Part 7

"Just rigged up a series of photo-electric cells and relays, so now all I have to do is throw one switch and it takes care of all the little details of landing, just as this other one does of take-offs." Jon tried to make it sound like an offhand comment. "My height-to-descent-speed ratio was off a bit, and that was what I had to fix."

"But ... but that's something brand new, isn't it? I never heard of such a thing before." Jak still could hardly believe what he had just witnessed.

"Oh, it wasn't so much a much." Jon looked down as he guessed that his brother would soon realize what a remarkable thing he had done.

"Boy, you're good!" Jak applauded, and as their mother came into the control room, he almost shouted, "Jon's gone and...."

"Landed so we could go out a bit and make a fuller report in our log," Jon cut in sharply, with a warning look at his senior. "How's Pop?"

"Been moving about some, although he hasn't wakened fully yet today. His breathing is much easier. He still makes noises--but then, he always did sort of snore when he slept."

The boys went with her into the bunkroom to look at their father before they started outside. There was a flush of color on his skin, although it was paler than its usual state. When Jak examined the side of his patient's head he could see that it was practically healed. Also, the broken leg seemed in fine shape, as seen through the clear plastic of the cast.

"He'll be waking up for good any day now, I'm sure," he said thankfully.

"Gosh, I hope so," Jon said. "I feel like a fish out of water without my Pop."

"You seem to be doing fine, anyway," his mother cheered him. "And so is Jak," she hastened to add, fearful her elder son might think her prejudiced.

The boys went out to get ready for their outside trip.

"What's the big idea, not letting me tell Mother about your new dinkus for landings and take-offs?" Jak railed.

"Aw, she wouldn't understand it, and it'd worry her for fear it wouldn't work." Jon was clearly uncomfortable about the praise he could not help seeing in his brother's eyes. "I'll tell Pop, when he wakes up. Come on, I'll race you into our suits."

The boys donned their spacesuits, and examined each other to make sure they were "tight." They saw to it that their guns and bandoliers were fully loaded; that they had with them what tools and other equipment they felt might be needed. Then they opened the lockdoors and went outside.

They started off in a predetermined direction, having made plans to go about five miles. Then they would swing in a circle around the ship. If they saw anything they thought exceptionally interesting, they would make short side trips, and if necessary, complete their circle on another day. In any event, they had promised their mother to be back by dark.

The first leg of their journey was completed without any excitement, although Jak was continually finding new plants he wanted to collect for future study.

"Nix, Owl, not this trip," Jon kept protesting. "You promised, remember?"

"Oh, all right, killjoy. But there's so much here I want to find out about."

"Yes, so much you couldn't even make a dent in it in a lifetime. Want us to leave you behind to do it?"

"You just try that, and I'll knock your teeth loose."

"You and what platoon of space marines?" Jon jeered good-naturedly, knowing that with his greater size and strength Jak could not make good his threat--even if he had really wanted to.

Bickering in more or less friendly fashion, they covered their first five miles, then turned to the left and started circling. About a mile of this and they entered a fairly large wood. The trees here were so strange the boys looked about them with a growing excitement.

Unconsciously, they drew closer together, and finally Jon voiced what was in both their minds.

"I'm beginning to get scared, Jak. Ought we to keep trying to go this way?"

"I'm not sure," slowly. "I'm getting a feeling there's something here that seems to be unfriendly--perhaps dangerous. But there isn't a thing we can see--not even animal life."

"Maybe it's only because this forest is so unlike either those on Terra or the ones on Two." But Jon gripped his rifle more tightly, and his thumb unlocked the safety catch.

The two boys finally came to a dead halt in a small clearing perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and examined more closely the few trees and bushes about them. The ground on which they were now standing was bare and sandy, although beneath the trees it had been more like black loam.

"This sand must be why there's practically no vegetation here," Jak said. He dug into the ground a bit, and found it to be sand as deep as he went.

Rising, he looked even more closely at the trees about the edge of the clearing.

Not one of them was the straight, slim type with which they were familiar. These were ungainly and appeared stunted, although many were actually close to thirty feet tall. Even so, they looked too large in diameter for their height. None of them had more than five or six twigless, leafless limbs, and those were almost as large in diameter as the trunks from which they grew. These branches twisted and curved, although in most cases the curve was upward, so that the leafless limbs often ended at a higher point than the main trunk of the tree.

Suddenly Jak began laughing--but with a high-pitched, mirthless laughter. As Jon looked at him in surprise, the elder tried to calm himself.

"I know what makes them look so scary," he finally said between gasps. "It's that weird look. But remember those pictures we've seen of the Zona and Newmex deserts in Noramer, back home? Remember the Josha trees growing there? They're as alien-looking as anything on Terra, and these look something like them."

Jon, too, began grinning as remembrance came. "'Most let ourselves get scared over nothing, didn't we? Come on, let's travel." And he started forward.

Yet the strangeness persisted, and before the boys had passed through the fringe of those tortured trees on the other side of that wood they started to get that queazy feeling again, in spite of their realization of what caused it. They began going more slowly, cautiously; ready for a quick turn and run, yet both inwardly hating themselves for the fear, and each determined not to let the other know he was afraid.

But it was with a distinct sense of relief that they saw the end of that forest ahead of them. Unconsciously they hurried their steps until they were almost trotting.

For the balance of their trip Jon was strangely acquiescent as Jak became more and more engrossed in the strange plant life of this world Three. He knew that this was Jak's dish, and he was perfectly willing to defer to the elder's knowledge and desire to learn. His main concern was to keep his brother from overloading himself with specimens, or from loitering too much.

Jak had been especially studying the soil here, Jon noticed, and finally he asked about it. "Notice one peculiar thing about this planet?"

"What's on your mind?"

"The total absence, as far as we've seen, of any sort or type of protoplasmic life," Jak reported.

"Hey, that's right, though I hadn't thought of it before. Our examination from the air, I remember now, showed no animals, birds or people. Plenty of vegetation, though."

"Yes, it has everything in that line. I wonder, though...." He paused, and he grew thoughtful.

"Wonder what?"

"How those plants can grow, without any worms or ants or anything to loosen and irrigate the soil, and no animals or birds to make fertilizers, or bees or butterflies or anything to carry pollen?"

Jon shrugged. "Wouldn't have the foggiest. That's your line, not mine. But they must do it some way--there's sure lots of plant life here."

But Jak was still shaking his head in puzzlement as they finally returned to the ship.

It was quite dark outside when the boys went into the control room after dinner. Jon went over to the window-ports, while Jak began working with his plant specimens.

"Jak, come here," Jon called after a moment or two. The elder, prompted by the curious urgency in his brother's voice, left his specimens and ran to the other's side.

"What're those things?"

Jak stared through the port in amazement. Outside, drifting across the clearing, were nearly a dozen large, spherical things like ghostly white balloons. They must have been almost a yard in diameter, and by straining their eyes the boys could see tentacles or tendrils of some sort depending from the bottom surfaces.

"Gosh, never saw anything like those. Let's go out and see what they are."

"Let's not and say we did," Jon retorted. "I want to find out more about them first." He went over to the control panel and switched on the searchlight, as well as the pilot's visi-screen. Looking into the latter, he was able to direct the light so it shone on a couple of the floating balls.

Jak was studying the plants--for so he believed them to be--more carefully, now that they were lighted. But after a moment he yelped excitedly, "Hey, they're deflating. Must be the light does it."

Jon was watching them in his screen. "Yes, I see now. What causes it?"

"I don't know," Jak answered sadly and absently. "But I sure want to know. How's about covering me while I go out and see if I can get one?"

"Well, maybe in your suit you'd be safe."

Once suited up, Jak went outside and across the short distance to where the balls seems to be slightly closer together. He tried first one way and then another to catch one, but at his lightest touch they burst and deflated. After several unsuccessful attempts, though, he called excitedly through his suit-sender.

"Jon, you read me?"

"Coming through."

"I'm going to try fanning one toward the air-analyzer. I want to see if we can get an idea of what's inside. I've got a screwy hunch."

"Right, I'll switch the light away from them, up into the air."

Carefully Jak herded one of the globes near the ship, and was finally successful in getting it close to the hull-vent of the air-analyzer. When it was almost touching the ship's side, he reached out and touched it, and it promptly broke.

"Get anything?" he yelled.

"Yes, gas of some sort. Taking the reading now. It seems to be mostly nitrogen."

"Hah, that's it, then! I'm coming in."

When Jak was back inside, Jon helped him remove his helmet, then demanded curiously, "What's it all about, Owl?"

"I'm not positive, of course, but I bet those things take the place of bees for pollinating, and also furnish the fertilizer for the ground when they burst and their nitrogen gets into the soil some way."

8

Later that evening Jon Carver sat for nearly an hour, studying intently from one of his reelbooks, and the frown on his face grew deeper and deeper.

Jak had been working over their father. He had given him a careful sponge bath, then fed him another intravenous dosage of the combined liquid protein, salt, sugar and glucose. Even though their mother had been able to spoon-feed her husband small amounts of food each day, the young hoped-to-be doctor felt additional nourishment was necessary.

When he finished his task and started to seek a comfortable seat in the living quarters of the space yacht, to relax with a little reading of his own, he noticed his brother's intent look and worried face.

"What's the matter, Jon?"

"Eh?" The younger boy looked up, startled, from his deep study. Then, as Jak repeated the question, he answered unhappily, "I just don't know enough, Owl. I can't figure out why Pop found such strong spectroscopic lines of that new element while we were billions of miles away, and yet we can't find any traces of it anywhere on these planets, except what we found in that cache."

"Maybe it's in the sun."

"I tried that when we were out there, but 'Annie' didn't even peep."

The elder brother studied the problem a moment.

"Could it be so strong that even the little bit we found would have shown those lines?"

"Maybe," doubtfully, "but I don't think so. Tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, I'm going to try to take a new reading from here. I tried to read Two, but couldn't get anything. However, I'm not so hot with the regular spectrograph, and that's why I'm boning up on it."

"Is this important?" Their mother had laid her sewing in her lap to listen to them, trying to follow and understand what her sons were talking about.

"Pop thought it was, Mom," Jon explained. "One of the things men have been looking for ever since they first started dreaming of rockets and spaceships, was the best possible fuel. We knew the one we're using now isn't the ultimate, but it's the best they've been able to get so far. Pop thought perhaps this new stuff might be it--_if_ we could find it, and _if_ we could learn how to use it."

"Why can't we use it if you find it?" Jak wanted to know.

"There are so many problems. Maybe it would be so radioactive we wouldn't be able to handle it or keep it in the storage bins without endangering the people on the ship. Maybe the exciters and convertors wouldn't handle it without a lot of new experimenting and new designs we wouldn't have the scientific or technical know-how to make. Or it might be that instead of getting a steady stream of power as we do with our present activated-copper fuel, the stuff would want to blow up all at once. If the metal's as powerful as I think it is, it might cause an explosion that would make man's biggest H- or C-bomb look like a firecracker."

"Then don't you go experimenting with it and blow us all up," his mother said sharply.

Jon grinned at her. "You needn't worry about that, Mom, now that I've had a chance to learn how little I know. Although I would've gone off half-cocked that day you stopped me--for which I'm grateful, even though I was sore at you for a while then. But I'm sure going to study it as soon as we get the other markers set and can get back to Two."

"By that time Father will be well again," Jak said.

"Isn't it wonderful that he really is coming around all right? Seems to be taking an awful long time for him to recover fully, though."

"I'm sure he'll be his own keen self again soon ... although he'll have to stay in bed until that leg is strong enough to stand on again."

"Well, let's hit the sack, so we can get a good start in the morning. 'Night, Mom."

* * * * *

During their journeys over the surface of Planet Three the boys conscientiously tended the machines and recorders that gave them the data on land and water conditions, the proportions of each, the approximate amounts of metallic ores their analyzers showed, the information on weather, temperature and humidity. They took numerous pictures as required by law--their mother often helping in this, after Jak had taught her how to operate the cameras. These pictures Jak developed and printed as he had time, and mounted them in their data book for the Colonial Board to study when they got back. They also mapped and recorded the size and distances of Three's two moons.

Jak named these "Zinnia" and "Begonia," much to Jon's sarcastic and openly-expressed derision.

"This'll make a swell home for people who like cold weather." Jak tried to change the subject.

"Yes, just as Two will for those who like it hotter." Jon's eyes shone. "Pop sure picked a winner when he decided to explore this system. Even with just these two worlds he has a prize."

"_If_ they accept our work as proof. Wonder what the fourth planet will be like?" Jak continued in a different tone.

"Cold. Lots colder, probably, than Mars."

"Then it won't do us any good?"

"Depends on what's on it in the way of metals that can be mined. Maybe we'll find something there. Might be natural gems or jewels, too."

"And anyway, cold never stopped man."

"That's right," Jon said admiringly. "They have mines on Pluto, even--although they're mostly worked by automatics while the men stay warm in their bubble-cities."

As the _Star Rover_ approached closer to the distant, smaller planet they had named "Jon," their instruments showed it to have a diameter of about 4400 miles, and a density of about 4.6, a little lighter than Terra. This meant the gravity would be a bit weaker, and they would weigh less than on their home planet. Four was almost a quarter of a billion miles from the sun, and would be very cold, as Jon had said.

While their ship drove in closer, the boys' mother came into the control room. All three Carvers stared excitedly into their visiplates, watching their rapid approach to this new world. Would they find anything of value there, or was it simply a barren wasteland of ice and frozen air and rocks, far too cold and forbidding for men even to bother trying to explore it?

When Jak, eyes still glued to the telescopic sights of his spectro-analyzer, voiced something of this, Jon drawled, "You know better than that, Owl. We said just yesterday that there's no place, no matter how bad, that man won't explore to see if there's anything he can possibly use. They'll follow us here, don't worry."

After cruising about the surface for some time, recording their data and taking the needed pictures, they saw a fairly level valley, ice-covered and bare, and Jon set the ship down there. By now he was becoming an expert astrogator and pilot, and with his new controls they could hardly feel the jar of the ship's landing.

"How's the temp outside?"

Jak was examining the gauges. "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.