Star Light m-2

by Hal Clement

  In fact, she went to greater lengths than Benj dared. Dondragmer might — probably would — have sent out a ground part to the site of Reffel’s disappearance, since the location was fairly well known; but it was unlikely that he would have risked sending one of his three remaining communicators along. Easy, partly by straight forward argument in her own name and partly by using her son’s techniques to swing Mersereau to the same side, convinced the captain that the risk of not taking the equipment along would be even greater. This discussion, like so many others, was conducted in Aucoin’s absence, and, even as he argued with Dondragmer, Mersereau was wondering how he would justify this one to the planner. Nevertheless, he argued on Easy’s side, with Benj almost grinning in the background.

  With this claim on his attention, Boyd scarcely noticed the call from another observer that a couple of objects were moving across the screen which showed the Esket’s laboratory. He switched channels briefly and passed the word on to the Settlement, cutting back to the Kwembly without waiting for the end of the communication cycle. Later he claimed that he never been really conscious of the Esket’s name in the report; he had thought of the message as a routine report from some observer or other, and his principal feeling had been one of irritation at being distracted. Some people would have snapped at the observer; Boyd, being the person he was, had taken what seemed to him the quickest and simplest way of disposing of the interruption. He had then quite genuinely forgotten the incident.

  Benj had paid even less attention. The Esket incident had occurred long before his arrival at the station, and the name meant nothing in particular to him, although his mother had once mentioned her friends Destigmet and Kabremm to him.

  It was easy, of course, who had really reacted to the call. She scarcely noticed what Mersereau did or said, and never thought of telling Barlennan herself until more details came in. She moved immediately to a chair coming a view of the “lost” cruiser’s screens and relegated the rest of the universe to background status.

  Barlennan’s return call, therefore, brought him very little information. Easy, to whom it was passed, had seen nothing herself; by the time she had reached her new station all motion had ceased. The original observer was only able to say that he had seen two objects, a reel of cable, or rope, and a short length of pipe, roll across the Esket’s laboratory floor. It was possible that something might have pushed them, though there had been no sign of life around the vehicle for several terrestrial months; it was equally possible, and perhaps more probable, that something had tilted the Esket to start them rolling. SO said the observer, though he could not suggest specifically what might have tipped the monstrous machine.

  This left Barlennan in a quandary. It was possible that one of Destigmet’s crew had become careless. It was possible that natural causes might be operating, as the humans seemed to prefer to believe. It was also possible, considering what Barlennan himself had just been planning to do, that the whole thing was a piece of human fiction. The command’s science made him attach rather more weight to this possibility than he might have done in other circumstances.

  It was hard to see just what they could expect to accomplish by such a fiction, of course. It could hardly be a trap of any sort; there could be no wrong reaction to the story. Complete mystification was the only possible response. If there were something deeper and more subtle involved, Barlennan had to admit to himself that he couldn’t guess what it was.

  And he didn’t like guessing anyway. It was so much easier to be able to take reports at face value, allowing only for the capabilities of the speaker and not worrying about his possible motives. A time the commander reflected, the annoying straightforwardness of Dondragmer which made him disapprove of the while Esket trick had something to be said for it.

  Really, all one could do was assume that the report was a truthful one; that should, at least, cause anything underhanded on the human side to backfire on its planners. In that case, there was nothing to do except check with Destigmet. That was simply another message to send on the Deedee.

  Come to think of it, this was another potential check on the accuracy of the human reports. Certainly this one, whatever else could be said for or against it, showed signs of having come through quickly. Of course, Mrs. Hoffman was involved this time.

  The thought that Easy’s involvement had the situation a special one was probably the only idea Barlennan and Aucoin would have had in common just then. Of course, the latter hadn’t heard anything about the new Esket incident so far, and even Mersereau hadn’t really thought about it. He was still otherwise engaged.

  “Easy!” Boyd turned from his microphone and called across to her new station. “We seem to have convinced Don. He’s sending a vision set with his six-man search party. He wants to check his own estimate of the distance to where Reffel vanished, and assumes that we can pinpoint where his transmitter was. I know we could have at the time, but I’m not sure that would have been recorded. Do you want to take over here while I check up with the mappers, or would you rather go yourself?”

  “I want to watch here a little longer. Benj can go up, if he can stand leaving the screens for a minute.” She looked only half-questioningly at the boy, and he nodded and disappeared at once. He was gone rather longer than expected, and returned with a somewhat crestfallen appearance.

  “They said they’d gladly give me the map made from the first part of Reffel’s flight, before I had told him to go on out to where he could barely see the Kwembly. All they could say about where he disappeared was that it must be off that map, which covers the width of the valley for about a mile westward of the cruiser.”

  Mersereau grunted in annoyance. “I’d forgotten about that.” He turned back to his microphone to relay this not very helpful information to Dondragmer.

  The captain was neither particularly surprised nor greatly disturbed. He had already discussed his own estimate of the distance and direction involved with Stakendee, who was leading the search party.

  “I suppose the human beings were right about having you take the set along,” the captain had remarked. “It will be a nuisance to carry and I don’t much like risking its loss, but having it will cut down the risk of losing you. I’m still concerned about a repetition of the flood that brought us here, and the people up above can’t give us any definite prediction — though they seem to agree that there should indeed be a flood season coming. With the set, they’ll be able to warn you if they get any definite information, and you’ll be able to tell me, through them, if you do find anything.”

  “I’m not sure in my own mind what’s best to do if a flood does come,” said Stakendee. ” Of course if we’re close to the Kwembly we’ll do our best to get back aboard, and I suppose if we’re really distant we’d make for the north side of the valley, which seems to be nearer. In a borderline case, though, I’m not sure which would be best; surviving the flood would do us little good if the ship got washed a year’s walk farther downstream.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” replied the captain, “and I still don’t have an answer. If we’re washed away again there’s the very large chance the ship will be ruined. I can’t decide whether we should take time to get life-support equipment out and set up on the valley side even before we go on with trying to melt her out. Your own point is a good one, and maybe I should have it there for your sake as well as ours. Well I’ll solve it. Get on your way. The sooner this is done, the less we’ll have to worry about floods.”

  Stakendee gestured agreement, and five minutes later Dondragmer saw him and his group emerge from the main lock. The communicator gave the part a grotesque appearance; the black of plastic, four inches high and wide and twelve in length, was being carried littler fashion by two of the searchers. The three-foot poles were only two inches apart, supported on yokes at the mid-point of the eighteen-inch-long bodies of the bearers. The poles and yokes had been fashioned from ship’s stores; the Mesklinite equivalent of lumber, of which literall
y tons filled some of the store compartments, formed another of the incongruities which the nuclear-powered cruiser offered in such profusion.

  The search party rounded the boy of the Kwembly, which was facing northwest, and proceeded straight west. Dondragmer watch its lights for a few minutes as they wound around and over the boulders, but had to turn to other matters long before they were out of sight.

  Elongated figures were swarming over the hull working the radiator bar loose. Dondragmer had not like to give the order for such destructive activity; but he had weighed as best he could the relative risks of doing it or of leaving it undone, and after reaching a decision he was not sufficiently human to keep on worrying whether or not it had been a good one. Just as most human beings thought of Drommians as typically paranoid, most Mesklinites who knew them at all thought of human beings as typically vacillating. Dondragmer, the decision made and the order given, simple watched to make sure that a minimum of damage was done to the hull. From the bridge he was unable to see over its curve to the point, far astern, where the conductors came through; he would have to go outside a little later to oversee that part of the work. Maybe it would be even better to take a vision set outside and let the human engineers supervise it. Of course, with the communication delay it would be difficult for them to stop a serious error in time.

  For the moment, though, the job could be left in Praffen’s nippers. The problem the captain had mentioned to Stakendee needed more thought. The life-support equipment was easy to dismount, and he could spare the men to transport it without cutting into the ice-removal project too badly; but it a flood came while it was ashore and carried the Kwembly a long distance, things might become awkward. The system was a closed-cycle one using Mesklinite plants, depending on the fusion converters for its prime energy. By its nature, it had just about the right of vegetation to take care of the crew — had there been much more there would not have been enough Mesklinites to take care of the plants. It might be possible to carry part of it away and leave the rest, and expand each half to take care of the whole crew whenever circumstances forced the decision between ship and shore; it would be easy enough to make more tanks, but growing either culture up to a population sufficient to supply hydrogen for the whole crew might be a little tense on time.

  In a way it was too bad that all the communication went through the human station. One of the major and primary tasks of the Esket crew was to modify the old system, or to produce a new one, with much more flexibility in the number of people it could take care of; and for all Dondragmer knew, this end might have been accomplished months ago.

  His musings were interrupted by the communicator.

  “Captain1 Benj Hoffman here. Would it be too much trouble to set up one of the viewers so that we could watch your men work on the melting project? Maybe the one on the bridge would do if you just slid it out to starboard and faced it aft.”

  “That will be easy enough,” replied the captain. “I was thinking perhaps it would be well for some of you people to watch the work.”

  Since the set weighed less than five hundred pounds in Dhrawn’s gravity, it was only its rather awkward dimensions which gave him trouble; he faced about the same problem as a man trying to move an empty refrigerator carton. By pushing it along the deck, rather than trying to pick it up, he working it into a good position in a few seconds. In due course, the boy’s acknowledgment came back.

  “Thanks captain; that’s good. I can see the ground along the starboard side, and what I suppose is the main lock, and some of your people working along the side. It’s a little hard to judge distances, but I know how big the Kwembly is and abut how far back the main lock is, and, of course, I know how big your people are, so I’d guess your lights let me see the ice for fifty or sixty yards on past the lock.”

  Dondragmer was surprised. “I can see fully three times that far; no, wait; you’re using your twelve based numbers so it’s not that much — but I do see father. Eyes must be better than the pickup cells in your set. I hope, though, that you are not just watching what goes on here. Are the other screens for the Kwembly sets all where you can see them? Or are there other people watching them? I want to be kept in as close touch as I possibly can with the search party that has just left on foot. After what happened to Reffel, I’m uneasy about both them and their set.”

  Dondragmer was debating with his own conscience as he sent this message. On the one hand, he was pretty certain that Reffel had shuttered his set deliberately, thought it was even less clear to him than to Barlennan why this should have been necessary. On the other was his disapproval of the secrecy of the whole Esket maneuver. He would not, of course, deliberately ruin Barlennan’s plans by any act of his own; but he would not be too disappointed if everything came out in the open. There certainly was a reasonable chance that Reffel was in real trouble; if, as seemed likely, whatever had happened to him had occurred only a few miles away, he had had time to get back and explain even on foot.

  In other words, Dondragmer had a good excuse, but disliked the thought that he even needed one. After all, there was Kervenser, too.

  “All four screens are right in front of me,” Benj’s assurance came back. “Just now I’m alone at this station, though there are other people in the room. Mother is about ten feet away, at the Esket screens — did anyone tell you that something moved on one of those? — and Mr. Mersereau has just gone off for another argument with Dr. Aucoin.” (Barlennan would have given a great deal to hear that sentence.) “There are about then other observers in the room watching the other sets, but I don’t know any of them very well. Reffel’s screen is still blank, five people are working in whatever room in the Kwembly your other set is in but I can’t tell you just what they’re doing, and your foot party is just walking along. I can see only a few feet from them, and only in one direction of course. The lights they’re carrying aren’t nearly as strong as the ones around the Kwembly. If anything does come after them, or some trouble develops, I may not even get as much warning as they do; and of course, there’ll be the delay before I could tell then anyway.”

  “Will you reminded them of that?” asked Dondragmer. “The leader is named Stakendee. He doesn’t have enough of the human language to do any good. He may very well be depending too heavily on you and your equipment for warning; I’m afraid I took for granted, without saying much of anything about it, that your set would help him that way when we were planning the search. Please tell him that it is strictly an indirect communicator between him and me.”

  The boy’s resp9onse was considerably longer in coming than light lag alone would explain; presumably he was carrying out the request without bothering to acknowledge its receipt. The captain decided not to make a point of the matter; Hoffman was very young. There was plenty else to keep Dondragmer busy, and he occupied himself with this, filing the unfinished conversation until Benj’s voice once more reached the bridge.

  “I’ve been in touch with Stak and told him what you asked. He promised to take care, but he’s not very far from the Kwembly yet — still among the stones, and they give out a little way upstream, you remember. He’s still on the map, I think, though I can’t really tell one square yard of that rock garden from another. It’s either smooth ice, or ice with cobblestones sticking up through it, or occasionally cobblestones with no ice between them. I don’t see how they’re going to search it very effectively. Even if you climb on the highest rock in the neighborhood, there are a lot of others you can’t see behind. The helicopters aren’t very big, and you Mesklinites are a lot smaller.”

  “We realized that when we sent out the party,” Dondragmer answered. “A really effective search will be nearly impossible among the stones if the missing people are dead or even helpless. However, as you said, the stones give way to bare rock a short distance from here; and in any case, it is possible that Kerv or Reffel could answer calls, or call for help themselves. Certainly one can be heard much farther than he can be seen, at night. Also, whateve
r is responsible for their disappearance may be bigger or easier to spot.” The captain had a pretty good idea how Benj would answer the last sentence. He was right.

  “Finding whatever that is by having another group disappear wouldn’t put us much farther ahead.”

  “It would if we actually learned what had happened. Keep in close touch with Stakendee’s party, please, Benj. My own time is going to be taken up with other matters, and you’ll learn whatever happens half a minute before I could anyway. I don’t know that those seconds will make much real difference, but at least you’re closer to Stak in time than I am.

  “Also, I have to go outside now. We’re getting to a ticklish point in taking this metal bar off the hull. I’d bring one of the sets outside to keep in closer touch with you, but I wouldn’t be able to hear you very well though a suit. The volume of these communicators of yours isn’t very impressive. I’ll give you a call when I’m back in touch; there’s no one handy to leave on watch here. In the meantime please keep a running log, in any way you find convenient, on what happens to Stakendee.”

  The captain waited just long enough to receive Benj’s acknowledgement — which did arrive this time — before making his way down to the lock and donning his airsuit. Preferring an inside climb to an outside one, he took the ramps back to the bridge and made use of the small lock which gave onto the top of the hull — a U-shaped pip of liquid ammonia just about large enough for a Mesklinite body. Dondragmer unsealed and lifted the inner lid and entered the three-gallon pool of liquid, the cover closing by its own weight above him. He followed the curve down and up again, and emerged through a similar lid outside the bridge.