by Hal Clement
The big rock was the central problem. It was keeping the drivers from traction, and until they not only touched bottom, but bore heavily on it, there was no moving the Kwembly with her own power. She might conceivably have been shifted by muscle power at Mesklin’s Rim, or more likely on Earth, but not under Dhrawn’s gravity. Even a two-foot boulder was hard to move in that field.
There was rigging inside which could be set up as lifting tackle, but none of it could begin to support the vehicle’s weight as a static load even if its mechanical advantage were adequate.
Of course some trucks—four, to be exact—were in contact with the troublesome rock itself, and several more in Row 5 were touching the bottom. None of these was powered at the moment, but converters could be transferred to them. If the four on the rock, and the ones forward from them, and some of the Row 5 trucks, were all to be powered why couldn’t the cruiser simply be backed off?
She could. No reason at all to doubt it. On level ground with reasonable traction any four wellspaced power units could drive her. With her weight concentrated on only a few trucks, traction should be better than normal; and a backward move would be essentially downhill.
It was not lack of self-confidence which caused Dondragmer to outline this plan to the human being on communication watch; he was announcing his intentions, not asking for advice. The man who heard him was not an engineer, and gave casual approval to the move; but as a matter of routine he reported the situation to Planning so that the information could be distributed. Consequently it reached an engineer within an hour or so, long before Dondragmer was ready to execute his plan.
It caused a raising of eyebrows, a quick examination of a scale model of the Kwembly, and two minutes of rapid slide-rule work.
The engineer was a poor linguist, but this was not the only reason he went looking for Easy Hoffman. He did not know Dondragmer very well, had no idea how the Mesklinite would react to criticism—he had worked with Drommians, since there were some connected with the Dhrawn project—and he felt it safest to have his point presented by the official oil-spreader. Easy, when found, promptly assured him that she had never known Dondragmer to resent reasonable advice, but agreed that her better knowledge of Stennish would probably help even though the captain was fluent in the human tongue. They went together to the communication room.
Benj was there, as usual when he was not actually on duty. He had by now made friends with several more of the Mesklinites, though he still liked Beetchermarlf best. The latter’s long work hours resulting from the accident had not entirely prevented them from conversing, and Benj’s Stennish had improved greatly; he was now almost as good as his mother believed.
When Easy and the engineer arrived, he was talking with—or rather, listening to—Takoorch, and was not too sorry to interrupt the exchange with the news that there was an important message for the captain.
It took several minutes to get Dondragmer to the bridge; like the rest of the crew he was working almost constantly, though by luck he happened to be inside when the call came.
“I’m here, Easy,” his voice finally came through. “Tak said you had a business call. Go ahead.”
“It’s about this way you plan to back off the rock, Don,” she began. “We don’t have the whole picture here, of course, but there are two things bothering our engineers. One is the fact that your forward truck will run off the stone while you still have ten feet or more of hull, including some of your bridge, over it. Have you measured to see whether there’s any risk of bare hull slamming down on the stone as the truck rolls off? Also, toward the end of the maneuver, you’ll have your hull supported almost entirely at the ends. The pneumatic undercarriage may distribute the load, but my friend here isn’t sure it will; and if you get the bare hull instead of the mattress taking half the Kwembly‘s weight, Dhrawn’s gravity is going to make a very respectable effort to break your land-ship in half. Had you checked those points?”
Dondragmer had to admit to himself that he had not, and that he had better do so before the project went much further. He conceded this on the radio, thanked Easy and her friend, and headed for the main lock—long since cleared for use.
Outside, the current had dropped to the point where lifelines were no longer necessary. Water depth was down to about seven feet, measured from the average level of the smallest boulders. The water line was, indeed, at about the most inconvenient possible level for seeing the whole picture which he wanted. He had to climb part way up the rock—a difficult task in itself, though helped by the fact that he had some buoyancy for the steepest part—and from there along the forward trucks to a point where he could compare the curvature of the big boulder and that of the Kwembly’s lower bow. He could not be completely sure, since moving the hull backward would obviously change its pitch angle but he did not like what he saw The human engineer, it seemed, was probably right. Not only was there risk of hull damage, but the steering bar came through the hull just ahead of the mattress by means of a nearly air-tight mechanical seal backed by a liquid trap, and made its key connections with the maze of tiller ropes. Serious damage to this would not actually cripple the vehicle, since there was a duplicate bar aft, but it was not a risk to be taken casually.
The answer to the whole situation was staring him in the face by that time, but he was another hour or more in seeing it. A human psychologist, when he heard about this later, was very annoyed. He had been looking for significant differences between human and Mesklinite minds, and was finding what he considered an undue number of points of similarity.
The solution involved work, of course. Even the smallest boulders were heavy. Still, they were numerous, and it was not necessary to go far for a plentiful supply. With the entire crew of the Kwembly at the job, except for Beetchermarlf and those still helping him with the trucks, a ramp of piled stones grew with fair speed from the stern of the trapped vehicle toward the key rock.
It was a help to Beetchermarlf. As fast as he readied a damaged bearing unit for service, he found himself able to get at new installation sites which had been out of reach before. He and the stone-carriers finished almost together, allowing for four trucks which he had been unable to repair because of missing parts. He had made thrifty use of these, cannibalizing them for the needs of some of the others, and had spotted the unavoidable gaps in traction widely enough to keep the cruiser’s weight reasonably well distributed. To work on Row 5, practically buried in the river bottom, he had had to deflate that part of the mattress. Pumping it up again when the two trucks were replaced caused the hull to shift slightly, to the alarm of Dondragmer and several workers underneath, but fortunately the motion was insignificant.
The captain had spent most of the time shuttling between their radio, where he kept hoping for a reliable prediction of the next flood, and the work site where he divided his attention between the progress of the ramp and the view upstream. By the time the ramp was complete the water was less than a yard deep, and the current had ceased entirely; they were in a pool rather than a stream.
It was now full night; the sun had been gone for nearly a hundred hours. The weather had cleared completely, and workers outside could see the violently twinkling stars. Their own sun was not visible; it was barely so at the best of times this deep in Dhrawn’s heavy atmosphere, and at the moment was too close to the horizon. Not even Dondragmer knew offhand whether it was slightly above or slightly below. Sol and Fomalhaut, which even the least informed of the crew knew to be indicators of south, glowed and wavered over a low eminence a few miles in that direction. The imaginary line connecting the two had tilted less than twenty degrees—human scale; the Mesklinite navigators would have said less than four—since dark.
Outside the range of the Kwembly‘s own lights it was almost totally black. Dhrawn is moonless, and the stars provide no more illumination than they do on Earth or Mesklin.
Temperature was nearly the same. Dondragmer’s scientists had been measuring the environment as completely as
their, knowledge and equipment allowed, and sending the results to the station above. The captain had been quietly hoping for some personally useful return, though he realized that the human beings didn’t owe him one. The reports, after all, were simply part of the job the Mesklinites had engaged to do in the first place.
He had also suggested to his own men that they try some independent thinking. Borndender’s answer to what he regarded as sarcasm had been to the effect that if the human beings would supply him with reports from other parts of Dhrawn and with computer time with which to correlate them, he would be glad to try. The captain had not intended sarcasm; he knew perfectly well the vast difference between explaining why a ship floats on water or ammonia and explaining why 2.3 millicables of 60-20 rain fell at the Settlement between Hour 40 and Hour 100 of Day 2. He suspected that his researcher’s misinterpretation had been deliberate; Mesklinites were often quite human when in search of excuses, and Borndender was currently feeling annoyed with his own lack of usefulness. Without bringing this aspect of the matter into the open, the captain merely repeated that useful ideas would be welcome, and left the lab.
Even the scientists were ordered outside when the time finally came to use the ramp. Borndender was irritated at this, and muttered something as he went about the academic nature of the difference between being inside the Kwembly and outside her if anything drastic happened. Dondragmer, however, had not made a suggestion; he had issued an order, and not even the scientists denied either his right, or his competence to do so. Only the captain himself, Beetchermarlf, and a technician named Kensnee in the life-support compartment were to be aboard when the start was made.
Dondragmer had considered acting as his own helmsman and taking a chance on the life equipment, but reflected that Beetchermarlf knew the tiller cable layout better and was more likely to sense anything going wrong in that department. Inside power was not directly concerned with motion, but if any slip or collapse of the ramp caused trouble with the life support system it was better to have someone on hand; this was even more important than the cruiser, since it was conceivable that the crew could walk back to the Settlement carrying the air equipment even if the cruiser herself were ruined.
The same logic which caused the evacuation order should, of course, have implied that Beetchermarlf and Kensnee be the only ones aboard, with the captain also watching from outside, but Dondragmer was not prepared to carry the logic that far.
The crowd of caterpillarlike beings gathered outside the monster hull was human enough to show tension as the drivers took up the slack in their treads. Dondragmer could not see the phenomenon from the bridge, and was calmer; Beetchermarlf could feel it, and was more perturbed. The human watchers, able to observe from a set which had been taken from the life-support room and placed on a rock projecting from the water a hundred yards from the land-cruiser, could see nothing until the latter actually started to move; they were all calm except Easy and Benj.
The boy was devoting little of his attention to the outside view, in fact; he watched the bridge screen on which part of Beetchermarlf could be seen. The helmsman had one set of chelae on the tiller, holding rather than manipulating it; the other three were darting with almost invisible speed among the grips of the engine-control lines, trying to equalize the pull of the different trucks. No attempts had been made to power more than the usual ten, but the cords which normally cross-connected them so that a single line would work them all had been realigned for individual control. Beetchermarlf was, therefore, very, very busy.
As the Kwembly began to inch backward, one of the human beings was moved to comment:
“Why in blazes didn’t they put remote controls, or at least torque and thrust indicators, on that bridge? That poor bug is going crazy. I don’t see how he can tell when a particular set of tracks is even gripping, let alone how it responds to his handling.”
“If he had fancy indicators, he probably couldn’t,” replied Mersereau. “Barlennan wanted no more sophisticated gear on those vehicles than his people could repair on the spot, except where there was really no choice. I agreed with him, and so did the rest of the planning board. Look—she’s sliding off, smooth as ice.”
A chorus of expressive hoots came from the speaker, muffled by the fact that most of the beings emitting them were under water. For a long moment, a score or so of the ’midship trucks were hanging free as the stern of the Kwembly came off the ramp and moved back over the riverbed. The engineer who had been afraid of the bridge effect crossed his fingers and rolled his eyes upward. Then the bow dipped as the forward trucks came down onto the ramp in their turn, and weight was once more decently distributed. The twisting stress, which no one had considered seriously, lessened as the cruiser eased onto the relatively level cobbling of the riverbed and came to a halt. The crew divided and poured around bow and stern to get to the main lock, no one thinking to pick up the communicator. Easy thought of reminding the captain, but decided that it would be more tactful to wait.
Dondragmer had not forgotten the instrument. As the first members of the crew emerged from the inner surface of the lock pool, his voice echoed through the speaking tubes.
“Kervenser! Reffel! Take the scout fliers out at once. Reffel, pick up the communicator outside—make sure the shutter is in the flier before you start—and then make a ten-minute sweep north to east and back. Kervenser, sweep west and around to south for the same time. Borndender, report when all your measuring equipment is aboard. Beetchermarlf and Takoorch, outside and realign the engine control cords to normal.”
His communicator at the bridge had the sound on, so Easy heard and translated these orders, though the reference to a shutter meant nothing to any of them. She and the others watched with interest the screen of the outside set as the two tiny helicopters rose from the upper lock, one of them sweeping toward the pickup and presumably settling outside its field of view. The other was still climbing as it left the screen, heading west. The picture rocked as the set was picked up by Reffel and wrestled into its space aboard the flier; Easy flicked a switch absentmindedly to record the scenes for future use.
Dondragmer would have appreciated being able to watch the same screen, but could wait only for a relayed verbal report from Reffel, or a delayed but direct one from Kervenser. Actually, Reffel did not bother to relay. The ten-minute flights produced no information demanding speedy delivery. What it amounted to, as Dondragmer duly reported to the human audience, was that the Kwembly was in a valley some fifteen miles wide, with walls of bare rock which were quite steep by Dhrawn’s standards; the pilots estimated twenty to thirty degrees. They were also remarkably high, fully forty feet. To the west there had been no sign of a new flood as far as Kervenser had flown, though he had noted that the boulders strewing the valley floor gave way to bare rock in that direction within a mile or two, and there were numerous pools like the one in which the Kwembly was now standing. To the east, the stones and pools continued as far as Reffel had gone. Dondragmer pondered for a while after relaying this information to the satellite, then ordered one of the fliers back to work.
“Kerv, get back aloft. The helmsmen won’t be done for hours yet. Go as far west along the valley as you can in an hour, and check as closely as your lights will allow for any sign whatever of more water starting down. No, make that three hours—unless you get a positive finding, of course, or have to turn back for bad visibility. I’m going off watch. Tell Stakendee to take the bridge before you leave.”
Even Mesklinites get tired, but Dondragmer’s supposition that this was the right time to get some rest was an unfortunate error, as Barlennan pointed out to him later. When the captain insisted that there would have been nothing for him to do even if he had been fully alert, his superior gave the equivalent of a snort of contempt.
“You’d have managed. You did later.”
Dondragmer refrained from pointing out that this proved that his omission was hardly a serious error.
It was almost eight hours
after Kervenser’s departure that a crewman reported to Dondragmer.
“Sir, Kervenser and the helmsman are still outside, and the pool of water we’re in has frozen.”
To Be Continued
STARLIGHT
Second of Four Parts. When two vastly different peoples, stemming from widely different philosophies, try to cooperate in exploring a planet with conditions unknown to either one—problems of what's “fair” can be almost as dangerous as a weirdo world!
Dhrawn is the star/planet companion of Lalande 21185, a red dwarf sun half a dozen light-years from the solar system. It has been bothering the cosmologists and planetologists. In terms of mass, it is on the borderline between typical Jovian planet and extreme dwarf star; in terms of composition, it seems to be as nearly destitute of light elements as Earth, or Venus. It is generating internal energy; its sun could not warm it above a few tens of degrees Kelvin, but there are local regions as hot as 1200°K. The atmosphere contains free oxygen, although the oceans (?) contain not only water but ammonia—a chemically unstable situation leading to the presumption that Dhrawn has active life.
Direct exploration is impossible for human beings because of the forty-Earth surface gravity. It has been decided to hire natives of Mesklin, the variable-G planet of 61 Cygni A, to do the work. BARLENNAN, the Mesklinite sea captain who had worked with non-Mesklinite researchers on his own world fifty Earth years before, jumps at the offer—with unmentioned ideas of his own in connection with the deal. A Mesklin-con-ditioned settlement is established on Dhrawn, and a dozen exploring vehicles to be manned by the Mesklinites are designed and built.
One of these, the Kwembly, is commanded by DONDRAGMER, Barlennan’s first officer in the old days when they were carrying alien instruments around their own planet. One of the Kwembly’s helmsmen is a young sailor named BEETCHERMARLF.
