Dondragmer was far from indifferent,
but by his standards it was normal to focus attention on a new
matter likely to require action rather than to clear up an old one
where action was unlikely to help. He had not forgotten the fate of
his men but when a distant hoot bore the words “Here’s the end of
the stream,” his program changed abruptly and
drastically.
He could not see where the voice was
coming from, since he was two feet below the general surface, but
Borndender reported glimpses of a light perhaps half a mile away.
At the captain’s order, the scientist climbed the hull part way to
get a better view, while his assistant went in search of a rope to
get the captain out of the ice pit. This took time. The sailors
had, with proper professional care, returned the lines used in
lowering the radiator bar to their proper places inside the
cruiser; and when Skendra, Borndender’s assistant, tried to get
through the main lock he found it sealed by a layer of clear ice
which had frozen a quarter of an inch thick on the starboard side
of the hull, evidently from the vapor emitted by the hot pool.
Fortunately most of the holdfasts were projecting far enough
through this to be usable, so he was able to climb on up to the
bridge lock.
Meanwhile, Borndender called down that
there were two lights approaching across the river bed. At the
captain’s order, he howled questions across the thouand-yard gap,
and the two listened carefully for answers: even Mesklinite voices
had trouble carrying distinct words for such a distance and through
two layers of air suit fabric. By the time Dondragmer was out of
the hole, they knew that the approaching men were the part of
Stakendee’s command which had been ordered downstream: they had
reached its end less than a mile from the ship, but until the group
actually reached them, no further details could be
obtained.
When they were, the officers could not
entirely understand them; the description did not match anything
familiar.
“The river stayed about the same size
all the way down,” the sailors reported. “It wasn’t being fed from
anywhere, and didn’t seem to be evaporating.
It wound among the stones a lot, when it got down to where they
were. Then we began to run into the funniest obstructions. There
would be a sort of dam of ice, with the stream running around one
end or the other of it. Half a cable or so farther on there’d be
another dam, with just the same thing happening. It was as though
some of it froze when it met the ice among the stones, but only the
lead part. The water that followed stayed liquid and went on around
the dam until it found some ice. The dams
would build up to maybe half a body length high before the
following water would find its way around. We reached the last one,
where it was still happening, just a few minutes ago. We’d seen the
bright cloud rising over the ship before that, and wondered whether
we ought to come back in case something was wrong, but we decided
to carry out orders at least until the river started to lead us
away from the Kwembly again.”
“Good,” said the captain. “You’re sure
the stream wasn’t getting any bigger?”
“As nearly as we could judge,
no.”
“All right. Maybe we have more time
than I thought, and what’s happening isn’t a prelude to what
brought us here. I wish I understood why the liquid was freezing in
that funny way, though.”
“We’d better check with the human
beings,” suggested Borndender, who had no ideas on the matter
either but preferred not to put the fact too bluntly.
“Right. And they’ll want measurements
and analyses. I suppose you didn’t bring a sample of that river,”
he said, rather than asked, the newcomers.
“No, sir. We had nothing to carry it
in.”
“All right. Born, get containers and
bring some back; analyze it as well and as quickly as you can. One
of these men will guide you. I’ll go back to the bridge and bring
the humans up to date. The rest of you get tools and start chipping
ice so we can use the main lock.” Dondragmer closed the
conversation by starting to climb the ice-crusted hull. He waved
toward the bridge as he went, assuming that he was being watched
and perhaps even recognized.
Benj and McDevitt had managed to keep
track of him, though neither found it easy to tell Mesklinites
apart. They were waiting eagerly when he reached the bridge to hear
what he had to say. Benj in particular had grown ever more tense
since the search under the cruiser had been interrupted; perhaps
the helmsmen had not been there after all; perhaps they had been
among the newcomers who had arrived to interrupt the search,
perhaps, perhaps.
Although McDevitt was a quiet man by
nature, even he was getting impatient by the time Dondragmer’s
voice reached the station.
The report fascinated the
meteorologist, though it was no consolation to his young companion.
Benj wanted to interrupt with a question about Beetchermarlf, but
knew that it would be futile; and when the captain’s account ended,
McDevitt immediately began to talk.
“This is not much more than a guess,
Captain,” he began, “though perhaps
your scientist will be able to stiffen it when he analyzes those
samples. It seems possible that the pool around you was originally
an ammonia-water solution (we had evidence of that before) which
froze, not because the temperature went down but because it lost
much of its ammonia and its freezing point went up. The fog around
you just before this whole trouble started, back on the snow field,
was ammonia, your scientists reported. I’m guessing that it came
from the colder areas far to the west. Its droplets began to react
with the water ice, and melted it partly by forming a eutectic and
partly by releasing heat; you were afraid of something of that sort
even before it happened, as I remember. That started your first
flood. When the ammonia cloud passed on into Low Alpha, the
solution around you began to lose ammonia by evaporation, and
finally the mixture which was left was below its freezing point.
I’m guessing that the fog encountered by Stakendee is more ammonia,
and has provided the material for the rivulet he has found. As the
fog meets the water ice near you they mix until the mixture is too
dilute in ammonia to be liquid any more (this forms the dam your
men described) and the liquid ammonia still coming has to find a
way around. I would suggest that if you can find a way to divert
that stream over to your ship and if there proves to be enough of
it, your melting-out problem would be solved.” Benj, listening in
spite of his mood, thought of wax flowing from a guttering candle
and freezing first on one front and then another. He wondered
whether the computers would handle the two situations alike, if
ammonia and heat were handled the same way in the two
problems.
“You mean I shouldn’t worry about a
possible flood?” Dondragmer’s voice finally returned.
“I’m guessing not,” replied McDevitt.
“If I’m right about this picture, and we’ve been talking it over a
lot up here, the fog that Stakendee met should have passed over the
snow plain you came from, or what’s left of it, and if it were
going to cause another flood that should have reached you by now. I
suspect the snow which was high enough to spill into the pass you
were washed through was all used up on the first flood, and that’s
why you were finally left stranded where you are. If the new fog
hasn’t reached you yet, by the way, I think I know the reason. The
place where Stakendee met it is a few feet higher than you are and
air flowing from the west is coming downhill. With Dhrawn’s gravity
and that air composition there’d be a terrific foehn effect
(adiabatic heating as the pressure rises) and the stuff is probably
evaporating just as it gets to the place where Stakendee met
it.”
Dondragmer took a while to digest this.
For a few seconds after the normal delay time, McDevitt wondered
whether he had made himself clear; then another question came
through.
“But if the ammonia fog were simply
evaporating, the gas would still be there, and must be in the air
around us now. Why isn’t it melting the ice just
as effectively as though it were in liquid drops? Is some physical
law operating which I missed in the College?”
“I’m not sure whether state and
concentration would make all that difference, just from memory,”
admitted the meteorologist. “When Borndender gets the new data up
here I’ll feed the whole works into the machine to see whether this
guess of ours is ignoring too many facts. On the basis of what I
have now, I still think it’s a reasonable one, but I admit it has
its fuzzy aspects. There are just too many variables; with only
water they are practically infinite, if you’ll forgive a loose use
of the word; with water and ammonia together the number is infinity
squared.
“To shift from abstract to concrete, I
can see Stakendee’s screen and he’s still going along beside that
streamlet in the fog; he hasn’t reached the source but I haven’t
seen any other watercourses feeding in from either side. It’s only
a couple of your body lengths wide, and has stayed about the same
all along.”
“That’s a relief,” came the eventual
response. “I suppose if a real flood were coming, that river would
give some indication. Very well, I’ll report again as soon as
Borndender has his information. Please keep watching Stakendee. I’m
going outside again to check under the hull; I was interrupted
before.” The meteorologist had wanted to say more, but was silenced
by the realization that Dondragmer would not be there to hear his
words by the time they arrived. He may also have been feeling some
sympathy for Benj. They watched eagerly, the man almost as
concerned as his companion, for the red-and-black inchworm to
appear on the side of the hull within range of the pickup. It was
not visible all the way to the ground, since Dondragmer had to go
forward directly under the bridge and out of the field of view; but
they saw him again near where the rope which had been used to get
him out a few minutes earlier was still snubbed around one of
Borndender’s bending posts.
They watched him swarm down the line
into the pit. A Mesklinite hanging on a rope about the thickness of
a six-pound nylon fishline, and free to swing pendulum-style in
forty Earth gravities, is quite a sight even when the distance he
has to climb is not much greater than his own body length. Even
Benj stopped thinking about Beetchermarlf for a
moment.
The captain was no longer worried about
the ice; it was presumably frozen all the way to the bottom by now,
and he went straight toward the cruiser without bothering to stay
on the stones. He slowed a trifle as he drew near, eyeing the
cavity in front of him thoughtfully.
Practically, the Kwembly was still frozen in, of course. The melted area
had reached her trucks some sixty feet fore and aft, but the ice
was still above the mattress beyond those limits and on the port
side. Even within that range, the lower part of the treads had
still been an inch or two under water when the heater had given
out. Beetchermarlf’s control cables had been largely freed, but of
the helmsman himself there was no sign whatever. Dondragmer had no
hope of finding the
two alive under the Kwembly; they would
obviously have emerged long ago had this been the case. The captain
would not have offered large odds on the chance of finding bodies,
either. Like McDevitt, he knew that there was a possibility that
the crewmen had not been under the hull at all when the freeze-up
occurred. There had, after all, been two other unexplained
disappearances; Dondragmer’s educated guess at the whereabouts of
Kervenser and Reffel was far from a certainty even in his own
mind.
It was dark underneath, out of range of
the floods. Dondragmer could still see (a response to abrupt
changes of illumination was a normal adaptation to Mesklin’s
eighteen-minute rotation period) but some details escaped him. He
saw the condition of the two trucks whose treads had been ruined by
the helmsmen’s escape efforts, and he saw the piles of stones they
had made in the attempt to confine the hot water in a small area;
but he missed the slash in the mattress where the two had taken
final refuge.
What he saw made it obvious, however,
that at least one of the missing men had been there for a while.
Since the volume which had evidently not frozen at all was small,
the most likely guess seemed to be that they had been caught in the
encroaching ice after doing the work which could be seen; though it
was certainly hard to see just how this could have happened. The
captain made a rapid check the full length of the ice-walled
cavern, examining every exposed truck fore and aft, top and sides.
It never occurred to him to look higher. He had, after all, taken
part in the building of the huge vehicle; he knew there was nowhere
higher to go.
He emerged at last into the light and
the field of view of the communicator. His appearance alone was
something of a relief to Benj; the boy had concluded, just as the
captain had, that the helmsmen could not be under the hull alive,
and he had rather expected to see Dondragmer pulling bodies after
him. The relief was short, and the burning question remained: where
was Beetchermarlf? The captain was climbing out of the pit and
leaving the field of view. Maybe he was coming back to the bridge
to make a detailed report. Benj, now showing clearly the symptoms
of sleeplessness, waited silently with his fists
clenched.
But Dondragmer’s voice did not come.
The captain had planned to tell the human observers what he had
found, but on the way up the side of the hull, visible but
unrecognized, he paused to talk to one of the men who was chipping
ice from the lock exit.
“I only know what the human, Hoffman,
told me you found when your party reached that stream,” he said.
“Are there more details I should know? I know that you met someone
at the point where the ground reached up into the fog, but I never
heard from Hoffman whether it was Reffel or Kervenser. Which was
it? And are the helicopters all right? There was an interruption
just then; someone up above apparently caught sight of Kabremm back
at the Esket; then I broke in myself because
the stream you had found worried me. That’s why I split your party.
Who was it you found?”
“It was Kabremm.”
Dondragmer almost lost his grip on the
holdfasts.
“Kabremm? Destigmet’s first officer?
Here? And a human being recognized him; it was your screen he was seen on?”
“It sounded that way, sir. He didn’t
see our communicator until it was too late, and none of us thought
for an instant that there was a chance of a human being telling one
of us from another; at least, not between the time we recognized
him ourselves and the time it was too late.”
“But what is he doing here? This planet
has three times the area of Mesklin; there are plenty of other
places to be. I knew the commander was going to hit shoals sooner
or later playing this Esket trick on the
human beings, but I certainly never thought he’d ground on such
silly bad luck as this.”
“It’s not entirely chance, sir. Kabremm
didn’t have time to tell us much. We took advantage of your order
about exploring the stream to break up and get him out of sight of
the communicator, but I understand this river has been giving
trouble most of the night. There’s a buildup of ice five million or
so cables downstream, not very far from the Esket, and a sort of ice river is flowing slowly into
the hot lands. The Esket and the mines and
the farms are right in its way.”
“Farms?”
“That’s what Destigmet calls them.
Actually a Settlement with hydroponic tanks; a sort of oversized
life-support rig that doesn’t have to balance as closely as the
cruiser rigs do. Anyway, Destigmet sent out the Gwelf under Kabremm to explore upstream in the hope of
finding out how bad the ice river was likely to get. They had
grounded where we met them because of the fog; they could have
flown over it easily enough, but they couldn’t have seen the river
bed through it.”
“Then they must have arrived since the
flood that brought us here; if they were examining the river bed
they flew right over us. How could they possibly have missed our
lights?”
“I don’t know, sir. If Kabremm told
Stakendee, I didn’t hear him.”
Dondragmer gave the rippling equivalent
of a shrug. “Probably he did, and made it a point to stay out of
reach of our human eyes. I suppose Kervenser and Reffel ran into
the Gwe/f, and Reffel used his vision
shutter to keep the dirigible from human sight; but I still don’t
see why Kervenser, at least, didn’t come back to
report.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know about any of
that, either,” replied the sailor.
“Then the river we’ve washed into must
bend north, if it leads to the Esket area.”
The other judged correctly that Dondragmer was merely thinking out
loud, and made no comment. The captain pondered silently for
another minute or two. “The big question is whether the commander
heard it too, when the human—I suppose it was Mrs. Hoffman; she is
about the only one that familiar with us—called out Kabremm’s name.
If he did, he probably thought that
someone had been careless back at the Esket, as I did. You heard her on your set and I heard
her on mine, but that’s reasonable. They’re both Kwembly communicators, and probably all in one place up
at the station. We don’t know, though, about their links with the
Settlement. I’ve heard that all their communication gear is in one
room, but it must be a big room and the different sets may not be
very close together. Barl may or may not have heard
her.
“What it all shapes up to is that one
human being has recognized an Esket crew
member, not only alive long after they were supposed to be dead but
five or six million cables from the place where they supposedly
died. We don’t know how certain this human being was of the
identification; certain enough to call Kabremm’s name aloud,
perhaps not certain enough to spread the word among other humans
without further checking. I gather they don’t like looking silly
any more than we do. We don’t know whether Barlennan knows of the
slip; worst of all, we can’t tell what he’s likely to answer when
questions about it come his way. His safest and most probable line
would be complete ignorance seasoned with shocked amazement, and I
suppose he’ll realize that, but I certainly wish I could talk to
him without having human beings along the corridor.”
“Wouldn’t your best line be ignorance
too?” queried the sailor.
“It would be,” the captain answered,
“but I can’t get away with it. I’ve already told the humans your
party was back, and I couldn’t convince them that nothing at all
had happened on your trip. I’d like to make Mrs. Hoffman believe
she made a mistake in identity and that you had met Reffel or
Kervenser; but until we find at least one of them even that would
be hard to organize. How did she recognize Kabremm? How does she
recognize any of us? Color pattern and habitual leg stance, as
you’d expect? Or what?
“And furthermore, what did become of
that pair? I suppose Reffel came on the Gwelf unexpectedly, and had to shutter his set to keep
the humans from seeing it; in that case we should be back in touch
before long. I wish he looked more like Kabremm. I might take a
chance on claiming that it was Ref she’d seen. After all, the light
was pretty bad, even for those seeing machines, as I picture the
situation, only I don’t know what Barl is going to do. I don’t even
know whether he heard her or not. That’s the sort of thing that’s
been worrying me ever since this Esket trick
was started; with all our long-distance communication going through
the human station, coordination was bound to be difficult. If
something like this happened, as it was always likely to, before we
got our own communication systems developed and working, we wind up
on a raft with no center-boards and breakers downwind.” He paused
and thought briefly. “Did Kabremm make any arrangements with your
group about further communication when we got the talking-box out
of the way?”
“Not that I know of, sir. Your orders
to break up and go different ways came before much was
said.”
“All right. You carry on, and I’ll
think of something.”
“All that ever worried me,” replied the
sailor as he resumed chipping at the ice, “was what would happen
when they did learn about what we were
doing. I keep telling myself they wouldn’t really abandon us here;
they don’t seem to be quite that firm, even on business deals; but
they could as long as we don’t have space
craft of our own.”
“It was something like that fear which
caused the commander to start the whole project, as you know,”
returned Dondragmer. “They seem to be well-intentioned beings, as
dependable as their life-spans allow; personally I’d trust them as
far as I would anyone. Still, they are
different, and one is never quite sure what they will consider an
adequate motive or excuse for some strange action. That’s why
Barlennan wanted to get us self-supporting on this world as soon as
possible and without their knowledge; some of them might have
preferred to keep us dependent on them.”
“I know.”
“The mines were a long step, and the
dirigibles were a triumph, but we’re a long, long way from being
able to make do without the human energy-boxes; and I sometimes
wonder if the commander realizes just how far beyond us those
things really are.
“But this talk isn’t solving problems.
I have to talk to the humans again. I hope that not mentioning
Kabremm at all won’t make them suspicious; at least it would be
consistent with the mistaken-identity line, if we have to use it.
Carry on, and give me a wave on the bridge when the main lock is
clear.”
The sailor gestured
understanding-and-compliance, and Dondragmer at last got to the
bridge.
There was plenty to say to the human
beings without mentioning Kabremm, and the captain began saying it
as soon as he had doffed his air suit.
“At least one of the helmsmen was under
the hull for a while, and probably they both were, but I couldn’t
find any trace of either one just now except work they had done
trying to get out; at least, I can’t see any other reason for the
work; it certainly wasn’t an assigned job. They wrecked, or nearly
wrecked, two of the trucks in the process. Much of the space under
there is still frozen up, and I’m afraid they’re probably in the
ice. We’ll search more carefully, with lights, when the crew comes
back and I can spare the men. The water, or whatever it was, that
was boiled away by our heater made an ice layer on the hull which
has sealed the main lock; we must get that back into service as
quickly as possible. There is much equipment which can’t now be
moved out if we have to abandon the Kwembly,
and much which can’t be moved back inside if we don’t, because it
won’t go through any other lock.
“Also, the use of that heater caused
the melting of about a body length of the radiator wire, and I
don’t see how we are going to restore the refrigerator to service
if we do get the Kwembly free. This may not
be of immediate importance, but if we do get back into service we’d
have to think twice about going very far into Low Alpha without
refrigeration. One of the few things you
people seem really sure of is that the low-pressure area is caused
by high temperature, presumably from internal heat, and I know you
set a very high priority on finding out about it. There is
virtually no metal in the ship, and one of the few things I
understand about that refrigerator is that its outside radiator
must be an electrical conductor. Right?”
The captain waited for his reply with
some interest. He hoped that the technical problem would divert
human interest from the whole question of Kabremm and the
Esket; but he knew that this would not have
worked if he himself were on the other end of the conversation. Of
course, Benj Hoffman was young; but he was probably not the only
person there.
Benj answered; he didn’t seem much
interested in technology.
“If you think they’re in the ice,
shouldn’t people get down there right away and look? They might
still be alive in those suits, mightn’t they? You said a while ago
that no one had ever found out, but that at least they wouldn’t
suffocate. It seems to me that the longer you put off finding them,
the less chance they have of living. Isn’t that the most important
problem right now?”
Easy’s voice broke in before Dondragmer
could frame an answer; she seemed to be talking to her son as well
as to the captain.
“It’s not quite the most important. The
Kwembly is synonymous with the lives of its
entire crew, Benj. The captain is not being callous about his men.
I know how you feel about your friend and it’s perfectly proper;
but a person with responsibility has to think as well as
feel.”
“I thought you were on my
side.”
“I feel with you very strongly; but
that doesn’t keep me from knowing the captain is
right.”
“I suppose Barlennan would react the
same way. Have you asked him what Dondragmer should
do?”
“I haven’t asked him, but he knows the
situation; if you don’t think so, there’s the microphone; give your
side of it to him. Personally I don’t think he’d dream of
overriding Dondragmer or any other cruiser captain in such a
matter, when he himself isn’t on the scene.” There was a pause
while Benj hunted for words to refute this claim; he was still
young enough to think that there was something fundamentally
inhuman about thinking more than one step ahead at a time. After
ten seconds or so of silence, Dondragmer assumed that the station
transmission was over and a reply was in order.
“Mrs. Hoffman, I believe I recognized
her voice, is quite right, Benj. I have not forgotten
Beetchermarlf, any more than you have forgotten Takoorch, although
it is obvious even to me that you are thinking less of him. It is
simply that I have more lives to consider than theirs. I’m afraid
I’ll have to leave any more discussion of it to her, right now.
Would you please get some of your engineers thinking about the
problem of my refrigerator? And you probably see Borndender
climbing the hull with his sample; the report about the stream
should come up in a few minutes. If Mr. McDevitt is still there,
please have
him stand by; if he has left for any reason, will you please have
him come back?”
The watchers had seen a climbing
Mesklinite as the captain had said, though not even Easy had
recognized Bomdender. Before Benj could say anything, McDevitt
answered, “I’m still here, Captain. We’ll wait, and as soon as the
analysis is here I’ll take it to the computer. If Borndender has
any temperature and pressure readings to send along with his
chemical information, they will be useful.”
Benj was still unhappy, but even he
could see that this was not the time for further interruption.
Besides, his father had just entered the communication room,
accompanied by Aucoin and Mersereau. Benj tactfully slid out of the
seat in front of the bridge screen to make room for the planner,
though he was too angry and upset to hope that his badly chosen
words of the last few minutes would go unmentioned. He was not even
relieved when Easy, in bringing the newcomers up to date, left the
question of the missing helmsmen unmentioned.
Her account was interrupted by
Dondragmer’s voice. “Bomdender says that he has checked the density
and boiling temperature of the liquid in the stream: it is about
three eighths ammonia and five eighths water. He also says that the
outside temperature is 71, the pressure 26.6 standard atmospheres,
our standard, of course, and the wind a little north of west, 21
degrees to be more precise, at 120 cables per hour. A very light
breeze. Will that suffice for your computer?”
“It will all help. I’m on my way,”
replied McDevitt as he slid from his seat and headed toward the
door. As he reached the exit he looked back thoughtfully, paused,
and called, “Benj, I hate to pull you from the screens right now,
but I think you’d better come with me for a while. You can check me
on the input, then you can bring the preliminary run back to report
to Dondragmer while I do the recheck.”
Easy kept her approval to herself as
Benj silently followed his superior. The approval was divided
between McDevitt, for turning the youngster’s attention in a safer
direction, and her son for showing more self-control than she had
really expected.
Aucoin paid no attention to the
exchange; he was still trying to clarify his picture of the current
state of affairs.
“I take it that none of the missing
personnel have turned up,” he said. “All right, I’ve been thinking
it over. I assume that Barlennan has been brought up to date, as we
agreed a few hours ago. Is there anything else which has happened,
which he has been told about but I haven’t?” Easy looked up
quickly, trying to catch evidence of resentment on the
administrator’s face, but he seemed unaware that his words could
possibly be interpreted as criticism. She thought quickly before
answering.
“Yes. Roughly three hours ago,
Cavanaugh reported action on one of the Esket screens. He saw a couple of objects sliding or
rolling across the floor of
the laboratory from one side of the screen to the other. I started
watching, but nothing has happened there since.
“Then an hour or so later, the search
party Don had out for the missing helicopters met a Mesklinite
which we of course assumed at first to be one of the pilots; when
he got close to the transmitter I recognized Kabremm, the first
officer of the Esket.”
“Six thousand miles from where the
Esket’s crew is supposed to have
died?”
“Yes.”
“You told this to
Barlennan?”
“Yes.”
“What was his comment?”
“Nothing specific. He acknowledged the
whole report, but didn’t offer any theories.”
“He didn’t even ask you how sure you
were of the identification? Or on what you based it?”
“No.”
“Well, if you don’t mind I’d like to.
Just how did you know this Kabremm, and how certain are you that
you were right?”
“I knew him, before the loss of the
Esket, well enough to make it difficult to
say what I went by; he’s simply distinctive, in color pattern,
stance and walk, just as you and Ib and Boyd are.”
“The light was good enough for color
pattern? It’s night down there.”
“There were lights near the set, though
most of them were in front of it, in the field of view, and Kabremm
was mostly backlighted.”
“Do you know the two missing men well
enough to be certain it was neither of them; do you know that
neither one looks much like Kabremm?”
Easy flushed. “It certainly wasn’t
Kervenser, Don’s officer. I’m afraid I don’t know Reffel well
enough be sure; that possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I just saw
the man, and called out his name pretty much by reflex. After that
I couldn’t do much but make a report. The Settlement microphone was
alive at the time, and Barlennan or whoever was on duty could
hardly have helped hearing me.”
“Then there is a reasonable chance that
Barlennan’s lack of comment was a polite attempt to avoid
embarrassing you, to gloss over what may have seemed to him a silly
mistake?”
“I suppose it’s possible.” Easy could
not make herself sound anything but doubtful, but even she knew
that her opinion was unlikely to be objective.
“Then I think,” Aucoin said slowly and
thoughtfully, “that I’d better talk to Barlennan myself. You say
nothing more has happened at the Esket since
Cavanaugh saw those objects rolling?”
“I haven’t seen anything. The bridge
set, of course, is looking out into darkness, but the other three
are lighted perfectly well and have shown no change except that
one.”
“All right. Barlennan knows our
language well enough, in my experience, so that I won’t need you to
translate.”
“Oh, no; he’ll understand you. You mean
you’d rather I left?”
“No, no, certainly not. In fact, it
would be better if you listened and warned me if you thought there
might be any misunderstanding developing.” Aucoin reached for the
Settlement microphone switch, but glanced once more at Easy before
closing it. “You don’t mind, do you, if I make sure of Barlennan’s
opinion about your identification of Kabremm? I think our main
problem is what to do about the Kwembly, but
I’d like to settle that point too. After you have brought the
matter up with him, I’d hate Barlennan to get the idea that we were
trying to, well, censor anything, to phrase it the way Ib did at
the meeting.” He turned away and sent his call toward
Dhrawn.
Barlennan was in the communicator
chamber at the Settlement, so no time was lost reaching him. Aucoin
identified himself, once he was sure the commander was at the other
end, and began his speech.
Easy, Ib, and Boyd found it annoyingly
repetitious, but they had to admire the skill with which the
planner emphasized his own ideas. Essentially, he was trying to
forestall any suggestion that another vehicle be sent to the rescue
of the Kwembly, without suggesting such a
thing himself. It was a very difficult piece of language
manipulation, even though the matter had been uppermost in Aucoin’s
mind ever since the conference, so that while it was anything but
an impromptu speech, it certainly had merit as a work of art, as Ib
remarked later. He did mention Easy’s identification of Kabremm to
the commander, but so fleetingly that she almost failed to
recognize the item. He didn’t actually say that she must have been
mistaken, but he was obviously attaching no importance to the
incident.
It was a pity, as Easy remarked later,
that such polished eloquence was so completely wasted. Of course
Aucoin had no more way of knowing than did the other human beings
that the identification of Kabremm was Barlennan’s main current
worry, that for two hours he had been concerned with nothing else.
Faced with the imminent collapse of his complex scheme and, as he
suddenly realized with embarrassment, having no ready alternative,
he had employed those hours in furious and cogent thought. By the
time Aucoin had called, Barlennan had the first steps of another
plan. He was waiting so eagerly for a chance to put it into
operation that he paid little attention to the planner’s
beautifully selected words. When a pause came, Barlennan had his
own speech ready, though it had remarkably little to do with what
had just been said.
The pause had not actually been meant
as time for an answer; Aucoin had taken a moment to review mentally
what he had covered and what should come next. Mersereau, however,
caught him as he was about to resume talking.
“That break was long enough to let
Barlennan assume you had finished and wanted an answer,” he said.
“Better wait. He’ll probably have started talking before whatever
you were just going to say gets down there.” The administrator
obediently waited; a convention was, after all, a convention. He
was prepared to be sarcastic if Mersereau were wrong, but the
Mesklinite commander’s voice came through on the scheduled
second—closer to it than they would have been willing to bet, Ib
and Easy thought later.
“I’ve been thinking deeply ever since
Mrs. Hoffman told me about Kabremm,” he said, “and I’ve been able
to come up with only one theory. As you know, we’ve always had to
carry in mind the possibility that there was an intelligent species
here on Dhrawn. Your scientists were certain there was highly
organized life even before the landing, because of the oxygen-rich
air, they said. I know we haven’t run into anything but simple
plants and practically microscopic animals, but the Esket had ventured farther into Low Alpha than any of
the other cruisers, and conditions are different there; certainly
the temperature is higher, and we don’t know how that may change
other factors.
“Until now, the chance that the
Esket had met intelligent opposition was
only one possibility, with no more to support it than any other
idea we could dream up. However, as your own people have pointed
out repeatedly, none of her crew could have lived this long without
the cruiser’s support system or something like it. They certainly
couldn’t have travelled from where the Esket
still is, as far as we can tell, to Dondragmer’s neighborhood. It
seems to me that Kabremm’s presence there is convincing evidence
that Destigmet’s crew has encountered and been captured by natives
of Dhrawn. I don’t know why Kabremm was free enough to meet that
search party; maybe he escaped, but it’s hard to see how he would
have dared to try under the circumstances. More likely they sent
him deliberately to make contact. I wish very much that you’d pass
this idea along to Dondragmer for his opinion, and have him find
out what he can from Kabremm, if he is still
available. You haven’t told me whether he was still with the search
party or not. Will you do that?”
Several pieces fell into place in Ib
Hoffman’s mental jigsaw puzzle. His silent applause went unnoticed,
even by Easy.