We Have Fed Our Sea Part 8

"Propriety be d.a.m.ned. I'd rather have David's child, alive." She slipped her boots back on, took a flashlight from the cupboard, and went out the door. As she opened it, the wind came straight in and hit Magnus across the face.

"In the land of Chinchanchou, Where the winds blow tender From a sea like purple wine Foaming to defend her, Lives a princess beautiful (May the G.o.ds amend her!) Little known for virtue, but Of most female gender."

AS he came around the gyro housing and pulled himself forward to the observation deck, David Ryerson heard the guitar skitter through half a dozen chords and Maclaren's voice come bouncing in its wake. He sighed, pushed the lank yellow hair back out of his eyes, and braced himself.

Maclaren floated in the living section. It was almost an in-sult to see him somehow clean all over, in a white tunic, when each man was allowed a daily spongeful of water for such purposes. And half rations had only leaned the New Zealander down, put angles in his smooth brown countenance; he didn't have bones jutting up under a stretched skin like Ryerson, or a flushed complexion and recurring toothache like Nakamura. It wasn't fair!

"Oh, hullo, Dave." Maclaren continued tickling his strings, but quietly. "How does the web progress?"

"I'm done."

"I just clinched the last bolt and spotwelded the last connec-tion. There's not a thing left except to find that germanium, make the transistors, and adjust the units." Ryerson hooked an arm around a stanchion and drifted free, staring out of sunken eyes toward emptiness. "G.o.d help me," he murmured, "what am I going to do now?"

"Wait," said Maclaren. "We can't do much except wait." He regarded the younger man for a while.

"Frankly, both Seiichi and I found excuses not to help you, did less out there than we might have, for just that reason. I've been afraid you would finish the job before we found our planet."

Ryerson started. Redness crept into his chalky face. "Why, of all the-" His anger collapsed. "I see. All right."

"These weeks since we escaped have been an unparalleled chance to practice my music," remarked Maclaren. "I've even been composing. Listen.

"In their golden-masted ships Princes come a-wooing Over darkling spindrift roads Where the gales are brewing.

l.u.s.ty tales have drawn them thence, Much to their undoing: When they seek the lady's hand She givesthemthe-"

"Will you stop that?" screamed Ryerson.

"As you like," said Maclaren mildly. He put the guitar back into its case. "I'd be glad to teach you," he offered.

"No."

"Care for a game of chess?"

"No."

"I wish to all the h.e.l.ls I'd been more of an intellectual," said Maclaren. "I never was, you know. I was a playboy, even in science. Now . . . I wish I'd brought a few hundred books with me. When I get back, I'm going to read them." His smile faded. "I think I might begin to understand them."

"When we get back?" Ryerson's thin frame doubled in midair as if for a leap. "If we get back, you mean!"

NAKAMURA entered. He had a sheaf of scribbled papers in one hand. His face was carefully blank. "I have com-pleted the calculations on our latest data," he said.

Ryerson shuddered. "What have you found?" he cried. "Negative."

"Lord G.o.d of Israel," groaned Ryerson. "Negative again."

"That pretty well covers this...o...b..t, then," said Maclaren calmly. "I've got the elements of the next one computed- somewhere." He went out among the instruments.

A muscle in Ryerson's cheek began to jump of itself. He looked at Nakamura for a long time. "Isn't there anything else we can do?" he asked. "The telescopes, the-Do we just have tosit?"

"We are circling a dead sun," the pilot reminded him. "There is only feeble starlight to see by. A very powerful instrument might photograph a planet, but not the telescopes we have. Not at any distance greater than we could find them gravita-tionally. S-s-so."

"We could make a big telescope!" exclaimed Ryerson. "We have gla.s.s, and . . . and silver and-"

"I've thought of that." Maclaren's tones drifted back from the observation section. "You're welcome to amuse yourself with it, but we'd starve long before a suitable mirror could be ground with the equipment here."

"But-Maclaren, s.p.a.ce is so big! We could hunt for a million years and never find a planet if we can't . .

. can't see them!"

"We're not working quite at random." Maclaren reappeared with a punched tape. "Perhaps you've forgotten the principle on which we are searching. We position ourselves in an orbit about the star, follow it for a while, check our position repeat-edly, and compute whether the path has been significantly perturbed. If it has been, that's due to a planet somewhere, and we can do a Leverrier to find that planet.

If not-if we're too far away-we quarter to another arc of the same path and try again. Having exhausted a whole circ.u.mference thus, we move outward and try a bigger circle."

"Shut up!" rasped Ryerson. "I know it! I'm not a schoolboy. But we'reguessing!"

"Not quite," said Maclaren. "You were occupied with the web when I worked out the secondary principle . . . yes, come to think of it, you never did ask me before. Let me explain. You see, by extrapolating from data on known stellar types, I know approximately what this star was like in its palmy days. From this, planetary formation theory gives me the scale of its one-time system. For instance, its planets must have been more or less in the equatorial plane; such quant.i.ties as ma.s.s, angular momentum, and magnetic field determine the Bode's Law con-stants; to the extent that all this is known, I can draw an orbital map.

"Well, then the star went supernova. Its closer planets were whiffed into gas. The outermost giants would have survived, though badly damaged. But the semimajor axes of their orbits were so tremendous-theoretically, planets could have formed as much as a light-year from this star-that even a small percentage of error in the data makes my result uncertain by Astronomical Units. Another factor: the explosion filled this s.p.a.ce with gas. We're actually inside a nonluminous nebula. That would shorten the orbits of the remaining planets; in the course of millions of years they've spiraled far inward. In one way that helps us: we've an area to search which is not hope-lessly huge. But on the other hand, just how long has it been since the accident? What's the density distribution of the neb-ula now, and what was it back then? I've taken some readings and made some estimates. All very crude, but-" Maclaren shrugged-"what else can we do? The successive orbits we have been trying are, more or less, those I have calculated for the surviving planets as of today. And, of course, intermediate radii to make sure that we will be measurably perturbed no matter where those planets actually are. It's just a matter of getting close enough to one of them."

"If our food lasts," groaned Ryerson. "And we have to eat while we finish the web, too. Don't forget that."

"We're going to have to reorganize our schedules," declared Maclaren thoughtfully. "Hitherto we've found things to keep us occupied. Now we must wait, and not go crazy waiting." He grinned. "I hereby declare theSouthern Cross dirty limerick contest open and offer a prize of-"

"Yes," said Ryerson. "Great sport. Fun and games, with Chang Sverdlov's frozen corpse listening in!"

SILENCE clapped down. They heard the air mumble in the ventilators.

"What else can we do with our poor friend?" asked Nakamura softly. "Send him on a test rocket into the black sun? He deserved better of us. Yes-s-s? Let his own people bury him."

"Bury a copy of him!" shrieked Ryerson. "Of all the sense-less-"

"Please," said Nakamura. He tried to smile. "After all it is no trouble to us, and it will comfort his friends at home; maybe yes? After all, speaking in terms of atoms, we do not even wish to send ourselves back.

Only copies." He laughed.

"Will you stop that giggling!"

"Please." Nakamura pushed himself away, lifting aston-ished hands. "Please, if I have offended you, I am so sorry."

"So sorry! So sorry! Get out of here! Get out, both of you! I've seen more of you than I can stand!"

Nakamura started to leave, still bobbing his head, smiling and hissing in the shaftway. Maclaren launched himself be-tween the other two. He snapped a hand onto either wrist.

"That will do!" They grew suddenly aware, it was shocking, how the eyes burned green in his dark face.

His words fell like axes. "Dave, you're a baby, screaming for mother to come change you. Seiichi, you think it's enough to make polite noises at the rest of the world. If you ever want to see sunlight again, you'll both have to mend your ideas." He shook them a little. "Dave, you'll keep yourself clean. Seiichi, you'll dress for dinner and talk with us. Both of you will stop feeling sorry for yourselves and start working to survive. And the next step is to become civilized again. We haven't got the size, or the time, or the force to beat that star: nothing but manhood. Now go off and start practicing how to be men!"

They said nothing, only stared at him for a few moments and then departed in opposite directions.

Maclaren found him-self gazing stupidly at his guitar case.I'd better put that away till it's requested, he thought.If ever. I didn't stop to think, my own habits might possibly be hard to live with.

After a long time:Seems I'm the captain now, in fact if not in name. But how did it happen? What have I done, what have I got? Presently, with an inward twisting:It must be I've less to lose. I can be more objective because I've no wife, no chil-dren, no cause, no G.o.d. It's easy for a hollow man to remain calm.

He covered his eyes, as if to deny he floated among a million unpitying stars. But he couldn't hunch up that way for long. Someone might come back, and the captain mustn't be seen afraid.

Not afraid of death. Of life.

SEEN from a view turret on the observation deck, the planet looked eerily like its parent star which had mur-dered it. Ryerson crouched in darkness, staring out to dark-ness. Against strewn constellations there lay a gigantic out-line with wan streaks and edgings of gray. As he watched, Ryerson saw it march across the Milky Way and out of his sight. But it was theCross which moved, he thought, circling her hope in fear.

I stand on Mount Nebo,he thought,and down there is my Promised Land.

Irrationally-but the months had made them all odd, silent introverts, Trappists because meaningful conversation was too rare and precious to spill without due heed-he reached into his breast pocket. He took forth Tamara's picture and held it close to him. Sometimes he woke up breathing the fragrance of her hair.Have a look, he told her.We found it. In a heathen adoration:You are my luck, Tamara. You found it.

As the black planet came back into sight, monstrously swal-lowing suns-it was only a thousand or so kilometers away- Ryerson turned his wife's image outward so she could see what they had gained.

"Are you there, Dave?"

Maclaren's voice came from around the cylinder of the living section. It had grown much lower in this time of search. Often you could scarcely hear Maclaren when he spoke. And the New Zealander, once in the best condition of them all, had lately gotten thinner than the other two, until his eyes stared from caves. But then, thought Ryerson, each man aboard had had to come to terms with himself, one way or another, and there had been a price. In his own case, he had paid with youth.

"Coming." Ryerson pulled himself around the deck, between the instruments. Maclaren was at his little desk, with a clip-board full of scrawled paper in one hand. Nakamura had just joined him. The Saraian had gone wholly behind a mask, more and more a polite un.o.btrusive robot. Ryerson wondered whether serenity now lay within the man, or the loneliest circle of h.e.l.l, or both.

"I've got the data pretty well computed," said Maclaren.

Ryerson and Nakamura waited. There had been curiously little exultation when the planet finally revealed itself.I, thought Ryerson,have become a plodder. Nothing is quite real out here-there is only a succession of motions, in my body and my brain-but I can celebrate no victory, because there is none, until the final and sole victory: Tamara.

But I wonder why Terangi and Seiichi didn't cheer?

Maclaren ruffled through his papers. "It has a smaller ma.s.s and radius than Earth," he said, "but a considerably higher density suggesting it's mostly nickel-iron. No satellite, of course. And, even though the surface gravity is a bit more than Earth's, no atmosphere. Seems to be bare rock down there or metal, I imagine. Solid, anyhow."

"How large was it once?" murmured Nakamura.

Maclaren shrugged. "That would be pure guesswork," he said. "I don't know which planet of the original system this is. One or two of the survivors may have crashed on the primary by now, you see. My personal guess, though, is that it was the 61 Cygni C type-more ma.s.sive than Jupiter, though of less bulk because of core degeneracy. It had an extremely big orbit. Even so, the supernova boiled away all its hydrogen and prob-ably some of the heavier elements, too. But that took time, and the planet still had this much ma.s.s left when the star decayed into a white dwarf. Of course, with the pressure of the outer layers removed, the core reverted to normal density, which must have been a pretty spectacular catastrophe in itself. Since then, the residual stellar gases have been making the planet spiral slowly inward, for hundreds of megayears. And now-"

"Now we found it," said Ryerson. "With three weeks' food supply to spare."

"And the germanium still to get," said Maclaren.

Nakamura drew a breath. His eyes went to the deck "be-neath" his feet. Far aft was a storage compartment which had been left open to the bitterness of s.p.a.ce; and a dead man, lashed to a stanchion.

"Had there been four of us," he said, "we would have con-sumed our supplies already and be starving. I am most hum-bly grateful to Engineer Sverdlov."

Maclaren's tone was dry. "He didn't die for that reason."

"No. But has he given us less merely because it was an accident?"

THEY floated a while in stillness. Then Maclaren shook himself and said: "We're wasting time. This ship was never intended to land on a planet. Since I've already informed you any world we found might very likely use vacuum for sky, and you didn't object, I a.s.sume the aircraft can make a land-ing."

Nakamura crossed his legs and rested impa.s.sively, hands folded on his lap. "How familiar are you with the standard exploratory technique?" he inquired.

"Not very," confessed Maclaren. "I gather that aircraft are preferred for reasons of ma.s.s economy."

"And even more for maneuverability. A nuclear-powered vessel, using wings and turbojets, can rise high into an atmo-sphere, above the worst air resistance, without having to ex-pend the reaction ma.s.s of a rocket. Likewise it can land more easily and safely in the first place. The aircraft which we carry, dismantled, are intended to leave their orbiting mother ship with a short rocket burst, slip into the atmosphere of a new planet, and descend. The return is more difficult, of course, but they get into the stratosphere before applying the non-ionic rocket drive. This in turn takes them into s.p.a.ce proper, where their ion accelerators will work. Naturally, the cabins being sealed, any kind of atmosphere will serve them.

"Now, this is for exploration purposes. But these auxiliary craft are also capable of landing on rockets alone. When the time has come to establish a beam-relay station, some airless lifeless satellite is chosen, to avoid the necessity of quarantine. The craft shuttle back and forth, carrying the ship's disman-tled transceiver. This is rea.s.sembled on the surface. Thereby the satellite's own ma.s.s becomes available to the matterbank, and any amount of material can be reconstructed according to the signals from the home station. The first things sent through are usually the parts for a much larger transceiver station, which can handle many tons of ma.s.s at a time."

"Well, good," said Maclaren. "That was more or less what I thought. Let's land and-oh, oh."

Ryerson felt a smile tugging his lips, though it was not a happy one. "You see?" he murmured.

Maclaren regarded him closely. "You don't seem too discour-aged," he said. "There must be an answer."

Ryerson nodded. "I've already spoken with Seiichi about it, while you were busy determining the exact characteristics of the planet. It's not going to be fun, but-Well, let him tell you."

Maclaren said slowly: "I had hoped, it was at least possible, that any planet we found would have a surviving satellite, small enough to land the whole ship on, or lay alongside, if you want to consider it that way. It would have been the best thing for us. But I'm sure now that this lump has no companion of any kind. So we'll have to get our germanium down there."

"Which we could also have done, had we been fortunate enough to locate the planet sooner," Nakamura told him. "We can take aircraft down to the surface even now. But we would have to transship all the mining and separating equipment, establish a working s.p.a.ce and an airdome-It is too much work for three men to do before our three weeks of supplies are eaten up, and then the actual mining would still remain."

Maclaren nodded. "I should have thought of this myself," he said. "I wonder how sane and sensible we are-how can we measure rationality, when we are all the human race we know for tens of light-years?

Well. So I didn't think and you didn't talk. Nevertheless, I gather there's a way out of our dilemma."

"Yes," said the pilot. "A riskful way, but any other is certain death. We can take the ship down, and use her for our ready-made workshop and airdome."

"TheCross? But . . . well, of course the gravitation here is no problem to her, nor the magnetism now that the drive is shielded-but we can't make a tail landing. We'd crumple the web, and . . . h.e.l.l's clanging bells, she can't land at all! She's not designed for it! Not maneuverable enough, why, it takes half an hour just to swing her clear around on gyros."

Nakamura said calmly, "I have made calculations for some time now, preparing for this eventuality.

There was nothing we could do before knowing what we would actually find, but I do have some plans drawn up. We have six knocked-down auxiliary craft. Yes? It will not take long to a.s.semble their non-ionic rocket drives, which are very simple devices, clamp these to the outside hull, and run their control systems through the ship's console. I think if we all work hard we can have it a.s.sembled, tested, and functioning in two or three days. Each pair of rockets should be so mounted as to form a couple which will rotate the ship around one of the three orthogonal s.p.a.ce axes. No? Thus the s.p.a.ceship will become most highly respon-sive to piloting. Furthermore, we shall cut up the aircraft hulls, as well as whatever else we may need and can spare for this purpose, such as interior fittings. From this, we shall construct a tripod enclosing and protecting the stern a.s.sem-bly. It will be clumsy and unbalanced, of course-but I trust my poor maneuverings can compensate for that-and it will be comparatively weak-but with the help of radar and our pow-erful ion-blast, the ship can be landed very gently."