And back home somebody had blown up half a ploughed field with an Aldarian device modified to do something unknown. It turned out be the violent breakdown of all endothermal compounds. Somebody near Denver had stumbled on a particular shaping of the pointed end of the fishlike Grek device part, and it pushed down walls with no reverse thrust on the device. It was a so-far-primitive space drive, which only needed to be worked out in detail to make rockets mere souvenirs of a quaint, old-fashioned period.
But there was one man who'd worked zestfully in his own field, quite alone and with no help from anything Hackett or anybody else had accomplished. He'd studied the gesture code of the Greks and Aldarians, in motion pictures taken when they were away from the ship. He'd studied pictures showing gesture conversations taking place before an Aldarian writing down something for humans to read. This signal language student had the text of the writings and had learned to talk in gesture code, though with an extremely limited vocabulary. There was some similarity to the sign language of American Indians, who might not know a word of each others' spoken language, but could discuss all sorts of subjects in detail by signs.
Hackett assigned him to establish communication with the solitary Aldarian captured in the Morrow Island cavern. He and Lucy went back together to arrange the next two stages in a sequence which would be more hair-raising in each incident.
He held conferences. Most of the world celebrated or gloated that the Greks were coming back. They'd said so. But Hackett and a certain number of close-mouthed individuals made plans and preparations that would have gotten them lynched anywhere on the globe.
There was a garage mechanic who'd repaired a sinter-field generator much too well, so that even metals crumbled to powder when it was turned on them. In on this discussion was a general of ordnance, an electrical engineer with some reputation for designing gigantic dynamo-electric machinery, and the head of an electrical workers' union.
There was discussion with linguists and semanticists and communications experts. Their subject matter had to be referred to Lucy with an ultimate referral to the man who'd studied Grek-Aldarian gesture-codes. He and the captured Aldarian were flown back to where communication as achieved could be put on tape, and the tape applied to control an Aldarian hearing aid magnified and made able to transmit its field directionally.
There was a conference. They were innumerable, but Hackett did happen to be the man who as of now thought more lucidly about Grek-style devices and principles than anybody else. He assumed the authority to insist that he was going with the expedition to the antarctic. That expedition had the tightest of possible schedules. It would have to shave minutes to reach Antarctica, do what it must do there and get back to the landing cradle in Ohio before the Grek ship came to ground a second time.
In this seething activity, some curious sidelights turned up. The delegation which had implored the return of the Greks somehow gathered bunting and flags and motortrucks and fuel—the fuel was an achievement—and headed for the landing cradle to prepare a welcoming ceremony for those philanthropists of space, the Greks. The Aldarians instructing male and female students in the sciences of the Greks were unaware of any change in the prospective sequence of events. One Aldarian at the dummy power-station Hackett had entered bitterly gave up hope that human beings might turn out to be wiser or stronger than the Greks, so he and his people might some day hope to be more than slaves. And some thousands of tons of gold bullion accumulated at the Mediterranean station where sea water was de-salted to be pumped into the Sahara basin. There was much pilfering of that gold by workmen at the plant, but nobody else, anywhere, wanted it.
Then, when Hackett found that he had to abandon further efforts of any sort in order to head for the airport for the journey south, a large man with a patient expression came into the office he'd preempted.
"Well?" said Hackett. "I don't mean to be impolite, but I have to get going—"
The large man said mildly, "I came to wish you good luck. I think it's important that you have it."
"Thanks and all that, but—"
"We've a mutual acquaintance," said the large man. "A Miss Constance Thale, who went to school with me. She wrote me a very pleasant note the other day. I understand that you and Doctor Thale are to be married. She thought I might be interested. I telephoned her once about you."
Hackett blinked. Then he said hastily, "I suppose I should apologize for giving orders and such things without authority, but they more or less—"
"You've no idea," said the large man mildly, "how pleased I am when people don't insist that I pass on everything they want to do, when what they're doing is sensible, that is." Then he said; "I'm really hopeful now. The credit will have to be distributed rather widely if things go as we want them to, but—You're ready to go? I'll drive you to the airport."
Hackett and Lucy, waiting below, were driven to the airport in a White House limousine, which would be beautifully calculated to give pleasure to Lucy's Cousin Constance when she was free to talk about it. And they took off for Antarctica.
The look of things at their landing place was singularly unlike the darkness and gloom of Baffin Land and Morrow Island. There was sunlight. Ice was blindingly white. Open water was incredibly blue. An atomic submarine waited with atomic-headed rockets ready to take over the enterprise if unhappily the expeditionary force should fail.
From the moment of their landing to the climax of their journey, this was altogether different from the Morrow Island effort. For one thing, exploration of Antarctica was a continuing process. There were still hundreds of thousands of square miles no human eye had ever seen, but the continent had a relatively permanent population of as much as two hundred persons. They moved on fixed routes as a rule, but they did move about. Snow tractors were routine in some areas, and there were caches of fuel along lines sometimes hundreds of miles in length, though they might run alongside the bases of mountains whose other sides were totally unknown. Planes were not unprecedented here. So if there were a Grek power-generating station on Antarctica it would undoubtedly be more carefully hidden than at the other end of the world, but aliens in it would be less likely to imagine every visible movement directed against them.
Snow tractors carried the expedition inland. In the tractor carrying the nerve-stimulus beam projector, Lucy gave Hackett a rundown of progress in race-to-race communication.
"That poor Aldarian you captured," she observed, "was absolutely pitiable, Jim. Do you know why he was alone?"
Hackett shook his head.
"You hurried back," she said. "But after you left they found there'd been some others. They'd been killed and dumped in snowdrifts. Something had come down from the moon. Greks. Just before their ship took off from Earth they made a discovery they didn't like. So while humans got to miss them, they made a surprise inspection on the Morrow Island station. They found an Aldarian hearing aid. So they killed four of the five Aldarians who'd been there, and promised the last that half of those on the ship who were hostages for him would be killed. Half. You see? He was punished by the lulling of some hostages. But he couldn't think of revenge because there were more. They could kill the rest."
"I see," said Hackett. His tone was detached. "I don't like the Greks. I hope things go our way when they land again."
Lucy shivered a little. "He was so completely desperate that I think he'd have killed himself when he got the chance. You see, in being captured or even killed he'd have committed a crime in the eyes of the Greks!"
"Nice people, the Greks," said Hackett ironically. "Nice!"
"So by the time the sign language man came to try to talk to him, he was already due for absolutely every punishment the Greks could inflict. So he talked. He was brought down and showed the things that are being got ready. Did anybody tell you how a stepped-up sinter beam makes metal fall to powder?"