Still River

by Hal Clement

  Molly sympathized with her companion, though she could never have brought herself to be that emphatic with Joe. She added a quiet “It would be nice to know just how many of those little mappers really are left” to Carol’s diatribe, and waited for his answer, which was quite predictable.

  “You are quite right; I should have withdrawn the other robots before starting this investigation. I’ll go back and take care of that immediately.”

  “And please tell us when you’re out in the open again,” added the Human.

  “There are no more such constrictions on the way out, but I will certainly report. It will take a little while to make even an approximate count of the robots; I should have included provision for individual monitoring.”

  “You can’t either foresee or take care of everything, Joe. A fiction writer, years ago on my home world, complained that the trouble with writing adventure stories was that adventures happened only to the incompetent and he or she—I don’t remember which it was—felt unhappy writing about incompetent characters. The readers, he felt, were bound to recognize each mistake as it happened and sneer at them. It just doesn’t happen that way; if it did, none of us would make mistakes—and life could actually become boring. Horrid thought. Go on back to the hollow, Joe, check your machines, and keep in touch with us. Even there, things might happen that none of us has foreseen. I think we’re in more danger at the moment than you are, but I’m far from certain of it.”

  Ten hours later, Charley reported a gravity of thirty in the usual units; presumably he was over halfway to the center. Jenny had found fundamental genetic biochemistry suggesting eight different planetary origins in the specimens she herself had found and brought back to the tent; there seemed no reasonable doubt that Enigma had been repeatedly seeded, and ordinary evolution been busily at work developing a fascinating ecology of the results. She was still working. The original atmosphere problem had been almost forgotten; objectively speaking, the guess that had been made toward a solution was still in the hypothesis class, but the flood of new questions had left the group willing to accept it so their attention could be freed for other things.

  Joe had found that many of his robots were indeed missing, but fewer than he had guessed; there were still three hundred ten in service. This, of course, did not lesson the problem of what had happened to the other two hundred or so; he would long since have returned to the caves in search of them if another difficulty had not developed.

  Molly and Carol were still following a river of unknown size. Gravity suggested that they might be nearly halfway to the inner surface by now, according to Carol’s observations; but Molly was unable to check them.

  Her vision had been getting progressively worse. The urge to blink and squint had increased, the blurring had grown more and more extreme, and occasionally she could feel liquid running down her cheek—slowly, and only when an accumulation that made seeing hopeless had finally been dislodged from her cornea by frantic blinking and head shaking. She had nothing to serve as a mirror and could not tell whether the liquid was ordinary tears or something else. Carol, who could see the drops, was not familiar enough with Human physiology to report anything useful. Her color sense was different enough from Molly’s to make even basic description quite useless; there was no way for the translator to handle color symbols, and it simply reported the fact.

  Both carried elementary first aid equipment in their armor, of course. Carol’s was, except for purely mechanical items like wound dressings, incompatible with Human chemistry. Molly’s seemed inappropriate to the present trouble, but she lacked the medical knowledge to offer more than a guess at her present trouble.

  The Shervah could guess equally well, and with more conviction. “I told you it was insane to take that bath. School only knows what was in that part of the river besides water.”

  “But I didn’t get any of it in my eyes. I had them shut tightly when I submerged.”

  “You didn’t get much of it in your eyes. What’s its vapor pressure at the temperature of that bath? What does it do to your chemistry? How much does it take to destroy your eyes?”

  “Since I don’t know what it is…” “Precisely. All right, I’m sorry to overtrack; you know as well as I do how silly it all was—and I know as well as you do that I might have done the same under the same drive. Let’s be reasonable, if you’ve been poisoned by something in that river, the stuff is water soluble. You will have to decide whether you can spare enough water from your armor system, and open your helmet long enough in this environment, to try swabbing your eyes out with a water-soaked dressing. I know it may be too late, and whatever happened will have to run its course; I know whatever caused the trouble may still be around us as vapor. I have wound dressings that will hold water if you decide to try it—so do you, I imagine.”

  “I do. Let me think.”

  “May I make a point?” It was Joe.

  “Of course.”

  “If you have suffered chemically from the river, it might be well to get away from the river before you attempt first aid. This will delay your arrival at the hollow and therefore the time when we can get you back to the tent; but this may make little difference, since real treatment probably cannot be started until Classroom with others of your species returns. If you can wait without too much pain, it might be a good idea to hold off opening your helmet until your river has gone, as Charley’s did. Is there very much pain involved, or is it a matter of the inconvenience of not seeing?”

  “Mostly the blindness. I can wait, for a while at least. If you can do all the watching for narrow passages and low ceilings, Carrie…”

  “I’ll have to do that anyway. I don’t expect just swabbing out will be a cure.”

  “It might let normal healing go faster.”

  “And it might expose you to another dose that would blind you permanently.” Molly noted with gratitude that her companion refrained from adding anything like “if you aren’t already,” and wondered for a moment whether Charley might cut in with one of his infelicitous remarks. If he were so inclined, Carol gave him no chance. “I can keep alert as well as you, and for a lot longer, and even when 1 have to doze I can still stay on watch after a fashion You know that. We won’t have to stop. You relax—sleep if you can. I’ll tell you if the river disappears, and you can decide then whether you want to try washing your eyes or not. Until then, let me run things, and be thankful it’s your eyes instead of mine. Would you like to have to do the lookout job and face the delay of telling me what to do with the robot every time something came up?”

  “Your logic is overwhelming. I am quite delighted.” Molly didn’t care whether Joe got the sarcasm, but rather hoped Carol wouldn’t. If she did, she said nothing.

  Charley came through, on private channel.

  “I have a lot of Human information in my personal library but can’t get at it until we’re back in electromagnetic range of the boat. A lot of it’s probably medical, and might help. Do you think it will be worthwhile for me to go back now to check it out?”

  The offer was tempting. However, the likelihood that Charley had really detailed enough medical material available, even if he had simply transferred whole banks of information unselectively for later browsing, seemed too low to be worth anyone’s time. Molly refused the offer with thanks, not guessing what that would do to confuse further the already undecided Kantrick.

  Joe did not hear the offer, of course—the private channels were genuinely private—but the same notion had occurred to him. There was medical data appropriate to all members of the team in the boat, though he knew nothing of Charley’s special collection. He could, with its aid, have set a bone for Molly, Carol, or Jenny, repaired even serious cracks in Charley’s exoskeleton, sewn up or cemented wounds for any of them, treated burns and radiation injury, taken appropriate steps for lack of food or solvent or even air for those who used it; but chemical poisoning was a different game tank. There might be relevant and recognizable information.
He might find it quickly enough to be of use. It might involve treatment that Molly and Carol could apply with what they had with them, following directions he could transmit. So he asked Jenny to check for the appropriate information and stayed where he was.

  It was far more likely that the real need would be for transportation to the boat. Until Charley reached the interior, the only known way back to the surface was stored in Joe’s mappers; and this meant that Joe could not risk his machine in the tunnels again until the women reached the hollow or were stopped so that he clearly had to go to them. He didn’t like it, but he hung near the inner surface, doing a little very cautious tunnel mapping with his small machines, and otherwise simply waiting.

  Charley raced through passages when there was only one way to go, stopped to check wind whenever there was a branch, and groped with his rope flag for appropriate exits when the course led through large caverns. His speed, so much greater than that of Molly and Carol when he had had a river to follow, averaged only a small fraction of its earlier value.

  He envied Joe for being already in the hollow, where he could be useful. Joe envied Charley for having something to occupy his attention. Molly envied Carol for being able to see where they were going. Carol envied Jenny for being in the lab getting something practical accomplished.

  Jenny, happy as a scientist can be only when the data are falling smoothly into a coherent picture, envied nobody. She made a run-through of the boat’s Human information at Joe’s request, found nothing that seemed relevant, and returned to the real work—properly concerned about her Human friend, but quite clear in mind and conscience that there was nothing more she could do about the matter just then. Joe, or conceivably Charley, would establish physical contact eventually; more effective steps could then be taken. In the meantime, a picture of a tightly coordinated ecology, involving life that seemed to have originated on at least nine different worlds and been interacting here for some unknown length of time, was beginning to emerge. Two fundamentally unrelated forms produced hydrogen peroxide; six contained considerable amounts of hydrazine in their body solvents; and one, with a genetic basis she had never seen or heard of, consumed both, apparently getting its energy by reacting the two to water and nitrogen. At least, this seemed to fit their structures; actual life processes would now have to be checked. Jenny kept happily at work.

  “Joe!” Charley’s voice came through the Rimmore’s translator, but failed to catch her attention at first. “I’ve found another river—I think.”

  “Why is there doubt?”

  “It’s not traveling. I entered a big kame—irregular, over thirty kilometers one way, nearly forty at right angles, and over twenty-five deep—from about the middle of the north side. There was some radar ambiguity from near the top, and I went to check it. There are huge drops of what I suppose must be water just hanging here, drifting around, sometimes coming together and joining. When they do that they start to sink, but before they reach the bottom of the cave, they always break into smaller ones and start up again. It’s sort of river’s end, I’d say—maybe Carol and Molly’s.”

  “Possible. Theirs seemed to be larger than your original one, and size would be needed to get that deep against rising hot air. It’s a long way from certain, of course, but maybe you should make another gravity check to see how your depth compares with theirs, and if they aren’t too different, you might wait for a little while anyway. If you can meet them, travel in your machine, especially for Molly, will be a lot better than on theirs.”

  “Right. I’ll check.”

  Carol chimed in. “You know, if that’s the real limit of the river, whether it’s ours or not, the water or whatever it is ought to be loaded with salts; and if the drops are evaporating all the time and getting fed from above, there ought to be crystals around. Why don’t you check the cave walls for that, too? It would be a pity to wait and do nothing.”

  “All right. The laser would give an easy check for dissolved salts; I could boil one of the drops, and if there is solid dust, vaporize it and get a spectrum. I’ll…”

  “Charley! DON’T!”

  The Rimmore’s grating call was too late; Charley had been acting as he spoke.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Of Course I Expected That

  Fortunately the drop was small, as they went in that area, and there were no others really close by. Charley insisted later that this had not been a matter of luck alone; he had not wanted to waste time and energy boiling large amounts of water, or having his experimental results involved with other drops. Whatever the actual reason, the fact was fortunate.

  The test laser was not a weapons-grade device but was quite capable of vaporizing small volumes of metal or rock. The present liquid target was more transparent, which meant that more of the material had to be traversed by the beam for a given amount of energy to be absorbed; but, as it turned out, very little energy was needed. The drop—not just the liquid in the path of the beam, but the entire drop-exploded violently.

  The shock wave flattened other drops and reduced them to spray, but did not detonate them. Its most critical effect was on Charley’s robot. This was supported and driven by the usual field effects, and guided and navigated by an inertial system. This, unless the guidance computer was set to respond to additional factors such as the approach of other vehicles or radar information, did its fusion-powered best to hold the machine in whatever position the driver had placed it.

  The mapper did not, therefore, move under the impulse of the shock wave. Portions of its shell did yield to the pressure, some sections peeling away entirely and flying out of sight, some collapsing inward. Charley found himself, when he recovered from several seconds of daze, pressed down by what had been outer hull onto the ring-shaped seat cushion that normally surrounded his mouth. The polymer had bent to conform rather well to his own armored contours, but not perfectly; his forward arm and right leg seemed to be broken. One of his eyes, the front one, was also out of action. He could not localize the pain well enough to guess at the overall personal damage, but it certainly hurt.

  “Charley! Don’t!” the Rimmore called again.

  He found himself able to answer clearly enough for his translator to handle.

  “I’m afraid I did. It wasn’t water, was it?”

  “It might have been, but there were other possibilities. What happened?”

  Charley reported as completely as he could.

  “I see three possibilities—or rather, two and a combination,” Jenny started thoughtfully. “Either it was…”

  “Jenny! Charley’s hurt! What can we do?” It was Carol, not Molly, who had interrupted. The Human was not too surprised at this; there is a difference between potential danger and actual damage.

  “We consult medical information, get Charley to describe his damage in as much detail as possible, and tell him what to do for himself if he doesn’t already know,” the chemist replied calmly. “If he is actually on your river, you two may be able to do more shortly; listen carefully to any information I transmit.”

  “If he is on our river, we’d better find out what’s in it besides water,” the Shervah answered. “Your theories are important, after all; pardon my interruption.”

  “I’ll get back to that later. Charley, are you losing body fluids at any serious rate?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. I’m cracked in several places—leg, arm, probably right front upper body quadrant—but sac doesn’t seem to be ruptured. I can’t see my own head, of course, and one eye is out, so there is some damage there; but again, I don’t seem to be leaking. Remember, I can’t see through my armor; it’s just inference. A bad leak would have me unconscious by now.”

  “Then from the summary of your physiology I have here, your main danger is starting to heal broken limbs without having them properly set.”

  “Right. If I can free myself from this robot’s outer shell, I can take care of most of the trouble—the armor itself will do for splints, if I ca
n find something with the leverage I need to straighten the limb sections.”

  “Will your robot travel?” asked Joe.

  “It’s still hanging where all this happened; its power must be on. At the moment I can’t reach or nip the keys. I’ll report when I can. I’m starting to feel stronger; maybe I can get out from under this envelope in a few minutes.”

  “I’d better come in for you,” Joe started.

  “Come in where? Stay where you are until we can figure out a useful action. Send those little robots back to their mapping, and if they all disappear we’ll have to live with it and think of something else; but there’s nothing else useful you can do from there right now.”

  “True, Jenny. I was getting ahead of my own thinking; thanks. If I can locate that river—or those rivers—the real problem is to get us back together and back to the boat”

  “Get to it. You’ll find me.”

  “I hope you’re better with that guess than the one about the boat’s not lasting. Are you ever going to tell us why you thought that?”

  “Probably not. Just start mapping, please. I’m hurting.”

  “The robots are on the way.”

  “Charley, can you move yet?” called Molly.

  “Yes, a little. The hull stuff that is pinning me down is very thin and should be easy to bend. I just don’t have much leverage. There, I’m getting away from the pedestal and can move toward the rear of the mapper. I see what happened. The front part of the body was pushed back and wrapped around me, and most of the side and rear covering just peeled away like an outgrown shell. The interior doesn’t seem to have suffered. I can twist this bent stuff out of the way and get at the keys. Wait a minute while I run them through. Yes. Good. I seem to have full control, and even my radar is working, though the lights are gone except for interior instrument ones.”