Since Hugh had provided careful specifications, the tools brought back had two disadvantages. They were light enough for Rekchellet to carry in flight, which meant that they were too light to make full use of Erthumoi muscles; and they were too heavy as well as having poorly shaped handles for anyone but the Erthumoi.
They took turns digging. S’Nash and Barrar watched, Plant-Biologist climbed about and over the heap in search of a spot from which he could see into it more clearly, and the fliers scoured the area from above in the faint hope of learning that tunneling would not be needed after all.
Three or four hours of chipping and prying brought the diggers close enough to allow the Locrian to state with certainty that a number of Habra forms were indeed embedded in the ice ahead, so that the party was either at the right place or one equally worth examining.
Rekchellet promptly pointed out that Ennissee was obviously responsible for the melting and general cliff damage, just as he had claimed earlier; this time even Barrar wondered whether he might be right. The nondiggers now congregated around the mouth of the tunnel and as far inside as they could get. Barrar and Miriam could now make themselves useful carrying ice fragments away from the digging face, and strained their various senses to determine details of what still lay some meters ahead.
Plant-Biologist informed them happily that the Habra forms were surrounded and more or less intermingled with tumbleweeds and other local vegetation, and thereafter focused most of his attention on this material. Miriam was beginning to get some details of the Habra bodies through her electrical senses.
A meter or so short of the nearest body the work had to slow down. The Locrian reported that the ice a little beyond the corpses contained a large, tightly packed bundle of plant remains of the azide variety, so that a pick blow might cause an explosion of possibly inconvenient magnitude. No one. they agreed, wanted to risk destruction of the specimens after all their work, and also Plant-Biologist wanted to study the tangle itself; the vegetation did not resemble at all closely any solid Ocean forms he had seen, he claimed.
Janice was fascinated; the biologist must have been able to observe near-microscopic details of tissue to identify the chemical nature of the things. Or could he sense the chemistry itself?
Conceivably the Habras ahead had accumulated the growths for some reason — perhaps to blast a shelter for themselves into the face of the cliff, Rekchellet suggested. It seemed to Janice a little early for hypothesizing, but she agreed that the idea had possibilities. S’Nash absorbed another lesson in tact.
Work became slow and cautious, the small metal spikes which were carried on the truck to work ice out of its tracks replacing the heavier tools. There were enough of these to let everyone work, and the tunnel end began to widen in both directions. In spite of the danger, most of the crew stayed as close as they could to the inner end of the tunnel. Plant-Biologist’s desire to examine the plants as closely as possible in case they did explode before he reached them overrode any fear he may have felt: S’Nash watched the Locrian for reasons Hugh and his wife could now easily guess; Janice’s attention was divided between the two while she mulled over developing theories. Even Barrar, anxious to miss nothing, crowded among the others and distracted the Locrian with questions about the Habra bodies which even the others could now see fairly clearly through the ice. He was not visibly taking notes, but Hugh felt sure his “body” incorporated recording equipment.
The bodies, all with wings folded back, were grouped next to the mass of vegetation as though they had died together while pushing it toward the cliff. They were not, as far as even the Locrian could see, wearing any protective equipment — certainly nothing like that now employed by Ted, Miriam, and their fellows. They might indeed have been a group blown long ago away from the sun and over the Solid Ocean in one of Habranha’s storms, dying while seeking shelter against or inside the cliff.
But what had killed them all at once? The bodies were not crushed or visibly injured, any more than the one Janice had already examined; they had certainly not been under an avalanche or anything like one. They were not, for the most part, in physical contact, so an electrical jolt from the plants could hardly have caught them all at once.
Barrar suggested that a sudden gust of ultrachilled air, not strong enough to blow them away but cold enough to kill or paralyze them until they were buried in an ordinary drift was conceivable. The bodies would have to be examined in detail to test this, and native help would be needed; no one else, except possibly the Naxians in the orbiting station, knew just what effects freezing might have on Habras. Since the plan was to secure all the corpses anyway, this hypothesis had no effect on procedure. The work went on slowly.
Digging around and over the bodies was tedious but not too difficult. Digging under to free them for transport was another matter. S’Nash was drafted, in spite of the clumsiness of its/his handlers, since work space could be excavated much more easily for its/his slender form.
Once his head was out of sight under the body, Janice tried another experiment. She was reasonably sure by now that a Naxian had to see its subject to read emotions. S’Nash could not see them now, and it was easy, snuggling next to Hugh even in armor, to assure a burst of emotion. As she had hoped, there was no obvious reaction from under the ice block.
Of course, S’Nash might have guessed what she was up to; no one ever performs the final experiment — the one which removes all possible doubt. This, the Erthuma reflected ruefully, is why science never gets past theory. But she could be pretty sure, now, about Naxians. The Locrians, though—
She let her own incidental flutter of emotion die down — she had been depending mostly on Hugh’s for the experiment — and turned her attention back to Plant-Biologist. Hugh enjoyed his own until S’Nash reported that it/ he had removed all the ice below the corpse except for supporting pillars at each corner of the block. These should remain until it/he emerged.
Two or three minutes later the first specimen was moving slowly back down the tunnel. In due time it was followed by a second, and a third, and a fourth. There were ten more bodies, but Plant-Biologist now wanted to take out the much larger and less tractable block containing the mass of plants. Ged disagreed, pointing out the risk to the other specimens. The Naxian’s eyes were swiveling around the group as though it/he wanted to keep them all in view at once, and Janice felt once more the glow of another fact supporting her ideas. She felt morally sure of her Naxian theory, and didn’t care whether S’Nash fully grasped the source of her feeling; she simply enjoyed it while the argument finally climaxed.
The Locrian won. It was obvious that the whole tunnel would have to be widened to accommodate this specimen, and the two Erthumoi from the supply station cheerfully volunteered to take the picks to this job. The rest, with reputations for scientific interest more or less at stake, began to work their way around the tangle of frozen vegetation with the smaller tools. They were very, very cautious, wary of projecting blades and stems which might actually be in the way of their strokes, and had not completed the job by the time the heavy labor on the tunnel was finished.
No one suggested that the picks be brought back, and their wielders did nol volunteer; with no comment but a simple “All done,” they went back to their truck to eat and rest. It was another hour before the botany specimen was ready to move.