The theory made Vickers extremely uncomfortable, but long cogitation produced no other. He berated himself for giving so much information without obtaining any in return; but there was no use reviving a dead issue. He determined to return to the observatory, both to check his theory and to obtain some of the missing information. He arose, opened the air lock, and walked across the small plateau toward the great entry way.
Twenty minutes later, a very thoughtful man, he was sitting in his control room. He had met four Heklans inside the entrance; they had been extremely polite; but he had not reached the elevator. Something was decidedly wrong. He had learned nothing new or helpful on the second trip, but it seemed pretty certain that action was required.
Action was not Vickers’ strong point, and none knew the fact better than he. Where a good personality and a working knowledge of practical persuasion were required, he shone; but if there were need of a more specialized field of knowledge, he knew when to call for help.
He turned to the panel below the outer vision screens, and pulled a small section out and down to form a shelf. On this was mounted a small medium-crystal unit. Such a transmitter was standard lifeboat equipment, but this set’s crystal had been recharged, removing it from the universal distress medium, and matched to only one other unit, which was in the interstellar ship now resting on Hekla’s innermost satellite. The set was keyed, as the high-frequency interrupter which permitted voice and, later, vision to be sent and received even by a ship in second-order flight had not at that time been developed.
Vickers checked the tiny green light which assured him that heat or stray static charges had not altered the crystal’s medium; then, at a very fair speed, he began rapping out a message. He had to wait several minutes for an acknowledgment, but finally a brief series of long and short flashes blinked from a second bulb above the key, and he closed the unit, satisfied.
There was nothing more he could do at the moment. He had been active since mid-morning, and it was now well after noon; he suddenly realized that his legs and back were aching fiercely from the unaccustomed walking under Heklan gravity. Vickers rose, closed and secured the inner air lock door, and dropped thankfully onto his bunk.
When he awoke, the sun was quite low in the west. Its enormous disk, ill-defined at the best of times, was nearly hidden in haze; the western half of the sky was tinted a deep blood-red never approached by a terrestrial sunset. The daily cumulus cloud was still above the mountain, its top streaming away inland and forming a crimson-lit finger pointing at Observatory Hill. Vickers, looking at it, was reminded to turn on the homing transmitter in his ship, in case his help should have difficulty in locating him.
He spent more than an hour at the board, using all his radio equipment in every combination and on every band he could reach, in an effort to pick up Heklan communications. On the entire electromagnetic spectrum, except the bands of too high frequency for communication beyond the horizon, static was strong and constant; frequency modulation did little to help, and brought nothing that might have been an intelligent message. He considered charging a spare crystal, but realized that no unit so far energized on any Federation world had chanced on the medium of a widely separated crystal, and the chances against doing so had been computed as something like the number of electrons in the universe. Two crystals had to be charged in physical contact to respond to each other across what, for want of a better name, was called a “medium.” Even if Heklan science had reached such a point, there was no hope of discovering the fact by searching the legions of possible media. Vickers took that for granted, and after some time at the radios was prepared to state that they had no other means of long-range communication.
He had given up the search and was eating, when a second lifeboat settled down beside his own. Vickers failed to notice it for several minutes; when he did, he immediately snapped on the standard communicator and tuned to the frequency his crew normally used on such occasions. He gave the set a moment to warm, and then called.
“Hello, Dave! Is everything all right?” The answer came back at once.
“This is Macklin. Rodin is here, all right. He’s in the air lock, compressing; I’m afraid he’s a little annoyed at you. Why in the name of common sense didn’t you let us know that you had an atmospheric pressure of forty pounds on this blasted hilltop? He could have ridden all the way in the lock, building up gradually. He’ll be over there as soon as possible; as soon as he opens the lock, you’d better trot over and help him. He had enough stuff to set up in business for himself. All right?”
“All serene. Can you stay with us, or do they want the boat back in a hurry?”
“I have to go back. I don’t know what they want with this can, and I’m much too modest to suppose they’d need me, but them’s the orders. You’d better watch for Dave; the lock pressure is nearly forty now.”
“All right. Don’t get lost.”
Vickers snapped off the set, and opened the inner lock door. A glance through the control room port showed that the other ship was still sealed, but he strolled out onto the landing stage and waited there for Rodin to emerge. He noted with a shiver that the temperature at the top of the hill had not increased perceptibly since morning.
He had only a few moments to wait; the lock of the visiting ship opened silently, and its occupant hailed him.
“Hello, Alf? What have you messed up this time?”
“Don’t take so much for granted, cloud-chaser,” returned Vickers. “As a matter of fact, I’m not quite sure what, if anything, has been botched. I’m just a little doubtful of the attitude I aroused in the lad who runs this place. It’s a weather station, and he’s a member of your honored and ancient profession, so I called on you to stand by and assist in further negotiations.”
“You would. I’d just gotten back on a more or less human eating and sleeping schedule. Will you help me get my stuff over to your ship? Mack is probably getting tired of waiting.” Vickers nodded and they set to work; Rodin continued to talk, commenting unfavorably on Hekla’s atmospheric pressure, gravity — this as he tried to lift a piece of apparatus normally well within his strength — temperature, and various other characteristics. He did not mention its weather, except to say that it looked interesting from an academic viewpoint.
The equipment had been transferred, and the men were settled in the warmth of Vickers’ ship before Rodin asked for details of the situation. Vickers gave a report of the last three months, pointing out that he had refused either to give an explanation of himself or request information of his hosts until he was sure of his ability to use their language; that Serrnak Deg, the only Heklan with whom he had come into more than momentary contact during this time, had seemed both friendly and interested until exchange of information had begun; and that Vickers had given much more information than he had received. He stressed the fact that the Heklan’s behavior had not become openly hostile; they were carefully keeping him away from anything in the observatory that might do him good, but they were being very polite about it. Rodin asked a question at this point.
“If they don’t want you, who aren’t a scientist, wandering around the place, what good will I do? Don’t you want them to know I’m a meteorologist?”
“I don’t want to wander. Deg said he’d call for me as soon as his emergency had passed — which may merely mean when he’s made the place safe for inspection by a suspicious alien. I’ll introduce you to him as a fellow meteorologist. Your inability to speak his language will take care of any risk there might be of your saying the wrong thing. I don’t know how advanced their metro is — the lab I saw looked quite imposing, but they may not be up to us. That’s one thing I’d like you to pass judgment on. If they’re behind us, we’ll try to make you helpful to them in as many ways as possible — generally produce a good impression. If they know more than you, we’ll decide on some other course of action.”