The Planet Mappers by E. Everett Evans (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

"About a hundred below, and not a bit of moisture, naturally. Going to try going out?"

"I don't...." their mother started to speak against it, but made herself stop. Her boys were showing such resourcefulness and unexpected habits of caution that she felt she must let them decide things for themselves, even though her motherly instinct was always to hold them back from possible dangers.

"Sure we're going out for a bit," Jon answered his brother, then faced their mother. "It'll be all OK, Mom," he said affectionately. "We'll wear our suits, of course, with the heaters on. We won't go far, because the moment we feel any cold we'll run back. But I want to see what it's like out there, and if there's any sort of life. We're supposed to report...."

"Life? Here?" incredulously.

It was Jak who answered this. "Sure, Mother, there can be life-forms anywhere. Oh, not necessarily nor even probably anything we know on Terra. But there should be some sort of moss or lichen in the plant line."

"Yes, it has been learned from experience there's some sort of life almost everywhere," Jon chimed in.

"Even though most of it's so different from the basic protoplasm-type we're used to that it's hard to realize it's really life at all," Jak continued. "But then, remember back on Terra, the vast difference between animal and vegetable life—so totally unlike each other. I second Jon's plan to go out. I'd really like to see what's out there."

She sighed as if in recognition of the fact that these boys of hers were fast becoming reliable, self-sufficient men. They were not her babies any more. She was proud, of course—but she couldn't resist the motherly impulse to warn, "Well, be careful, anyway."

"Sure, we will."

Jon locked all the controls in neutral, and the two boys went to put on their suits. Knowing, as they did, the vital necessity of making sure they were "tight" and fully equipped, they examined and inspected their own and each other's spacesuits carefully before they opened the inner lockdoor.

Once outside, they stood on the icy ground for several minutes to make sure their heaters were working capably enough to keep them—and especially their feet—warm. Finding they were as completely comfortable as anyone ever can be inside that sort of a suit, they started off across the frozen plain, headed for the near-distant hills on the side of the valley closest to the ship.

Jak examined the ground about them intently as they walked, hoping to find some sort of plant life, while Jon kept his eyes mostly on the portable analyzer he carried, hoping they might discover valuable deposits of inorganics. Was there any of that unknown fuel-metal here, he wondered anxiously. Their big analyzer had not shown it as they were coming in on the survey or landing spiral, but that did not necessarily mean the portable wouldn't show it on closer approach, or that there might not be some on a portion of the surface they had not yet covered from above.

Their trips about and above the surface had, however, shown traces of iron, manganese, gold, silver, copper and several other metals, although not strongly enough to indicate great deposits. But Jon knew experience had shown over the years that one of the inefficiencies of such analyzers was that they would not show the depth of a deposit. Many times, when only a slight trace had been detected while flying above the surface, prospectors on the ground had found veritable bonanzas, once they started mining.

Even though the gravity was about eight per cent lighter than on Terra, the boys found walking not too easy. The terrain was mostly rough, although there were many spots of slick, glare ice. Too, there were many hillocks, and cracks and crevasses between the slippery places. So, even though they had added caulks to their metallic suit-boots, walking was unsafe and hard. By the time they reached the base of the first low hills they were winded and glad to rest a few minutes.

"Not a thing so far," Jak panted into his suit-mike. "I can't see even a bit of color—just this white glare."

"'Annie' hasn't let out a peep, either. Guess this is a dead 'un all right."

"At least this district looks it."

"Let's climb a ways, and if we don't find anything there, go back to the ship and try somewhere else."

"I'll buy a chunk of that."

They started up the hill before them. The climbing was difficult because of the ice and because in most places the side of the hill was not a gradual slope, but a starkly steep climb. It was evident there had been no gradual "weathering" here, to produce rounded edges and rolling slopes, although there were occasional smooth places. These, though, the boys knew could not be climbed at all without special equipment which they did not carry.

"This isn't frozen-water ice, is it?" Jon asked as they panted upward.

"No, silly. There can be no water vapor here, any more than there is on Neptune or Pluto back home. This is mostly frozen carbon dioxide."

"Well, it's just as cold and just as hard to climb as polar ice."

They climbed the quarter mile to the crest of the first hill and peered eagerly over its top. In front and slightly below was another valley—not as deep as the one in which their ship lay, but even larger. From their higher position the floor of this new valley seemed quite smooth.

"But that can be just an optical illusion," Jak answered Jon's statement, adding, "the glare of white would make it look smoother from a height."

Jon ignored the tone of superiority. "Good thing our suits have tinted lenses. Do we go down?"

"Natch." Jak had already started. "Off there to the right and part way down are some darker places. I want to look at them."

"Could lichens grow here?"

"Some could, possibly, though not exactly like the kind we'd find on Earth. If there's life here, it's probably a type that can convert energy directly from the elements in the ground or ice, instead of using photo-synthesis or other methods of obtaining nourishment we know about."

Half-sliding, half-climbing, they made their difficult way to the little patch of gray-greenness, which Jak examined with growing delight.

"Hey, that's gneiss."

"What's nice about ... Oh!" Jon grew red-faced at having been caught that way. "You and your education!" he snorted.

"See how brittle it is," Jak ignored the interruption as he touched a stem, only to have it snap off like a slim glass fibre. "Can't tell without a more thorough microscopic examination, but I'll bet this is some sort of silicon-based life—crystalline instead of being like the gneissic rocks back home."

Jon, meanwhile, had been surveying the valley with his binoculars. Suddenly he gave a gasp, and focussed his glasses more steadily on something that had caught his eye.

For some minutes he studied it, then called excitedly, "Hey, Owl, give a look over there. See, beside that spire of rock," he pointed as his brother rose and unlimbered his own pair of binoculars. "There's movement of some sort there, though it's very, very slow, on that sort of pyramid a yard or so high."

For long moments the two studied the spot through their high-powered glasses, then Jak said slowly but with mounting excitement, "I think you're right, Chubby, and that we've got to see."

In their excitement, the two started off faster and more carelessly than was safe. They found out that fact when both, almost at the same time, lost their footing and fell, coasting down the remainder of the hill. Faster and faster they slid, shaken and becoming bruised, although luckily neither broke any bones.

At the bottom they picked themselves up and started on again. Both walked more gingerly now, and Jak limped a bit from a twisted ankle. Yet they were so eager to see what this strange movement might be, they soon forgot their bruises and hurried once more.

It was a good half mile across the valley floor to their destination. But there, sure enough, they found life!

Strange, unearthly life it was, but they soon discovered that it had reproduction, growth and movement—the three main criteria of life-forms.

"Crystalline, by golly!" Jon yelled.

Jak was squatting beside the growing thing. It was somewhat pyramidal, yet the sides were not smooth. Rather, they were many-faceted, like the pieces of rock crystal with which the boys were familiar. It was a grayish-white color—with just enough of the gray in it so it had been visible from a distance, against the white background. But now, as the boys were on the sunward side of one of the pyramids, for there were many of them about, they could see that the light reflected from it was kaleidoscopic coloration at times.

Jak reached out a gloved hand and rapped on the pyramid ... and it gave forth a tinkling sound, then collapsed into a thousand tiny shards.

"You ... you broke it."

"Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kill it. Had no idea it was so fragile." Jak rose, moved over to another pyramid, and squatted beside it, examining it closely, but careful not to touch it. Jon sank onto his heels beside him.

For a few seconds as they watched there was no change. But suddenly they heard a small, clear ping, and a new crystal sprang into existence near the base. Almost at once there was a repetition of the sound and another appeared further up on the adjoining side of the structure—or creature. As the boys continued watching this was repeated over and over—with each tiny sound a new facet came into being somewhere on the pyramid. Before their very eyes the crystal-being was growing.

"Boy, that's something!" Jon exclaimed admiringly.

"Yes, it's a life-form, all right," Jak said more seriously, without taking his eyes from it. "It's all new to us, but I'll bet there's silicon of some sort beneath this carbon-dioxide ice, and that this thing gets its nourishment from that."

"What makes it keep growing?"

"What makes a man or an animal or plant grow when it eats?"

"Oh!" Then, "Do you suppose it has any mentality?"

Jak was silent a moment, mulling that over. Then he looked at his brother, a crease of concentration on his forehead. "I feel quite sure that it probably has, but of a sort we wouldn't be able to understand, even if we could get in contact with its so-called 'mind.' Even reading that, I doubt very much if we'd be able to understand its way of thinking, reasoning, or the motivations by which it lives." He went back to studying the strange crystallization.

"Ummm, probably you're right," Jon agreed after some thought. A moment later he asked, "Is it good for anything? I mean, can man use it for something?"

Jak wrenched his gaze away from that astounding growth to look up in shocked disgust. "Is that all you think about in the face of such a marvel as this—whether it's worth anything or not? Here we've found an entirely new type of life, and...."

"Hey, keep your suit tight, Owl. We have to report this, you know, and I'm just trying to find out what to write down."

"Oh!" Jak spoke slowly, his voice now admitting the lightness of that point of view. "I can't, offhand, see any practical value, especially considering how easily these crystals are broken. But I know geologists—and possibly chemists—will be intensely interested in studying them. There's a lot they can learn here, I'm sure. We'll naturally report all that, you're right, and the location of this valley."

"Think they may occur all over the planet?"

"No telling, but probably if they can find the right sort of soil nourishment. We didn't see any while coming down, but they might've been there and we missed them, not expecting anything like this."

"We didn't see any other life-forms, either, that we could recognize. Maybe these're the dominant species here."

Jak rose to his feet and looked all about him. There were hundreds of the pyramids to be seen, some towering a dozen or more feet high and as large across each base line; others very small—babies, he thought with a grin.

Again he watched one of the smaller ones intently, noticing how it grew. Jon walked about, looking at the different structures of that mysterious, growing crystal.

Suddenly he stiffened, straining, listening. Then he called, "Hey, Jak, you hear anything?"

"Huh?" his brother tore his gaze from the crystallization he was watching. "Hear what?"

"Turn up the power of your suit receiver. There. There it is again.... Hey, sounds like our siren!"

"Yes, I heard it then. Mother must be in trouble, or something."

Jak's last words were flung back across his shoulder as he ran as fast as he could across the icy wastes of the valley floor. Nor was Jon far behind. In fact, after a few strides the younger, but longer-legged boy was beside him, then forged ahead.

"Hurry, Owl! Mom wouldn't signal unless it was urgent."

"Maybe Father's worse."

They tried