CLOSE TO CRITICAL

"Call me Easy; it'll save time."

"Tell me what you recognize on the board in front of you."

"Not much. Light switches are labeled over on the left. The communicators are top center; air-lock controls under a guard near the light switches; about two square feet of off-on relay buttons, labeled with letters, that don't mean anything to me—" She let her voice trail off, and Saki nodded.

"All right. Now, near the top of the board, to the right of the communicators, you'll see an area about six inches square marked 'Hunt.' Have you found it?"

"Yes; I see it."

"Make sure the master toggle at its lower left corner says 'Off.' Then put the three in the group labeled

'Aero' in the 'On' position. Then make sure that the big one marked 'D.I.' is off. Do you have that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now be sure you're strapped in. What you've been doing is to tie in a homing radio which is tuned to the transmission of the robot on the ground to the aerodynamic controls of the 'scaphe. I don't dare have you use any power, but with luck the autopilot will glide you down somewhere in the general vicinity of that robot. You don't have to worry about burning up hi the atmosphere; the ship is designed for a power-off entry. It's a big planet, and if we can narrow down your landing area to even a five-hundred-mile radius it will be a big help in picking you up. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I'm strapped in the seat, and 'Mina is lying down."

"All right. Now reach up to the 'Hunt' region you've just been setting, and snap on the master switch. I hope you're not prone to motion sickness; it will be rough at first, I expect."

Sakiiro from the rescue boat and the group in the message room of the Vindemiatrix watched tensely as Communication; Penetration; Isolation 65

the girl's hand went up and out of the pickup field. They could not see her actually close the switch, and to the surprise of the engineers they could not detect very easily the results of the act. They had expected the girl to be jammed into her seat by an abrupt acceleration change; but things proved not nearly so bad.

"I can feel it," Easy reported. "The ship is rolling— now the planet is on our left side—and I'm a little heavier in my seat—now we're leveling out again, and 'Down' is forward, if this panel is at the front of the room."

"It is," replied the engineer. "You should now be headed toward the robot, and will be slowing down until you're doing about five hundred miles an hour with respect to the air around you. The braking will be jerky; the ship had throw-away speed brakes to take it down through the heat barrier. Stay strapped in."

"All right. How long will it take?"

"A couple of hours. You can stand it all right."

Rich cut in at this point.

"Suppose the machine passes over your robot's location before getting rid of its speed, Mr. Sakiiro? What will the autopilot do? Try to dive in at that point?"

"Certainly not. This is a vehicle, not a missile. It will circle the point at a distance which doesn't demand more than an extra half-G to hold it in the turn. If necessary, it will try to land the ship; but we should be able to avoid that."

"How? You don't expect Easy to fly it, do you?"

"Not in the usual sense. However, when she's down to what we can call 'flying' speed, the main buoyancy tanks of the 'scaphe should be full of the local atmosphere. Then I'll tell her how to start the electrolyzers; that will fill them with hydrogen, and the ship should float, when they're full, at an altitude where boosters can be used.

Then she and her young friend can trim the ship so that

66 CLOSE TO CRITICAL

she's hanging nose up, and fire the rest of the boosters. We can be waiting overhead."

"I thought you said the boosters weren't connected to the control panel yet!"

Sakiiro was silent for a moment.

"You're right; I'd forgotten that. That complicates the problem."

"You mean my kid is marooned down there?"

"Not necessarily. It's going to call for some tight maneuvering; but I should think we could rig boosters on this boat so as to be able to reach the 'scaphe when it's floating at its highest. The whole design object, remember, was for the thing to float high enough for hydroferron boosters to work; and if they'll work on one frame, they'll certainly work on another."

"Then you can rescue her." The statement was more than half a question. Sakiiro was an honest man, but he had difficulty in making an answer. He did, however, after a moment's hesitation, staring into the face of the middle-aged man whose agonized expression showed so clearly on his screen.

"We should be able to save them both. I will not conceal from you that it will be difficut and dangerous; transferring an engineer to the outside of the 'scaphe to finish up wiring, while the whole thing is floating like a balloon, from a rocket hanging on booster blasts, will present difficulties."

"Why can't you transfer the kids to the rescue ship?"

"Because I'm pretty sure their space suits won't stand the pressure at the 'scaphe's floating height," replied Sakiiro. "I don't know about Drommian designs, but I do know our own."

"Mr. Sakiiro." Easy's voice cut back into the conversation.

"Yes, Easy."

"Is there anything more I can do? Just sitting here doesn't seem right, and—it scares me a little."

Communication; Penetration; Isolation 67

Rich looked appealingly at the engineer. As a diplomat, he was an accomplished psychologist, and he knew his daughter. She was not hysterical by nature, but few twelve-year-olds had ever been put under this sort of stress.

He himself was not qualified to suggest any reasonable occupation to hold her attention; but fortunately Sakiiro saw the need, too.

"There are pressure gauges to your left," he said. "If you can give us a running report on their readings, while your friend tells us when he can first detect signs of dimming in the stars, it will be of some help. Keep it up unless you get too heavy to be able to watch easily; that may not be too long."

Rich looked his thanks; if Aminadabarlee was doing the same, no one was able to detect the fact. For long minutes the silence was broken only by the voices of the children, reading off numbers and describing the stars.

Then Easy reported that the ship was banking again.

"All right," said Sakiiro. "That means you're about over the robot. From now until your speed is killed, you're going to have to take better than three and a half gravities. Your seat folds back on its springs automatically to put you in the best position to stand it, but you're not going to be comfortable. Your friend can undoubtedly take it all right, but warn him against moving around. The ship's traveling fast in an atmosphere, and going from one air current to another at a few thousand miles can give quite a jolt."

"All right."

"The stars are getting hazy." It was Aminadorneldo.

"Thanks. Can you give me another pressure reading?"

The girl obliged, with detectable strain in her voice. Until the last turn had started, the 'scaphe was in relatively free fall; but with its rudimentary wings biting what little there was of the atmosphere in an effort to keep it in a turn the situation was distinctly different.