Janice put the question to her, not because she expected to get more sympathy from a female but because Hugh’s hand was getting cramped again. Miriam, winging somewhere near the settlement on her own affairs, answered readily enough.
“I could see the ornaments. The ice was fairly clear, and they caught my attention because I’d never seen anything like them. I couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman.”
“Not even from the body?”
“Well — I…” Janice was quick-witted and hardened to many local customs. She guessed the likely cause of the hesitation.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. The ornament pattern, though — that was completely unfamiliar?”
“Completely. It corresponds to no age group, sex, or social organization I have ever seen in my life.”
“And like most of your people, you’ve been all over your world.”
“That’s right, as far as the continent goes.”
“Then it’s reasonable to guess that this person has been in the ice for a long time.”
“I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“And — please forgive me if this question is also discourteous — will anyone be bothered if we use a very tiny sample of his or her tissue to try to find out how long ago death occurred?”
“That would be all right even if there were known relatives, unless they were very odd people indeed. There are such folk, but I really wouldn’t worry. All of us here would very much like to find out how long ago this person froze, and where and why; but I suppose some of that will have to wait until we find the people who were in the truck.”
“And maybe longer,” was Hugh’s contribution to the close of the discussion. “Thanks, Miriam. Jan’ll let us all know as soon as she has anything to tell.” He turned to his wife and gestured, not using standard code, “All right, darling. Do your job.”
She came as close to expressing affection as environment armor allowed, and headed for her lab.
Hugh thought briefly of bumping someone from a tour of watch duty which demanded a different sort of concentration and was, in its way, a sort of relaxation, but the seed of another idea was starting to sprout. He decided to stay where he was, as undisturbed as possible, to let it grow.
The truck had come to Pitville some undetermined distance from some undetermined point somewhere on Darkside, apparently under automatic control. The last seventy or eighty kilometers of that journey had followed the regular road from the sea. The rest had apparently been cross-country.
Why had it followed the road? Why had it not come into the settlement straight from its point of origin? Because someone wanted that point to remain unknown?
But then why allow the autodriver to make a record of the trip? And why set it to follow the road, even briefly? Any random direction of approach would be just as deceptive. Could the driver’s chart have been falsified in some way? One of the people on the truck had been a Crotonite, who might very well have been able to make the device sit up and talk — and lie. So could the Erthumoi who had apparently been there, or any other passengers; it was a matter of learning the foibles of that instrument, not of belonging to a particular species. Any technically trained member of the Six Races, or, for that matter, a Habra, could probably have learned the requisite skills from a competent instructor in, at the outside, an hour or so.
Should he, Hugh Cedar, call Rekchellet and Third-Supply-Watcher and their companions and suggest that the search was a waste of time? Not yet. There’s a broad gap between even the most reasonable hypothesis and the weakest real theory, and a good chance still remained that people were actually in trouble and needing help somewhere out there in the chilly half-light of setting Fafnir. Or somewhere where Fafnir had already set.
What was needed was a bit of testing. Someone, as a first step, should go out to the point where the truck had left the road and look for — what?
Well, for evidence of whether the machine had stopped there and for how long. It would have melted snow under its body, which would have frozen into a sheet of ice almost at once when it left. With luck, the sheet would even bear marks of its treads, and possibly other tracks.
Who should go?
Agreed — by and with himself — that the truck shouldn’t be called back. It should continue what it had started.
A Habra or a Crotonite could get there from Pitville far faster than Hugh himself, even in the low gravity. Unfortunately, the only Crotonite to whom he could explain the whole matter quickly enough was Rekchellet. It would take too long to get any other even to start listening. The Habras were both pleasant and bright enough, but he didn’t feel for the moment that he knew any of them that well, even Ted. Janice couldn’t go any faster than he. S’Nash. .
Maybe. The snake could travel fast enough. Janice, however, had shared with her husband her mixed feelings about the Naxian’s trustworthiness, and Hugh had already felt much the same; his thoughts during the meeting at the ice dump had closely paralleled hers.
Strongest point of alclass="underline" the ice sheet, if it had been produced at all, had not been noticed by any of those now with the truck. It could easily have been covered by blown snow, or even by an advancing dune. Third-Supply-Watcher would have seen it only if she had been looking for it, and she had presumably had no reason to do that. Or had she? Hugh remembered that something had been said about examining each place the truck had stopped for clues.
He hesitated; he rather liked the idea he was developing, and didn’t want it to die too young, but common sense won. He called the truck. The Locrian answered.
“Did you make a really close examination of the place where you left the road before you started climbing hills?” asked the Erthuma.
“Not a deep one. There seemed no reason. There was no evidence of a prolonged stop, and it seemed unlikely that one would have been made so we checked only the surface. Is there reason to have gone deeper?” answered the Locrian with evident concern.
“No strong reason. I had an idea, but not a very well supported one. Not enough reason for you to turn back. Have you found anything of interest?”
“Not to the search. Judging by the differences between our actual height and readings on this chart, the hills move quite rapidly at some points and much less so at others. I have failed to find any systematic relation so far.”
“If you do, put in for an advanced degree. Thanks.” Hugh signed off, thought for another minute or two, and called Ged.
Janice had picked up a coring tool at her lab and made her way to the warehouse. The slab of ice was lying where it had been left; not even a Habra was watching or guarding it. Miriam’s casual attitude toward the dead, or at least dead who weren’t personal acquaintances, seemed to be shared by the other natives. In the interest of statistical reliability the Erthuma took two dozen specimens from points scattered the length of the body, though mostly from its upper surface — even here the ice slab was hard to turn over lor a single human being in armor. She included some wing tissue for comparison with the specimen already found in the Pit.
The operation was simple enough, but had to be done carefully, with each item separately stored and labeled; the whole procedure took nearly half an hour. Absorbed in work she liked, Janice took no real notice of the variations in weather which occurred during that time — a spell of clear calm, with Fafnir shining on the work area to lend his small assistance to her own lamp; another howling snow squall which forced her to bend close to see what she was doing; a mass of slow-moving, nearly saturated, bitterly cold air which threatened to hide subject and equipment in quickly growing frost. She was used to Habranhan weather and paid attention to it only when its demand was insistent. She had checked her armor properly and trusted it.