Noise

by Hal Clement

  Except, of course, that there was no way for it to be a definite number. He himself would have been tempted to top the oxygen supply off every day, but now realized that with the “tree-leaf” deployed they were much more vulnerable to waterspouts. The captain had now decided that the risk had to be taken.

  Each of the next ten days, for the four hours when the suns were at their highest, the tree-leaf—Mike had decided that kumu’rau was probably an evolved blend of Hawaiian and Maori—was paid out. Fortunately it trailed in the opposite direction from the sea-anchor system, and didn’t directly interfere with the control lines; but since it was affected by the surface current, its deployment did add problems to handling these.

  Mike was not excused from this complication of control duty after the first day, which he spent watching Wanaka and Keo very closely indeed. Thereafter he was on his own, and to his own slowly decreasing surprise made no serious mistakes. His self-confidence, along with his fluency in Finger, was growing, though there was still very little risk of his reaching the dangerous overconfidence level.

  It was ’Ao who was now totally relieved from the sea-anchor duty. Her muscular strength was not really up to it, and there was much else to keep her busy now that Mike needed practically no advice. Actually, everyone except Mike was mostly keeping alert for waterspouts while the oxygen-maker was deployed. Malolo was little more maneuverable at such times than when the sea-anchor system was out of action. Whenever one of these whirling towers of spray drew close enough to worry Wanaka or Keo when Mike was on the lines, one of them would take over without comment and ’Ao, without orders, would take the growing shiplet out of the sea and lash it quickly but securely onto the remaining hull. Mike wondered what would be done when it grew too big for this procedure.

  He trusted the professional skill of his hosts, but knew there were conditions that even the most competent of seamen couldn’t handle; and he was pretty sure that the captain, good as she was at keeping her feelings to herself, was becoming more and more worried about something.

  It was not the oxygen. After ten days of using the kumu’rau the cartridges were as full as when the sortie had started, and she made no attempt to hide her relief the last time it was reeled in.

  Also, the problem was probably not their location. While it was not really practical to take a noon sight by instrument on the twin suns, it was evident that the ship’s latitude had changed. They were too far south. While even Hoani could see that Malolo had drifted some distance eastward, since the sister planet Kaihapa was clearly nearer the western horizon, longitude mattered very little. The likelihood of having to circumnavigate a parallel of latitude in order to find a given city went without saying in Kainui seamanship. It was not a difficulty of knowing the ship’s longitude, which could be worked out celestially with enough effort; the eclipses of the two suns provided time information. However, knowing that of the ship’s intended port with no effective long-range communication was entirely another matter. A marine chronometer is useful only if there is a Greenwich, and it stays put.

  Trouble did eventually come, of course, but Mike never found out whether it was the one worrying the captain.

  Even the procedure difficulties threatened by the growing replacement ship failed to become serious. Well before the seedling was too heavy to ride the remaining hull without sinking it gunwale down, it had become far too bulky for even Keo and the captain together to hoist, regardless of ingenious improvisations of cordage. This seemed to bother no one. When a waterspout threatened, the growing craft was now simply moored as securely as the supply of rope would permit and allowed to float by itself. This, of course, made the duty on the sea-anchor lines too complicated for a beginner, and Mike was sometimes rather glad to see a spout developing nearby. It saved him labor, and he had certainly not yet become overconfident.

  On the second of these occasions, however, one of the mooring lines became slack—no one ever found who was to blame, but ’Ao and Mike could share the happy confidence that it wasn’t their fault. This allowed a minor collision, and one of the growing keels was badly cracked, while a scratch penetrated all four protective coats of the older hull. Now even Mike was informed enough to worry, though the scratched area was repainted using appropriate seeds as soon as the waves permitted.

  Wanaka then changed procedure. Fewer but longer tow lines were used, and the embryonic vessel was kept farther from the rest of the system. This was not too difficult when the wind more or less directly opposed the surface current, which it usually did. Otherwise, while the little craft still floated with keels horizontal, the high side of the developing deck sandwiched between them now caught a good deal of air. And made maneuvering very complex indeed.

  This Mike could understand. What bewildered him was that at the next approach of a waterspout, ’Ao was ordered to swim to the tow and lash herself to it as solidly as she could—in fact, the captain went with her and supervised the process before rejoining Keo at the lines.

  She gestured to Mike, who for the moment was free of duty, and ordered him in the hand language he now understood quite well: “Keep your eyes on her. If she’s swept away, tell Keo. Don’t waste time reporting to me.”

  He nodded understanding and returned to the other hull, which offered both a higher viewpoint, since the cabin roof was no place to ride out a waterspout, and was also closer to the object of his attention.

  He was just a little undecided. He would have conceded to anyone the importance of discipline in any sort of crew, but couldn’t help feeling that he himself should be more able physically to perform a rescue; the captain might technically be a better swimmer, but in the storm-lashed sea it looked as though muscle might be a greater need.

  Demand for strength might explain why she should have ordered him to tell Keo first, rather than attempting rescue himself; no doubt there were routine procedures familiar to the sailors that Mike knew nothing about. His intentions wavered while Malolo and her attachments rocked and shivered in the turbulence around the spout.

  It was quickly over, waterspouts traveling as they do, and no decision had to be made; ’Ao was still in sight and lashed in place when things quieted down. Wanaka immediately swam to the child and helped free her from the lashings, and they returned to the cabin together.

  In another two or three minutes it was safe to doff helmets, and Mike looked for signs of her ordeal on the child’s face. He was astonished to find none visible around her mask; she seemed as perky as though she had enjoyed the ride.

  It seemed very likely indeed that there was something else Mike didn’t know. He decided not to inquire what it might be; he was not yet emotionally convinced that almost the only silly questions are the ones not asked.

  There was now a good deal of work for all; the spinning of everything in the waterspout had upset the sea-anchor control system—it was lucky that the oxygen leaf had not been deployed—and badly tangled the set of tow lines that had kept the child and her charge part of the system. The seedling, now more of a sapling, had indeed come much closer to the main hull than anyone had wanted; Mike actually remarked aloud to Keo how much better it would have been if they had managed to salvage more cordage from the diseased hull, and the other had merely nodded. This left Hoani wondering whether he had overshot being merely right and become blatantly obvious.

  With the sea-anchor controls reestablished and Mike once more handling them, the other two adults—’Ao was in the cabin, to eat and sleep—left Hoani’s range of vision and attention, saying something about rearranging the tow system. When they came back more than an hour later, they were still talking but seemed dissatisfied.

  In spite of this, the same general procedure was followed with the next unavoidable spout, and the next. There were no collisions on either occasion, but each time the captain and mate spent a while afterward trying to improve arrangements. Even Mike could see that they were getting even farther south. There was simply no quick way of judging the changing speed of th
e deep current.

  Then several days passed with no real incidents. Spouts were seen, of course; a total lack of them in Kainui’s grossly unstable atmosphere would have been really noteworthy, but none came near enough to require action. Just possibly the adults became too relaxed; it was ’Ao who shouted the warning about another approaching menace and dived for her hull station without waiting for orders.

  Wanaka followed as usual to make sure of child’s and doll’s lashings, and by the time she got back to Keo and the lines the Malolo-sea-anchor system was again out of control. Mike did not actually see the separation of their tow; he was almost pulled from station and lifelines by an especially violent jerk, had to glance momentarily around to find another grip, and when he looked up again could see nothing but seething water where seedling and child had been.

  It took several seconds to convince himself that tow and rider had really disappeared, and more than a minute to make his way across to the cabin where captain and mate had just stopped working because the sea anchor had been disarranged again.

  By this time Mike had no trouble getting his message across in Finger, which was fortunate because all helmets had to stay tight. The captain asked only three questions, and of course her facial expression could not be seen as she gestured.

  “’Ao was still lashed to the ship when they disappeared?”

  “As far as I know. I didn’t see the actual separation. I told you why. She was there only seconds before.”

  But Wanaka didn’t seem to be thinking along whose-fault-was-it lines. She could not, Mike thought, possibly have blamed him for the loss of the tow, but his failure actually to see it go might be another matter.

  “And her lashings seemed secure when you last did see?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “’Oloa, too?”

  “Yes.”

  The captain’s tension disappeared, as far as could be told with her helmet on.

  “Perfect,” she gestured.

  V

  Quality

  The gesture might, of course, have meant merely “Good,” or “All right,” or “Fine”; there was a fairly broad spectrum of possibilities. Mike’s confidence in the exact meaning was not yet very high. However, as he currently understood Finger, it had been very emphatic indeed, and he couldn’t see why.

  He found himself almost on the point of asking questions, but there was no time. Wanaka was issuing orders. Also, he was feeling more and more as though he should already know some of the answers.

  “Keo, surface the sails. Lucky they’re already out of drag mode. Mike, help me deploy the leaf; we might as well stock up on oxygen while we’re waiting, and it’ll keep us closer to the current.”

  “Waiting? Shouldn’t we be looking for the kid—and the ship?” he added. He certainly didn’t know those answers.

  “No. They’ll have to find us, which means we’ll have to stay as nearly right here as possible. Lucky the storm’s passing. Surface current will be about the only variable they’ll have to allow for.”

  “They?” The word had seemed reasonable when child and ship had been the subject; now it sounded odd. However, Wanaka’s hands were too busy with the roll of leaf-equivalent to allow her to answer, and her face was not visible at the moment. She might have made a slip of the finger, no doubt; the gloves of the sound armor were not heavily padded, but were hard-shelled, exquisitely jointed to permit any finger movement, and depended on impedance mismatch rather than padding to keep dangerous noises out. They permitted Finger communication easily. Mike felt a distinct suspicion that she had deliberately given him meaningful information, possibly to see whether he’d wind up more or less confused than before.

  Of course, the plural might still have included the ship, but that made two questions rather than one. He glanced at where Keo had been, but the mate was already in the sea carrying out his orders. Hoani felt like a student who had just been handed a surprise quiz with the question in an unfamiliar language. He didn’t even have time to think; helping pay out the long ribbon of pseudolife without harming it took too much of his attention. So did the the constant reminder that the storm had not completely passed, that there were plenty of ordinary waterspouts in sight, and that the hull was no steadier than usual.

  When helmets could once more be removed, he had another surprise: Wanaka was taking what looked like position sights on the suns and Kaihapa. The instrument she used had no real optical parts; it was basically a simple cross staff, the arms modified with double sights to allow aiming it at both suns at once, with a tray of viscous fluid serving as a horizontal reference. Mike did manage to solve that one after a few seconds; he had, he remembered, used the trick himself when no horizon was visible, measuring the sun’s angular separation from its reflection in a horizontal surface. He could even see why no lenses were being used here. It was not just that silicon was virtually unobtainable from Kainui’s highly acidic ocean—carbon-based optics could have been grown, presumably—but because the hazy, ripply atmosphere made really precise sighting on celestial objects impossible anyway. Magnifying optics would have done nothing for accuracy.

  What he didn’t see clearly was why such observations were worth making at all. True, the captain had said something about “waiting” for ’Ao, so it was obviously important to try to stay put in some sense or other; but if they were yielding to the current anyway…

  Maybe it would be more profitable to go back to just who “they” might be—Wanaka had certainly used the plural gesture. Most likely “they” were ’Ao and the growing ship; but that, as he had already noticed, posed two major questions. It was just believable that the child could swim back—if she knew the right direction. The storm was not a frontal disturbance; Mike had seen no such phenomenon yet on Kainui. It was simply a local convective instability resulting partly from temperature and partly from humidity. Its winds were mostly short, random gusts and the child shouldn’t be far out of sight. Mike had no idea, however, how ’Ao could possibly know the direction.

  If “they” did mean child and ship, it was even harder for him to see how the latter could be propelled, even granting that the direction was known. Though the vessel was only part-grown, the thought of a ten-year-old swimmer towing it any distance was hard to accept, not to say utterly ridiculous even granting her background. So was the idea of her separating the growing sections, assembling them properly—including attaching the deck, stepping the mast, and setting sail—and sailing.

  Hoani was now, however, firmly determined not to ask; if he were being tested, he was not going to give up without trying. It didn’t occur to him that the captain must know him pretty well by now and might be doing a little research of her own.

  The rest of that day, and most of the next, were as close to completely idle time as he had experienced since Malolo had left her home dock. For the first time, Wanaka and Keo left Mike alone on the hull, essentially in charge of everything, while they caught up on sleep. The closest to a general instruction he received was a “Keep your eyes open”—from Keo, not the captain. Hoani had gestured agreement, and was left alone with mist, the suns, Kainui’s twin planet, and the usual microtsunamis, waterspouts, and thunder. He had not even been told what to do about the leaf-strip if another storm were to find them.

  Common sense suggested that it should be reeled in. Or did it? It had drag, Wanaka had mentioned the need for them to stay in position with respect to the ocean, and hail shouldn’t do much damage to the band of tissue. Besides all that, it would probably be impossible to reel it all in between the time the need was evident and the arrival of spout or storm.

  Mike thought about it all for a while, smiled suddenly behind his mask, got to his feet with the usual difficulty, and began scanning the surrounding sea carefully for one partly grown replica of the Malolo. No, not yet a replica—probably. He couldn’t be sure about that, but at least he could watch without asking silly questions.

  Some hours passed. Astronomy distracted his
attention for a while as the suns disappeared behind Kaihapa while in mutual eclipse, but his attention was eventually rewarded.

  Malolo junior—he wondered fleetingly, whether his suggestion would really be followed—had come quite near before he spotted it; he had allowed for its being much less than full size, but had no way to guess at its state of assembly. It was hard to see how that could possibly have changed since he had last seen it, and he was somewhat relieved to see that it hadn’t.

  The growing hulls still floated in contact, on their sides, with the still very small deck sandwiched between them. Part of this was catching wind, obviously; the other part, submerged, must be playing the part of a keel. ’Ao was in the water at the near end, apparently pushing the pair of hulls to one side in order to alter its heading. They were almost exactly upwind from Mike, but not so nearly up current. The man was impressed to see how precisely the “ship” moved toward him when the child stopped her efforts. He watched entranced while it drifted to the end of the hull where he was standing. He almost failed to catch the line ’Ao tossed him, and almost as absently moored the immature vessel while the child, paying him no other attention, swam to the cabin, pulled herself out of the sea, and disappeared into the air lock.

  Mike, once more alone, stayed where he was; perhaps he should have called the others when the little ship first appeared, but he had simply not thought of it. Reporting ’Ao’s return was now obviously superfluous, and anyone could see that having no one at all on watch was a bad idea.