A circle of three-mile radius has an area of slightly over twenty-eight square miles, or roughly eighteen thousand acres. It follows that the map prepared by Roger and Edith Wing was not as detailed as it might have been. On the other hand, as their father was forced to admit, a tree-covered mountain side does not offer too many details to put on a map; and the effort the children turned in did show every creek and trail of which Mr. Wing had knowledge. Still more to the point, it showed clearly that they had actually travelled over the area in question. This was the defect in the girl’s experience which he had wanted corrected before she was released from the “stick-to-the-trail” rule.
He looked up presently from the tattered notebook. The family was gathered around the fireplace again, and the two cartographers were ensconced on either arm of his chair. Don was on the floor between the seats with Billy draped across his neck; Marjorie was in her mother’s lap. All were listening for the verdict.
“You seem to have done a pretty good job here,” Mr. Wing said at last. “Certainly anyone could find his way around the area with the aid of this map. Edie, how do you think you could do without it?”
“All right, Dad, I’m sure,” the girl replied in a slightly surprised tone. “Do I have to?” Her father shrugged.
“You know best whether you want to carry this with you all the time. No, you don’t have to, as far as I’m concerned. How have the two of you made out on the patrol schedule?” Roger took over the conversation, curling a little closer to his father’s shoulder and using the map to illustrate his points.
“There are eight trails leading into the three-mile circle at different points. Don and I used to go around the circle each day, going along each one far enough to be sure no one had been using it. There are spots on each which it’s practically impossible to go through without leaving some sort of trail. Going from one trail to another we’d try to cut across places of the same sort — where we could tell if people had been through.
“This time we’re working it a little differently. I’m still checking the ends of those trails, but we’ve been listing places from which people could watch anyone bound away from here — there aren’t nearly so many of those. Edie can cover nearly all of them in two hour-and-a-half walks morning and afternoon — we’ve tried it; and I can do the rest when I take the outer trails. That’s a lot like the way you’ve always worked it when you were going out, anyway; you took a zigzag path, and had us checking for watchers, so that one of us could cut across and warn you if we saw anyone — we never have, that I can remember, but I don’t suppose that proves anything.” Mr, Wing smiled briefly.
“I may be stretching the precautions a little too far,” he said. “Still I have certain reasons for not wanting the place I get the metal to become known. Half a dozen of the reasons are in this room with me. Besides, I think you get fun out of it, and I know it keeps you outdoors where you ought to be this time of year. If two or three more of you grow up to be scientists, we may be able to do some work together that will let us forget about secrecy.”
The younger girl, who had been displaying increasing signs of indignation during her brother’s talk, cut in the instant she thought her father had finished.
“Daddy, I thought I was supposed to be helping with this. I heard Roger say so yesterday, and you said it the first night.”
“Oh? And how did you hear what I said that night? As I recall, the matter was not discussed until after you were in bed. What I said then goes — you can go with either Roger or Edie on their walks, but you still observe the limits when you’re by yourself. Billie, you too! There’ll be plenty of long trips for all of you, without your having to go off on your own, and there’s always been plenty to keep you occupied around here. I’ve been promising for five or six years to get a load of cement up here if you folks would get enough loose rock together to make a dam out here — I’d like a swimming pool myself. Don doesn’t think we need cement for it, but that’s something he’ll have to prove. I’ll be glad if he can do without it, of course.” He leaned back and stretched his legs. Billy promptly transferred his perch from Don’s shoulders to his father’s shins, and put his own oar into the conversation. He wanted one of the trips before his father went prospecting, and expressed himself at considerable length on the subject. Mr. Wing remained non-committal until the striking of the clock brought relief. He pulled in his legs abruptly, depositing the youngster on the floor.
“Small fry to bed!” he pronounced solemnly.
“Story!” yelled Margie. “You haven’t read since we got here!” Her father pursed his lips.
“How long do you suppose it would take them to be ready for bed?” he asked, as though to himself. There was a flurry of departing legs. Mr. Wing turned to the bookcase beside the fireplace, and encountered the grinning face of his second son. “All right, young man, we need some fun — but some of us need discipline, too. Suppose you and Edie save time by popping upstairs and imitating the excellent example of your juniors!” Still chuckling, the two did so.
For some reason, the story lasted until quite late. The beginning was vastly exciting, but the pace calmed down later, and Billy and Margie were both carried up to bed at the end — though they refused to believe the fact in the morning.
Roger tried at breakfast to make the small boy tell the end of the story and was surprised when Billy refused to accept his inability to do so as evidence that he had been asleep. The older boy gave up at last and went to saddle the horses; he was constitutionally unfitted to hold his own in an argument where the opponent’s only words were “I was not either!”
It was shopping day, and Roger’s turn to go down to Clark Fork with his mother to obtain the necessities for the next week. They left as soon after breakfast as the animals could be readied. Edie and the younger children went off on their own; as soon as everyone was away from the house Mr. Wing and Don dressed themselves in hiking clothes and headed east. Roger would have given much to see them go.
The trails were good, and for a couple of hours the two made very satisfactory progress. For the most part they followed the creeks, but once or twice the older man led the way over open spurs of rock which involved considerable climbing.
“This is about the quickest way to the transmitter, Don,” he said at one point. “It’s a lot closer to the house than even your mother realizes — though goodness knows I wouldn’t hide it from her if she cared to come on one of these hikes. On the regular trips, I follow a very roundabout path I worked out years ago when I was really afraid of being followed. That was just after the first World War, long before I’d even met your mother. There were a number of people around this part of the country then who would cheerfully have tossed me off a hilltop for a fraction of the value I brought back from the first trip. I tell you, I did some pretty serious thinking on the way in from that trip. You’ll see why very shortly.”
Don made no immediate answer to this. His attention seemed to be fully taken up with negotiating the slope of loose rock they were traversing at the moment. It was a section practically impossible to cross without leaving prominent traces, and he had been a little puzzled at his father’s going this way until he realized that the idea was probably to permit a check on any trailers as they returned. Once across the treacherous stuff and angling back down the slope, he finally spoke.
“You said a while back, Dad, that we were the reasons you didn’t make public this source of metal. It seems to me that even that shouldn’t have carried weight while the war was on — it might have been better to let the government develop the find and use it. I don’t mean that I don’t appreciate getting a college education, but — well—” he paused a little uncomfortably.
“You have a point, son, and that was another matter for thought when the war started, with you in high school and Billy just learning to walk. I think I might have done as you suggest, except for the fact that the most probable result of publicity would be to remove the source of metal. Just be patient a little longer — we’ll be there in a few minutes, and you will see for yourself.”
Donald nodded acceptance of this, and they proceeded in silence for a short time. The course Mr. Wing was following had led them into a narrow gully after crossing the scree; now he turned up this, making his way easily along the bank of the tiny brook which flowed down its center. After some ten minutes’ climb the trees began to thin out, and a few more rods found them on practically bare rock. This extended for some distance above them, but the older man seemed to have no desire to get to the top of the hill.
Instead, he turned again, moving quickly across the bare rock as though a path were plainly marked before him; and in a few steps reached the edge of a shallow declivity which appeared to have acted as a catch basin for rocks which had rolled from farther up the hill. Winding his way among these, with Donald close at his heels, he finally stopped and moved to one side, permitting his son to see what lay before them.
It was an almost featureless structure of metal, roughly cubical in shape and a little less than a yard on each edge. There was a small opening on one side, containing a single projection which had the appearance of a toggle switch. Several bolt heads of quite conventional appearance were also visible on different parts of the surface.
After allowing his son to look the object over for a few moments, Mr. Wing took a small screwdriver from his pocket and set to work on the bolts, which seemed very loose. Don, lacking tools, tried a few of the projecting heads with his fingers and had little difficulty with them; in two or three minutes, the older man was able to remove several metal plates and expose the interior of the block to view. Don looked, and whistled.
“What is it, Dad? Not an ordinary radio, certainly!”
“No. It seems to be a radio of some sort, however. I don’t know what sort of wave it uses, or its range, or its power source — though I have some ideas about the last two. There’s nothing to using it; I imagine the makers wanted that to be easy, and there is only the single control switch. I’m not so sure that the interior was meant to be so accessible.”
“But where did it come from? Who made it? How did you get hold of it?”
“That’s a rather long story, and happened, as I said, before you were born.
“I was just out of college, and had gotten interested in this part of the country; so I decided to see some of it first hand, and eventually found myself here in the hills. I started at Helena, and went on foot up to Flathead, through Glacier Park, west along the border to the Kootenai, and back along the river past Bonner’s Ferry into the Cabinets. It wasn’t a very exciting jaunt, but I saw a lot and had a pretty good time.
“I was crossing the brook we just followed up here, just after I had gotten under way one morning, when I heard the weirdest racket from up the hill. I really didn’t know too much about the neighborhood, and was a bit on the uneasy side; but I had a rifle, and managed to convince myself that I was out to satisfy my curiosity, so I headed up toward the noise.
“When I got out from among the trees, the noise began to sound more and more like spoken language; so I yelled a few words myself, though I couldn’t understand a word of it. There was no answer at first — just this tremendous, roaring voice blatting out the strangely regular sounds. Finally, a little way up the hill from here, on a rather open spot, I saw the source; and at almost the same instant the noise stopped.
“Lying out in the open, where it could be seen from any direction, was a thing that looked like a perfectly good submarine torpedo — everyone was familiar with those at the time, as they played a very prominent part in the first World War. Science-fiction had not come into style then, and Heaven knows I wasn’t much of a physical scientist, but even so I found it hard to believe that the thing had been carried there. I examined it as thoroughly as I could, and found a few discrepancies in the torpedo theory.
“In the first place, it had neither propellers nor any type of steering fin. It was about twenty feet long and three in diameter, which was reasonable for a torpedo as far as I knew, but the only break in the surface was a section of the side, near what I supposed to be the front, which was open rather like a bomb bay. I looked in, though I didn’t take a chance on sticking an arm or my head inside, and saw a chamber that occupied most of the interior of the nose section. It was empty, except for a noticeable smell of burning sulfur.
“I nearly had a heart attack when the thing began talking again, this time in a much lower tone — at any rate I jumped two feet. Then I cussed it out in every language
I knew for startling me so. It took me a minute or two to get command of myself, and then I realized that the sounds it was making were rather clumsy imitations of my own words. To make sure, I tried some others, one word at a time; and most of them were repeated with fair accuracy. Whoever was speaking couldn’t pronounce ‘P’ or ‘B,’ but got on fairly well with the rest.
“Obviously there was either someone trapped in the rear of the torpedo, or it contained a radio and someone was calling from a distance. I doubted the first, because of the tremendous volume behind the original sounds; and presently there was further evidence.
“I had determined to set up camp right there, early as it was. I was going about the business, saying an occasional word to the torpedo and being boomed at in return, when another of the things appeared overhead. It spoke, rather softly, when it was still some distance up — apparently the controllers didn’t want to scare me away! It set-tied beside the first, trailing a thin cloud of blue smoke which I thought at first must have to do with driving rockets. However, it proved to be leaking around the edges of a door similar to that in the first torpedo, and then a big cloud of it puffed out as the door opened. That made me a little cautious, which was just as well — the metal turned out to be hot enough to feel the radiation five feet away. How much hotter it had been before I can’t guess. The sulfur smell was strong for a while after the second torpedo landed, but gradually faded out again.
“I had to wait a while before the thing was cool enough to approach with comfort. When I did, I found that the nose compartment this time was not empty. There was an affair rather like a fishing-box inside, with the compartments of one side full of junk and those on the other empty. I finally took a chance on reaching in for it, once it was cool enough to touch.
“When I got it out in the sunlight, I found that the full compartments were covered with little glassy lids, which were latched shut; and there was a: tricky connection between the two sides which made it necessary to put something in an empty compartment and close its lid before you could open the corresponding one on the other side. There were only half a dozen spaces, so I fished out some junk of my own — a wad of paper from my notebook, a chunk of granite, a cigarette, some lichen from the rocks around, and so on — and cleaned out the full compartments. One of the things was a lump of platinum and related metals that must have weighed two pounds.
“Right then I settled down to some serious thinking. In the first place, the torpedo came from off this planet. The only space ship I’d ever heard of was the projectile in Jules Verne’s story, but people of this planet don’t send flying torpedoes with no visible means of propulsion carrying nuggets of what I knew even then was a valuable metal; and if they do, they don’t call attention to the practice by broadcasting weird languages loudly enough to be heard a mile away.
“Granting that the torpedo came from outer space, its behavior seemed to indicate only one thing — its senders wanted to trade. At any rate, that was the theory I decided to act on. I put all the junk except the platinum nugget back where it came from, and put the box back in the nose of the torpedo. I don’t yet know if they could see me or not — I rather doubt it, for a number of reasons — but the door closed almost at once and the thing took off — straight up, out of sight. I was sorry I hadn’t had much of value to stuff in my side of the box. I had thought of sending them a rifle cartridge to indicate we had a mechanical industry, but remembered the temperature at which the thing had arrived and decided against it.
“It took two or three hours for the torpedo to make its round trip. I had set up my tent and rounded up some firewood and water by the time it came back, and I found out my guess was right. This time they had put another platinum nugget in one compartment, leaving the others empty; and I was able to remember what I had put in the corresponding space on the previous visit.
“That about tells the story.” Mr. Wing grinned at his son. “I’ve been swapping cigarettes for platinum and indium nuggets for about thirty years now — and you can see why I wanted you to study some astronomy!” Don whistled gently.
“I guess I do, at that. But you haven’t explained this,” he indicated the metal cube on which his father was sitting.
“That came down a little later, grappled to a torpedo, and the original one took off immediately afterwards. I have always supposed they use it to find this spot again. We’ve sort of fallen into a schedule over the years. I’m never here in the winter any more, and they seem to realize that; but from two to three days after I snap this switch off and on a few times, like this,” he demonstrated, “the exchequer gets a shot in the arm.”
Don frowned thoughtfully, and was silent for a time.
“I still don’t see why you keep it a secret,” he said at last. “If the affair is really interplanetary, it’s tremendously important.”
“That’s true, of course. However, if these people wanted contact with mankind in general, they could certainly establish it without any difficulty. It has always seemed to me that their maintaining contact in this fashion was evidence that they did not want their presence generally known; so that if experts began taking their transmitter apart, for example, or sending literature and machinery out to them in an effort to show our state of civilization, they would simply leave.”
“That seems a little far-fetched.”
“Perhaps; but can you offer a better suggestion why they don’t land one of these things in a city? They’re paying tremendous prices for darned small quantities of tobacco — and a corner drug store could stock them for years at their rate of consumption.
“Don’t get me wrong, son; I certainly appreciate the importance of all this, and want very much to find out all I can about these things and their machines; but I want the investigating done by people whom I can trust to be careful not to upset the apple cart. I wish the whole family were seven or eight years older; we’d have a good research team right here. For the moment, though, you and I — principally you — are going to have to do the investigating, while Rog and Edie do the scouting. I expect they’ll sneak over to watch us, of course; Roger’s curiosity is starting to keep him awake nights, and he has the makings of a man of action. I’m wondering whether we don’t find his tracks or Edie’s on the way back — he might have persuaded her to go to town for him. There’s nothing more to be done here, unless you want to look this communicator over more closely; we might as well head back, and find out how enterprising the younger generation is.”
“There’s no hurry, Dad. I’d like to look this thing over for a while. It has some of the earmarks of a short wave transmitter, but there are a lot of things I’d like to get straight.”
“Me, too. I’ve learned a good deal about radios in the last twenty years, but it’s a bit beyond me. Of course, I’ve never dared take off more than the outer casing; there are parts too deeply stowed to be visible, which might be highly informative if we could see them.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. There should be some way to look into it — we ought to dig up one of those dentist’s mirrors.”
“You don’t catch me sticking anything made of metal into a gadget that almost certainly uses astronomical voltages.”
“Well — I suppose not. We could turn it off first, if we were sure which position of that switch were off. We don’t really know whether you’re calling them with a short transmission when you move it, or whether you’re breaking a continuous one. If they use it for homing, it would be the latter; but we can’t be sure.”
“Even if we were, turning it off wouldn’t be enough. Condensers can hold a nasty bite for a long time.”
Don admitted the justice of this point, and spent only a few minutes peering through the openings left by the removal of the plates.
“Most of the inside seems to be blocks of bakelite anyway,” he said at last. “I suppose they have everything sealed in for permanence. I wonder how they expect to service it? I guess you’re right — we may as well go home until the torpedo comes.” He slung the pack that had contained their lunch — or rather, the sandwiches they had eaten in route — over his shoulder, and straightened up. His father nodded in agreement, and they began to retrace their steps down the hillside.
Don was wrapped in thought, and his father forbore to interrupt. He knew how he had reacted to the events he had just described, when he had been very little older than his son was now; also, he had a high opinion of his children’s intelligence, and believed firmly in letting them solve problems for themselves as much as was safe. He reflected somewhat ruefully that nothing he could say would be too much help, in any case.
There was no trace of anyone’s having followed them at any point on the trail home, though they split up to take opposite sides of the scree they had deliberately crossed on the way out. Neither found this very surprising, for it turned out that Edith had made her scheduled patrols and spent the rest of the day with the younger children, while Roger had gone to town as expected. If he had thought of finding a substitute and following his father, nothing had come of it. Mr. Wing was not sure whether he ought to be pleased or disappointed.