Search Worlds Without End

Stranded on an alien planet, light years from home, wandering from blistering heat to searing cold, Nils Kruger was not a happy man. So when he met another being - even though it wasn't human - things seemed to be looking up. The alien might be helpless, or it might be dangerous, but one thing was for sure - they stood a better chance for survival if they worked together. But as the two creatures overcame their mutual suspicion, as they worked together, as the language barrier was broken down, Nils came to a terrifying conclusion - this alien was more intelligent than a human. And to it, Nils was the alien.

Although known as one of the most scrupulously accurate of the "hard science" writers, someone careful to always get the scientific details right, Hal Clement also has a rich and lively imagination, especially when it comes to alien lifeforms, and he has created some of the most memorable alien characters in science fiction. Clement's outdone even himself in the suspenseful novella, Exchange Rate, in which harried human explorers (under pressure in more ways than one!) must try to figure out the lifeways and motivations of some extremely strange and enigmatic alien creatures on one of the strangest planets ever portrayed in science fiction - and do it all before the clock runs out.

This novella originally appeared in Absolute Magnitude, Winter 1999. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002), edited by David G. Harwell and Kathryn Kramer.

In about two hundred years, the human race on Earth is perhaps facing extinction due to the rapid evolution of disease. A crew of young men and women travel to the moons of Saturn, to Titan, to investigate the biochemistry of the pre-life conditions there in the slim hope of discovering something that might save Earth. The whole story runs at high-speed, as they race to find answers across the surface of an alien landscape with death close behind... and gaining.

As the planet gleamed in his viewport, Sallman Ken could not believe that such a bleak and icy globe could have produced intelligent life. Yet when the expedition had sent in unmanned landers, that was what it had found. Some sort of native alien, surviving on the barren planet. But Sallman and his team were not the first to make contact. Smugglers from his own planet had begun trading with the natives for a new and virulent narcotic - the most dangerous drug in the universe. Now Sallman would have to find out how he could survive on a planet so cold that sulphur was solid and water was liquid - and how to stop the source of the deadly drug!

Well know as the author of Mission of Gravity, Cycle of Time, Close to Critical and for his many other extraordinarily realistic creations of extra-terrestrials, it is remarkable that Hal Clement's novelettes have never appeared in book form before.

Here are three of the best - each dealing with a different aspect of communication with creatures so alien to mankind that the first thing to do is throw speech out the window!

What happens next is strictly up to the ingenuity of writers like Mr. Clement, who visualizes a lively time for mankind among his counterparts from other planets.

Hal Clement, the dean of hard science fiction, has written a new planetary adventure in the tradition of his classic Mission of Gravity. It is the kind of story that made his reputation as a meticulous designer of otherworldly settings that are utterly convincing because they are constructed from the ground up using established principles of orbital mechanics, geology, chemistry, biology, and other sciences.

Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the language of the colonists, to analyze its evolution in the years since settlement. But Kainui is an ocean planet. Although settled by Polynesians, it is anything but a tropical paradise. The ocean is 1,700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn't breathable, and lightning, waterspouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. There are, for instance, pirates. Mike's academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

Aquatic Enigma - The world's energy was limited... and with overpopulation and a high level of technology, the Power Board had virtually become the real government of the world. Power was rationed, it was guarded, it was sacred. Thus when three of the Power Board's agents disappeared at sea, and there was evidence that something irregular was happening to the energy quota in that area, it was cause for real alarm.

The Riddle of Enigma

Years of exacting study were coming to an end. All five student scientists, each the best its species had to offer, were one step away from their final degrees. One examination remained: the students were to determine why the tiny planet of Enigma, a planet with so little mass that it should never have had an atmosphere, in fact it did.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly until the only Human member of the team, Molly was accidentally blown into one of the deep fissures that pocked the planet's surface.

She found herself trapped in a series of tunnels and caves that only led her deeper into the riddle that was at the heart of Enigma. But as her concerned companions followed her, they found Enigma's most puzzling anomaly. For in the dark passages they discovered life - life which couldn't possibly exist.

A Nomadic family in the future is allied with an octopus-like alien who can survive in earth's new atmosphere, which has combined with nitrogen. Humans must live in shelters with oxygen-generating plants, or use suitable breathing equipment. Some of earth's original life forms have mutated to survive in the changed atmosphere. Since almost no metals can exist in the corrosive atmosphere, any technology is based on ceramics or glass.

Some humans are suspicious of the aliens, blaming them for the change in the atmosphere since they are adapted to it. The family has an almost fatal encounter with a group of such people, who are holding another alien hostage. However the two aliens are able to pool memories biochemically so that they become the same personality in two bodies. Their combined knowledge and skills help the family to escape. The journey reveals just who the aliens are, where they came from, and why the earth's atmosphere changed.

This sci-fi classic, dating back to before man entered space, is based on the idea that adults would be unable to adapt to zero gravity conditions. Because of this, teenagers would be the first explorers of space, launching to orbiting space stations and the moon.

Table of Contents:

• Hal Clement: Rationalist - (1979) - essay by Lester del Rey
• Impediment - (1942) - novelette
• Technical Error - (1944) - novelette
• Uncommon Sense - (1945) - shortstory
• Assumption Unjustified - (1946) - novella
• Answer - (1947) - shortstory
• Dust Rag - (1956) - shortstory
• Bulge - (1968) - novelette
• Mistaken for Granted - (1974) - novella
• A Question of Guilt - (1976) - novelette
• Stuck With It - (1976) - novelette
• Author's Afterword - (1979) - essay by Hal Clement

For a profit -- and adventure -- Barlennan would sail thousands of miles across uncharted waters, into regions where gravity itself played strange tricks. He would dare the perils of strange tribes and stranger creatures -- even dicker with those strange aliens from beyond the skies, though the concept of another world was unknown to the inhabitants of the disk-shaped planet of Mesklin.

But in spite of the incredible technology of the strangers and without regard for their enormous size, Barlennan had the notion of turning the deal to an unsuspected advantage for himself . . . all in all a considerable enterprise for a being very much resembling a fifteen-inch caterpillar!

The Tenebrans are intelligent, but primitive by human standards. Yet scientists from Earth have found ways to train and educate some of the Tenebrans. This training becomes crucial when two beings—a young girl from Earth and the son of an alien diplomat—are marooned in a bathyscape that is headed toward the surface of the planet, where neither can hope to survive.

The Return of Barlennan

Dhrawn was a giant rock ball, more than 3,000 time the mass of Earth. Perhaps a planet, perhaps a nearly dead star, these 17 billion square miles of mystery cried out for investigation. But its corrosive atmosphere and crushing gravity assured that no human would ever set foot on its surface.

Those hardy, caterpillar-like Mesklinites, on the other hand, were ideally suited to explore Dhrawn, and their leader certainly knew a good deal when he saw one. So Barnennan, a shrewd sea captain if ever there was one, struck a sharp bargain with the Earth men for his services in leading the expedition.

But the humans might not have been so pleased with their side of the bargain, if they had known Barlennan had plans of his own for Dhrawn...

Two ships race in from outer space and crash in the Pacific Ocean. One contains a hunter, entrusted with a vital mission. The other, his quarry - corrupt, evil, a criminal from an unearthly civilisation light years away. Yet both these creatures had one thing in common - they were unable to exist alone. Each needed a host, a human body they could invade and control...

Bob and Hunter depended on one another for dear life, until one of them suddenly became a killer..

This volume contains three of the most important hard science fiction novels of Hal Clement--Needle, Iceworld, and Close to Critical.

This volume contains seventeen of Hal Clement's stories. They range from near-future earth to the distant Magellanic Cloud. Their protagonists are tachyonic aliens and teen-aged humans, retired explorers and beings so vast and slow that they don't even notice mankind, criminals, pirates and teachers. Hal Clement's stories, like his novels, show that the natural world contains wonders and possibilities which hardly require any additional invention-yet he supplies it, creating stories which turn on scientific puzzles or which lead us to look at old notions in a new light.

This volume contains the complete Mesklin writings of Hal Clement.