Hugh again fought down the urge to get rid of the diving fluid and take an aircraft out to the truck himself. He knew he wasn’t needed. Rekchellet was much better qualified physically to do search work over the Fafnir-lit snow hills than any Erthuma. Hugh didn’t know Third-Supply-Watcher or all the Habras who were along, but he had no reason to doubt their abilities either. He and his wife had a natural desire to find out what had led up to the truck’s arrival at Pitville and the source of its grim cargo, but so, presumably, did the others. They had as much right to satisfy the emotion as the Erthumoi, and could be trusted to pass any information along when it became available.
And there was a bright side to staying. They were also curious about the frozen corpse still lying outside the warehouse, and any answers to that problem were likely to be found right here at Pitville when dating and other analyses could be made.
Maybe.
The real trouble with the safety job, Hugh frequently told himself — he didn’t waste code effort repeating the point to Janice — was that it was interesting only in spurts. The rest of the time he had to spend trying to think up things that might go wrong and arrangements he might reasonably make to forestall them. That, at least, was what the job description implied.
There were actually other things to think about. Rekchellet’s half-joking remark that S’Nash was distracting its/his fellow Naxians by suggesting that the Erthumoi were plotting to popularize the use of artificial intelligence had not been funny. It was very close to the Cedars’ actual basic responsibility on Habranha, a fact it would be better for the Guild, or at least its local personnel, not to know. It would be naive to suppose that S’Nash, at least, hadn’t figured il out by now; the words to Rekchellet could easily have been meant to tell the Erthumoi this. The Naxian, Hugh was sure, was quite subtle enough. Even if they hadn’t, S’Nash must have sensed his and Janice’s emotional response to the Crotonite’s words, and there could be very few reasonable explanations for those feelings. No mind reading would be needed.
Of course, S’Nash it/himself seemed a bit— liberal? — by Naxian criteria; one could hope for tolerance of such activity.
Also, it/he had been using Rekchellet and the Erthumoi for personal convenience, and had given the former permission to return the attention. This might not have been meant literally, but taking it so could hardly be resented by a reasonable being.
Hardly.
Wishful thinking, Hugh. Let Jan get in on it, boy; she’s better with non-Erthumoi than you are.
“We’re starting.” It was the Locrian’s voice. “We cannot use full speed, since my attention will be divided between chart and surface now that we are off the road, and the surface itself is far from level. In a way, that will help since it will give the fliers more time to examine the region to either side, but I am more doubtful now about their chances of seeing anything. The hills seem to move fast enough to keep this machine from retracing its way in all three dimensions even after what I assume must have been a fairly short time, so it seems likely that traces left by anyone who went outside, or which were left by the truck itself when it stopped, will be covered.”
“That would depend on chance,” keyed Hugh. “Some stuff might be left clear for hours or days, depending on which way the dune was traveling. Keep your eye ready for tracks; the truck is heavy enough to have welded snow or melted its way into ice if it stopped for more than a few moments, or perhaps even if it didn’t. A long stop should leave an ice sheet where the engine melted the ground under it. Is there any spot on the map which looks special? Something they headed toward for a long time, or away from for a long time?”
“Yes. After many short legs starting at the Port, it indicates a great circle path of forty-two hundred eighty-three kilometers to a point two hundred ninety-one kilometers north of the Cold Pole, and from there a similar one of even greater length, four thousand four hundred ten kilometers, followed by a dozen more short legs ending at the point where we left the road.”
“And, I assume, a final leg along the road itself to here.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I suppose the long sections are as likely to be meant to deceive as the short ones. Better not shortcut.”
“That was Rekchellet’s opinion and mine.”
“Good. Remember, the best indication of a slop will probably be a patch of melted and refrozen surface.”
“That may well be. I will watch.”
“You especially,” added Janice. “Even a thin cover of blown snow would hide that from the fliers.”
“True. I will watch carefully. That was why I expected to have to divide attention so much.” “It’s worth any lost time, I’d say,” keyed Hugh. “I agree.”
The Erthumoi leaned back from the microphone. There was little they could do until more information came in from somewhere. Hugh almost hoped for another emergency signal, which would at least have made him feel useful. His wife could always fall back on lab work, of course. That thought gave birth to an idea.
“Say, Jan,” he signaled, “Do we really need anyone’s permission to go to work on the Habra body? You only want tiny samples, and if it’s anything like as old as that wing, no one would mind anyway.”
“But if it’s a modern casualty, someone might. We don’t have any idea how old it might be. It’s like a fossil bought from a wandering dealer — no provenance. We can’t even guess how old it might be because we don’t know how long this species has been around on Habranha in its present form — that’s the main reason for this whole project, after all. What we could see in the ice looked modern, and Counter-of-Supplies didn’t mention any differences…”
“But she did say she wasn’t very familiar with Habra insides. We can’t weigh that very much. Come on. You could use a regular microcorer on the ice slab, and get a bit of body plate or even some inner tissue, and no one’d be bothered. They wouldn’t even have to know. You wouldn’t have to check out special equipment from anywhere; you have everything you’d need in your own lab right now.”
Janice frowned thoughtfully.
“Did all the Habras who saw the body go with Rek?” she asked after a time.
“No. Only two.”
“Can you get in touch with any others and ask if the body ornaments on it showed through the ice well enough to help with identification?”
“I guess so. I don’t know who else was there, offhand, but Counter should be able to tell us. She knows — no, maybe not. The Erthumoi and Locrians were supply people, but the Habras came from outside about when we did. I think Switch went with Rek; Ted was there, too, but would have stayed around. Still, I’ll ask her.” Hugh turned back to the microphone. He wasn’t seriously bothered by his wife’s scruples; he shared them, actually. It was merely that his curiosity was overpowering them.
It took over a quarter of an hour to identify the natives who had not gone with Rekchellet; Hugh, in fact, had to conceive the notion of calling the truck and asking, when Third-Supply-Watcher could get its attention, one of those who had. The call and conversation were quick enough, but the gestation of the idea had been embarrassingly long. Another sixty seconds of relaying through the Habra community — it was nice, the man reflected, that someone could use radio freely here — had him in touch with a being the translator called Miriam.