The whole flight time was not, by any means, spent at language lessons; Mahare sometimes slept, sometimes chattered at length to her tall male companion through their translators, sometimes sat and thought or simply watched the Habranhan icescape below or sky above as they flew. If there was any connection between the two other than their common employment by Ennissee, It never became obvious.
Both passengers knew the word “Pwanpwan,” and used it often enough to make Hugh realize that they hoped to get there eventually. He assumed that there would be no great difficulty about this, but tried not to make any signs likely to be taken as a promise that he would carry them there either himself or at once.
As it turned out, this was no problem. Hugh reported arrival to Ged as they slanted down toward the lights of Pitville, mentioning his passengers, and did not even have to arrange quarters for them after he landed. The small flier which had brought him and Reekess back from Pwanpwan was waiting beside the warehouse, as was Ged Barrar himself. The Samian shepherded the two Erthumoi aboard with almost discourteous haste, and they were gone before Hugh had a chance to more than wave a farewell.
“You’ll be less surprised later,” S’Nash remarked. The Naxian’s words were surprising enough right then. Clearly it/he knew more about everything going on than had been made clear so far, but this sounded almost as though the devious character intended to provide answers it/himself. Hugh refused to worry about it; he had not seen Janice for several Common Days. He left the unloading of what was left of the supplies to the warehouse people.
As far as his wife could tell, the specimens from Ennissee’s dig were very old. This merely meant older than the carbon dating limit; there was no reliable way to go farther with organic specimens. Habranhan “Fossils” were entire frozen remains, not mineralized. The only radionuclide in them with a respectable half life was potassium-forty, and there was very little of that; Habranhan life made do with an extremely low mineral content, not too surprisingly. The argon-forty which was one of its decay products could diffuse fairly rapidly, on the geological time scale, from the immediate area of its production; cross-checking with calcium-forty, the other product, pointless on other worlds because it was ubiquitous, might help a little here, but still all one could hope for was a minimum age. Actually, Janice had found only a little of the potassium and too little of its decay products to measure. The main specimen was certainly older than one hundred sixty thousand Common Years, with another faint probability that it was older than five hundred fifty thousand; but she had no faith whatever in the latter figure.
Such of Ennissee’s plant material as she had had time for was all much younger, safely inside the carbon limits. This, surprisingly, included that which seemed to be associated with the Habra remains. She had no explanation for this. She was still correlating her various results with Ennissee’s collection notes.
“What do our biological friends say?” asked Hugh.
“Just what you’d expect. Irritated because this or that part is missing, so they can’t check this or that theory of Habra evolution.”
“But they are sure it is a Habra ancestor?”
“They seem to be taking it for granted. I may be doing them an injustice, of course.”
“It’s a pretty key point. If there is this much evidence that the Habras did evolve here, that undersea project gets very important indeed.” Janice had not heard about this; Hugh had been too occupied otherwise to remember to tell her what he had learned from Bill and Shefcheeshee on his earlier return from Pwanpwan. He clarified the story now and she nodded.
“Have you told Ged about your dates yet?” her husband asked.
“Yes. There seemed no reason not to.”
Hugh was less sure of this, but reflected that it would take the Samian time to get his article written, if it were to be of degree caliber. If Ged didn’t realize that, which he might not, then perhaps it would be just as well if Janice’s name didn’t appeal on the work. In any case, it was a safe bet that the author would be back with more questions, since Janice was still at work. No need to worry.
In fact, there suddenly seemed no need to worry about anything. The original frozen body, beyond serious doubt, had been brought back in the truck and foisted on them more or less as a dress rehearsal. It would be nice to know where it had actually come from — Ennissee’s mole? From how deep under the ice — but that information could be worked out of Ennissee. It would be a little surprising if both specimens had been found near the Cold Pole.
And Hugh suddenly realized how surprising it was. His own native assistants could never have reached that point without the supplies in the aircraft, or some complex arrangement of food caches such as he had set up earlier for the Crotonites. That was something to be checked immediately through Ted; there might be historical records of such an expedition, or even several, though it was surprising that nothing of the sort had been mentioned in earlier discussion of the truck specimen.
If the other find represented a remote ancestor of the present natives there would of course be no historical record for it — but how had it flown that jar? It had smaller wings than the present species, and at least superficially a smaller brain. How could the Habra equivalent of a Lucy have made such a journey? Where had the specimen actually been found? Granted the general Habranhan chaos, which presumably extended to the surface and subsurface glaciers of the night hemisphere, what were the chances of a primitive flier from the ring continent being carried by a storm to or shortly past the terminator and then borne by ice currents all the way to the Cold Pole?
The first chance was probably respectable, granting Habranha’s storms. The second seemed remarkably close to zero. The seismic study of the Solid Ocean discussed a year or so ago by S’Nash suddenly seemed urgent.
Ennissee would have to be questioned in such a way as to establish the truth or falsehood of his answers beyond reasonable doubt, no argument about it. Rekchellet could be trusted to help with that, since it would make the other Crotonite look subservient to an Erthuma. There could hardly be a better revenge in Crotonite eyes.
The truck might bear further study; it could have been used to transport the second specimen as well. In any case it ought to be either returned to the Port, or have its location reported to the owners. That was not really Pitville responsibility, but Hugh’s people had been involved, and it would be a courtesy. No further excuse should be needed.
Maybe Jan and I should fly out, Hugh thought, with someone to take the aircraft back, and drive the truck back here ourselves. That could be fun; not even a Locrian within dozens of kilometers. We need a vacation from the diving juice. I’ll have Rek give me a quick lesson on that autodriver — no, he doesn’t know how to make it avoid elevation data— wait, that’s all right, if we’re just setting a new route and not back-tracing—