[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction, July 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Massy waked that morning when the only partly-opened port of his
sleeping-cabin closed of itself and the room-warmer began to whir. He
found himself burrowed deep under his covering, and when he got his
head out of it the already-bright room was bitterly cold and his breath
made a fog about him.
He thought uneasily, _It's colder than yesterday!_ But a Colonial
Survey officer is not supposed to let himself seem disturbed, in
public, and the only way to follow that rule is to follow it in
private, too. So Massy composed his features, while gloom filled him.
When one has just received senior service rating and is on one's very
first independent survey of a new colonial installation, the unexpected
can be appalling. The unexpected was definitely here, on Lani III.
He'd been a Survey Candidate on Khali II and Taret and Arepo I,
all of which were tropical, and a Junior Officer on Menes III and
Thotmes--one a semiarid planet and the other temperate-volcanic--and
he'd done an assistant job on Saril's solitary world, which was
nine-tenths water. But this first independent survey on his own was
another matter. Everything was wholly unfamiliar. An ice planet with a
minus point one habitability rating was upsetting in its peculiarities.
He knew what the books said about glacial-world conditions, but that
was all.
The denseness of the fog his breath made seemed to grow less as the
room-warmer whirred and whirred. When by the thinness of the mist he
guessed the temperature to be not much under freezing, he climbed out
of his bunk and went to the port to look out. His cabin, of course,
was in one of the drone-hulls that had brought the colony's equipment
to Lani III. The other emptied hulls were precisely ranged in order
outside. They were duly connected by tubular galleries, and very
painstakingly leveled. They gave an impression of impassioned tidiness
among the upheaved, ice-coated mountains all about.
He gazed down the long valley in which the colony lay. There were
monstrous slanting peaks on either side. They partly framed the morning
sun. Their sides were ice. The flanks of every mountain in view were
ice. The sky was pale. The sun had four sun-dogs placed geometrically
about it. It shone coldly upon this far-out world. Normal post-midnight
temperatures in this valley ranged around ten below zero--and this
was technically summer. But it was colder than ten below zero now. At
noon there were normally tiny trickling rills of surface-thaw running
down the sunlit sides of the mountains--but they froze again at night
and the frost replaced itself after sunset. And this was a sheltered
valley--warmer than most of the planet's surface. The sun had its
sun-dogs every day, on rising. There were nights when the brighter
planets had star-pups, too.
* * * * *
The phone-plate lighted and dimmed and lighted and dimmed. They
did themselves well on Lani III--but the parent world was in this
same solar system. That was rare. Massy stood before the plate and
it cleared. Herndon's face peered unhappily out of it. He was even
younger than Massy, and inclined to lean heavily on the supposedly vast
experience of a Senior Officer of the Colonial Survey.
"Well?" said Massy--and suddenly felt very undignified in his
sleeping-garments.
"We're picking up a beam from home," said Herndon anxiously, "but we
can't make it out."
Because the third planet of the sun Lani was being colonized from
the second, inhabited world, communication with the colony's base
was possible. A tight beam could span a distance which was only
light-minutes across at conjunction, and not much over a light-hour
at opposition--as now. But the beam communication had been broken
for the past few weeks, and shouldn't be possible again for some
weeks more. The sun lay between. One couldn't expect normal
sound-and-picture transmission until the parent planet had moved past
the scrambler-fields of Lani. But something had come through. It would
be reasonable for it to be pretty well hashed when it arrived.
"They aren't sending words or pictures," said Herndon uneasily. "The
beam is wabbly and we don't know what to make of it. It's a signal, all
right, and on the regular frequency. But there are all sorts of stray
noises, and still in the midst of it there's some sort of signal we
can't make out. It's like a whine, only it stutters. It's a broken-up
sound of one pitch."
Massy rubbed his chin reflectively. He remembered a course in
information theory just before he'd graduated from the Service Academy.
Signals made by pulses, and pitch-changes and frequency-variations.
Information was what couldn't be predicted without information. And he
remembered with gratitude a seminar on the history of communication,
just before he'd gone out on his first field job as a Survey Candidate.
"Hm-m-m," he said with a trace of self-consciousness. "Those
noises--the stuttering ones. Would they be, on the whole, of no more
than two different durations? Like--hm-m-m--_Bzz bzz bzzzzzz bzz_?"
He felt that he lost dignity by making such ribald sounds. But
Herndon's face brightened.
"That's it!" he said relievedly. "That's it! Only they're high-pitched
like--" His voice went falsetto. "_Bzz bzz bzz bzzzzz bzz bzz!_"
It occurred to Massy that they sounded like two idiots. He said with
dignity:
"Record everything you get, and I'll try to decode it." He added:
"Before there was voice communication there were signals by light
and sounds in groups of long and short units. They came in groups,
to stand for letters, and things were spelled out. Of course there
were larger groups which were words. Very crude system, but it worked
when there was great interference, as in the early days. If there's
some emergency, your home world might try to get through the sun's
scrambler-field that way."
"Undoubtedly!" said Herndon, with even greater relief. "No question,
that's it!"
He regarded Massy with great respect as he clicked off. His image
faded. The plate was clear.
* * * * *
_He thinks I'm wonderful_, thought Massy wryly. _Because I'm Colonial
Survey. But all I know is what's been taught me. It's bound to show up
sooner or later. Damn!_
He dressed. From time to time he looked out the port again. The
intolerable cold of Lani III had intensified, lately. There was some
idea that sunspots were somehow the cause. He couldn't make out
sunspots with the naked eye, but the sun did look pale, with its
accompanying sun-dogs. Massy was annoyed by them. They were the result
of microscopic ice-crystals suspended in the air. There was no dust on
this planet, but there was plenty of ice! It was in the air and on the
ground and even under it. To be sure, the drills for the foundation
of the great landing-grid had brought up cores of frozen humus along
with frozen clay, so there must have been a time when this world had
known clouds and seas and vegetation. But it was millions, maybe
hundreds of millions of years ago. Right now, though, it was only warm
enough to have an atmosphere and very slight and partial thawings in
direct sunlight, in sheltered spots, at midday. It couldn't support
life, because life is always dependent on other life, and there is a
temperature below which a natural ecological system can't maintain
itself. The past few weeks, the climate had been such that even
human-supplied life looked dubious.
Massy slipped on his Colonial Survey uniform with its palm-tree
insignia. Nothing could be much more inappropriate than palm-tree
symbols on a planet with sixty feet of permafrost. Massy reflected
wryly, _The construction gang calls it a blast, instead of a tree,
because we blow up when they try to dodge specifications. But
specifications have to be met! You can't bet the lives of a colony or
even a ship's crew on half-built facilities!_
He marched down the corridor from his sleeping room, with the dignity
he painstakingly tried to maintain for the sake of the Colonial Survey.
It was a pretty lonely business, being dignified all the time. If
Herndon didn't look so respectful, it would have been pleasant to be
more friendly. But Herndon revered him. Even his sister Riki--
But Massy put her firmly out of his mind. He was on Lani III to check
and approve the colony installations. There was the giant landing-grid
for spaceships, which took power from the ionosphere to bring heavily
loaded space-vessels gently to the ground, and in between times took
power from the same source to supply the colony's needs. It also
lifted visiting spacecraft the necessary five planetary diameters out
when they took off again. There was power-storage in the remote event
of disaster to that giant device. There was a food-reserve and the
necessary resources for its indefinite stretching in case of need. That
usually meant hydroponic installations. There was a reason for the
colony, which would make it self-supporting--here a mine. All these
things had had to be finished and operable and inspected by a duly
qualified Colonial Survey officer before the colony could be licensed
for unlimited use. It was all very normal and official, but Massy was
the newest Senior Survey Officer on the list, and this was the first of
his independent operations. He felt inadequate, sometimes.
He passed through the vestibule between this drone-hull and the next.
He went directly to Herndon's office. Herndon, like himself, was newly
endowed with authority. He was actually a mining-and-minerals man and
a youthful prodigy in that field, but when the director of the colony
was taken ill while a supply ship was aground, he went back to the home
planet and command devolved on Herndon. _I wonder_, thought Massy, _if
he feels as shaky as I do?_
* * * * *
When he entered the office, Herndon sat listening to a literal hash
of noises coming out of a speaker on his desk. The cryptic signal had
been relayed to him, and a recorder stored it as it came. There were
cracklings and squeals and moaning sounds, and sputters and rumbles
and growls. But behind the façade of confusion there was a tiny,
interrupted, high-pitched noise. It was a monotone whining not to be
confused with the random sounds accompanying it. Sometimes it faded
almost to inaudibility, and sometimes it was sharp and clear. But it
was a distinctive sound in itself, and it was made up of short whines
and longer ones of two durations only.
"I've put Riki at making a transcription of what we've got," said
Herndon with relief as he saw Massy. "She'll make short marks for the
short sounds, and long ones for the long. I've told her to try to
separate the groups. We've got a full half hour of it, already."
Massy made an inspired guess.
"I would expect it to be the same message repeated over and over," he
said. He added. "And I think it would be decoded by guessing at the
letters in two-letter and three-letter words, as clues to longer ones.
That's quicker than statistical analysis of frequency."
Herndon instantly pressed buttons under his phone-plate. He relayed the
information to Riki, his sister, as if it were gospel. Massy remembered
guiltily that it wasn't gospel. It was simply a trick recalled from
his boyhood, when he was passionately interested in secret languages.
His interest had faded when he realized he had no secrets to record or
transmit.
Herndon turned from the phone-plate.
"Riki says she's already learned to recognize some groups," he
reported, "but thanks for the advice. Now what?"
Massy sat down. He'd have liked some coffee, but he was being treated
with such respect that the role of demigod was almost forced on him.
"It seems to me," he observed, "that the increased cold out here might
not be local. Sunspots--"
Herndon jittered visibly. He silently handed over a sheet of paper
with observation-figures on top and a graph below them which related
the observations to each other. They were the daily, at-first-routine,
measurements of the solar constant from Lani III. The graph-line almost
ran off the paper at the bottom.
"To look at this," he admitted, "you'd think the sun was going out. Of
course it can't be," he added hastily. "Not possibly! But there is an
extraordinary number of sunspots. Maybe they'll clear. But meanwhile
the amount of heat reaching us is dropping. As far as I know there's
no parallel to it. Night temperatures are thirty degrees lower than
they should be. Not only here, either, but at all the robot weather
stations that have been spotted around the planet. They average forty
below zero minimum, instead of ten. And--there is that terrific lot of
sunspots...."
He looked hopefully at Massy. Massy frowned. Sunspots are things
about which nothing can be done. Yet the habitability of a borderline
planet, anyhow, can very well depend on them. An infinitesimal change
in sun heat can make a serious change in any planet's temperature. In
the books, the ancient mother planet Earth was said to have entered
glacial periods through a drop of only three degrees in the planet-wide
temperature, and to have been tropic almost to its poles from a rise of
only six. It had been guessed that glacial periods in the planet where
humanity began had been caused by coincidences of sunspot maxima.
This planet was already glacial to its equator. There was a genuinely
abnormal number of sunspots on Lani, its sun. Sunspots could account
for worsening conditions here, perhaps. _That message from the inner
planet could be bad_, thought Massy, _if the solar constant drops and
stays down a while._ But aloud he said:
"There couldn't be a really significant permanent change. Not quickly,
anyhow. Lani's a Sol-type star, and they aren't variables, though of
course any dynamic system like a sun will have cyclic modifications of
one sort or another. But they usually cancel out."
He sounded encouraging, even to himself. But there was a stirring
behind him. Riki Herndon had come silently into her brother's office.
She looked pale. She put papers down on her brother's desk.
"But," she said evenly, "while cycles sometimes cancel, sometimes they
enhance each other. They heterodyne. That's what's happening."
* * * * *
Massy scrambled to his feet, flushing. Herndon said sharply:
"What? Where'd you get that stuff, Riki?"
She nodded at the sheaf of papers she'd just laid down.
"That's the news from home." She nodded again, to Massy. "You were
right. It was the same message, repeated over and over. And I decoded
it like children decode each other's secret messages. I did that to Ken
once. He was twelve, and I decoded his diary, and I remember how angry
he was that I'd found out he didn't have any secrets."
She tried to smile. But Herndon wasn't listening. He read swiftly.
Massy saw that the under sheets were rows of dots and dashes,
painstakingly transcribed and then decoded. There were letters under
each group of marks.
Herndon was very white when he'd finished. He handed the sheet to
Massy. Riki's handwriting was precise and clear. Massy read:
"FOR YOUR INFORMATION THE SOLAR CONSTANT IS DROPPING RAPIDLY DUE TO
COINCIDENCE OF CYCLIC VARIATIONS IN SUNSPOT ACTIVITY WITH PREVIOUS
UNOBSERVED LONG CYCLES APPARENTLY INCREASING THE EFFECT MAXIMUM
IS NOT YET REACHED AND IT IS EXPECTED THAT THIS PLANET WILL BECOME
UNINHABITABLE FOR A TIME ALREADY KILLING FROSTS HAVE DESTROYED CROPS
IN SUMMER HEMISPHERE IT IS IMPROBABLE THAT MORE THAN A SMALL PART OF
THE POPULATION CAN BE SHELTERED AND WARMED THROUGH DEVELOPING GLACIAL
CONDITIONS WHICH WILL REACH TO EQUATOR IN TWO HUNDRED DAYS THE COLD
CONDITIONS ARE COMPUTED TO LAST TWO THOUSAND DAYS BEFORE NORMAL SOLAR
CONSTANT RECURS THIS INFORMATION IS SENT YOU TO ADVISE IMMEDIATE
DEVELOPMENT OF HYDROPONIC FOOD SUPPLY AND OTHER PRECAUTIONS MESSAGE
ENDS FOR YOUR INFORMATION THE SOLAR CONSTANT IS DROPPING RAPIDLY DUE TO
COINCIDENCE OF CYCLIC--"
Massy looked up. Herndon's face was ghastly. Massy said in some
grimness:
"Kent IV's the nearest world your planet could hope to get help from.
A mail liner will make it in two months. Kent IV might be able to send
three ships--to get here in two months more. That's no good!"
He felt sick. Human-inhabited planets are far apart. The average
distance of stars of all types--there is on an average between four
and five light-years of distance between suns. They are two months'
spaceship journey apart. And not all stars are sol-type or have
inhabited planets. Colonized worlds are like isolated islands in an
unimaginably vast ocean, and the ships that ply between them at thirty
light-speeds seem merely to creep. In ancient days on the mother planet
Earth, men sailed for months between ports, in their clumsy sailing
ships. There was no way to send messages faster than they could travel.
Nowadays there was little improvement. News of the Lani disaster
could not be transmitted. It had to be carried, as between stars, and
carriage was slow and response to news of disaster was no faster.
The inner planet, Lani II, had twenty millions of inhabitants, as
against the three hundred people in the colony on Lani III. The outer
planet was already frozen, but there would be glaciation on the inner
world in two hundred days. Glaciation and human life are mutually
exclusive. Human beings can survive only so long as food and power hold
out, and shelter against really bitter cold cannot be improvised for
twenty million people! And, of course, there could be no outside help
on any adequate scale. News of the need for it would travel too slowly.
One other world might hear in two months, and send what aid it could
in four. But the next would not hear for four months, and could not
send help in less than eight. It would take five Earth-years to get a
thousand ships to Lani II--and a thousand ships could not rescue more
than one per cent of the population. But in five years there would not
be nearly so many people left alive.
* * * * *
Herndon licked his lips. There were three hundred people in the
already-frozen colony. They had food and power and shelter. They had
been considered splendidly daring to risk the conditions here. But
all their home world would presently be like this. And there was no
possibility of equipping everybody there as the colonists were equipped.
"Our people," said Riki in a thin voice, "all of them.... Mother and
father and--the others. Our cousins. All our friends. Home is going to
be like ... like that!"
She jerked her head toward a port which let in the frigid
colony-world's white daylight. Her face worked.
Massy was aware of an extreme unhappiness on her account. For himself,
of course, the tragedy was less. He had no family. He had very few
friends. But he could see something that had not occurred to them as
yet.
"Of course," he said, "it's not only their trouble. If the solar
constant is really dropping like that ... why things out here will be
pretty bad too. A lot worse than they are now. We'll have to get to
work to save ourselves!"
Riki did not look at him. Herndon bit his lips. It was plain that their
own fate did not concern them immediately. But when one's home world
is doomed, one's personal safety seems a very trivial matter.
There was silence save for the crackling, tumultuous noises that came
out of the speaker on Herndon's desk. In the midst of that confused
sound there was a wavering, whining, high-pitched note which swelled
and faded and grew distinct again.
"We," said Massy without confidence, "are right now in the conditions
they'll face a good long time from now."
Herndon said dully:
"But we couldn't live here without supplies from home. Or even without
the equipment we brought. But they can't get supplies from anywhere,
and they can't make such equipment for everybody! They'll die!" He
swallowed, and there was a clicking noise in his throat. "They ... they
know it, too. So they ... warn us to try to save ourselves because ...
they can't help us any more."
There are many reasons why a man can feel shame that he belongs to a
race which can do the things that some men do. But sometimes there are
reasons to be proud, as well. The home world of this colony was doomed,
but it sent a warning to the tiny group on the colony-world, to allow
them to try to save themselves.
"I ... wish we were there to ... share what they have to face," said
Riki. Her voice sounded as if her throat hurt. "I ... don't want to
keep on living if ... everybody who ... ever cared about us is going to
die!"
Massy felt lonely. He could understand that nobody would want to live
as the only human alive. Nobody would want to live as a member of the
only group of people left alive. And everybody thinks of his home
planet as all the world there is. _I don't think that way_, thought
Massy. _But maybe it's the way I'd feel about living if Riki were to
die._ It would be natural to want to share any danger or any disaster
she faced. Which he was.
"L-look!" he said, stammering a little "You don't see! It isn't a case
of your living while they die! If your home world becomes like this,
what will this be like? We're farther from the sun! We're colder to
start with! Do you think we'll live through anything they can't take?
Food supplies or no, equipment or no, do you think we've got a chance?
Use your brains!"
Herndon and Riki stared at him. And then some of the strained look left
Riki's face and body. Herndon blinked, and said slowly:
"Why ... that's so! We were thought to be taking a terrific risk when
we came here. But it'll be as much worse here--Of course! We are in the
same fix they're in!"
He straightened a little. Color actually came back into his face. Riki
managed to smile. And then Herndon said almost naturally:
"That makes things look more sensible! We've got to fight for our
lives, too! And we've very little chance of saving them! What do we do
about it, Massy?"