“Then there’s the surface. Before you can have spaceflight, you need a pretty advanced civilization. It doesn’t have to be out on the surface—Lo’tfian females run everything from their burrows, and only the males wander around above ground. But normally you expect spaceports an’ stuff like that. Archimedes plotted out lots of structures that could be cities or industrial plants on the warm hemisphere, but he can’t see anythin’ moving near any of them. Also, we don’t pick up a peep of radio signals from them. The strangest thing is that on the cold side, where Archimedes finds no trace of industrial structures, we pick up scads of radio noise all over the place. An’ when I say noise, I mean it. The signals are junk, as though hundreds of people in suits were all jabbering at each other at once with nobody listening. One of those babble centers seems right about the place where we pick up the beacon of E.C. Tally’s suit.”
Louis leaned back in his chair. He would never admit it to anybody, but it was nice to have an audience—especially an audience as attentive, fair-skinned and bright-eyed as Sinara Bellstock. A man could get into lots of trouble with an attractive young woman like that hanging on his words—if he wasn’t in twenty-seven kinds of trouble already.
Sinara raised her eyebrows at him. “Do you really want my opinion?”
“I’m waitin’ for it.”
“Well, I would say the choices are rather clear-cut. There is exactly one place on Marglot where you have a member of our party, and also evidence of surface activity. We should take the pinnace down to E.C. Tally’s location and find out what’s going on there.”
“You got it in one. Can you be ready in two hours?”
“Louis, I’m ready now. For anything.”
She looked it. Her cheeks were glowing.
“One other thing, Sinara. We have no idea what we may find down on the surface. We all wear suits.”
“I know that. I’m not a raw trainee, I’m a survival specialist. Assume I’m good at something.”
Louis did, but he wouldn’t say what. He watched her bounce out, happy as if he’d announced they all had the day off and were going for a picnic down on Marglot. She had come to the same decision as him about a choice of destination, but there was one detail of Louis’s own thought processes that he had declined to mention: of all the creatures, human or non-human, that you might find down on the surface of the planet, E.C. Tally was the one entity whom Louis Nenda could persuade into believing almost anything.
Unfortunately, others already on Marglot might be able to persuade E.C. just as easily.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Fun and games on Marglot
One more decision had to be made. Louis had not mentioned it to Sinara, because he was still turning it over in his mind. They had not come here to see the sights, so the safest approach would be to fly to your landing point as directly as possible. On the other hand, if there were spoils to be gained on Marglot—something which Louis increasingly doubted—then a survey from a few thousand meters above the ground, and even a landing at multiple locations, would be needed.
He never made a final decision. He didn’t have to, because Atvar H’sial made it for him.
“Do you anticipate that we will be obliged to wear closed suits for most of the period while we are on the surface of Marglot?”
“Dunno. Seems like there’s a pretty good chance of it, ’specially when we meet Tally an’ whatever goes with him.”
“Then let me remind you that on similar occasions in the past, you and I have suffered because of our inability to communicate. Sealed suits prevent any form of pheromonal communication, and you have difficulties when I seek to make statements employing human speech modes.”
“You’re gettin’ better, At.”
“Do not waste both our times. Your true opinion of my efforts shows clearly as a sub-text. No matter. What is important is that, since you and I will be unable to communicate efficiently once we are on the surface and our suits are closed, we must have an opportunity to decide upon a course of action before we arrive. We are able to fly in the pinnace with suits open. I therefore propose that we perform a preliminary reconnaissance of Marglot and formulate our plans, before we land and close our suits to meet with E.C. Tally and whatever surrounds him.”
“Got it. I’ll define a full low-altitude circuit of the planet before we touch down. Anything shoots at us, naturally we’ll be out of there.”
Louis thought about his partner again as he took the final steps to separate the pinnace from the Have-It-All and begin the swoop toward Marglot. You took one look at a Cecropian and you wished you could wake up; but you were already awake, and when it came to business the pheromonal conversations between Louis and Atvar H’sial agreed point by point. Those conversations were also—Louis was very aware of Sinara, sitting right behind him and breathing down the back of his neck—unclouded by those other pheromonal exchanges which prevented clear-headed discussion with members of the opposite sex.
He stared ahead at their nearing destination. From this distance one whole hemisphere of Marglot was visible. It was almost all the cold side. Making a landing down there among the ice ridges of the oceans or the vertical walls of land glaciers would not be easy. With any luck they would never have to try it.
He had his suit open, and he was offering a running commentary on what he saw to the Cecropian at his side. Atvar H’sial was in the observer’s seat—a wild misnomer in this case, since her echolocation permitted her to see only what was in the cabin of the pinnace. Louis wondered how she could stand it. She couldn’t “see” anything at all unless it gave off or reflected sound waves. For Atvar H’sial there were no stars, no moons, no galaxies—not even the planet below, until they were close to the ground. And, once her suit was sealed, there was also no speech. The urge to open up as soon as they landed would be enormous. But she never complained.
Not like the sniveling wretch in the seat behind her. Claudius had a special suit, one adapted to his strange helical physiology. Insisting that he was dying, he had refused to wind himself into it on the Have-It-All, until Nenda brought Archimedes into the picture.
The Zardalu had raised himself to his full height and glared down on Claudius with open maw, while Nenda said to Claudius, “I’ve told him he can eat whatever of you he can still see one minute from now.”
That had taken care of the suit problem, but it hadn’t ended the moaning and groaning.
“Such discomfort! Such pain! Such anguish! That a distinguished being of noble lineage should be subjected to treatment like this . . . Never should I have agreed to suffer such degradation. Never should I have left the haven of Pleasureworld!”
With his suit open Nenda was trying to talk pheromonally to Atvar H’sial, but doing it while Claudius made such a racket in the back seat made Louis’s head ache. Claudius was loud, and he was shrill.
Finally Nenda set the controls to automatic and turned in his seat to face the Polypheme. He said pleasantly, “We are cruisin’ at seventeen thousand meters. The temperature is a hundred and eleven below. There’s hardly any air outside, and nothin’ but solid ice beneath us. The seat you are in, Claudius, has an ejector mechanism, and it’s controlled from the pilot’s seat. If you don’t stop jabbering, I’m goin’ to use it.”
Sinara, sitting next to Claudius, said, “Louis, do it! Do it!”
“I may. My finger’s on the button. One more squeak and that’s it.”