by Hal Clement
“And, of course, Barlennan hasn’t heard about this either.”
“There’s been no way to tell him. We only discovered the ice was moving just before dark. It was just a cliff a few dozen cables from the mine up to then.”
“In other words, we’ve lost not only my first officer and a helicopter but a dirigible with six men, and as an afterthought the whole Esket project—with my Kwembly probably on the same list. And you still think we shouldn’t end this trickery, tell the human beings the whole story, and get their help?”
“More than ever. If they learn we’re having this much trouble, they’ll probably decide we’re no more use to them and abandon us here.”
“Nonsense. No one just abandons an investment like this project—but never mind arguing; it’s a futile point anyway. I wish . . .”
“What you really wish is that you had an excuse for leaking the whole barrel to your oxygenbreathing friends.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m quite ready to use my own judgment in the field, but I know enough history to be afraid of making spot-changes in basic policy.
“Thank goodness. It’s all right to like some humans, but they’re not all like the Hoffman one. You admitted that yourself.”
“What it boils down to,” Barlennan said to Bendivence, “is that we were much too hasty in sending Deeslenver to the Esket with orders to shutter its vision sets. The whole Esket question seems to have quieted down, and that will bring it to life again. We’re not ready for the main act yet, and won’t be for a year or more. I wasn’t sorry for the chance to start the human beings thinking along the lines of a native-menace idea, but Destigmet’s crew won’t be able to play the part until they have a lot more homemade mechanical and electrical equipment—things that the humans know we don’t have. Certainly, unless the native menace seems real, the human beings aren’t very likely to take the steps we want.
“If there were any way to go after Dee now and cancel his orders, I’d do it. I wish I’d dared let you go ahead with radio experiments, and had a set on the Deedee right now.”
“It shouldn’t be too risky, and I’d be more than glad to work on it,” answered Bendivence. “The waves could be detected by the human beings of course, but if we confined ourselves to brief and rare transmissions and used a simple off-on code they probably wouldn’t realize what the source was. However, it’s too late to get Deeslenver, anyway.”
“True. I wish I knew why no one up there has said another word about Kabremm. The last time I talked to Mrs. Hoffman, I got the impression that she wasn’t quite as sure as before that she’d really seen him. Do you suppose she really made a mistake? Or are the human beings trying to test us, the way I wanted to do with them? Or has Dondragmer done something to get us off that reef? If she were really wrong, we’ll have to start thinking all over again—”
“And what about that other report we’ve heard no more of—something sliding across the Esket’s floor?” countered the scientist. “Was that still another test? Or is something really happening there? Remember, we haven’t had any contact with that base for over a hundred and fifty hours. If the Esket is really being moved by something, we’re much too badly out of date to do anything sensible. You know, without saying anything against the Esket act, it’s an awful nuisance not to be able to trust your data.”
“If there’s real trouble at the Esket we’ll just have to trust Dee’s judgment,” said the commander, ignoring Bendivence’s closing sentence. “Actually, even that isn’t the chief problem. The real question is what to do about Dondragmer and the Kwembly. I suppose he had good reason to leave his ship and let her drift away, but the results have been very awkward. The fact that a couple of his men got left aboard makes it almost more so; if they hadn’t been, we could just forget about the cruiser and send out the Kaliff to pick up the people.”
“Why can’t we do that anyway? Didn’t the human Aucoin suggest it?”
“He did. I said I’d have to think it over.”
“Why?”
“Because there is less than one chance in ten, and probably less than one in a hundred, that the Kaliff could get there in time to do those two men any good. The chances are small enough that she could get there at all. Remember that snowfield the Kwembly crossed before her first flood? What do you suppose that area is like now? And how long do you think two men—competent men, but with no real technical or scientific training—are going to keep that leaking hull habitable?
“Of course, we could confess the whole act, tell the humans to get in touch with Destigmet through the watch he keeps at the Esket’s communicators; then they could tell him to send a rescue dirigible.”’
“That would be wasting a tremendous amount of work, and ruining what still seems a promising operation,” Bendivence replied thoughtfully. “You don’t want to do that any more than I do; but we can’t abandon those helmsmen.”
“We can’t,” Barlennan agreed slowly, “but I just wonder whether we’d be taking too much of a chance on them if we waited out one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“If the human beings were convinced that we could not possibly carry out the rescue, it’s just possible—especially with two Hoffmans to do the arguing—that they’d decide to do something about it themselves.”
“But what could they do? The ship they call the ‘barge’ will only land here at the Settlement by its automatic controls, as I understand Rescue Plan One. They certainly can’t fly it around on this world from out at the orbiting station; if it took them a whole minute to correct any mistake, they’d crash it right away. They certainly can’t fly it down personally. It’s set up to rescue us, with our air and temperature control, and besides Dhrawn’s gravity would paint a human being over the deck.”
“Don’t underestimate those aliens, Ben. They may not be exactly ingenious, but there’s been time for their ancestors to think up a lot of ready-made ideas we don’t know about yet. I think . . . I wouldn’t do it if I felt there was a real chance of our getting there ourselves, but this way we’re not putting the helmsmen in any worse danger than they are already . . . that we’ll let the human beings get the idea of making the rescue themselves. It would be much better than giving up the plan.”
“What it boils down to,” said Beetchermarlf to Takoorch, “is that we somehow have to find time between plugging leaks and cleaning poison out of the air units to convince people that the Kwembly is worth salvaging.
“The best way would be to get her going ourselves, though I doubt very much that we can do it. It’s the cruiser that’s going to set the policy. Your life and mine don’t mean very much to the humans—except maybe Benj—who isn’t running things up there. If the ship stays alive—if we can keep these tanks going to supply us with food and air, and incidentally keep from being poisoned by oxygen ourselves, and make real, reportable progress in repairing and freeing the cruiser—then maybe they’ll be convinced that a rescue trip is worthwhile. Even if they don’t, we’ll have to do all those things for our own sakes anyway; but if we can have the humans tell Barlennan that we have the Kwembly out and running, and will get her back to Dondragmer by ourselves, it should make quite a few people happy—especially the commander.”
“Do you think we can do it?” asked Takoorch.
“You and I are the first ones to convince,” replied the younger helmsman. “The rest of the universe will be much easier after that.”
“What it boils down to,” said Benj to his father, “is that we won’t risk the barge for two lives, even though that’s what it’s here for.”
“Not quite right on either count,” Ib Hoffman answered. “It’s a piece of emergency equipment, but it was planned for use if the whole project collapsed and we had to evacuate the Settlement. This was always a possibility; there was a lot that just couldn’t be properly tested in advance. For example, the trick of matching outside pressure in the cruisers and airsuits by using extra argon was perfectly reasona
ble, but we could not be sure there would be no side effects on the Mesklinites themselves—argon is inert by the usual standards, but so is Xenon, which is an effective anesthetic for human beings. Living systems are just too complicated for extrapolation ever to be safe, though the Mesklinites seem a lot simpler physiologically than we are—that may be one reason they can stand such a broad temperature range.
“But the point is, the barge is preset to home on a beam transmitter near the Settlement; it won’t land itself anywhere else on Dhrawn. It can be handled by remote control, of course, but not at this range.
“We could, I suppose, alter its on-board computer program to make it set itself down in other places—at least, on any reasonably flat surface; but would you want to set it down anywhere near your friend either by a built-in, unchangeable program or by long-delayed remote control? Remember the barge uses proton jets, has a mass of twenty-seven thousand pounds, and must put up quite a splash soft-landing in forty gravities—especially since its jets are splayed to reduce cratering.” Benj frowned thoughtfully.
“But why can’t we get closer to Dhrawn, and cut down the remote-control lag?” he asked, after some moments thought. Ib looked at his son in surprise.
“You know why, or should. Dhrawn has a mass of 3,471 Earths, and a rotation period of just over fifteen hundred hours. A synchronous orbit to hold us above a constant longitude at the equator is, therefore, just over six million miles out. If you use an orbit a hundred miles above the surface, you’d be traveling at better than ninety miles a second and go around Dhrawn in something like forty minutes. You’d remain in sight of one spot on the surface for two or three minutes out of the forty. Since the planet has about eighty-seven times Earth’s surface area, how many control stations do you think would be needed to manage one landing or lift-off?”
Benj made a gesture of impatience.
“I know all that, but there is already a swarm of stations down there—the shadow satellites. Even I know that they all have relay equipment, since they’re all reporting constantly to the computers up here and at any given moment nearly half of them must be behind Dhrawn. Why can’t a controller riding one of these, or in a ship at about the same height, tie into their relays and handle landing and liftoff from there? Delay shouldn’t be more than a second or so even from the opposite side of the world.”
“Because,” Ib started to answer, and then fell silent. He remained so for a full two minutes. Benj did not interrupt his thinking; the boy usually had a good idea when he was ahead.
“There would have to be several minutes of interruption of neutrino data while the relays were being preempted,” Ib said finally.
“Out of the how many years that they’re integrating that material?” Benj was not usually sarcastic with either of his parents, but his feelings were once more growing warm. His father nodded silently, conceding the point, and continued to think.
It must have been five minutes later, though Benj would have sworn to a greater number, that the senior Hoffman got suddenly to his feet.
“Come on, Son. You’re perfectly right. It will work for an initial space-to-surface landing, and for a surface-to-orbit lift-off, and that’s enough. For surface-to-surface flight even one second is too much control delay, but we can do without that.”
“Sure!” enthused Benj. “Lift-off into orbit, get your breath, change the orbit to suit your landing spot, and go back down.”
“That would work, but don’t mention it. For one thing, if we made a habit of it there would be a significant interruption of neutrino data transmission. Besides, I’ve wanted an excuse for this almost ever since I joined this project. Now I have one, and I’m going to use it.”
“An excuse for what?”
“For doing exactly what I think Barlennan has been trying to maneuver us into doing all along: put Mesklinite pilots on the barge. I suppose he wants his own interstellar ship, some time, so that he can start leading the same life among the stars that he used to do on Mesklin’s oceans, but he’ll have to make do with one quantum jump at a time.”
“Is that what you think he’s been up to? Why should he care about having his own space pilots so much? And come to think of it, why wasn’t that a good idea in the first place, if the Mesklinites can learn how?”
“It was, and there’s no reason to doubt that they can.”
“Then why wasn’t it done that way all along?”
“I’d rather not lecture on that subject just now. I like to feel as much pride in my species as circumstances allow, and the explanation doesn’t reflect much credit either on man’s rationality, or his emotional control.”
“I can guess, then,” replied Benj. “But in that case, what makes you think we can change it now?”
“Because now, at the trifling cost of descending to the same general level of emotional reasoning, we have a handle on some of man’s less generous drives. I’m going down to the planetology lab and filibuster. I’m going to ask those chemists why they don’t know what trapped the Kwembly, and when they say it’s because they don’t have any samples of the mud, I’m going to ask them why they don’t. I’m going to ask them why they’ve been making do with seismic and neutrino-shadow data when they might as well be analyzing mineral samples carted up here from every spot where a Mesklinite cruiser has stopped for ten minutes. If you prefer not to descend to that level, and would rather work with mankind’s nobler emotions, begin thinking of all the heart-rending remarks you could make about the horror and cruelty of leaving your friend Beetchermarlf to suffocate slowly on an alien world parsecs from his home. We could use that if we have to take this argument to a higher authority, like the general public. I don’t think we’ll really need to, but right now I’m in no mood to restrict myself to clean fighting and logical argument.
“If Alan Aucoin growls about the cost of operating the barge . . . think he has too much sense . . . I’m going to jump on him with both feet. Energy has been practically free ever since we’ve had fusion devices; what costs is personal skill. He’ll have to use Mesklinite crews anyway, so that investment is already made; and by letting the barge drift out here unused he’s wasting its cost. I know there’s a small hole in that logic, but if you point it out in Dr. Aucoin’s hearing I’ll paddle you for the first time since you were seven—and I don’t think the last decade has done too much to my arm. You let Aucoin do his own thinking.”
“You needn’t get annoyed with me, Dad.”
“I’m not. In fact, I’m not as much annoyed as I am scared.”
“Scared? Of what?”
“Of what may happen to Barlennan and his people on what your mother calls ‘that horrible planet.’ ”
“But why? Why now, more than before?”
“Because I’m coming gradually to realize that Barlennan is an intelligent, forceful, thoughtful, ambitious, and reasonably well-educated being, just as my only son was six years ago; and I remember your diving outfit much too well. Come on. We have an astronautics school to get organized, and a student body to collect.”
EPILOGUE
At two hundred miles, the barge was just visible as a starlike object reflecting Lalande 21185’s feeble light. Benj had watched the vessel as it pulled up to that distance and moved into what its pilot considered a decent station-keeping orbit, but neither he nor the pilot had discussed technical details. It was so handy to be able to hold a conversation without waiting a full minute for the other fellow’s answer that Benj and Beetchermarlf had simply chattered.
These conversations were becoming less and less frequent. Benj was really back at work now and, he suspected, making up for lost time. Beetchermarlf was often too far away on practice flights to talk at all, and even more frequently too occupied to converse with anyone but his instructor.
“Time to turn it over, Beetch,” the boy ended the present exchange as he heard Tebbetts’ whistling from down the shaft. “The taskmaster is on the way.”
“I’m ready when he is,” came the
reply. “Does he want to use your language, or mine, this time?”
“He’ll let you know; he didn’t tell me. Here he is,” replied Benj.
The bearded astronomer, however, spoke first to Benj after looking quickly around. The two were drifting weightless in the direct-observation section at the center of the station’s connecting bar, and Tebbetts had taken for granted that the barge and his student would be drifting alongside. All his quick glance caught was the dull coal of the sun in one direction and the dimly lit disk of Dhrawn, little larger than Luna seen from Earth, in the other.
“Where is he, Benj? I thought I heard you talking to him, so I assumed he was close. I hope he isn’t late. He should be solving intercept orbits, even with nomographs instead of highspeed computers, better than that by now.”
“He’s here, sir.” The boy pointed. “Just over two hundred miles away, in a 17.8 minute orbit around the station.”
Tebbetts blinked. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t think this heap of hardware would whip anything around in that time at a distance of two hundred feet, let alone that many miles. He’d have to use power, accelerating straight toward us—”
“He is, sir. About two hundred Gs acceleration. The time is the rotation period of Mesklin, and the acceleration is the gravity value at his home port. He says he hasn’t been so comfortable since he signed up with Barlennan, and wishes there were some way to turn up the sunlight.”
