Complete Short Fiction, page 281
“You haven’t held course, Maria. How about using the wind? It’s still from the west, and you can see the stuff blowing.”
“Too turbulent to be useful, as least close to the ground. I’d thought of that. Getting knocked off my feet, and I suppose picking up more covering, every few minutes doesn’t help.”
“You know where she is. Pick her up now!” cried Belvew.
“Stop thinking of that!” Maria had never sounded so much like a commander. “Make another pass over me, or as nearly over me as you can, Ginger, heading as straight as you can for Arthur’s Pool. You can still see it, can’t you?”
“Sure. All right, coming back. Call when I’m closest, and tell me which side you’re on and how far if you can. I’ll be a minute or so with the turn. All right?”
“All right?”
“ALL RIGHT?”
Maria couldn’t answer. She was off the ground again, totally disoriented. She snapped both hands above her helmet to protect it in case she landed head downward, and ignored Ginger’s increasingly frantic calls until she struck the surface again.
Her heels touched first, with her body extending back and up at about forty-five degrees. On Earth she would have slammed down on the back of her helmet; on Titan the rest of the fall took well over a second and she had plenty of time to spin cat-style and land on her hands. A medium hard one-handed push-up brought her back on her feet; she felt a fleeting glow of pride that she hadn’t overdone it—much. One short backward step kept her from falling the other way.
“I’m all right. I got tossed around by another quake. I don’t know whether you passed me then or not.”
“I must have. I’m half way to the rim—Maria! My Aitoff shows a new cloud erupting all around the lake! Is it blocking your sight?”
“The eight hour prediction was inaccurate,” Status interrupted, “but the qualitative extrapolation offered by Sergeant Belvew was very good. The lake is now near the north rim of a hexagonal area well marked by fume-emitting faults. It will take a minute or more to determine the new height of the area. The lake itself has shown no significant change in shape or area. If Major Xalco will try again to locate the commander—”
“Is that area big enough for landing?”
“Is the Pool inside the prism?” came Belvew’s and Maria’s interruptions simultaneously. Status untangled the sound patters, though none of the human listeners could. The processor answered the commander first.
“The pool is inside the area described, though quite close to the northwest corner. It has not been visibly affected by the shock. It should be possible with care to land the jet within the hexagon. I would advise landing westward, touching down as near the east corner as the pilot’s skill permits.”
“Take it, Gene,” Ginger called promptly.
“Not yet. Finish your run. We need to know whether Maria’s inside the hexagon, too. It she isn’t, and the boundary is hard to cross for any reason—remember how she got blown into the air at the other place—we don’t want to land there.”
“Right. Give me the call, Maria, if and when. Here I should be coming.”
“I hear you but can’t see you. The fog’s a lot thicker, I’m afraid.”
“Not even a glimpse?”
“No.”
“Any guess at the direction of my sound?”
“Not in armor.”
“Shall I make another pass?”
“No use, I’d say. If the new fog allows, you might go as low as seems safe over the hexagon and help Status find out if it’s higher or lower than the rest of the floor. I’d guess it had dropped, or rather that the outside rose—I was tossed upward again.”
“You’re assuming you’re outside.”
“Yes, Gene. Unless my earlier position was wildly off or I got tossed several hundred meters, I have to be north of it still.”
“I suppose so. All right, just go on, I guess. You can see your track still, can’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, no. The snow seems to have been tossed up, too, I’m afraid.”
Not even Status had an immediate answer for this. After some seconds, Belvew asked, “Can you see the tracks you make right now—after the shock.”
Maria experimented—the answer seemed obvious, but she was taking no chances on another trivial surprise—and answered affirmatively.
“All right, just start walking, and keep a straight line as you did before, I’d say. If you’re lucky and get into clear air, fine. Sooner or later you’ll have moved far enough so Ginger can get some idea of distance and direction from when you can hear her pass over, even if that doesn’t give much resolving power. Can anyone think of anything quicker? Staying put certainly won’t accomplish anything.”
Maria admitted this, and decided not to mention that the joints of her armor were getting stiffer. There would be time enough for the others to face that worry if and when she were actually immobilized. It would have been nice, she reflected as she started to walk, if she had had a rope, or a few meters of wire, or something like that to drag behind her. Even if that were tossed off the ground, it would have to fall back somewhere near its original position.
Theia boomed overhead, and the commander reported the sound as soon as it started to fade. Two minutes later she heard it again, this time with a fainter maximum, and she passed on this information as well. The third time was fainter still.
“All right, I think I have you fairly well pin-pointed,” came Belvew’s voice—he had evidently taken over the jet. “Just keep travelling, and report any sort of change you catch. You’re about where we thought, only a few hundred meters from the nearest of the new faults.”
“You said they were putting out fog, too. I can’t see any difference in the vision range yet—of course, I don’t really have any idea of how far I’m seeing. I think I hear something besides the jet, though.”
“What?”
“It’s like the deep whistle of the stuff coming from that other fault, but that may not be objective. Keep your fingers crossed, those of you who aren’t flying. I’m still walking.” The last statement was not a complete truth; her armor was continuing to get stiffer, and the walk becoming a totter.
Twice more in the next few minutes she was thrown from her feet, but neither time was her track too badly smeared. The escaping vapor, if that’s what it was, grew louder; she had trouble hearing the jet at all when Belvew made another attempt to locate her, but they both felt sure she was approaching the nearest edge of the hexagon.
She was. A scarp loomed suddenly in front of Maria just as she was seriously wondering whether she would have to report her travel problems—and also wondering what good the report would do. It was only a dozen meters away; the fog was far thicker than before.
“No wonder I was tossed around, even if the prism went up more than I did. Your hexagon is over two meters above the rest of the floor, at least on this side,” she reported. “I wonder whether this is something common here, or whether Arthur just picked a very bad spot.”
“It will take a lengthy review of the worldwide mapping records to tell,” Status replied. “Nothing of this sort came to anyone’s attention earlier, and I was instructed to test for albedo changes, not heights.”
“You can get up on the new level and check Arthur’s Pool in a few minutes,” Belvew said happily. “I can’t be sure where you hit the edge, but it almost has to be the north face. The pool could be about in front of you, or anywhere up to three or four hundred meters to your right. You’d know it, I suppose, if you were right at a comer.”
“I might, but not if it were more than a dozen or two meters away. About getting up . . .” the commander’s voice trailed off.
“You can jump two meters—or are you worn out again?” Belvew made no specific reference to Maria’s ailment, though he was of course aware of it.
“I’m afraid that’s not it. This white coating has been stiffening up my joints, for quite a while now, enough to make walking difficult. I’ll try, but I’m not sure I can jump at all.” There was silence from the Station while she tried, reported failure, and tried again.
“I can’t get up half a meter. Check the maps you have so far. Is there any place which looks as though it might be anything but a vertical cliff? Surely you can’t just push a prism of ice up like this, especially if the ice is effectively rock, without some irregular cracking somewhere.”
Again Status took unintended parts of the remark literally. “Not enough is known about the mechanical properties of ice at these temperatures. Remember how Sergeant Inger was taken unaware by its expansion coefficient. Our only pictures of this new feature cover the minutes since it formed. There are several irregularities around its perimeter, on all six faces including the north one where you presumably are. If you can still walk, I advise you do so in either direction along the scarp.”
“If—” Belvew choked off the exclamation. Then, “I’m setting down. Go left, Maria. It’s clearest to the east. You can walk, I hope.”
“Oh, yes. But we must check the pool, and should check the lake, and they’re up top.”
The jet’s roar suddenly became audible over the sound of escaping vapor, and faded again. Belvew continued as though the commander hadn’t spoken.
“I can’t land up there.”
“Why not?” came the usual multiple voices.
“The area is just barely wide enough for a landing at all, approaching just above wing-stall. At that speed the turbulence from the fog blast—I felt it with the gages a hundred meters up—as I cross the edge would wreck the plane unless, by pure luck, updrafts under both wings were exactly equal. I know I’m safe up here, but once is more than enough.”
“I can get down again after I get up,” Maria replied calmly. “Don’t try to land anywhere until I’m through here. That’s an order.”
“How do you mean that word through?” Belvew let the question out, and immediately regretted it. Maria had tact as well as firmness, however.
“I think I see at least two ways of getting up,” she said, still calmly. “At the other fault, the updraft tossed me off the ground; this one seems a lot stronger. With luck, Bernoulli effect will keep me inside the stream until I get to the top.”
“And maybe longer. What will you do hanging a couple of meters out of reach of the ground?” A little to her surprise, the voice was Seichi’s, not Gene’s. She had to hesitate only a moment before answering.
“I’m a lot bigger than the lab, and can do things about my overall shape. I won’t be out of control.”
“What’s your other idea?” asked Belvew predictably.
“Build a ramp. The ‘snow’ is three or four centimeters deep.”
“How much snow will she have to move, Status?”
“It depends on the angle of repose of the particles, another unknown quantity. Its behavior under Earth conditions is irrelevant; it is sand or dust here, if it actually is ice. Assuming a twenty degree repose angle, the volume would be approximately thirty-two cubic meters. If the commander’s estimate of snow depth is correct and general, it would require all the snow within a distance of some sixteen meters of the climbing point. The material is apparently available, but the time required to move it without tools may be excessive. This ignores the problem of building against the updraft at the inner side of the ramp. The commander has about eighteen point two hours, extrapolating from the last two hours’ consumption, to suit emergency status.”
Long before this sentence was finished, Maria had approached the whistling crevice at the base of the scarp. By the time Martucci had pointed out that she could accumulate a large volume quite rapidly by the snowball-rolling technique, and Seichi had reminded him that snow did not self-weld readily at ninety Kelvins, she had leaned for the first time as closely as she could against the smooth ice face and been hurled backward with satisfying violence.
By the time she had tried again, backing against the wall and pushing as hard as she could with her legs, which was not very hard under Titanian traction conditions, Chem had pointed out that the stuff had at least stuck to the commander’s armor, so maybe snowballing would work after all.
Before the argument got any farther, Maria interrupted. “What I can see of my armor is now nearly clear of its white coating. I can move quite freely. Something in the vapor stream got rid of it, I guess,” she concluded.
“It was hot enough to melt it, and blow the liquid away,” Belvew proposed at once.
“The dust particles sand-blasted you clear,” Seishi came back at once with the obligatory counter-hypothesis.
“If they stuck in the first place because of altered surface tension, they’d have just added to the coating this time. It has to be temperature.”
“That couldn’t have been why they stuck. Surface tension won’t hold any size water drop liquid down at ninety-K.”
Maria again ended the debate without suggesting this was not the time for it; she was interested in the reason herself, but had not needed any of the recent reminders about her suit’s depletion or what work had to be done.
“I’m jumping—now!” There was a silence of two or three seconds.
“Make it? asked Belvew.
“Not quite. High enough, but I bounced off the fan of vapor—it’s all right, I was able to land on my feet. It must have been a matter of armor shape; I should have been pulled into the stream.”
“Pushed.” This was Martucci.
“Don’t be a purist. Here I go again—I’m in, this time. Bouncing around, as someone suggested, a meter or so above the top of the scarp. I can regulate my height with arms and legs—there. Now—blast, up again. I’m oscillating. I can vary the rate and amplitude by reaching—there. Resonance. I’m out, and on the right side. Oops—there’s a breeze trying to push me back into the current—”
“I told you so,” said Martucci. Maria ignored this.
“No traction to speak of—wait, I’m all right—I’m away from it now. The wind is only within a couple of meters of the edge. You were right, Gene; don’t try to land here. The visibility isn’t very good, either. I’m heading right to look for the pool.”
“It’s only about seventy meters,” Martucci informed her. “You can see me?”
“Sure. There’s contrast again, now your whitewash is off. Head along the edge to your right ‘til I tell you to stop, then turn straight away from it and hike about thirty meters. Not too close to the edge; remember that Bernoulli wind.”
“Is the seeing worse than outside?” asked Belvew. “That west wind is covering the hexagon with fog, or dust, or whatever’s blowing up on that side. Is the stuff blowing along the surface, or overhead?”
“Surface or both, I’m afraid. I can see the rim, but not the pool yet.”
“It’s time to turn,” called Martucci. “Right angle, away from the edge. Tell us when you see the pool, so we can give Gene a real measure of the visibility.”
There was silence for a few seconds.
“I think it’s there—yes, I can see its near edge.”
“Sixteen meters,” muttered one of the watchers.
“The color is funny, a lot redder than any I’ve seen. Certainly redder than the one you got stuck in, Ginger. I can see four of the labs, now; I hope they’re working. I’m right at the edge, now. The color isn’t the same all over; some of it, away from the rim, is almost black, and there are a few spots where the snow seems to be sticking. They’re all several meters from the edge, and none of the labs is anywhere near one; shall I get a sample to bring up?”
“No!” cried Ginger and Gene together. “All we need is to get you stuck the way I was,” added the former.
“You got loose.”
“From stuff that looked different. Don’t take any chances. Pick up one of the labs and toss it onto the white, but keep your feet out of trouble.”
Maria followed this suggestion, and scored a center hit the first time. She was getting used to the gravity, evidently.
“I won’t step on it, but I’m going to get a sample from the edge to take up. We can do more with it in the Station than the labs can manage.”
“Be careful!”
“Relax, Sergeant. I said I wouldn’t step in it.” There was silence for over a minute, a very tense one for the watchers in the Station; instrument resolution wasn’t quite good enough to show what parts of Maria’s suit were actually above the pool, especially when another shock tossed her upward. She landed feet down about half as meter onto the stuff but was off before it managed to stick to her boots—if this variety were going to. She did not report all the details to the others.
“I have a chunk,” she called at last. “It’s gooey, like the stuff that caught you, Ginger. I don’t have anything to put it in, but I can carry it in one hand—the piece is about fist size. I’ll leave the digger. I don’t know why I carried it this far. Now, Gene, I’m willing to make you happy. I’ll pass up the lake. Where can you land?”
“Closer than I thought. If I go into the wind, which isn’t really fast enough to matter, I can touch down half a kilometer from the corner at the east end of your edge—you’re at the west, about the same distance from it. Go back to the edge, turn right, start hiking, and please don’t let any new cliffs form in the next few minutes. I’ll skid to about three hundred meters of the corner, and can drive closer on rockets. Jump through the updraft when you hear I’m down. Don’t get down any sooner; if I have to abort and land somewhere else, it’ll be easier to cross the hexagon than go around it. I’m lining up now—slowing down near pipe stall—letting down slowly—I don’t want to get too low until I cross the crater rim.” There was half a minute of silence. “Over the rim. Rocket mode. Height one fifty—one hundred—” the pilot ceased reporting for several endless seconds. “Touched down, sliding as usual. I’m coming into the fog and can’t see very far ahead, but I made the approach a little north of your edge so there’ll be no trouble if I slide too far. There; stopped. Pete, how far am I from Maria? Should I push a bit closer?”
“You can go another hundred meters. Maria, you still have a way to go. Don’t hurry; getting picked up again by the updraft would waste time.”
