Complete Short Fiction, page 213
“There is another good reason against landing the barge. If we use remote, live control, there is the sixty-second reaction lag, which would make handling anywhere near the ground really impossible. It would be possible to program its computer to handle a landing, but the risks of that were proved the hard way the first time anyone landed away from Earth. You might as well give the Mesklinites a quick lesson in flying the thing for themselves!”
“Don’t try to make that last sound too silly, Alan,” Easy pointed out gently. “The Kwembly is merely the first of the cruisers to get into what looks like final trouble. Dhrawn is a very big world, with very little known about it, and I suspect we’re going to run out of land-cruisers for rescue or any other purpose sooner or later. Also, even I know that the barge controls are computer-coupled, with push-the-way-you-want-to-go operators. I admit that even so, the chances are ten to one or worse that anyone trying a ground-to-ground flight with that machine on Dhrawn without previous experience would kill himself, but do Beetchermarlf and Takoorch have even that much chance of survival on any other basis?”
“I think they do,” replied Aucoin quietly.
“How, in the name of all that’s sensible?” snapped Mersereau. “Here all along we’ve—” Easy held up her hand, and either the gesture or the expression on her face caused Boyd to fall silent.
“What other procedure which you could conscientiously recommend would stand any real chance of saving either the Kwembly herself, or her two helmsmen, or the rest of Dondragmer’s crew?” she asked.
Aucoin flushed deeply, but he answered steadily enough.
“I mentioned it earlier, as Boyd remembers,” he said. “Sending the Kaliff from the Settlement to pick them up.”
The words were followed by some seconds of silence, while expressions of amusement flitted across the faces around the table. Eventually Ib Hoffman spoke.
“Do you suppose Barlennan will approve?” he asked innocently.
“It boils down to this,” Dondragmer said to Kabremm. “We can stay here and do nothing while Barlennan sends a rescue cruiser from the Settlement—I assume he can think of some reason for sending one which won’t sound too queer, after he failed to do it for the Esket.”
“That would be easy enough,” returned the Esket‘s first officer. “One of the human beings was against sending it, and the commander simply let him win the argument. This time he could be firmer.”
“As though the first time wouldn’t have made some of the other humans suspicious enough. But never mind that. If we wait, we don’t know how long it will be, since we don’t even know whether there’s a possible ground route from the Settlement to here. You came from the mines by air, and we floated part of the way.
“If we decide not to wait, we can do either of two things. One is to move by stages toward the Kwembly, carrying the life equipment as far as the suits will let us and then setting it up again to recharge them. We’d get there some time, I suppose. The other is to move the same way toward the Settlement to meet the rescue cruiser if one comes, or get there on foot if it doesn’t. I suppose we’d even get there, eventually. Even if we reach the Kwembly, there is no certainty that we can repair her; if the human beings have relayed Beetchermarlf’s feelings at all adequately, it seems rather doubtful. I don’t like either choice because of the wasted time they both involve.
There are better things to do than crawl over the surface of this world on foot.
“A better idea, to my way of thinking, is to use your dirigible either to rescue my helmsmen if it is decided to give up on the Kwembly, or to start ferrying my crew and equipment over to where she is.”
“But that—”
“But that, of course, sinks the raft as far as the Esket act is concerned. The human beings couldn’t help finding out that we had become partly independent of them, and even getting a pretty good idea how we did it. The question in my mind is whether this game is really worth the deliberate sacrifice of two lives. I admit that it’s worth risk, of course, or I wouldn’t have gone along with it in the first place.”
“So I heard,” returned Kabremm. “No one has been able to make you see the risk of being completely dependent on beings who can’t regard us as real people.”
“Quite right. They haven’t, and I doubt that anyone will. I made up my mind about human beings the time one of them answered my question about a differential hoist with a good, clear, and detailed explanation, bolstered with my first lesson in the use of mathematics in science. I know, of course, that human beings are no more all alike than we are—certainly that one who talked Bari out of sending help to the Esket must be as different as possible from Mrs. Hoffman or my old friend Charles Lackland—but I don’t and never will distrust them as a species the way you seem to. I don’t think Barlennan really does, either; he’s changed the subject more than once rather than argue the point with me, and that’s not Barlennan when he’s sure he’s right. I still think it would be a good idea to lower the sails on this act and ask directly for human help with the Kwembly, or at least take a chance on their finding out by using all three dirigibles there.”
“There aren’t three, any more.” Kabremm knew the point was irrelevant, but was rather glad of the chance to change the subject. “Karfrengin and four men have been missing in the Elsh for two of this world’s days.”
“That news hadn’t reached me, of course,” said Dondragmer. “How did the commander react to it? I should think that even he would be feeling the temptation to ask for human help, if we’re starting to lose personnel all over the map.”
“He hasn’t heard about it, either. We’ve had ground parties out searching, using trucks we salvaged from the Esket, and we didn’t want to make a report until it could be a complete one.”
“How much more complete could it be? Karfrengin and his men must be dead by now. The dirigibles don’t carry life-support gear for any two days.”
Kabremm gave the rippling equivalent of a shrug. “Take it up with Destigmet. I have my troubles.”
“Why wasn’t your flier used for the search?”
“It was, until this evening. There are other troubles at the mine, though. A sort of ice river is coming, very slowly, but it will soon cover the whole second settlement if it doesn’t stop. It’s already reached the Esket and started to tip it over; that’s why we were able to salvage the trucks so easily. Destigmet sent me to follow back up the glacier and try to find out whether it is likely to keep coming indefinitely, or was just a brief event. I really shouldn’t have come this far, but I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s this same river for the whole distance, sometimes solid and sometimes liquid along the way—it’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen yet on this weird world. There isn’t a chance of the ice’s stopping, and the Esket settlement is as good as done for.”
“And, of course, Barlennan hasn’t heard about this either.”
“There’s been no way to tell him. We only discovered the ice was moving just before dark. It was just a cliff a few dozen cables from the mine up to then.”
“In other words, we’ve lost not only my first officer and a helicopter but a dirigible with six men, and as an afterthought the whole Esket project—with my Kwembly probably on the same list. And you still think we shouldn’t end this trickery, tell the human beings the whole story, and get their help?”
“More than ever. If they learn we’re having this much trouble, they’ll probably decide we’re no more use to them and abandon us here.”
“Nonsense. No one just abandons an investment like this project—but never mind arguing; it’s a futile point anyway. I wish . . .”
“What you really wish is that you had an excuse for leaking the whole barrel to your oxygenbreathing friends.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. I’m quite ready to use my own judgment in the field, but I know enough history to be afraid of making spot-changes in basic policy.
“Thank goodness. It’s all right to like some humans, but they’re not all like the Hoffman one. You admitted that yourself.”
“What it boils down to,” Barlennan said to Bendivence, “is that we were much too hasty in sending Deeslenver to the Esket with orders to shutter its vision sets. The whole Esket question seems to have quieted down, and that will bring it to life again. We’re not ready for the main act yet, and won’t be for a year or more. I wasn’t sorry for the chance to start the human beings thinking along the lines of a native-menace idea, but Destigmet’s crew won’t be able to play the part until they have a lot more homemade mechanical and electrical equipment—things that the humans know we don’t have. Certainly, unless the native menace seems real, the human beings aren’t very likely to take the steps we want.
“If there were any way to go after Dee now and cancel his orders, I’d do it. I wish I’d dared let you go ahead with radio experiments, and had a set on the Deedee right now.”
“It shouldn’t be too risky, and I’d be more than glad to work on it,” answered Bendivence. “The waves could be detected by the human beings of course, but if we confined ourselves to brief and rare transmissions and used a simple off-on code they probably wouldn’t realize what the source was. However, it’s too late to get Deeslenver, anyway.”
“True. I wish I knew why no one up there has said another word about Kabremm. The last time I talked to Mrs. Hoffman, I got the impression that she wasn’t quite as sure as before that she’d really seen him. Do you suppose she really made a mistake? Or are the human beings trying to test us, the way I wanted to do with them? Or has Dondragmer done something to get us off that reef? If she were really wrong, we’ll have to start thinking all over again—”
“And what about that other report we’ve heard no more of—something sliding across the Esket’s floor?” countered the scientist. “Was that still another test? Or is something really happening there? Remember, we haven’t had any contact with that base for over a hundred and fifty hours. If the Esket is really being moved by something, we’re much too badly out of date to do anything sensible. You know, without saying anything against the Esket act, it’s an awful nuisance not to be able to trust your data.”
“If there’s real trouble at the Esket we’ll just have to trust Dee’s judgment,” said the commander, ignoring Bendivence’s closing sentence. “Actually, even that isn’t the chief problem. The real question is what to do about Dondragmer and the Kwembly. I suppose he had good reason to leave his ship and let her drift away, but the results have been very awkward. The fact that a couple of his men got left aboard makes it almost more so; if they hadn’t been, we could just forget about the cruiser and send out the Kaliff to pick up the people.”
“Why can’t we do that anyway? Didn’t the human Aucoin suggest it?”
“He did. I said I’d have to think it over.”
“Why?”
“Because there is less than one chance in ten, and probably less than one in a hundred, that the Kaliff could get there in time to do those two men any good. The chances are small enough that she could get there at all. Remember that snowfield the Kwembly crossed before her first flood? What do you suppose that area is like now? And how long do you think two men—competent men, but with no real technical or scientific training—are going to keep that leaking hull habitable?
“Of course, we could confess the whole act, tell the humans to get in touch with Destigmet through the watch he keeps at the Esket’s communicators; then they could tell him to send a rescue dirigible.”
“That would be wasting a tremendous amount of work, and ruining what still seems a promising operation,” Bendivence replied thoughtfully. “You don’t want to do that any more than I do; but we can’t abandon those helmsmen.”
“We can’t,” Barlennan agreed slowly, “but I just wonder whether we’d be taking too much of a chance on them if we waited out one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
“If the human beings were convinced that we could not possibly carry out the rescue, it’s just possible—especially with two Hoffmans to do the arguing—that they’d decide to do something about it themselves.”
“But what could they do? The ship they call the ‘barge’ will only land here at the Settlement by its automatic controls, as I understand Rescue Plan One. They certainly can’t fly it around on this world from out at the orbiting station; if it took them a whole minute to correct any mistake, they’d crash it right away. They certainly can’t fly it down personally. It’s set up to rescue us, with our air and temperature control, and besides Dhrawn’s gravity would paint a human being over the deck.”
“Don’t underestimate those aliens, Ben. They may not be exactly ingenious, but there’s been time for their ancestors to think up a lot of ready-made ideas we don’t know about yet. I think . . . I wouldn’t do it if I felt there was a real chance of our getting there ourselves, but this way we’re not putting the helmsmen in any worse danger than they are already . . . that we’ll let the human beings get the idea of making the rescue themselves. It would be much better than giving up the plan.”
“What it boils down to,” said Beetchermarlf to Takoorch, “is that we somehow have to find time between plugging leaks and cleaning poison out of the air units to convince people that the Kwembly is worth salvaging.
“The best way would be to get her going ourselves, though I doubt very much that we can do it. It’s the cruiser that’s going to set the policy. Your life and mine don’t mean very much to the humans—except maybe Benj—who isn’t running things up there. If the ship stays alive—if we can keep these tanks going to supply us with food and air, and incidentally keep from being poisoned by oxygen ourselves, and make real, reportable progress in repairing and freeing the cruiser—then maybe they’ll be convinced that a rescue trip is worthwhile. Even if they don’t, we’ll have to do all those things for our own sakes anyway; but if we can have the humans tell Barlennan that we have the Kwembly out and running, and will get her back to Dondragmer by ourselves, it should make quite a few people happy—especially the commander.”
“Do you think we can do it?” asked Takoorch.
“You and I are the first ones to convince,” replied the younger helmsman. “The rest of the universe will be much easier after that.”
“What it boils down to,” said Benj to his father, “is that we won’t risk the barge for two lives, even though that’s what it’s here for.”
“Not quite right on either count,” Ib Hoffman answered. “It’s a piece of emergency equipment, but it was planned for use if the whole project collapsed and we had to evacuate the Settlement. This was always a possibility; there was a lot that just couldn’t be properly tested in advance. For example, the trick of matching outside pressure in the cruisers and airsuits by using extra argon was perfectly reasonable, but we could not be sure there would be no side effects on the Mesklinites themselves—argon is inert by the usual standards, but so is Xenon, which is an effective anesthetic for human beings. Living systems are just too complicated for extrapolation ever to be safe, though the Mesklinites seem a lot simpler physiologically than we are—that may be one reason they can stand such a broad temperature range.
“But the point is, the barge is preset to home on a beam transmitter near the Settlement; it won’t land itself anywhere else on Dhrawn. It can be handled by remote control, of course, but not at this range.
“We could, I suppose, alter its on-board computer program to make it set itself down in other places—at least, on any reasonably flat surface; but would you want to set it down anywhere near your friend either by a built-in, unchangeable program or by long-delayed remote control? Remember the barge uses proton jets, has a mass of twenty-seven thousand pounds, and must put up quite a splash soft-landing in forty gravities—especially since its jets are splayed to reduce cratering.” Benj frowned thoughtfully.
“But why can’t we get closer to Dhrawn, and cut down the remote-control lag?” he asked, after some moments thought. Ib looked at his son in surprise.
“You know why, or should. Dhrawn has a mass of 3,471 Earths, and a rotation period of just over fifteen hundred hours. A synchronous orbit to hold us above a constant longitude at the equator is, therefore, just over six million miles out. If you use an orbit a hundred miles above the surface, you’d be traveling at better than ninety miles a second and go around Dhrawn in something like forty minutes. You’d remain in sight of one spot on the surface for two or three minutes out of the forty. Since the planet has about eighty-seven times Earth’s surface area, how many control stations do you think would be needed to manage one landing or lift-off?”
Benj made a gesture of impatience.
“I know all that, but there is already a swarm of stations down there—the shadow satellites. Even I know that they all have relay equipment, since they’re all reporting constantly to the computers up here and at any given moment nearly half of them must be behind Dhrawn. Why can’t a controller riding one of these, or in a ship at about the same height, tie into their relays and handle landing and liftoff from there? Delay shouldn’t be more than a second or so even from the opposite side of the world.”
“Because,” Ib started to answer, and then fell silent. He remained so for a full two minutes. Benj did not interrupt his thinking; the boy usually had a good idea when he was ahead.
