Barlennan was quite pleased with his
speech. He had not told a single falsehood; the worst he could be
accused of was fuzzy thinking. Unless some humans were already
actively suspicious, there would be no reason for them not to pass
on the “theory” to the Kwembly’s captain,
thus telling him the line that Barlennan proposed to follow.
Dondragmer could be trusted to play up properly, especially if the
hint that Kabremm might not be available for further questioning
were transmitted to him. It was too bad, in a way, to spring the
“native menace” so long before he had meant to; it would have been
much nicer to let the human beings invent it for themselves, but
any plan which couldn’t be modified to suit new circumstances was a
poor plan, Barlennan told himself.
Aucoin was taken very much aback. He
had personally had no doubt whatever that Easy was mistaken, since
he had long ago written the Esket completely
off, in his own mind, and Batlennan’s taking her opinion seriously
had been a bad jolt. The administrator knew that Easy was by far
the best qualified person in the station to make such a
recognition; he had not, however, expected the Mesklinites
themselves to be aware of this. He blamed himself for not paying
much more attention to the casual conversation between human
observers (especially Easy) and the Mesklinites over the past few
months. He had let himself get out of touch, a cardinal
administrative sin.
He could see no reason for denying
Barlennan’s request, however. He glanced at the others. Easy and
Mersereau were looking expectantly at him; the woman had her hand
on the microphone selector in her chair arm as though about to call
Dondragmer. Her husband had a half-smile on his face which puzzled
Aucoin slightly for a moment, but as their eyes met Hoffman nodded
as though he had been analyzing the Mesklinite’s theory and found
it reasonable. The planner hesitated a moment longer, then spoke
into his microphone.
“We’ll do that right away, Commander.”
He nodded to Easy, who promptly changed her selector switch and
began talking. Benj returned just as she started, obviously
bursting with information, but he restrained himself when he saw
that a conversation with the Kwembly was
already in progress. His father watched
the boy as Easy relayed the Barlennan theory, and had some
difficulty in concealing his amusement. It was so obvious that Benj
was swallowing the idea whole. Well, he was young, and several of
his elders seemed a bit uncritical too.
“Barlennan wants your thoughts on this
possibility, and especially any more information you may have
obtained from Kabremm,” concluded Easy. “That’s all—no, wait.” Benj
had caught her attention. “My son has come back from the aerology
lab, and seems to have something for you.”
“Mr. McDevitt has made one run with the
new measures added to the earlier data and is making a second now,”
Benj said without preamble. “According to the first, he was right
about the reason for the melting and freezing of your lake, and the
nature of the clouds which Stakendee has encountered. The chances
are better than even that condensation from these will increase,
and make the stream near you bigger. He suggests that you check
very carefully, as he mentioned before, the time the clouds reach
the Kwembly. As he guessed, they are
evaporating from adiabatic heating as the air carrying them comes
down the ground slope. He says that the later they are in getting
to you, the worse the flood will be when it does. I don’t see why
myself, but that’s what the computer implies. He said to be sure to
remind you that this was just another tentative calculation, just
as likely to be wrong as any of the earlier ones. He went into a
long speech about all the reasons he couldn’t be sure, but you’ve
heard it already.”
Dondragmer’s answer commenced almost on
the light-echo; he could not have spent more than a second or two
after the end of Benj’s report in deciding what to
say.
“Very well, Benj. Please tell Barlennan
that his idea sounds reasonable, and at least fits in with the
disappearance of my two fliers. I have had no opportunity to get
information from Kabremm, if it really was he; I haven’t seen him.
He hasn’t come back to the Kwembly. You
could tell better than I whether he’s still with Stakendee and
those who went upstream. I will take precautions on the assumption
that the commander is right. If the idea had occurred to me
earlier, I certainly would not have sent out practically my entire
crew to set up the safety base at the side of the
valley.
“However, it may be just as well I did.
I see no possibility of freeing the cruiser in any reasonable time,
and if Mr. McDevitt is even moderately sure that another flood is
on the way we’ll have to finish moving out shortly. If a current
anything like the one that brought us here hits the Kwembly while she’s fastened down like this, there’ll be
pieces of hull scattered for a million cables downstream. When my
men come back we’ll take one more load of necessary equipment and
abandon the ship for the time being. We’ll set up on the valley
rim, and as soon as life-support equipment is running adequately
there I’ll start sending crews back here to work on freeing the
Kwembly, provided the flood isn’t obviously
on the way. That’s a firm basic plan; I’ll work out details for
covering the work crews with your assistance, and if Barlennan’s
theory calls for special action I’ll take it, but I haven’t time to
argue the basic decision. I can see moving lights to the north; I
assume it’s my crew on the way back. I’ll turn the set so that you
can see them.”
The view on the screen wavered, then
panned jerkily as the captain nudged the transmitter box through a
third of a circle. The result was no improvement, from the human
viewpoint; the lighted region around the Kwembly where details could not only be seen but
compared and interpreted, was replaced by almost total darkness
relieved by a few specks of light. It took close, careful watching
to confirm Dondragmer’s claim that they were moving. Easy was about
to ask that the lens be returned to its former position when Benj
began talking.
“You mean you’ve given up all hope of
finding Beetchermarlf and Takoorch and the others, and are just
going off and leaving them there? I know you have nearly a hundred
other people to worry about, but there are times when that seems a
pretty thin excuse for not even trying to rescue
someone!”
Easy was startled and rather dismayed
at her son’s choice of words, and almost cut in with a combined
rebuke to the boy and apology to Dondragmer. She hesitated,
however, in the effort to find words which would do this without
doing violence to her own feelings; these bore a strong resemblance
to Benj’s. Aucoin and Mersereau had not followed the exchange at
all closely, since both were concentrating on Barlennan on the
other screen and Benj had uttered his tirade in Stennish. Ib
Hoffman showed no expression which the casual observer could have
translated, though Easy might have detected traces of amusement if
she had been looking at him. McDevitt had just come in, but was too
late to catch anything except Easy’s facial
expression.
The pause went overtime, so they waited
for Dondragmer’s answer. This revealed no annoyance in tone or
choice of words; Easy wished she could see him to judge his body
attitude.
“I haven’t given them up, Benj. The
equipment we plan to take includes as many power units as possible,
which means that men will have to go under the hull with lights to
get as many of them as they can from the unfrozen trucks. Those men
will also have orders to search the ice walls carefully for traces
of the helmsmen. If they are found, men will be assigned to chip
them out, and I will leave those men on the job until the last
possible instant. However, I can’t justify putting the entire crew
to work breaking ice until there is nothing else to be done to get
the cruiser free. After all, it is perfectly possible that they
discovered what was going on before the pond froze to the bottom,
and were trapped while looking for a hole in the ice somewhere else
in the pond.”
Benj nodded, his face somewhat red;
Easy spared him the need of composing a verbal
apology.
“Thanks, Captain,” she said. “We
understand. We weren’t seriously accusing you of desertion; it was
an unfortunate choice of words. Do you suppose
you could aim the communicator back at the lighted space? We
really can’t see anything recognizable the way it’s pointed
now.”
“Also,” McDevitt cut in without
allowing a pause to develop at the end of Easy’s request, “even
though you are planning to leave the Kwembly, do you suppose you could leave a power unit on
board to run the lights, and lash the bridge communicator about
where it is so we can see the hull? That would not only let us
observe the flood if it comes, which I’m almost certain it will in
the next three to fifteen hours, but would also give us a chance to
tell you whether there was any use looking for the cruiser
afterward, and possibly even where to look
for it. I know that will leave you with only two communicators, but
it seems to me that this would be worth it.”
Again, Dondragmer appeared to make up
his mind on the spot; his answer emerged from the speaker almost
with the sixty-four-second bell.
“Yes, we’ll do it that way. I would
have had to leave light power anyway, since I wanted crews to come
back for work; and as I said, I wanted some sort of safety
communication with them. Your suggestion fits that perfectly. I’ve
turned the set back to cover the starboard side, as you no doubt
see. I must leave the bridge now; the crew will be back in a minute
or two, and I want to assign duties to them as they
arrive.”
Again, Benj began talking without
checking with anyone else.
“Captain, if you’re still in hearing
when this gets to you, will you wave or signal some way, or have
Beetch do it, if you find him alive? I won’t ask you to make a
special trip back to the bridge to give details.”
There was no answer. Presumably
Dondragmer had suited up and gone outside the moment he finished
speaking. There was nothing for the human beings to do but
wait.
Aucoin, with Easy’s assistance, had
relayed Dondragmer’s answer to the Settlement, and received
Barlennan’s acknowledgment. The commander asked that he be kept up
to date as completely as possible on Kwembly
matters, and especially on any ideas which Dondragmer might have.
Aucoin agreed, asked Easy to relay the request to the captain, and
was told that this would be done as soon as the latter
reestablished contact.
“All right,” nodded the planner. “At
least, there’s been no mention so far of sending a rescue vehicle.
We’ll leave well enough alone.”
“Personally,” retorted Easy, “I’d have
dispatched the Kalliff or the Hoorsh hours ago, when they first froze
in.”
“I know you would. I’m very thankful
that your particular brand of ethics won’t let you suggest it to
Barlennan over my objections. My only hope is that he won’t decide
to suggest it himself, because every time I’ve had both of you
really against me I’ve been talked down.” Easy looked at Aucoin,
and then at the microphone, speculatively. Her husband decided that
distraction was in order, and cut into the thickening silence with
a question.
“Alan, what do you think of that theory
of Barlennan’s?”
Aucoin frowned. He and Easy both knew
perfectly well why Ib had interrupted, but the question itself was
hard to ignore; and Easy, at least, recognized that the
interruption itself was a good idea.
“It’s a fascinating idea,” the planner
said slowly, “but I can’t say that I think it very probable. Dhrawn
is a huge planet, if it can be called a planet, and it seems funny,
well, I don’t know whether it seems funnier that we’d have met
intelligence so quickly or that only one of the cruisers has done
so. There certainly isn’t a culture using electromagnetic energy;
we’d have detected it when we first approached the place. A much
lower one, well, how could they have done what seems to have been
done to the Esket’s crew?”
“Not knowing their physical and mental
capabilities, quite aside from their cultural level, I couldn’t
even guess,” replied Hoffman. “Didn’t some of the first Indians
Columbus met wind up in Spain?”
“I think you’re stretching
resemblances, to put it mildly. There’s a practical infinity of
things which could have happened to the Esket without her running into intelligent opposition.
You know that as well as I do; you helped make up some of the
lists, until you decided it was pointless speculation. I grant that
Barlennan’s theory is a little bit more believable than it was, but
only a very little.”
“You still think I was wrong in my
identification of Kabremm, don’t you?” said Easy.
“Yes, I’m afraid I do. Furthermore, I
just don’t believe that we’ve run into another intelligent species.
Don’t compare me with the people who refused to believe that
dePerthe’s rocks were man-made tools. Some things are just
intrinsically improbable.”
Hoffman chuckled. “Human ability to
judge likelihood, you might call it statistical insight, has always
been pretty shaky,” he pointed out, “even if you skip purely
classical examples like Lois Lane. Actually, the chances don’t seem
to be that low. You know as well as I do that in the very small
volume of space within five parsecs of Sol, with only seventy-four
known stars and about two hundred sunless planets, what we have
found in the way of intelligence: twenty races at about our own
stage of development, safely past their Energy Crisis; eight,
including Tenebra and Mesklin, which haven’t met it yet; eight
which failed to pass it and are extinct; three which failed but
have some hope of recovery; every one of them, remember, within a
hundred thousand years of that key point in their history, one way
or the other! That’s in spite of the fact that the planets range in
age from Panesh’s nine billion years or so to Tenebra’s maybe a
tenth of that. There’s more than coincidence there,
Alan.”
“Maybe Panesh and Earth and the older
planets have had other cultures in the past; maybe it happens to
any world every few tens of millions of years.”
“It hasn’t happened before unless the
earlier intelligent races were so intelligent from the beginning
that they never tapped their planet’s fossil fuels. Do you think
man’s presence on Earth won’t be geologically obvious a billion
years from now, with looted coal seams and the beer bottle as an
index fossil? I can’t buy that one, Alan.”
“Maybe not, but I’m not mystical enough
to believe that some super-species is herding the races of this
part of space toward one big climax.”
“Whether you like that Demon Hypothesis
or prefer the ESFA Theory doesn’t matter. There’s certainly more
than chance involved, and therefore you can’t use the laws of
chance alone to criticize what Barlennan has suggested. You don’t
have to assume he’s right, but I strongly urge you to take him
seriously. I do.”
Dondragmer would have been interested
in hearing this discussion, just as he would have appreciated
attending the staff meeting of some hours before. However, he would
have been too busy for either, even if attendance had been
physically possible. With the return of most of his crew (some, of
course, had stayed behind to continue setting up the life-support
equipment) there was much to oversee and quite a lot to do himself.
Twenty of his men were set to helping the trio already chipping ice
from the main lock. As many more went under the hull with lights
and tools to find and secure any power units not too solidly frozen
in. The captain kept his promise to Benj, ordering this group to
check most carefully for signs of Beetchermarlf and Takoorch.
However, he emphasized the importance of examining the ice walls
closely, and as a result the group found nothing. Its members
emerged in a few minutes with the two power boxes from the trucks
which the helmsmen had used, and two more which had been freed by
the action of the heat. The rest, which according to Dondragmer’s
recollection and the laws of arithmetic must number six, were
unapproachable, even though the sailors could make a reasonably
well-founded guess as to which trucks they were on.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crew had
been entering the cruiser by the available locks: the small one at
the bridge, the larger ones through which the fliers were launched
and the pairs of one-man-at-a-time emergency traps at the sides
near bow and stern. Once inside, each crewman set about an assigned
job. Dondragmer had been thinking as well as talking to human
beings during their absence. Some packed food to last until the
life-support equipment resumed cycling normally; others readied
coils of rope, lights, power units, and other equipment for
transportation.
Many were at work improvising carrying
devices; one awkward result of the Kwembly’s
being fusion-powered was a great shortage of wheels aboard. There
were tiny pulleys carrying the control cables around corners. These
were too small for wheelbarrows or similar devices and Dondragmer
had firmly forbidden any dismantling of the vehicle. There was
nothing like a fork-lift or even a dolly aboard. Such devices, the
former muscle-powered, of course, were known and used on Mesklin
for medium-to-long-distance carrying; but there was nothing on the
Kwembly which could be moved at all which a
Mesklinite could not easily carry to any part of the vehicle
without mechanical assistance. Now, with
miles to go and the necessity of moving many items complete rather
than in pieces, improvisation was in order. Litters and travois
were making their appearance. The corridors leading to the main
lock were rapidly being stacked with supplies and equipment
awaiting the freeing of the exit.
None of the bustle and thumping,
however, penetrated the mattress where Beetchermarlf and Takoorch
still lay concealed. As nearly as could be judged later, they must
have sought this shelter within a very few minutes of the time the
resistance heater went into action. The thick, rubbery material of
the mattress itself, which had been so difficult for even a
Mesklinite-wielded knife to penetrate, blocked the sounds made by
the crackling steam-bubbles around the hot metal and the calls of
the workers who entered later. Had these last been forced to
communicate with anyone at a distance, their resonant hooting might
well have made its way even through that tough material; but there
was little for them to say even to each other; they all knew their
jobs perfectly well. The slit through which the helmsmen had found
their entrance was held tightly enough closed by the elasticity of
the fabric so that no light reached them. Finally, the Mesklinite
personality trait most nearly described as a combination of
patience and fatalism assured that neither Beetchermarlf nor his
companion was likely to check outside their refuge until the
breathing hydrogen in their suits became a serious
problem.
As a result, even if Dondragmer had
heard Benj’s appeal, there would have been nothing for him to
signal. The helmsmen, some three feet above some of their
companions and a like distance below many others, were not
found.
Not quite all the Kwembly’s crew were engaged in preparation for the move.
When the most necessary aspects of that operation had been
arranged, Dondragmer called two of his sailors for a special
detail.
“Go to the stream, head northwest and
you can’t miss it, and go upstream until you find Kabremm and the
Gwelf,” he ordered. “Tell him what we are
doing. We will set up a livable site as quickly as we can, you tell
him where; you’ve been there and I haven’t. We will set up the
human machines so they are looking into the lighted, active portion
of that area. That will make it safe for him to bring the
Gwelf down and land her anywhere outside
that area, with no risk of being seen by the human beings. Tell him
that the commander seems to be starting the native-life part of the
play early, apparently to account for Kabremm’s being seen in this
neighborhood. He’s suggested no details, and will probably stick to
the original idea of letting the human beings invent their
own.
“When you have seen Kabremm, go on
upstream until you find Stakendee, and give him the same
information. Be careful about getting into the view field of his
communicator; when you think you may be getting near him, shut off
your lights every little while and look for his. I’ll be in touch
with him through the human beings, of course, but not with
that message. You understand.”
“Yes, sir,” the two replied in unison,
and were gone.
The hours passed. The main lock was
freed and opened, and nearly all the material to be taken was
outside when a call came from above. The communicator which had
been in the laboratory was now outside, so Dondragmer could be
reached directly. Benj was still the speaker.
“Captain, Stakendee reports that the
stream he is following is getting noticeably broader and swifter,
and that the clouds are becoming rain. I’ve told him to start back,
on my own responsibility.” The captain looked up at the still
cloudless sky, then westward toward the place where Stakendee’s fog
might have shown if it had been daylight.
“Thanks, Benj. That’s what I would have
ordered. We’re leaving the Kwembly right now
before the stream gets too big to cross with the equipment. I have
lashed the communicator down to the bridge and will leave the
lights on as Mr. McDevitt requested. We’ll hope you can tell us
that it’s safe to come back, before too long. Please report this to
Barlennan, and tell him that we will watch as carefully as possible
for the natives; if, as he seems to be suggesting, they are using
Kabremm as a means of getting in touch with us, I will do my best
to set up cooperative relations with them. Remember, I haven’t seen
Kabremm myself yet, and you haven’t mentioned him since the first
time, so I’m entirely in the dark about his status so
far.
“Be sure to keep me informed of
Barlennan’s thoughts and plans, as far as you can; I’ll do the same
from here, but things may happen too quickly for any possible
advance warning. Watch your screens. That’s all for now; we’re
starting.”
The captain uttered a resonant hoot
which, fortunately for human ears, was not faithfully amplified by
the set. The Mesklinites fell into rough line, and within two
minutes were gone from the field of view of the bridge
communicator.
The other set was being borne near the
tail of the line, so the screen far above showed the string of
lights bobbing in front of it. Little else could be seen. The
nearest sailors, those within two or three yards of the lens, could
be made out in reasonable detail as they wound among the boulders
with their burdens, but that was all. The line could have been
flanked on both sides twenty feet away by a legion of natives,
without any human being the wiser. Aucoin was neither the first nor
the last to curse Dhrawn’s 1500-hour rotation period; there were
still over six hundred hours to go before the feeble daylight from
Lalande 21185 would return.
The stream was still small when the
group splashed through it, though Stakendee’s set a few miles west
had confirmed the report that it was growing. Benj, noticing this,
suggested that the small party also cross so that its members could
meet the main body on the other side of the valley. Fortunately he
made this suggestion to Dondragmer before acting on his own; the
captain, remembering the two messengers he had sent upstream,
hastily advised that the crossing be postponed as long as possible
so that Stakendee and his men could
compare more accurately the size of the stream with what it had
been when they had passed the same area earlier. Benj and Easy
accepted this excuse. Ib Hoffman, quite aware that the foot party
was carrying no time measuring devices and could give no meaningful
report on the rate of change, was startled for a few seconds. Then
he smiled, privately.
For minutes, which stretched into one
hour and then another, there was little to watch. The crew reached
and climbed the bare rock sides of the valley at the spot where the
first load of equipment had been left, and set about constructing
something which might have been called either a camp or a town.
Life-support equipment had first priority, of course. It would be
many hours yet before any air-suits would need recharging, but the
time would come. For organisms as profligate of energy as the
Mesklinites, food was also a matter of immediate concern. They set
about it quickly and efficiently; Dondragmer, like the rest of the
cruiser captains, had given plenty of advance thought to the
problem of abandoning ship.
Stakendee’s group finally crossed the
river and, somewhat later, reached the encampment. The crossing had
been approved by Dondragmer after he had received through Benj a
message which contained, quite incidentally, the name of one of the
messengers the captain had sent from the Kwembly.
Consequently no one, either member of
the Kwembly crew or human being, was able to
watch the growth of the ammonia-water stream. It would have been an
interesting sight. At first, as the witnesses had reported, it was
little more than a trickle running from hollow to hollow on the
bare rock in the higher reaches of the river bed, men winding among
the boulders lower down. As the drops of liquid in the fog
coalesced and settled out more rapidly, tiny new tributaries began
to feed into the main stream from the sides, and the stream itself
grew deeper and faster. On the bare rock it meandered more
violently, overflowing the basins which had originally contained
it. Here and there it froze temporarily, as water, supplied by the
frozen puddles upstream, and ammonia from the fog, shifted about
the eutectic, which was liquid at the local temperature: about 174
degrees on the human Kelvin scale, roughly 71 on that used by the
Mesklinite scientists.
Among the boulders, as it neared the
Kwembly, it accumulated more and more water
ice, and the progress grew more complicated. The ammonia dissolved
water for a time, the mixture flowing away as the composition
entered the liquid range. Then the stream would stop and build up,
as Benj had pictured it, like hot wax on a candle, solidifying
temporarily from addition of ammonia. Then it would slump away
again as underlying ice reacted with the mixture.
It finally reached the hole which had
been melted along the Kwembly’s starboard
side, where the human beings could watch once more. By this time
the “stream” was a complex network of alternate liquid, solid, and
slush perhaps two miles across. The solid, however, was losing out.
While there were still no clouds this far downstream, the air was
nearly saturated with ammonia: saturated,
that is, with respect to a pure liquid-ammonia surface. The
ammonia vapor pressure needed for equilibrium over an ammonia-water
mixture is lower; so condensation was taking place on the mostly
water and low-ammonia ice. As it reached the appropriate
composition for liquefaction its surface flowed away and exposed
more solid to the vapor. The liquid tended to solidify again as it
absorbed still more ammonia vapor, but its motion also gave it
access to more water ice.
The situation was a little different in
the space under the Kwembly’s hull, but not
greatly so. Where liquid touched ice the latter dissolved and slush
appeared; but more ammonia diffusing from the free surface at the
side melted it again. Slowly, slowly, minute after minute, the grip
of the ice on the huge vehicle relaxed so gently that neither the
human beings watching with fascination from above nor the two
Mesklinites waiting in their dark refuge could detect the change,
and the hull floated free.
By now the entire river bed was liquid,
with a few surviving patches of slush. Gently, very unlike the
flood of a hundred hours or so before when three million square
miles of water-snow had been touched by the first ammonia fog of
the advancing season, a current began to develop. Imperceptibly to
all concerned, the Kwembly moved with that
current: imperceptibly because there was no relative motion to
catch the eyes of the human beings, and no rocking or pitching to
be felt by the hidden Mesklinites.
The seasonal river, which drains the
great plateau where the Kwembly had been
caught, slices through a range of hills, for Dhrawn respectable
mountains; the range extends some four thousand miles
northwest-southeast. The Kwembly had gone
parallel to this range for most of its length before the flood.
Dondragmer, his helmsmen, his air scouts, and indeed most of the
crew had been quite aware of the gentle elevation to their left,
sometimes near enough to be seen from the bridge and sometimes only
a pilot’s report.
The flood had carried the cruiser
through a pass near the southeastern end of this range to the
somewhat lower and rougher regions close to the edge of Low Alpha
before she had grounded. This first flood was a rough, rather
hesitant beginning of the new season as Dhrawn approached its
feeble sun and the latitude of the sub-stellar belt shifted. The
second was the real thing, which would only end when the whole snow
plain was drained, more than an Earth year later. The Kwembly’s first motions were smooth and gentle because
she was melted free so slowly; then they were smooth and gentle
because the liquid supporting her was syrupy with suspended
crystals; finally, with the stream fully liquid and up to speed, it
was smooth because it was broad and deep. Beetchermarlf and
Takoorch may have been slightly dazed by decreasing hydrogen
pressure, but even if they had been fully alert the slight motions
of the Kwembly’s hull would have been masked
by their own shifting on the flexible surface that supported
them.
Low Alpha is not the hottest region on
Dhrawn, but the zone-melting
effects which tend to concentrate any planet’s radioactive
elements have warmed it to around the melting point of water ice in
many spots, over two hundred Kelvin degrees hotter than Lalande
21185 could manage unassisted. A human being could live with only
modest artificial protection in the area, if it were not for the
gravity and pressure. The really hot area, Low Beta, is forty
thousand miles to the north; it is Dhrawn’s major climate-control
feature.
The Kwemhly’s
drift was carrying it into regions of rising temperature, which
kept the river fluid even though it was now losing ammonia to the
air. The course of the stream was almost entirely controlled by the
topography, rather than the other way around; the river was
geologically too young to have altered the landscape greatly by its
own action. Also, much of the exposed surface of the planet in this
area was bed rock, igneous and hard, rather than a covering of
loose sediment in which a stream could have its own
way.
About three hundred miles from the
point at which she had been abandoned, the Kwembly was borne into a broad, shallow lake. She
promptly but gently ran aground on the soft mud delta where the
river fed into it. The great hull naturally deflected the currents
around it, and set them to digging a new channel alongside. After
about half an hour she tilted sideways and slid off into the new
channel, righting herself as she floated free. It was the rocking
associated with this last liberation which caught the attention of
the helmsmen and induced them to come out for a look
around.