Complete Short Fiction, page 131
“You all heard what I told Swift’s man, about the machine which was stranded somewhere here with some of my people in it. If it is not found and fixed shortly, those people will die. You know as well as I that rescue of people in danger is of more importance than almost anything else; and for that reason, we are going to drop all other activities, except those needed actually to stay alive, while we look for that ship.
“I will give you a description, as completely as possible, of the place where they are. We’ll check all our maps for similarity—I’ll help you there; I can do it faster—and then you’ll go out in pairs to check all likely spots. If we don’t find them, mapping will proceed as rapidly as possible, to the exclusion of all other scientific activities.
“For the rest of today, Betsey and Nick will take care of camp and herd; search teams will be Oliver and Dorothy, John and Nancy, and Jim and Jane. I will assign an area to each of the teams as soon as the maps have been checked; in the meantime, you might all be gathering firewood for tonight.” The group scattered obediently.
The geologists in the Vindemiatrix had for some time been matching, or trying to match, Easy’s not too complete description of the bathyscaphe’s environs; they had come up with four or five possible locations, none of which made them really happy. However, when a sixth possibility was finally settled on, Raeker called the exploring teams back to the robot and assigned two of the hopeful areas to each team. These were all in the general direction of the old village, naturally, since the mapping had gone on radially from that point in the two or three years the cartography project had been going. They were all on the nearer side of that region, however, since the men who had done the matching had been influenced by the realization that the ’scaphe must have drifted seaward on the night that it moved. It seemed likely, therefore, that a day to go, a day to explore, and a day to return would suffice for this step of the plan. By that time, Swift might be back with his people, and the rate of search could be stepped up. That was why Nick had been kept behind at the camp site; he might be needed as an interpreter.
The instructions were heard, the villagers’ own maps were checked, weapons were examined, and the parties set out. Nick and Betsey, standing beside the robot, watched them go; and far away, Raeker finally left the observing room to get some sleep. The diplomats stayed awake, chatting with their children as the latter described the animals which came into sight from time to time. In this relatively dull fashion the rest of the ship’s day, a night, and part of another day were spent, while the search teams plodded sturdily toward their assigned areas.
This was the twenty-seventh ships’ day since the accident to the bathyscaphe, the afternoon of the seventh day as far as Nick and his people were concerned. The children were understandably impatient; both fathers had to explain again and again how small were their chances of being found at the very beginning of the search. For this day, at least, human and Drommian were in remarkably close accord. In spite of this unity of effort, however, the children tended to spend more and more time at the windows as the day drew on, and from time to time even Easy brought up the subject of using the spotlights to guide the searchers who should be approaching. Her father kept reminding her that Raeker had advised against it; but eventually Raeker withdrew his objection.
“It’ll make the kid feel more part of the operation,” he said in an aside to Rich, “and I can’t see that there’s much, if any, more chance of Swift’s sighting them than of our own people’s doing it at the moment. Let her play with the lights.”
Easy happily made full use of the permission, and the bathyscaphe blazed far brighter than daylight—since daylight was utter darkness to human eyes, at Tenebra’s surface. Rich was not too happy about the permission; it seemed to him encouraging the youngster in her unreasonable hope of an early rescue, and he feared the effects of disappointment.
“Listen to them,” he growled. “Yelling to each other every time something moves within half a mile. If they could see any farther it would be still worse—thank goodness they are using their eyes instead of the photocells of the robot. That’ll last until they get sleepy; then they’ll start again when they wake up—”
“They should be under water by then,” pointed out Raeker mildly.
“And drifting again, I suppose. That’s when everything will go to pieces at once, and we ll have a couple of screaming kids who’ll probably start hitting switches right and left in the hope some miracle will bring them home.”
“I don’t know about the Drommian, but I think you do your daughter a serious injustice,” replied Raeker. “I’ve never known much about kids, but she strikes me as something pretty remarkable for her age. Even if you can’t trust her, you’d better not let her know it.”
“I realize that, and no one trusts her more than I do,” was the weary answer. “Still, she is only a kid, and a lot of adults would have cracked before now. I can name one who’s on the edge of it. Listen to them, down there.”
Aminadorneldo’s piercing tones were echoing from the speaker.
“There’s something on this side, Easy! Come and see this one.”
“All right, ’Mina. Just a minute.” Easy’s small form could be seen for an instant on the screen, passing through the control room from one side of the ship to the other, calling as she went, “It’s probably another of those plant-eating things that are about as big as Nick’s people. Remember, the ones we want stand up on end.”
“This one does. Look!”
“Where?” Aminadorneldo must have been pointing; there was a moment of silence; then the girl’s voice, “I still don’t see anything; just a lot of bushes.”
“It looked just like Nick. It stood beside that bush for a moment and looked at us, and then went away. I saw it.”
“Well, if you were right, it’ll come back. We’ll stand here and watch for it.”
Rich looked at Raeker and shook his head dismally.
“That’ll—” he began, but got no farther. His sentence was interrupted by a sudden shriek from the speaker, so shrill that for a moment neither of them could tell who had uttered it.
VIII
John and Nancy made steady progress into the west. Their journey so far had not been particularly difficult, though most of it had been made over ground not yet surveyed. They had fought with floaters and other carnivores a reasonable number of times, eaten the fruits of their victories when they felt hungry enough, and talked more or less incessantly. The talk was mostly speculation; they had learned more about the nature of their teacher in the last few days than in the preceding sixteen years, but what they had learned seemed only to give rise to more questions. They were young enough to be surprised at this; hence the steady conversation, which was interrupted only by their reaching a region which seemed to match part of their map.
“We must have kept our direction pretty well,” Nancy said after comparing the hills around them to those indicated on the sheet. “We were trying to hit, the mapped region about here,” she pointed, “and seem to be only a dozen miles to the north. Oliver mapped this place; it hasn’t changed enough to be really doubtful. We can head south, and be sure of ourselves in a few more miles.”
“All right,” agreed John. “You know, even if we are still a good many miles from either of our search areas, it wouldn’t actually hurt to keep our eyes open for the machine.”
Nancy sent the ripple that passed for a shrug flickering down her scales. “It’s hardly worth making a special effort. We’ll be able to see it miles away, if it’s as bright as Fagin said. I think we’d better concentrate on the map, just now, until we’re sure we’re where we’re supposed to be.”
“Fagin would have had something to say about that sentence,” muttered John, “but I suppose you’re right. Let’s get on.”
Two miles, twenty-five minutes, one brief fight and one longish quake later they were in a position to feel sure of themselves. Uniform as the solution molded surface of Tenebra was, and rapid as its changes were, the present region matched the maps too closely to be coincidence. They spent a few minutes deciding whether it would be better to start gathering firewood for the night which was not too many hours away or move closer to their first search area so as to waste less time in the morning, settled on the second alternative, and went on.
Nightfall was even closer when they stopped simultaneously. Neither needed to speak, since it was quite evident to both that they had seen the same thing. Far to the south and somewhat to the west a light was shining.
For several seconds they stood looking at it. What they could see was not particuarly brilliant—it was just enough to be noticeable; but light other than daylight on Tenebra can be explained only in a certain very few ways. So, at least, Fagin’s students supposed.
After a moment’s staring, they got out the maps once more and tried to judge where the source of the light might be. This was difficult, however, because it was next to impossible to estimate the distance. The source itself was not directly visible, just the glow which fires, spotlights, and Altair itself produced in Tenebra’s soupy envelope. The direction was plain enough, but it seemed likely that the actual source was either outside mapped territory altogether or in the poorly covered region Nick had done during the trip which had discovered the cave village. It seemed equally likely that they could not possibly reach the place before rainfall, but after the briefest of discussions they agreed to start out.
The going was normal at first, but gradually got rougher. This agreed with what they remembered of Nick’s report on his trip. They also recalled his mention of a life form which lived in holes and was dangerous to passers-by, but they encountered no sign of it just then. The light kept getting brighter, which was encouraging, but for several hours they failed to get any better idea of what was making it.
Then they began to get an impression that it was coming from a point above their level, and after another half hour they were both quite sure of this. The fact was hard to understand; Fagin had said that the bathyscaphe couldn’t fly because it was broken, and there had been no mention of a hill—at least, not of anything unusual in that respect—in the description of the machine’s environment. As a matter of fact, they recalled, it had been stated to lie at the foot of a hill.
Then John remembered Nick’s tale of a remarkably high hill in the region, and the two got out their maps once more. It seemed possible though far from certain, after careful checking, that the light was on the hill; but if that were the case it seemed to dispose of any remaining chance that they had found the bathyscaphe. Since the only other possibility they could envision was that Swift’s people were there with a fire, a slight problem developed.
It would be raining before long, and travel without torches would be impossible. If the area ahead were actually a camp of Swift’s cave dwellers, approaching it with torches would be simply asking for capture. Of course, the chief might have accepted Fagin’s offer, so that they would technically be allies; but from what John and Nancy knew of Swift they didn’t want to take the chance. From one point of view, there was no reason to approach at all, since they were searching for the bathyscaphe rather than scouting the cave men; but this phase of the matter didn’t occur to either of them. If it had, they would probably have insisted that they weren’t sure the light wasn’t from the crippled machine. Anyway, they kept trying to plan a method of approach to the light.
It was Nancy who finally worked it out. John didn’t like the plan and didn’t trust it. Nancy pointed out truthfully that she knew more physics than he did, and even if he didn’t know what she was talking about he ought to take her word for it. He replied, equally truthfully, that he might be a mathematician rather than a chemist but even he knew enough about rain not to accept ideas like hers uncritically. Nancy finally won her point by the simple process of starting toward the light alone, giving John the choice of coming or staying behind. He came.
Raeker would have liked to hear that argument. He had named the little creatures who had emerged from the stolen eggs quite arbitrarily, and still had no idea of the actual gender of any of them. Nancy’s display of a human-feminine characteristic would have been fascinating if not very conclusive.
John watched the sky uneasily as they strode onward. Inwardly he knew perfectly well that the rain was not due for a while yet; but the mere fact of Nancy’s defiance of the phenomenon made him abnormally conscious of it. By the time the first drops actually appeared far above, they were close enough to the light to see that something lay between them and the actual source—it was shining from behind a barrier of some sort, presumably a hill.
“Should we go over, or around?” John asked, when this fact became evident. “If we go up, we’ll mn into the rain sooner.”
“That’s a good reason for doing it,” retorted Nancy. “If it is the cave people, they won’t be expecting us from that direction, and you’ll see all the sooner that I’m right. Besides, I’ve never been up a really high hill, and Nick said this one was two or three hundred feet tall—remember?”
“I remember, but I’m not as sure as you seem to be L at this is the hill he was talking about.”
“Look at your map!”
“All right, I know we’re close to it, but his notes were pretty rough; you know that as well as I do. There never was time to make a decent map of the country he covered, after he got back. We’ve been fighting or moving practically ever since.”
“All right, you needn’t make a thesis out of it. Come on.” She led the way without waiting for an answer.
For some time there was no appreciable rise in the general ground level, though the number of ordinary hillocks remained about as usual. The first implication that Nancy might be right about the nature of the hill was a change in the nature of the ground underfoot. Instead of the usual feldspar-rich granitic rock, heavily pitted with solution cavities, a darker, much smoother material became predominant. Neither of them had ever seen fresh lava, since Nick had brought back no specimens, and it took time for their feet to get used to it.
The rain was getting very close to the surface now. There was no difficulty in dodging drops, since there was more light coming from ahead than Altair gave at high noon; the trouble was that Nancy was not bothering to dodge them. Theoretically she was right enough; they were still cloudy with oxygen bubbles, and her body heat turned them into perfectly breathable air, but it took a while for John to follow her example. Habits are as hard to break for Tenebrans as for human beings.
Gradually the slope of the dark rock began to increase. They were on a hill, and the light was close ahead, now. Rocks were silhouetted sharply against it, not more than a mile in front. Nancy stopped, not because of the rain but to take a final look around; and it was then that they both noticed something else.
In the first place, the raindrops were not falling straight; they were drifting horizontally as they descended, drifting in the same direction as the two were traveling. That was reasonable when one stopped to think; they had known about convection and advection currents almost as long as they could remember. It was the speed that was remarkable; the drops were heading toward the fire at a good two miles an hour. The air current that impelled them could actually be felt—and that was a major hurricane, for Tenebra. If the thing ahead was a fire, it was a bigger fire than Fagin’s pupil’s had ever lighted or ever seen.
“If Swift lighted that, he must have touched off a whole map section,” remarked John. Nancy turned to him abruptly.
“Johnny! Remember what happened last night, when Nick got the teacher away from the caves! He did light fires over a good part of a section! Do you suppose they could still be burning, and have spread like this?”
“I don’t know.” John stood still and thought for a moment or two. Then he referred to the map, easily legible in the brilliant light. “I don’t see how it could be,” he said at length. “We’re a lot closer to the caves than we were this morning, but not that close. Besides, the clear rain late at night should have put any fire out if there was no one to tend it.”
“But if it were big enough, maybe it would stir up the air so there was always enough oxygen for it—feel this wind on our backs. Have you ever known anything like it?”
“No. Maybe you’re right. We can go on and see, though; I still think it’s more likely to be Swift. Are you still going to try that idea of yours?”
“Of course. It’s all the better, with the wind carrying the drops as fast as this.”
“I hope you’re as right as you are reasonable.” The two went on, somewhat more slowly since it was necessary to follow a rather tortuous path to keep their goal in sight among the drops. These were now reaching the surface in great numbers and remaining liquid, except for those parts most closely exposed to the body heat of the two travelers. It took a little longer than might have been expected, therefore, to get within two hundred yards of the rocks ahead, which from the absence of anything but light beyond them appeared to mark the top of the hill. At this point, Nancy decided that stealth was in order; so she brought the scary part of her plan into operation.
Finding an exceptionally large and still cloudy raindrop drifting downward at no great distance, she deliberately placed herself so as to be enveloped by it as it landed. Naturally, the bottom portion of the fifty-foot spheroid was obliterated at once by her body heat; but further descent of the drop finally hid her from view. The great, foggy blot of liquid began to follow the general pattern of activity of the others, moving slowly toward the light; and Nancy did her best to follow. This was not as easy as it might have been, even though the gas around her was perfectly breathable, since with no view of her surroundings it was nearly impossible to judge the rate of drift of the raindrop. The wind was some help, but not enough, and several times John could see her outline as she came too close to the edge of the volume of fog. He stayed where he was, not considering it cowardly to see how the experiment turned out before he tried it himself.
