The Man Who Counts

V

“First,” said Wace, “you must understand that the world is shaped like a ball.”

“Our philosophers have known it for a long time,” said Delp complacently. “Even barbarians like the Lannach’honai have an idea of the truth. After all, they cover thousands of obdisai every year, migrating. We’re not so mobile, but we had to work out an astronomy before we could navigate very far.”

Wace doubted that the Drak’honai could locate themselves with great precision. It was astonishing what their neolithic technology had achieved, not only in stone but in glass and ceramics; they even molded a few synthetic resins. They had telescopes, a sort of astrolabe, and navigational tables based on sun, stars, and the two small moons. However, compass and chronometer require iron, which simply did not exist in any noticeable quantity on Diomedes.

Automatically, he noted a rich potential market. The primitive Tyrlanians were avid for simple tools and weapons of metal, paying exorbitantly in the furs, gems, and pharmaceutically useful juices which made this planet worth the attention of the Polesotechnic League. The Drak’honai could use more sophisticated amenities, from clocks and slide rules to Diesel engines — and were able to meet proportionately higher prices.

He recollected where he was: the raft Gerunis, headquarters of the Chief Executive Officer of the Fleet; and that the amiable creature who sat on the upper deck and talked with him was actually his jailer.

How long had it been since the crash — fifteen Diomedean days? That would be more than a week, Terrestrial reckoning. Several per cent of the Earthside food was already eaten.

He had lashed himself into learning the Drak’ho tongue from his fellow-prisoner Tolk. It was fortunate that the League had, of necessity, long ago developed the principles by which instruction could be given in minimal time. When properly focused, a trained mind need only be told something once. Tolk himself used an almost identical system; he might never have seen metal, but the Herald was semantically sophisticated.

“Well, then,” said Wace, still haltingly and with gaps in his vocabulary, but adequately for his purposes, “do you know that this world-ball goes around the sun?”

“Quite a few of the philosophers believe that,” said Delp. “I’m a practical (?) one myself, and never cared much one way or another.”

“The motion of your world is unusual. In fact, in many ways this is a freak place. Your sun is cooler and redder than ours, so your home is colder. This sun has a mass… what do you say?… oh, call it a weight not much less than that of our own; and it is about the same distance. Therefore Diomedes, as we call your world, has a year only somewhat longer than our Earth’s. Seven hundred eighty-two Diomedean days, isn’t it? Diomedes has more than twice the diameter of Earth, but lacks the heavy materials found in most worlds. Therefore its gravity — hell! — therefore I only weigh about one-tenth more here than I would at home.”

“I don’t understand,” said Delp.

“Oh, never mind,” said Wace gloomily.

The planetographers were still puzzling about Diomedes. It didn’t fall into either of the standard types, the small hard ball like Earth or Mars, or the gas giant with a collapsed core like Jupiter or 61 Cygni C. It was intermediate, with a mass of 4.75 Earths; but its overall density was only half as much. This was due to the nearly total absence of all elements beyond calcium.

There was one sister freak, uninhabitable; the remaining planets were more or less normal giants, the sun a G8 dwarf not very different from other stars of that size and temperature. It was theorized that because of some improbable turbulence, or possibly an odd magnetic effect — a chance-created cosmic mass spectrograph — there had been no heavy elements in the local section of the primordial gas cloud… But why hadn’t there at least been a density-increasing molecular collapse at the center of Diomedes? Sheer mass-pressure ought to have produced degeneracy. The most plausible answer to that was, the minerals in the body of this world were not normal ones, being formed in the absence of such elements as chromium, manganese, iron, and nickel. Their crystal structure was apparently more stable than, say, olivine, the most important of the Earth materials condensed by pressure -

The devil with it!

“Never mind that weight stuff,” said Delp. “What’s so unusual about the motion of Ikt-hanis?” It was his name for this planet, and did not mean “earth” but — in a language where nouns were compared — could be translated “Oceanest,” and was feminine.

Wace needed time to reply; the technicalities outran his vocabulary.

It was merely that the axial tilt of Diomedes was almost ninety degrees, so that the poles were virtually in the ecliptic plane. But that fact, coupled with the cool ultra-violet-poor sun, had set the pattern of life.

At either pole, nearly half the year was spent in total night. The endless daylight of the other half did not really compensate; there were polar species, but they were unimpressive hibernators. Even at forty-five degrees latitude, a fourth of the year was darkness, in a winter grimmer than Earth had ever seen. That was as far north or south as any intelligent Diomedeans could live; the annual migration used up too much of their time and energy, and they fell into a stagnant struggle for existence on the paleolithic level.

Here, at thirty degrees north, the Absolute Winter lasted one-sixth of the year — a shade over two Terrestrial months — and it was only (!) a few weeks’ flight to the equatorial breeding grounds and back during that time. Therefore the Lannachska were a fairly cultivated people. The Drak’honai were originally from even farther south -

But you could only do so much without metals. Of course, Diomedes had abundant magnesium, beryllium, and aluminum, but what use was that unless you first developed electrolytic technology, which required copper or silver?

Delp cocked his head. “You mean it’s always equinox on your Eart’?”

“Well, not quite. But by your standards, very nearly!”

“So that’s why you haven’t got wings. The Lodestar didn’t give you any, because you don’t need them.”

“Uh… perhaps. They’d have been no use to us, anyway. Earth’s air is too thin for a creature the size of you or me to fly under its own power.”

“What do you mean, thin? Air is… is air.”

“Oh, never mind. Take my word for it.”

How did you explain gravitational potential to a nonhuman whose mathematics was about on Euclid’s level? You could say: “Look, if you go sixty-three hundred kilometers upward from the surface of Earth, the attraction has dropped off to one-fourth; but you must go thirteen thousand kilometers upward from Diomedes to diminish its pull on you correspondingly. Therefore Diomedes can hold a great deal more air. The weaker solar radiation helps, to be sure, especially the relatively less ultraviolet. But on the whole, gravitational potential is the secret.

“In fact, so dense is this air that if it held proportionate amounts of oxygen, or even of nitrogen, it would poison me. Luckily, the Diomedean atmosphere is a full seventy-nine per cent neon. Oxygen and nitrogen are lesser constituents: their partial pressures do not amount to very much more than on Earth. Likewise carbon dioxide and water vapor.”

But Wace said only: “Let’s talk about ourselves. Do you understand that the stars are other suns, like yours, but immensely farther away; and that Earth is a world of such a star?”

“Yes. I’ve heard the philosophers wonder — I’ll believe you.”

“Do you realize what our powers are, to cross the space between the stars? Do you know how we can reward you for your help in getting us home, and how our friends can punish you if you keep us here?”

For just a moment, Delp spread his wings, the fur bristled along his back and his eyes became flat yellow chips. He belonged to a proud folk.

Then he slumped. Across all gulfs of race, the human could sense how troubled he was:

“You told me yourself, Eart’ho, that you crossed The Ocean from the west, and in thousands of obdisai you didn’t see so much as an island. It bears our own explorings out. We couldn’t possibly fly that far, carrying you or just a message to your friends, without some place to stop and rest between times.”

Wace nodded, slowly and carefully. “I see. And you couldn’t take us back in a fast canoe before our food runs out.”

“I’m afraid not. Even with favoring winds all the way, a beat is so much slower than wings. It’d take us half a year or more to sail the distance you speak of.”

“But there must be some way—”

“Perhaps. But we’re fighting a hard war, remember. We can’t spare much effort or many workers for your sake.

“I don’t think the Admiralty even intends to try.”