter of fact. He seemed to be in fairly good shape; the tofacco apparently had few visible after-effects, even after years of use, which was a comforting thing to think about.
Ken showed him what had been done on the vivarium during his absence, and Feth expressed approval. He looked a little disappointed, however, at hearing the scientist’s plan for stocking the device; as it turned out, he had had one of his own.
“I don’t know why we were fools enough to get the specimens before we had a place to put them,” Ken said. “We run the risk of ruining them in the cans, and have the transfer problem. We’d have been a lot smarter to make this thing first, and take it down to Three’s surface for stocking on the spot. Why didn’t we?”
“If you want an answer to that, we were probably too eager to make the trip,” was the plausible answer. “Are you going to forget about the specimens we have, then?”
“We might check their temperatures. If those are still reasonable, we might as well take them back to Three and make the transfer there. It will be interesting to see how the seeds, if any, stood their trip — not that anything will be proved if they don’t come up.”
“You could make a microscopic check for anything resembling seed,” Feth suggested, forgetting the situation for a moment.
“Do I cook the specimen or freeze the observer?” queried the scientist in an interested tone. Feth did not
