Star Light m-2

by Hal Clement

  “Sir, how about checking hull-squeeze watch? If there is any current where we’re floating, we’d have to be going downhill, and that should show—” Dondragmer interrupted.

  “But the surface was level — no, you’re right. We should check.” He reared up to the bank of speaking tubes and called the laboratory. “Born, how is the pressure? You’re keeping track, of course.”

  “Of course, Captain. Both bow and stern safety bladders have been expanding ever since we began to float. We’ve descended about six body lengths in twice that many minutes. I’m about ready to tap more argon.

  Dondragmer acknowledged, and looked back at his helmsman.

  “Good for you. I should have thought of that. That means we are being carried by current as well as wind and all bets on speed, distance, and where we stop are off. There couldn’t be a current unless the air scouts missed a slope, and if there’s a slope this plateau must drain somewhere.”

  “We’re secure for rough travel, Sir. I don’t see what else we can do.”

  “There’s one thing,” Dondragmer said grimly He reared to the tubes again, and emitted the siren-like general quarters call. Reasonably sure that all were listening, he pulled his head back so as to be equally distant from all the tubes, and spoke loudly enough to get through them all.

  “All hands into air suits as quickly as possible. You are relieved from stations for that purpose, but get back as soon as you can.” He lowered himself to his command bench and addressed Beetchermarlf. “Get your suit and mine, and bring them back here. Quickly!”

  The helmsman was back with the garments in ninety seconds. He started to assist the captain with his, but was dismissed by an emphatic gesture and went to work on his own. In two minutes both, protected except for head covering, were back at their stations.

  The haste, as it turned out, was unnecessary More minutes passed while Beetchermarlf toyed with the useless helm, and Dondragmer wonde1cd whether the human scientists were ever going to come through with any information and what use it was likely to be if they did. He hoped that satellite fixes could give him some idea of the Kwembly’s speed; it would, he thought rather cynically, be nice to know how hard they were likely to hit whatever finally stopped them. Such fixes were, he knew, hard to get on order; there were over thirty of the “shadow satellites” in orbit but they were less than three thousand miles above the surface. No attempt had been made to arrange their orbits so that their limited fields of visual and microwave coverage would be either uniform or complete; communication was not their primary purpose. The main human base, in synchronous orbit over six million miles above the Settlement meridian, was supposed to need no help with that task. Also, the ninety-plus mile per second orbital speed of the lower satellites, helpful though the human observers claimed it to be for moving-baseline location checking, still seemed to Dondragmer an inevitable cause of difficulty He was not at all hopeful about getting his speed from this source. That was just as well, because he never did.

  Once, about half an hour after they had gone adrift, a brief shudder ran through the Kwembly and the captain duly reported to the station that they had probably touched bottom. Everyone else on board made the same assumption and tension began to mount.

  There was a little warning just before the end. A hoot from the laboratory speaking tube was followed by a report that pressure had started to rise more rapidly, and that an additional release of argon into the ship’s atmosphere had been necessary to keep the safety bladders from rupturing. There was no sensation of increasing speed, but the implication of the report was plain enough. They were descending more rapidly How fast were they going horizontally? The captain and helmsman looked at each other, not asking the question aloud but reading it in each other’s expressions. More minutes passed; the tension mounted, chelae gripping stanchions and holdfasts ever more tightly.

  Then there was a thunderous clang, and the hull swerved abruptly; another, and it tilted sharply to starboard. For several seconds it pitched violently, and those near bow and stern could feel it yawing as well, though the fog still blocked any outside view which might have explained the sensation. Then there was another, much louder clang and the Kwembly rolled some sixty degrees to starboard; but this time she did not recover. Scraping, grinding sounds suggested that she was moving slightly, but no real change of attitude accompanied them. For the first time, the sound of liquid rushing past the hull became noticeable.

  Dondragmer and his companion were unhurt. To beings who regarded two hundred Earth gravities as normal and six hundred as a most minor inconvenience, that sort of acceleration meant nothing. They had not even lost their grips, and were still at their posts. The captain was not worried about direct injuries to his crew. His first words showed that he was considering matters much further ahead.

  “By stations, report!” he bellowed into the speaking tubes. “Check hull soundness at all points, and report all cracks, open breaks, dents, and other evidence for leaks. Lab personnel to emergency stations, and check for oxygen. Life-support, cut tank circulation until the oxygen check is done. Now!”

  Apparently the speaking tubes were intact, at least. Hoots of response began to return immediately As the reports accumulated, Beetchermarlf began to relax. He had not really expected the shell which protected him from Dhrawn’s poisonous air to withstand anything like such a shock and his respect for alien engineering went up several grades. He had regarded artificial structures of any sort as normally inferior in strength and durability to any living body He had, of course, excellent reason for such an attitude. Nevertheless, it appeared when all the reports were finally in, that there were no major structural failures or even visible cracks. Whether the normal leaks, unavoidable in a structure which had to have entrances for personnel and equipment, not to mention hull openings for instruments and control lines, were any worse than they had been, would not be known for a while. Pressure monitoring and oxygen checking would of course continue as normal routine.

  Power was still on, which surprised no one. The twenty-five independent hydrogen converters, identical modules which could be moved from any energy-using site in the Kwembly to any other, were solid-state devices with no moving parts larger than the molecules of gaseous fuel which were fed into them. They could have been placed under the hammer of a power forge without damage.

  Most of the outside lights were gone, or at least inoperative, though these could be replaced. Some were still working, however, and from the submerged end of the bridge it was possible to see out. Fog still blocked the view from the upper end. Dondragmer made his way very gingerly to the low end and took a brief look at the conglomeration of rounded rocks with diameters from half his own length to twenty times that, into which his craft had managed to wedge itself. Then he climbed carefully back to his station, energized the sound system of his radio and transmitted the report which Barlennan was to hear a little over a minute later. Without waiting for an answer, he began issuing orders to the helmsman.

  “Beetch, stand by here in case the men have anything to say I’m going to make a complete check myself, especially of the air locks. With all there is to be said for our design, we didn’t have this much of a roll in mind when we settled on it. We may only be able to use the small emergency locks, since the main one seems to be underneath us at the moment. It may be blocked on the outside even if we can open the inner door and find the septum still submerged. Chatter with the human beings if you want. The more of us who can use their language and the more of them who can use ours, the better. You have the bridge.”

  Dondragmer made the habitual, but now rather futile, gesture of rapping on the hatch for clearance; then he opened it and disappeared, leaving Beetchermarlf alone.

  The helmsman had no urge at the moment for idle talk with the station above. His captain had left him with too much to think about.

  He was not exactly delighted at being left in charge of the bridge, under the circumstances. He was not even too concerned about
the main air lock’s being blocked; the smaller ones were adequate, though not for life-support equipment, he suddenly remembered. Well, at the moment the desirability of going out seemed very small but if the Kwembly were permanently disabled that need would have to be faced.

  The real question, in that event, was just what good going outside would do. The twelve thousand miles or so, which Beetchermarlf thought of as nearly fourteen million cables, was a long, long walk, especially with a load of life-support equipment. Without that apparatus it was not to be thought of. Mesklinites were amazingly tough organisms mechanically and had a temperature tolerance range which was still disbelieved by many human biologists, but oxygen was another matter. Its partial pressure outside at the moment was presumably about fifty pounds per square inch, quite enough to kill any member of the Kwembly’s crew in seconds.

  The most desirable thing at the moment was to get the big machine back on her treads. How, and whether, this could be done’ would depend largely on the stream of liquid flowing past the stranded hull. Working outside in that current might not be impossible, but it was going to be difficult and dangerous. The air suited Mesklinites would have to be heavily ballasted to stay put at any task and life-lines would complicate the details.

  The stream might not, of course, be permanent. It had apparently just come into existence with the change in weather and it might cease flowing as suddenly However, as Beetchermarlf well knew, there is a difference between weather and climate. If the river were seasonal, its “temporary” nature might still turn out to be too long for the Mesklinites; Dhrawn’s year was some eight times as long as that of Earth and over one and a half times that of Mesklin.

  This was an area where human information might be useful. The aliens had been observing Dhrawn carefully for nearly half of one of its years and casually for much longer. They should have some idea of its seasons. The helmsman wondered whether it would be out of order for him to put such a question to someone in the orbiting station, since the captain had not. Of course, the captain had said he could use the radio for chatter and had made no mention of what might or might not be said.

  The idea that there was anything except the Esket incident which should not be discussed with the human sponsors of the Dhrawn expedition had not gone down the chain of command as far as Beetchermarlf. The young helmsman had almost made up his mind to initiate a call to the station when the radio beside him spoke. It spoke, furthermore, in his own language, though the accent was not above reproach.

  “Dondragmer. I know you must be busy but if you can’t talk now I’d be glad if someone else could. I am Benjamin Hoffman, an assistant in the aerology lab here at the station, and I’d like two kinds of help if anyone can find time to give it.

  “For myself, I’d like practice in language; it must be obvious that I need it. For the lab, we’re in a very embarrassing position. Twice in a row we’ve worked out weather predictions for your part of the planet which have been way, way off We just don’t have enough detailed information to do the job properly The observations we can make from here don’t resolve enough and there aren’t anywhere near enough reporting stations down there. You and the others have planted a lot of automatics on your trips, but they still don’t cover much of the planet, as you know. Since good predictions will be as useful to you as they will be to us, I thought maybe I could talk things out in real detail with some of your scientists and maybe work out the weather patterns where you know enough to supplement the background calculations and really get good forecasts, at least right in your neighborhood.”

  The helmsman replied eagerly.

  “The captain is not on the bridge, Benjaminhoffman. I am Beetchermarlf, one of the helmsmen, now on watch. Speaking for myself, I should be very glad to exchange language practice when duties permit, as now. I am afraid the scientists will be pretty busy for a while; I may be myself, most of the time. We are having some trouble, though you may not know all the details. The captain did not have time for the full story in the report I heard him send up a few minutes ago. I will give you as complete a picture as I can of the situation and some thoughts which have occurred to me since the captain left the bridge. You might record the information for your people and comment on my ideas if you wish. If you don’t think they’re worth mentioning to the captain, I won’t. He’ll be busy enough without them anyway I’ll wait until you tell me you’re ready to record, or that you don’t want to, before I start.” Beetchermarlf paused, not entirely for the reason he had just given. He suddenly wondered whether he should bother one of these alien beings with his own ideas which began to seem crude and poorly worked out to him.

  Still, the factual reports had to be useful. There was much detailed information about the Kwembly’s present situation which the men could not possibly know yet. By the time Benj’s approval came from the speaker, the helmsman had recovered some of his self-confidence.

  “That will be fine, Beetchermarlf. I’m ready to tape your report. I was going to anyway, for language practice. I’ll pass on whatever you want. Even if your weather men are busy, maybe the two of us could try to do what I suggested with the weather information. You can probably get their measurements, and you’re on the spot and can see everything and if you’re one of the sailors Barlennan recruited on Mesklin you certainly know something about weather. For all I know, you may have spent a couple of my lifetimes in that place on Mesklin learning engineering and research methods. Come ahead; I’m ready here.”

  This speech completed the restoration of Beetchermarlf’s morale. It had been only ten of Mesklin’s years since alien education had started for a selected few of its natives. This human being must be five years old or younger. Of course, there was no telling what that might mean in the way of maturity for his species, and one could not very well ask; but in spite of the aura of super-normality which tended to surround all the aliens, one just did not think of a five-year-old as a superior being.

  As relaxed as anyone could well be on a floor with a sixty-degree tilt, the sailor began his description of the Kwembly’s situation. He gave a detailed account of the trip down what now had to be recognized as a river, and of its conclusion. He described minutely what could now be seen from the bridge. He explained how they were now stranded off their tracks, and emphasized the situation which faced the crew if this could not be corrected. He even detailed the structure of the air-locks, and explained why the main one was probably unusable and the others possibly so.

  “It will help a great deal in the captain’s planning,” he concluded, “if we can have some trustworthy estimate of what will happen to this river, and especially whether and when it will run dry If the whole snow field melts at this season and runs off the plateau through this one drain, I suppose we’re here for the best part of a year and will have to plan accordingly If you can give any hope that we can work on dry land without having to wait too long, though, it would be very good to know.”

  Benj was rather longer than sixty-four seconds in answering this; he, too, had been given material for thought.

  “I have your details on tape, and have sent it up to Planning,” his words came through at last. “They’ll distribute copies to the labs. Even I can see that figuring out the life story of your river is going to be a nasty job; maybe an impossible one without a lot more knowledge. As you say, the whole snow field might be starting a seasonal melt. If the waters of North America had to drain out through one river you’d be there for a long time. I don’t know how much of the place your aerial scout reports cover, and I don’t know how ambiguous the photos from up here may be, but I’ll bet when it’s all down on maps there’ll still be room for argument. Even if everyone agrees on a conclusion, well, we still don’t know much about that planet.”

  “But you’ve had so much experience with other planets, many of them!” returned Beetchermarlf. “I should think that would be of some help.”

  Again the answer was longer in coming back than light-lag alone would explain.


  “Men and their friends have had experience on a lot of planets, that’s true, and I’ve read a good deal of it. The trouble is, practically none of it helps here. There are three kinds of planet, basically. One we call Terrestrial, like my own home; it is small, dense, and practically without hydrogen. The second is the Jovian, or Type Two, which tends to be much larger and much less dense because they have kept most of their hydrogen from the time they originally formed, we think. Those two were the only kinds we knew about before we left our own star’s neighborhood, because they are the only kinds in our system.

  “Type Three is very large, very dense, and very hard to account for. Theories which had the Type Ones losing their hydrogen because of their initially small mass, and the Twos keeping theirs because of their greater mass, were fine as long as we’d never heard of the Threes. Our ideas were perfectly satisfactory and convincing as long as we didn’t know too much, if you’ll forgive my sounding like my basic science teacher.

  “Type Three is the sort you’re on. There are none of them around any sun with a Type One planet. I suppose there must be a reason for that, but I don’t know what it is. Well, nothing was known about them among the Community races until we learned to travel between stars and began to do it on a large scale, large enough so the principal interest of wandering ships wasn’t just new habitable planets. Even then we couldn’t study them first hand, any more than we could the Jovian worlds. We could send down a few special, very expensive and usually very unreliable robots, but that was all. Your species is the first we’ve ever encountered able to stand the gravity of a Type Three or the pressure of a Type Two, for that matter.