Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement

too, and get something from the mouth; I’m not really sure I’m through skin here.” He waddled painfully around the head of the stranded behemoth to a point where gravity-distorted lips had exposed teeth, gums, and what was presumably a tongue. „Just get bits small enough to go in these bottles without crowding.” The Earthman tentatively tried the scalpel once more, finding the tongue somewhat less obdurate than the earlier sample, while Barlennan obediently nipped off fragments of the desired size. An occasional piece found its way to his mouth — he was not really hungry, but this was fresh meat — but in spite of this drain the bottles were soon filled. ‘
    Lackland straightened up, stowing the last of the containers as he did so, and cast a covetous glance at the pillarlike teeth. „I suppose it would take blasting gelatine to get one of those out,” he remarked rather sadly.
    „What is that?” asked Barlennan.
    „An explosive — a substance that changes into gas very suddenly, producing loud noise and shock. We use such material for digging, removing undesirable buildings or pieces of landscape, and sometimes in fighting.”
    „Was that sound an explosive?” Barlennan asked.
    For an instant Lackland made no answer. A boom of very respectable intensity, heard on a planet whose natives are ignorant of explosives and where no other member of the human race is present, can be rather disconcerting, especially when it picks such an incredibly apt time to happen; and to lay that Lackland was startled would be putting it mildly. He could not judge accurately the distance or size of the explosion, having heard it through Barlennan’s radio and his own sound discs at ‘the same time; but a distinctly unpleasant suspicion entered his mind after a second or two.
    „It sounded very much like one,” he answered the Mesklin-ite’s question somewhat belatedly, even as he started to waddle back around the head of the dead sea monster to where he had left the tank. He rather dreaded what he would find. Barlennan, more curious than ever, followed by his more natural method of travel, crawling.
    For an instant, as the tank came in sight, Lackland felt an overwhelming relief; but this changed to an equally profound shock as he reached the door of the vehicle.
    What remained of the floor consisted of upcurled scraps
    of thin metal, some still attached at the bases of the walls and others tangled among the controls and other interior fittings. The driving machinery, which had been under the floor, was almost completely exposed, and a single glance was enough to tell the dismayed Earthman that it was hopelessly wrecked. Barlennan was intensely interested in the whole phenomenon.
    „I take it you were, carrying some explosive in your tank,” he remarked. „Why did you not use it to get the material you wanted from this animal? And what made it act while it was still in the tank?”
    „You have a genius for asking difficult questions,” Lackland replied. „The answer to your first one is that I was not carrying any; and to the second, your guess is as good as mine at this point.”
    „But it must have been something you were carrying,” Barlennan pointed out. „Even I can see that whatever it was happened under the floor of your tank, and wanted to get out; and we don’t have things that act like that on Mesklin.”
    „Admitting your logic, there was nothing under that floor that I can imagine blowing up,” replied the man. „Electric motors and their accumulators just aren’t explosive. A close examination will undoubtedly show traces of whatever it was if it was in any sort of container, since practically none of the fragments seem to have gone outside the tank — but I have a rather worse problem to solve first, Barl.”
    „What is that?”
    „I am eighteen miles from food supplies, other than what is carried in my armor. The tank is ruined; and if there was ever an Earthman born who could walk eighteen