Heavy Planet Part 28

The situation was a little different in the s.p.a.ce under the Kwembly's hull, but not greatly so. Where liquid touched ice the latter dissolved and slush appeared; but more ammonia diffusing from the free surface at the side melted it again. Slowly, slowly, minute after minute, the grip of the ice on the huge vehicle relaxed so gently that neither the human beings watching with fascination from above nor the two Mesklinites waiting in their dark refuge could detect the change, and the hull floated free.

By now the entire river bed was liquid, with a few surviving patches of slush. Gently, very unlike the flood of a hundred hours or so before when three million square miles of water-snow had been touched by the first ammonia fog of the advancing season, a current began to develop. Imperceptibly to all concerned, the Kwembly moved with that current: imperceptibly because there was no relative motion to catch the eyes of the human beings, and no rocking or pitching to be felt by the hidden Mesklinites.

The seasonal river, which drains the great plateau where the Kwembly had been caught, slices through a range of hills, for Dhrawn respectable mountains; the range extends some four thousand miles northwest-southeast. The Kwembly had gone parallel to this range for most of its length before the flood. Dondragmer, his helmsmen, his air scouts, and indeed most of the crew had been quite aware of the gentle elevation to their left, sometimes near enough to be seen from the bridge and sometimes only a pilot's report.

The flood had carried the cruiser through a pa.s.s near the southeastern end of this range to the somewhat lower and rougher regions close to the edge of Low Alpha before she had grounded. This first flood was a rough, rather hesitant beginning of the new season as Dhrawn approached its feeble sun and the lat.i.tude of the sub-stellar belt shifted. The second was the real thing, which would only end when the whole snow plain was drained, more than an Earth year later. The Kwembly's first motions were smooth and gentle because she was melted free so slowly; then they were smooth and gentle because the liquid supporting her was syrupy with suspended crystals; finally, with the stream fully liquid and up to speed, it was smooth because it was broad and deep. Beetchermarlf and Takoorch may have been slightly dazed by decreasing hydrogen pressure, but even if they had been fully alert the slight motions of the Kwembly's hull would have been masked by their own shifting on the flexible surface that supported them.

Low Alpha is not the hottest region on Dhrawn, but the zone-melting effects which tend to concentrate any planet's radioactive elements have warmed it to around the melting point of water ice in many spots, over two hundred Kelvin degrees hotter than Lalande 21185 could manage una.s.sisted. A human being could live with only modest artificial protection in the area, if it were not for the gravity and pressure. The really hot area, Low Beta, is forty thousand miles to the north; it is Dhrawn's major climate-control feature.

The Kwemhly's drift was carrying it into regions of rising temperature, which kept the river fluid even though it was now losing ammonia to the air. The course of the stream was almost entirely controlled by the topography, rather than the other way around; the river was geologically too young to have altered the landscape greatly by its own action. Also, much of the exposed surface of the planet in this area was bed rock, igneous and hard, rather than a covering of loose sediment in which a stream could have its own way.

About three hundred miles from the point at which she had been abandoned, the Kwembly was borne into a broad, shallow lake. She promptly but gently ran aground on the soft mud delta where the river fed into it. The great hull naturally deflected the currents around it, and set them to digging a new channel alongside. After about half an hour she tilted sideways and slid off into the new channel, righting herself as she floated free. It was the rocking a.s.sociated with this last liberation which caught the attention of the helmsmen and induced them to come out for a look around.

14: SALVAGE CREW.

It would be untrue to say that Benj recognized Beetchermarlf at first glance. As a matter of fact, the first of the caterpillarlike figures to emerge from the river and clamber up the hull was Takoorch. However, it was the younger helmsman's name which echoed from four speakers on Dhrawn.

One of these was on the Kwembly's bridge and went unheard. Two were in Dondragmer's encampment a few hundred yards from the edge of the broad, swift river which now filled the valley. The fourth was in Reffel's helicopter, parked close beside the bulk of the dirigible Gwelf.

The flying machines were about a mile west of Dondragmer's camp; Kabremm would go no closer, not wanting to take the slightest chance of repeating his earlier slip. He would probably not have moved at all from the site where Stakendee had found him if the river had not risen. For one thing, he had been fog-bound and had no wish to fly at all. Reffel had been even less eager to move. However, there had been no choice, so Kabremm had allowed his craft to float upward on its own lift until it was in clear air. Reffel hovered as close to the other machine's running lights as he dared. Once above the few yards of ammonia droplets, they could navigate, and had flown toward Dondragmer's lights until the dirigible's commander had decided they were close enough. Letting the Gwelf come to the attention of the men in orbit above would have been an even more serious mistake than the one he had made already; Kabremm was still trying to decide what he was going to say to Barlennan about that the next time they met.

Both he and Reffel had also spent some uncomfortable hours before concluding, from the lack of appropriate comment, that Reffel had shuttered his vision set quickly enough after coming within sight of the Gwelf.

In any event, Dondragmer and Kabremm had at last achieved almost direct communication, and had been able to coordinate what they would say and do if there were any further repercussions from Easy's recognition. One load was off the captain's mind. However, he was still taking steps connected with that mistake.

The cry of "Beetch!" in Benj's unmistakable voice distracted him from one of these steps. He had been checking over his crew for people who looked as much as possible like Kabremm. The job was complicated by the fact that he had not seen the other officer for several months. Dondragmer had not yet had time to visit the Gwe/f, Kabremm would come no closer to the camp for any reason, and Dondragmer had never known him particularly well anyway. His plan was to have all crewmen who might reasonably be mistaken for the Esket's first officer appear un.o.btrusively and casually but frequently in the field of view of the vision sets. Anything likely to undermine the certainty of Easy Hoffman that she had seen Kabremm was probably worth trying.

However, the fate of the Kwembly and his helmsmen had never been very far from the captain's mind in the twelve hours since his cruiser's lights had vanished, and at the sound from the speaker he snapped to full attention.

"Captain!" the boy's voice continued. "Two Mesklinites have just appeared and are climbing up the hull of the Kwembly. They came out of the water; they must have been somewhere underneath all the time, even if you couldn't find them. It couldn't be anyone but Beetch and Tak. I can't talk to them until they get to the bridge, of course, but it looks as though we might get your ship back after all. Two men can drive it, can't they?"

Dondragmer's mind raced. He had not blamed himself for abandoning the cruiser, even though the flood had been such an anticlimax. It had been the most reasonable decision at the time and with the available knowledge. By the time the actual nature of the new flood had been clear, and it was obvious that they could have remained in the cruiser with perfect safety, it had been impossible to get back. Being a Mesklinite, the captain had wasted no time on thoughts of the "if only" variety. He had known when he left his vehicle that the chances of getting back were rather small, and when she had drifted downstream intact instead of a shattered ruin they had grown smaller. Not quite to zero, perhaps, but not large enough to take seriously any more.

Now suddenly they had expanded again. The Kwembly was not only usable, but his helmsmen were alive and aboard her. Something might be done, if ...

"Benj!" Dondragmer spoke as his thoughts reached this point. "Will you please get your technical men to determine as closely as they can just how far from us the Kwembly is now? It is perfectly possible for Beetchermarlf to drive her alone, though there are other problems in the way of general maintenance which will keep him and Takoorch busy. However, they should be able to manage. In any case, we must find out whether the distance involved is fifty miles or a thousand. I doubt the latter, since I don't think this river could have carried them so far in twelve hours, but we'll have to know. Get your people at it, and please tell Barlennan what is happening."

Benj obeyed quickly and efficiently. He was no longer overtired, worried, and resentful. With the abandonment of the Kwembly twelve hours before he had given up hope for his friend's life and had left the communication room to get some long overdue sleep. He had not expected to be able to accomplish this, but his own body chemistry had fooled him. Nine hours later he had returned to his regular duties in the aerology laboratory. It had been chance alone which had brought him back to the screens within a few minutes of the helmsmen's emergence. He had been sent by McDevitt to collect general data from the other cruisers, but had lingered for a few minutes to watch at the Kwembly station. The weather man had come to depend heavily on Benj's knowledge of the Mesklinite language.

The sleep, and the sudden discovery that Beetchermarlf was alive after all, combined to dispose of Benj's lingering resentment of Dondragmer's policy. He acknowledged the captain's request, called his mother to take his place, and headed for the laboratory decks as rapidly as his muscles would take him up the ladders.

Easy, who had also had some sleep, reported Benj's departure and her own presence to Dondragmer, briefed Barlennan as requested, and switched back to the captain with a question of her own.

"That's two of your missing men. Do you think there is still any chance of finding your helicopter pilots?"

Dondragmer almost slipped on his answer, carefully as he picked his words. He knew, of course, where Reffel was, since messengers had been pa.s.sing steadily between the camp and the Gwelf, but Kervenser, to his disappointment, had not been seen by the crew of the dirigible or anyone else. His disappearance was perfectly genuine, and the captain now regarded his chances for survival as even lower than those of the Kwemb/y pair an hour before. It was safe, of course, to talk about this; his slip consisted of failing to mention Reffel at all. The Stennish forms equivalent to "him" and "them" were as distinct as the human ones, and several times Dondragmer caught himself using the former when talking about his lost pilots. Easy seemed not to notice, but he wondered afterward.

"It is hard to judge. I have not seen either one. If he went down in the area now flooded it is hard to see how they could be alive now. It is very unfortunate, not only because of the men themselves but because with even one of the helicopters we might be able to transfer more men to the Kwembly and get her back here more easily. Of course, most of the equipment could not be carried that way; on the other hand, if it turns out that the two men cannot bring the cruiser back here for any reason, having one of the fliers could make a great difference to them. It is a pity that your scientists cannot locate the transmitter which Reffel was carrying, as they can the one on the Kwembly."

"You're not the first to feel that way," agreed Easy. The matter had been brought up shortly after Reffel's disappearance. "I don't know enough about the machines to tell why the signal strength depends on the picture brightness; I always thought a carrier wave was a carrier wave; but that seems to be it. Either Reffel's set is in total darkness or it has been destroyed.

"I see your life-support equipment is set up and working."

The last sentence was not entirely an effort of Easy's to change the subject; it was her first good look at the equipment in question, and she was genuinely curious about it. It consisted of scores, perhaps over a hundred, of square transparent tanks covering altogether a dozen square yards, each about a third full of liquid, with the nearly pure hydrogen which const.i.tuted Mesklinite air bubbling through it. A power unit operated the lights which shone on the tanks, but the pumps which kept the gas circulating were muscle-driven. The vegetation which actually oxidized the saturated hydrocarbons of Mesklinite biological waste and gave off free hydrogen was represented by a variety of unicellular species corresponding as nearly as might be expected to terrestrial algae. They had been selected for edibility, though not, as Easy had been given to understand, for taste. The sections of the support equipment which used higher plants and produced the equivalent of fruit and vegetables were too bulky to move from the cruiser.

Easy did not know how the non-gaseous items in the biological cycle were gotten into and out of the tanks, but she could see the charging of air suit cartridges. This was a matter of muscle-driven pumping again, squeezing hydrogen into tanks which contained slugs of porous solid. This material was another strictly non-Mesklinite product, a piece of molecular architecture vaguely a.n.a.logous to zeolite in structure, which adsorbed hydrogen on the inner walls of its structural channels and, within a wide temperature range, maintained an equilibrium partial pressure with the gas which was compatible with Mesklinite metabolic needs.

Dondragmer answered Easy's remark. "Yes, we have just about enough food and air. The real problem is what to do. We have saved very little of your planetological equipment; we can't carry on your work. Conceivably we might make our way back to the Settlement on foot, but we'd have to carry the life-support material by stages. That would mean setting up a camp only a few miles from here, transferring the equipment, recharging the air cartridges after cycling has resumed, and then repeating the process indefinitely. Since the distance to the settlement is about thirty thousand, excuse me, in your numbers about twelve thousand, of your miles, it would take us years to get there: that's no metaphor, nor do I mean your short years. If we're to be any further use to your project, we really must get the Kwembly back here."

Easy could only agree, though she could see an alternative which the captain had not mentioned. Of course, Aucoin would disapprove, or would he, under the circ.u.mstances? A trained and efficient exploring crew represented quite an investment, too. That might be a useful line to follow.

It was several more minutes before Benj returned with his information, and incidentally with a following of interested scientists.

"Captain," he called, "the Kwembly is still moving, though not very fast, something like twenty cables an hour. She is located, or was six minutes ago, 310.71 miles from your transmitter, in our figures. In your numbers and units that's 233,750 cables. There's a small error if there's much difference in elevation. That's great circle distance; we don't have too good an idea of the length of the river, though they have about twenty position readings taken along it since your ship started drifting, so there's a rough river map up in the lab."

"Thank you," came the captain's answer in due course. "Are you in verbal contact with the helmsmen yet?"

"Not yet, but they've gone inside. I'm sure they'll find the communicator on the bridge pretty soon, though I suppose there are other places they'd want to check first. The air must be pretty low in their suits."

This was perfectly correct. It took the helmsmen only a few minutes to ascertain that the cruiser was deserted, and to note that much of the life-support equipment was gone; but this left them with the need to check the air now aboard for contamination with oxygen from outside. Neither of them knew enough basic chemistry to invent a test, and neither was familiar with the routine ones used by Borndender and his colleagues. They were considering the rather drastic procedure of testing by smell when it occurred to Beetchermarlf that a communicator might have been left aboard for scientific reasons, and that the human beings might be of help. There was none in the laboratory, but the bridge was the next most likely spot, and Beetchermarlf's voice was on its way up to the station some ten minutes after the helmsmen had come aboard.

Benj postponed greetings when he heard Beetchermarif's question, and relayed it at once to Dondragmer. The captain called his scientists and outlined the situation, and for over half an hour the relay was very busy: Borndender explained things, and Beetchermarlf repeated the explanations, then went to the lab to examine material and equipment, then came back to the bridge to make sure of some minor point ...

Eventually both parties in the conversation felt sure that the instructions had been understood. Benj, at its pivot point, was nearly sure. He knew enough physics and chemistry himself to judge that nothing was likely to blow up if Beetch made a mistake; his only worry was that his friend might perform the tests sloppily and so miss a dangerous amount of oxygen. Was the risk simply one of poisoning, or did hydrogen-oxygen mixtures present other dangers? He wasn't quite sure; hydrogen-oxygen mixtures have other qualities. He remained rather tense until Beetchermarlf returned to the bridge with the report that both tests were complete. The catalyst which disposed of free oxygen by accelerating its reaction with ammonia was still active, and the ammonia-vapor concentration in the ship's air was high enough to give it something to work on. The helmsmen had already removed their air-suits and neither could smell any oxygen, though, as with human beings and hydrogen sulfide, smell is not always a reliable test.

At least, the two could live on board for a time. One of their first acts had been to "hand"-pump the feed tank which kept air bubbling through the life-support medium, and to satisfy themselves that most of the plants were still alive. The next problem was navigation.

Benj told his friend as much as possible about his location, that of the rest of the crew, and the Kwemb/y's present rate and direction of travel. There was no problem about using the information. Beetchermarlf could determine direction easily enough. The stars were visible and he had a perfectly good magnetic compa.s.s. Dhrawn's magnetic field was a good deal stronger than Earth's, to the consternation of the scientists who had long since taken for granted a correlation between magnetic field and rotation rate for ordinary planets.

The discussion which produced a detailed operation plan was shorter than the one preceding the oxygen test, though it still involved the long relay. Neither Dondragmer nor the helmsmen had any serious doubts about what to do or how to do it.

Beetchermarlf was far younger than Takoorch, but there seemed no question as to who was in charge aboard. The fact that Benj always signalled Beetch by name, rather than signaling the Kwembly formally, may have contributed to the young one's authority. Easy and several of the other human beings suspected that Takoorch, in spite of his willingness to discuss his own past accomplishments, was in no great hurry to take on too much responsibility. He tended to agree with Beetchermarif's suggestions either at once or after only token arguments.

"We're still adrift, and unless this river has some very funny loops farther down we'll never get any closer to the others with its help," the younger Mesklinite summarized at last. "The first job will be to get paddles on some of the powered trucks. Trying to do it with all of them will take forever; a couple of outboard-row ones aft, and maybe a central one forward should give control. With power available on other drivers we can either pull off or get safely ash.o.r.e if we run aground. Tak and I will go outside and start work right now. You keep an eye on us as much as you can, Benj; we'll leave the set where it is."

Beetchermarlf did not wait for an answer. He and his companion suited up once more and broke out the paddles which were designed to be pinned onto the treads of the drivers. These had been tested on Mesklin but had never yet been used on Dhrawn; no one really knew how well they would work. Their area was small, since there was little clearance for them above the trucks, and some of that small area was taken up by a plastic shield designed to fold them flat as they were riding forward on the top side of the trucks. However, it had been proved that they would supply some thrust. What this would accomplish remained to be seen; the Kwembly was floating higher in the ammonia-water solution of Dhrawn, of course, than she had in the liquid hydrocarbon ocean of the world where she had been made.

Installation of the fins and shields was a long and awkward job for two workers. The pieces could be taken out only one at a time, since there was nowhere to put them down with the cruiser afloat. Safety lines persistently got in the way. Mesklinite pincers are rather less effective handling organs than are human fingers, though this is somewhat offset by the fact that their owner can use all four pairs of them simultaneously and in coordination-he has no asymmetry corresponding to human right-or left-handedness.

The need for artificial lights was still another bother. As it turned out, getting twelve paddles and one shield on each of three drivers took a total of almost fifteen hours. It could, Beetchermarlf a.s.sured Benj, have been accomplished in two with four workers on each truck.

By this time the trackers had learned that the Kwembly was not getting any farther from the camp, though she was still moving. Apparently she had been caught in an eddy some four miles in diameter. Beetchermarlf took advantage of this when he was finally ready to apply power; he waited until the human a.n.a.lysts could tell him that he was being carried south before he set the three finned trucks running. For some seconds it was not apparent that the power was doing any good; then, very slowly, helmsmen and humans alike saw that the great hull was moving gently forward. The Mesklinites could see from the bridge a feeble excuse for a bow wave; the human beings, looking aft, were able to detect small ripples spreading back from the sides. Beetchermarlf swung his helm hard over to bring the bow in line with Sol and Fomalhaut. For nearly half a minute he was left wondering whether there would be any response; then the stars began to swing overhead as the long hull swerved majestically. Once started it was hard to stop; he overcontrolled many times and for a period of many minutes, sometimes by as much as a full right angle, before getting the feel of the vessel. Then for nearly an hour he managed to hold a southerly heading, though he had no idea of his actual course at first. He could guess from the earlier information that the eddy would be bearing him in the same direction at the start, but then it would presumably carry him eastward.

It was some time, however, before the directional antennae on the shadow satellites and the computers in the station could confirm this guess. About the time they did, the Kwembly ran gently aground.

Beetchermarlf instantly shifted drive power to the two trucks farthest forward which had power boxes, letting the paddle-equipped ones idle, and pulled his cruiser out on the sh.o.r.e.

"I'm out of the lake," he reported. "Minor problem. If I travel for any distance on land with the paddles in place I'll wear them out. If it turns out that I'm on an island, or have to go back to the water for any other reason, an awful lot of time will have been wasted taking them off and putting them on again. My first thought is to do some exploring on foot, leaving the ship right here, to get some idea of what the chances of staying ash.o.r.e may be. It will take a long time, but not nearly as long as waiting for daylight. I'll be glad of advice from you humans or orders from the captain; we'll wait."

Dondragmer, when this was relayed to him, was prompt with his answer.

"Don't go out. Wait until the map-makers up above can decide whether you are on the same side of the river as we are, or not. As I picture the map they've described, there's a good chance that the eddy carried you to the east side, which would be the right bank; we're on the left. If they are even moderately sure of this, get back into the water and head west until they think you're past it, no, second thought. Go until they think you're opposite its mouth, then head south once more. I'd like to find out whether you can travel upstream with any speed at all. I know it will be slow; it may turn out that you can't travel at all in some places along the bank."

"I'll tell Beetch and the map people, Captain," answered Benj. "I'll try to get a copy of their map and keep it up to date down here; that may save some time in the future."

The directional data was not, as it happened, definitive. The location of the Kwembly could be established well enough, but the course of the river down which she had come was much less certain. The checks were many miles apart, but sufficient in number to show that the river was decidedly crooked. After some further discussion, it was decided that Beetchermarlf should get back afloat and head westward as close to sh.o.r.e as he could; preferably within sight of it, if the range of his lights and the slope of the lake bottom would permit it. If he could find the river mouth by sight, he was to head up it as Dondragmer had wished; if not, he was to continue along the sh.o.r.e until the men above were reasonably certain that he had pa.s.sed the rivermouth, then turn south.

It did prove possible to keep the sh.o.r.e within range of the Kwembly's lights, but it took over two hours to reach the river. This had made a wide westward bend which had been missed in the checks of the cruiser's position during the downstream drift; then it turned again and entered the lake on an eastward slant which presumably caused the counterclockwise eddy. One of the planetographers remarked that you couldn't blame the eddy on Coriolis force because the lake was only seven degrees from the equator and on the south side, at that, of a planet which took two months to rotate.

The delta, which caused the sh.o.r.eline to turn north briefly, was a warning. Beetchermarlf at the helm and Takoorch at the port wing of the bridge sent the Kwembly groping around the rather irregular peninsula, slowing noticeably several times as the trucks dragged in soft bottom silt, and finally found their way into a clear channel and headed into its current.

This was not swift, but the Kwembly still wasn't afloat. The Mesklinites were in no hurry; Dondragmer gave six hours and more to the experiment of fighting the stream. They made about ten miles progress in that time. If that rate could be maintained, the cruiser would be back at the camp by a day or two after midnight, that is, in a week or so by human reckoning.

It was impatience which changed the travel plans. This could not, of course, be blamed on any Mesklinite; it was Aucoin, of all people, who decided that a mile and a half an hour was not satisfactory. Dondragmer did not feel strongly about the matter; he agreed that research might as well be worked into the trip if possible. At the planner's suggestion he sent Beetchermarlf angling westward toward what was presumably the near bank of the river. The land seemed traversable. With some misgiving he had the helmsmen remove the paddles.

Removal proved much easier than installation, since the vehicle was now on dry land. Things could be laid down and life lines were not needed. Benj, on his next visit to the communication room, found the Kwembly cruising smoothly south at about ten miles an hour over flat country, interrupted by an occasional outcropping of rock and studded here and there with scrubby brush, the highest life form so far encountered on Dhrawn. The surface was firm sediment; the planetologists judged the area to be a flood plain, which seemed reasonable even to Benj.

Beetchermarlf was willing to talk as usual, but it could be seen that his attention was not entirely on conversation. Both he and Takoorch were looking ahead as sharply as their eyesight and the Kwemhly's lights would permit. There was no a.s.surance that the going was safe; without air-scouting, the ten-mile speed was all they dared use. Anything faster would have been overrunning their lights. Whenever other duties, such as airplant maintenance, had to be performed, they stopped the cruiser and did the work together. One set of eyes, they felt, was not enough for safe travel.

Every now and then, as the hours wore on, whoever was at the helm would begin to feel the treacherous a.s.surance that there could be no danger; that they had, after all, come scores of miles now without having to change heading except to keep the river in sight. A human being would have increased the running speed bit by bit. The Mesklinite reaction was to stop and rest. Even Takoorch knew that when he was feeling tempted to act against the dictates of elementary common sense, it was time to do something about his own condition. Discovering the vehicle halted when he came to the screens on one occasion, Aucoin a.s.sumed it was a regular air-maintenance stop; but then he saw one of the Mesklinites sprawled idly on the bridge. The set had been put back in its old location, giving a view forward over the helm. Asked why the cruiser was not traveling, Takoorch simply replied that he had found himself getting casual. The administrator left in a very thoughtful mood.

Eventually, this care paid off, or seemed to.

For some miles the outcroppings of bed rock had been more and more frequent, though generally smaller, closer together, and more angular. The planetologists had been making guesses, futile ones with so little information, about the underlying stratigraphy. The basic surface was still hard-packed sediment, but the watchers suspected that it might be getting shallower, and that some time soon the Kwemhly might find herself on the same sort of bare rock that formed the substrate at Dondragmer's camp.

The helmsmen occasionally found it necessary now to weave slightly left or right to avoid the rock outcroppings; they even had to slow down a little from time to time. Several times in the past few hours the planetologists had rather plaintively suggested that the cruiser stop before it was too late, and pick up samples of the sediment she was running over even if the rocks were too big to collect. Aucoin simply pointed out that it would be a year or two before the sample could get up to the station anyway, and refused; the scientists retorted that a year was much better than the time which would be needed if the specimens weren't collected.

But when the Kwembly stopped, it was on Beetchermarlf's initiative. It was a minor thing, or seemed to be; the soil ahead seemed a little darker, with a very sharp boundary between it and the surface under the cruiser. The line was not noticeable on the vision screen, but the Mesklinites spotted it simultaneously and, without words, agreed that close examination was in order. Beetchermarlf called the station to inform the human beings and his captain that he and Takoorch would be going outside for a time, and described the situation. Easy, translating the message, was promptly begged by two planetologists to persuade the Mesklinites to bring samples aboard. She a.s.sumed that even Aucoin would hardly object under the circ.u.mstances, and agreed to ask them when she called back with Dondragmer's clearance.

The captain, this time, approved the sortie, suggesting only that it be preceded by a careful look around from the bridge with the aid of the spotlights. This proved useful. A hundred yards ahead, not too far out of the range of the running lights, a small stream ran across their path and emptied into the river. Sweeping the light to starboard, this tributary could be seen arcing around parallel to the cruiser's path from the north, then reversing its curve somewhat astern of the big vehicle and disappearing to the northwest. The Kwembly was on a peninsula some two hundred yards wide and not quite as long, bounded on the east-left-by the main river she had been following and on the other sides by the small tributary. It seemed likely to Mesklinites and human beings alike that the change in soil color which had caught the helmsmen's attention was caused by wetting from the smaller stream, but no one was sure enough of it to cancel the proposed trip outside. Aucoin was not present.

Outside, even with the aid of extra lights, the line of demarcation between the two kinds of soil was much less visible than before. Eye distance, Beetchermarlf judged, was the main cause. The crew sc.r.a.ped up and packaged samples of material from both sides of the line; then they went on to the stream itself. This proved to be a swift-running but shallow brook three or four body-lengths in width, its level an inch or two below the soil through which it was cutting its way. After a brief consultation, the two Mesklinites began to follow it away from the river. They had no way of telling its composition, but a bottle of its contents was secured for later testing.

By the time they reached the spot where it was curving away, even the Mesklinites could see that the stream had not been in existence very long. It was eating with visible speed into its banks, washing the sediment on toward the main river. Now that they were on the outside of its curve, the undercutting of the near bank could be seen and even felt; Beetchermarlf, standing at the edge, felt it crumble suddenly away under him and found himself in the stream.

It was only an inch or so deep, so he took advantage of the occasion to take another sample from its bottom before climbing out. They decided to continue upstream for another ten minutes or so, with Beetchermarlf wading and Takoorch on the bank. Before the time was up they had actually found the source of the watercourse. It was a spring, not half a mile from the Kwembly, roiling violently in the center of its basin where an underground source fed it. Beetchermarlf, investigating the middle, was knocked from his feet and carried half a body length by the upward current.

There was nothing in particular to do; they had no camera equipment, no one had seriously suggested that they bring the vision set with them, and there was nothing obvious to be gained by collecting more samples. They returned to the Kwembly to give a verbal description of what they had found.

Even the scientists agreed that the best step now was to get the samples back to the camp where Borndender and his fellows could do something useful with them. The helmsmen eased their cruiser into motion once more.

It approached the stream and nosed through it; the mattress took up the slight dip as the trucks crossed the bottom of the widening valley, and nothing could be felt on the bridge.

Not for another eight seconds.

The hull was rather more than half way across the little brook when the distinction between solid and liquid began to blur. A slight lurch could be felt on the bridge; it showed on the screen far above as a tiny upward jerk of the few outside features visible.

Forward motion stopped almost instantly, though the drivers kept churning. They could accomplish nothing when completely immersed in slimy mud, which the surface had so suddenly become. There was neither support nor traction. The Kwembly settled until the trucks were buried; settled until the mattress was nearly out of sight; settled almost, but not quite, to the level where she would have been literally floating in the semiliquid muck. She was stopped by two of the rock outcrops, one of which caught her under the stern just aft of the mattress, and the other on the starboard side some ten feet forward of the main lock. There was an ugly sc.r.a.ping sound as the cruiser's hull canted forward and to port, and then came to rest.

And this time, as Beetchermarifs sense of smell warned him only too clearly, the hull had failed somewhere. Oxygen was leaking in.

15: ESSENCE.

"It boils down to this," Aucoin said from the head of the table. "We have the choice of sending down the barge, or not. If we don't, the Kwembly and the two Mesklinites aboard her are lost, and Dondragmer and the rest of her crew are out of action until a rescue cruiser such as the Kalliff can reach them from the Settlement. Unfortunately, if we do try to land the barge there's a good chance that it won't help. We don't know why the ground gave under the Kwembly, and have no a.s.surance that the same thing won't happen anywhere else in the vicinity. Losing the barge would be awkward. Even if we first landed near Dondragmer's camp and transferred him and his crew to the cruiser, we might lose the barge and there is no a.s.surance that the crew could repair the Kwembly. Beetchermarlfs report makes me doubt it. He says he has found and sealed the major leaks, but he's still getting oxygen inside the hull from time to time. Several of his life-support tanks have been poisoned by it. So far he has been able to clean them out each time and restock them from the others, but he can't keep going forever unless he stops the last of these leaks. Also, neither he nor anyone else has made any concrete suggestion for getting that cruiser loose from the muck or whatever it's stuck in.

"There is another good argument against landing the barge. If we use remote, live control, there is the sixty-second reaction lag, which would make handling anywhere near the ground really impossible. It would be possible to program its computer to handle a landing, but the risks of that were proved the hard way the first time anyone landed away from Earth. You might as well give the Mesklinites a quick lesson in flying the thing for themselves!"

"Don't try to make that last sound too silly, Alan," Easy pointed out gently. "The Kwembly is merely the first of the cruisers to get into what looks like final trouble. Dhrawn is a very big world, with very little known about it, and I suspect we're going to run out of land-cruisers for rescue or any other purpose sooner or later. Also, even I know that the barge controls are computer-coupled, with push-the-way-you-want-to-go operators. I admit that even so, the chances are ten to one or worse that anyone trying a ground-to-ground flight with that machine on Dhrawn without previous experience would kill himself, but do Beetchermarlf and Takoorch have even that much chance of survival on any other basis?"

"I think they do," replied Aucoin quietly.

"How, in the name of all that's sensible?" snapped Mersereau. "Here all along we've-" Easy held up her hand, and either the gesture or the expression on her face caused Boyd to fall silent.

"What other procedure which you could conscientiourly recommend would stand any real chance of saving either the Kwembly herself, or her two helmsmen, or the rest of Dondragmer's crew?" she asked.

Aucoin had the grace to flush deeply, but he answered steadily enough.

"I mentioned it earlier, as Boyd remembers," he said. "Sending the Kalliff from the Settlement to pick them up."

The words were followed by some seconds of silence, while expressions of amus.e.m.e.nt flitted across the faces around the table. Eventually Ib Hoffman spoke.

"Do you suppose Barlennan will approve?" he asked innocently.

"It boils down to this," Dondragmer said to Kabremm. "We can stay here and do nothing while Barlennan sends a rescue cruiser from the Settlement. I a.s.sume he can think of some reason for sending one which won't sound too queer, after he failed to do it for the Esket."

"That would be easy enough," returned the Esket's first officer. "One of the human beings was against sending it, and the commander simply let him win the argument. This time he could be firmer."

"As though the first time wouldn't have made some of the other humans suspicious enough. But never mind that. If we wait, we don't know how long it will be, since we don't even know whether there's a possible ground route from the Settlement to here. You came from the mines by air, and we floated part of the way.

"If we decide not to wait, we can do either of two things. One is to move by stages toward the Kwembly, carrying the life equipment as far as the suits will let us and then setting it up again to recharge them. We'd get there some time, I suppose. The other is to move the same way toward the Settlement to meet the rescue cruiser if one comes or get there on foot if it doesn't. I suppose we'd even get there, eventually. Even if we reach the Kwembly, there is no certainty that we can repair her; if the human beings have relayed Beetchermarlf's feelings at all adequately, it seems rather doubtful. I don't like either choice because of the wasted time they both involve. There are better things to do than crawl over the surface of this world on foot.

"A better idea, to my way of thinking, is to use your dirigible either to rescue my helmsmen if it is decided to give up on the Kwembly, or to start ferrying my crew and equipment over to where she is."