Lamoureux brushed some of the white flakes off his shoulders. "All right, Sprott, suppose you are right. It _is_ following us around. That's no reason to alarm the other men, is it?"
"I guess not, sir.... I won't say a word. But there's something else I wanted to speak to you about, sir. It's McCracken."
"You believe he's responsible for the snow?"
Sprott looked astonished. "I don't mean that, sir. I don't see how he could be."
"I do. He shot a Mercurian. I have an idea that they're the ones who are causing the peculiar weather we've been having."
"Well, Kalinoff didn't mention seeing any weapons among them, so we've always assumed they had none. But suppose the weather was their weapon. It's a very effective one, Sprott. They've made things damnably unpleasant for us."
"How can they make rain where there isn't any, Captain? I know that rainmakers on Earth have had some success. But all they do is get the rain to fall near where it would have fallen anyway. They may make it precipitate a few hours before it would have otherwise, but that's all. Here there weren't any clouds to start with."
Lamoureux admitted, "I don't know how the trick is done, Sprott. But I agree with you that the snow is following us around, and I'm sure that the trick _is_ done."
Sprott was silent a moment. Then he said, "And you think, sir, it's all because McCracken shot one of them?"
"They evidently believe in the principle of the rain falling on the just and unjust alike. And the same thing goes for the snow."
Sprott said doubtfully, "I'm not sure about that, sir. But I do know that McCracken is up to something. He's been getting some queer noises on his receiver."
"Such as Haskell singing lullabies from the ship?"
"Nothing as unpleasant as that, Captain. They're just a series of sounds, some a little longer than others. Da, da, da-a-a, da--that sort of thing."
Lamoureux asked, "When did you hear them?"
"About ten minutes ago. McCracken doesn't know anything about chess, and neither do I, so we both wandered away after the first ten minutes. McCracken said he had an idea where those mountains were."
Lamoureux's eyes narrowed. "Those noises are undoubtedly a message. I seem to remember that some centuries back there was a code invented by a man named Morris. That's it, the Morris code. But where could such a message have come from?"