by Hal Clement
It did prove possible to keep the shore within range of the Kwembly‘s lights, but it took over two hours to reach the river. The latter apparently took a wide westward bend which had been missed in the spot-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. At least, as one of the planetographers remarked, you couldn’t blame the latter on Coriolis force when 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 shoreline 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, several times slowing noticeably 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 neither was the Kwembly afloat. The Mesklinites were in no haste; Dondragmer gave a good six hours to the experiment of fighting the stream. Just under ten miles of progress were made in that time. If that rate could be maintained, the cruiser could 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 caused the travel policy to change. This could not, of course, be blamed on any Mesklinite; and for once it was not the fault of Benj. The boy was not there. With the journey reduced to something like routine, McDevitt put his young apprentice back to regular work. The boy still spent as much time as he could talking to Beetchermarlf, of course—there was no one else in the station, or within communicator range, who could be described as being in his own age group—but the talks were usually brief.
It was Aucoin, of all people, who decided that a mile and a half an hour was not satisfactory. Dondragmer did not feel at all strongly about the matter, and agreed that research might as well be worked into the trip if possible, so at the planner’s suggestion he sent Beetchermarlf angling westward toward what was presumably the near bank of the river. The land seemed practicable for travel, so with some misgiving he had the helmsmen remove the paddles.
This proved much easier than installing them, since the vehicle was now on dry land; things could be laid down, and life lines were not needed. Benj’s 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 the scrubby bushes which were 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 Kwembly‘s lights would permit. There was no assurance 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 air-plant 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 assurance 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, in nine cases out of ten, 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. Aucoin, discovering the vehicle halted when he came to the screens on one occasion, assumed 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, really, 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 Kwembly 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 outcrops, and even 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 assumed that even Aucoin would hardly object under the circumstances, 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 was running across their path and emptying 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 side 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. As requested, they scraped 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 possible 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, had it crumble suddenly away under him and found himself in the stream.
It was only
an inch or so deep, so he merely took advantage of the occasion to take another sample from its bottom before climbing out. They decided to follow on up for another ten minutes or so, Beetchermarlf wading and Takoorch still on the bank; but before the time was up they 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 valley. Nothing could be felt on the bridge.
Not for another eight seconds.
The hull was rather more than halfway 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 scraping sound as the cruiser’s hull canted forward and to port, and then came to rest.
And this time, as Beetchermarlf’s sense of smell warned him only too clearly, the hull had failed somewhere. Oxygen was leaking in.
XV
“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 Kaliff 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 assurance that the same thing won’t happen anywhere else in the vicinity. Losing the barge would be awkward. Even if we landed first near Dondragmer’s camp and transferred him and his crew to the cruiser, losing the barge could be a waste; there is no assurance that they could repair the Kwembly. Beetchermarlf’s 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 those leaks. Also, neither he nor anyone else has made any concrete suggestion for getting that cruiser loose from the mud, or quicksand, or whatever it’s stuck in.
“There is another good reason 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 conscientiously 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 flushed deeply, but he answered steadily enough.
“I mentioned it earlier, as Boyd remembers,” he said. “Sending the Kaliff from the Settlement to pick them up.”
The words were followed by some seconds of silence, while expressions of amusement 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 assume 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.”
“But that—”
“But that, of course, sinks the raft as far as the Esket act is concerned. The human beings couldn’t help finding out that we had become partly independent of them, and even getting a pretty good idea how we did it. The question in my mind is whether this game is really worth the deliberate sacrifice of two lives. I admit that it’s worth risk, of course, or I wouldn’t have gone along with it in the first place.”
“So I heard,” returned Kabremm. “No one has been able to make you see the risk of being completely dependent on beings who can’t regard us as real people.”
“Quite right. They haven’t, and I doubt that anyone will. I made up my mind about human beings the time one of them answered my question about a differential hoist with a good, clear, and detailed explanation, bolstered with my first lesson in the use of mathematics in science. I know, of co
urse, that human beings are no more all alike than we are—certainly that one who talked Bari out of sending help to the Esket must be as different as possible from Mrs. Hoffman or my old friend Charles Lackland—but I don’t and never will distrust them as a species the way you seem to. I don’t think Barlennan really does, either; he’s changed the subject more than once rather than argue the point with me, and that’s not Barlennan when he’s sure he’s right. I still think it would be a good idea to lower the sails on this act and ask directly for human help with the Kwembly, or at least take a chance on their finding out by using all three dirigibles there.”
“There aren’t three, any more.” Kabremm knew the point was irrelevant, but was rather glad of the chance to change the subject. “Karfrengin and four men have been missing in the Elsh for two of this world’s days.”
“That news hadn’t reached me, of course,” said Dondragmer. “How did the commander react to it? I should think that even he would be feeling the temptation to ask for human help, if we’re starting to lose personnel all over the map.”
“He hasn’t heard about it, either. We’ve had ground parties out searching, using trucks we salvaged from the Esket, and we didn’t want to make a report until it could be a complete one.”
“How much more complete could it be? Karfrengin and his men must be dead by now. The dirigibles don’t carry life-support gear for any two days.”
Kabremm gave the rippling equivalent of a shrug. “Take it up with Destigmet. I have my troubles.”
“Why wasn’t your flier used for the search?”
“It was, until this evening. There are other troubles at the mine, though. A sort of ice river is coming, very slowly, but it will soon cover the whole second settlement if it doesn’t stop. It’s already reached the Esket and started to tip it over; that’s why we were able to salvage the trucks so easily. Destigmet sent me to follow back up the glacier and try to find out whether it is likely to keep coming indefinitely, or was just a brief event. I really shouldn’t have come this far, but I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s this same river for the whole distance, sometimes solid and sometimes liquid along the way—it’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen yet on this weird world. There isn’t a chance of the ice’s stopping, and the Esket settlement is as good as done for.”
