CLOSE TO CRITICAL

"How long will it take to get to you—for Nick, that is?" asked Aminadabarlee.

"Swift thinks by mid-afternoon, on foot; he doesn't know how fast the boat goes, though."

"Did you tell him about the boat?"

"Of course. He was wondering how he could get over closer to the ship here; this pool we're in the middle of is too deep for his people to wade, and they don't seem to swim. I suggested floating over on a raft made of wood, but the wood on this crazy planet sinks, we found out."

"You seem to be getting in a lot of talk with those people. Are you really good at their language?"

"Pretty good, but we're still very slow. If there's anything you want to ask Swift, though, let's have it."

"No—nothing right now," said the Drommian hastily. "You didn't suggest that your friend Swift make a raft of the sort Nick has?"

"I did, but he can't do it. His people can get all the skins they'd need, of course, but they can't make tight enough—I was going to say air-tight—bags out of them. They don't know how to make the glue Nick used, and neither do I. He's waiting until Nick gets here with the boat."

"And then will take it away from him, of course."

"Oh, no. He has nothing against Nick. I've told him who Nick is—how the robot stole the eggs from the place where Swift's people leave them to hatch. I think he may be a little mad at the robot, but that's all right. I've said I'd teach him anything he wanted to know, and that Nick had learned a lot and would help. We're getting along very well." The Drommian was startled, and showed it.

"Did Dr. Raeker suggest all this to you?"

"Oh, no; I thought of it myself—or rather, 'Mina and I did. It seemed smartest to be friends with these cave people; they might not be able to hurt the ship if they got mad at us, but we couldn't be sure."

"I see." Aminadabarlee was a trifle dazed. He ended

Organization; Revelation; Declaration 173

the conversation casually and courteously—he had never used toward Easy the mannerisms which were so natural with him when he talked to other human beings—and started to make his way back to Raeker's observation room. The scientists were questioning the girl once more before he was out of the room.

He seemed to be fated to choose bad times to move, that day. He had been in the corridors when Easy had given the bathyscaphe's location to Raeker and Nick; he was in them when the four explorers who had discovered the volcano returned and made their report to their teacher. He had stopped to eat, as a matter of fact, and didn't get back to the observation room until the report was finished. By that time the four natives and the robot were heading south with the cart in tow, answering a ceaseless flood of questions from the scientists, some of whom had been content to use the relay system while others had come down to the observation room, The bewildered Drommian found the latter compartment almost as crowded as the communication room had been a while earlier, and it took him some tune to get up to date from the questions and comments flying around.

"Maybe we could get the distance by triangulation— the wind at camp and 'scaphe must be blowing right toward it."

"But we don't know absolute directions at either place. Besides, the wind might 'be deflected by Coriolis action."

"Not much, on a world like Tenebra. You have it backward, though; the mountain is already on the maps.

With a little more data we could use the wind direction to pin down the 'scaphe—That was what the Drommian heard as he came in; it confused him badly. A little later, when he had deduced the existence of the volcano, it made a little more sense; he could see how such a source of heat could set up currents even in Tenebra's brutally compressed envelope. By then it was another question that was perturbing him.

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