Close to Critical (12 page)

Raeker finally went to sleep in his chair. The officer stayed awake, but the only message he received was to the effect that Easy was going to sleep and Aminador-neldo was taking over the watch. Nothing excited him, either, it seemed; the speaker remained silent after the human girl signed off.

For hour after hour the bathyscaphe bumped merrily on its way. Sometimes it stopped for a moment, sometimes for minutes on end; always the journey resumed, as vagaries in the current dislodged it from whatever barred its path. Easy woke up again, and attended to the problem of breakfast. Later she prepared a rather unappetizing dinner - so she said, anyway. Aminadorneldo was polite about it, blaming the deficiencies on the synthesizers. There's not too much one can do with amino acids, fats, and dextrose, even if vitamin powders are available for seasoning. Tenebra's long night wore on; Raeker served another watch in the robot's control room, bringing Nick and Fagin to a point which he believed was fairly close to the rest of the party from the village. A single night on a planet which takes nearly a hundred hours to rotate can become rather boring - though it doesn't have to be, Raeker thought wryly, as he recalled the one when Swift had made his raid.

Things looked up after sunrise - unfortunately, since he was getting sleepy again. Nick definitely recognized the ground over which they were passing, and stated flatly that they would meet his friends in another two hours; Raeker's relief arrived, and had to be given an extremely detailed briefing; and a message came from the communications room that the bathyscaphe seemed to have stopped. "Will you please ask Lieutenant Wellenbach if he can have visual communication rigged up between his office and this room?" Raeker asked the messenger who brought this information. "It begins to look as though I'll have to be talking to the bathyscaphe and my pupils at the same time in the near future." "Certainly, sir," replied the messenger. "There'll be no particular difficulty about that, I'm sure." "All right. I'm going up to the comm room now to hear Easy's report; I'll come back here when the set is rigged."

"But shouldn't you get some sleep, Doctor?" asked his relief.

"I should, but I can't afford to for a while. You stay on duty after I come back, and stop me if I start to do anything really silly."

"All right." The graduate student shrugged his shoulders. Raeker knew he was not being very sensible, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the scenes of action at the moment. He headed for the communication chamber at top speed.

Rich and Aminadabarlee were there. The human diplomat had apparently calmed his Drommian colleague down, at least for the time being, since Raeker's entry produced no fireworks. Easy was speaking as the biologist came in, and he said nothing until she had finished.

". . . minutes since we last moved. It's no lighter outside, but we're not being rocked so hard; I think the current is weaker. It's after sunrise, if I've been keeping track of time properly, so I guess the water's boiling away." She paused, and Raeker made his presence known.

"I take it, Easy, that neither you nor 'Mina saw any living creatures in the water while you were drifting.''

"Nothing but plants, or what I guess were plants."

"How about right now?"

"Still nothing."

"Then my guess is you haven't yet reached the ocean. There were definitely animals there, according to Nick - of course, I suppose they might be frightened by your lights. Would you be willing to put them out for five minutes or so, then turn them on suddenly to catch anything which might have approached?"

"All right, as long as you don't mind the control room lights on. There aren't any windows here, so they shouldn't matter. I'd be afraid to turn them out; I might hit the wrong switch in the dark when it was time to turn them on again."

"You're quite right. I never thought of that."

"I've thought of a lot of things the last three weeks, down here."

For an instant the light-hearted mask she had been holding for the benefit of her young companion slipped a trifle, and all the men saw a miserable, terrified twelve-year-old whose self-control was near its limit. Rich bit his lip and clenched his fists; the other human beings avoided his eyes, Aminadabarlee showed no emotion; Raeker wondered whether he felt any. Then the mask was back in place, and the merry-hearted youngster they had all known before the accident turned to the Drommian child.

" 'Mina, will you go to the window in the big lab? Call when you're there, and I'll turn off the outside lights."

"All right, Easy." The long body crossed the men's field of view and vanished again. Then his piping voice came from the other room, and the girl's fingers flicked the light switches.

"Is it dark outside now, 'Mina?"

"Yes, Easy. I can't see anything."

"All right. Tell me if you do; we'll keep it dark for a while. Dr. Raeker, is 'Mina's father there?"

"Yes, Miss Rich." Aminadabarlee answered for himself.

"Perhaps you'd better tell me and Dr. Raeker how long it takes your people's eyes to get used to the dark." Not for the first time, Raeker wondered what combination of heredity and upbringing had given Rich such an amazing child. He had known students ten years her senior whose minds would have been lagging far behind - she was thinking of important points sooner than Raeker himself, and he didn't have her worries. . . .

He brought his mind back to the present when she called his name.

"Dr. Raeker, 'Mina couldn't see anything. Maybe five minutes wasn't enough for your sea animals to get over their scare, of course."

"Maybe," admitted Raeker. "Maybe they're just not interested in the bathyscaphe, for that matter. However, I think we'll assume for the present that you haven't reached the sea yet. It will be interesting to see whether you're in a lake or stranded high and dry when the rain evaporates this morning. In either case, get us as complete a description of the country around as you possibly can."

"I know. We'll do our best."

"We're rigging up an arrangement that will let you talk more or less directly to Nick, when you're in a position to give him directions, so you won't have to trust my relaying of your reports. It should be ready soon."

"That's good. I've wanted to talk to him myself ever since I saw you in the robot control room. It looked like fun. But can't I talk to him without going through you, if he finds me? Doesn't this ship have outside mikes and speakers?"

"Oh, yes. Mr. Sakiiro will tell you how to turn them on. This is for the time before he finds you." "All right. We'll call you again as soon as the water's gone. 'Mina's hungry, and so am I." Raeker sat back and dozed for a few minutes; then he realized that he, too, was hungry, and took care of the situation. By this time he really wanted to sleep; but a call on the intraship system informed him that the communication equipment he had requested was ready for use. Sleepy or not, he had to try it out, so he went back to the robot control room. It was a good many hours before he left it again.

Nick and Fagin had just rejoined their friends at the new camping spot, and Nick was bringing the others up to date on events. Naturally, Raeker had to listen carefully; there was always the chance that Nick had seen things in a different light from the human observer. It had been known to happen; a human education had not given the Tenebrites human minds.

This time Nick's report showed no signs of such difference, but Raeker had still to learn what the others had done. Since this, as Nick had planned, involved a great deal of mapping, some hours were spent hearing the various reports. It was customary for the maps to be shown to the robot for photographing in the Vindemiatrix; then each was explained in detail by the one who had drawn it, since not all the information could be crowded onto the paperlike leaves or summarized in conventional mapping symbols. These verbal accounts were recorded as spoken, and as a rule immediately pre-empted by the geological crew. Since the present area was very peculiar in that it lay close to the sea and was largely submerged each night, a great deal of time was spent in bringing the men's maps and charts up to date.

Too much time, in fact.

Raeker's relief had not received, perhaps, a really clear idea of the current danger from Swift; and Raeker himself had not given the matter a thought since his return to the observation room. Neither had thought to advise Nick to have anyone on the lookout for danger, and it was sheer chance that the danger was spotted in time.

Jane was telling her tale, and everyone else was listening and comparing her map with his own, when Betsey caught sight of something. It was just for an instant, and some distance away, showing among the shrubs on a hilltop. She knew the Teacher could not have seen it; she was aware that her own vision equipment had superior resolving powers to his, though she didn't know the terminology. Her first impulse was to shout a warning, but fortunately before she yielded to it she got a better glimpse of the thing on the hill. That was enough for identification. It was a creature just like herself; and since all of Fagin's community was standing around the teacher, that meant it must be one of Swift's warriors. How he had gotten there so soon after things dried up she couldn't guess at the moment.

Speaking softly so as not to interrupt Jane, she called to Nick and John, who were closest. "Don't make any move that would let him know you see him, but one of the cave men is watching us from the hill three quarters of a mile west-north-west. What should we do about it?"

Nick thought tensely for a moment.

"Just one is all I see. How about you?"

"Same here."

"You've been around here, and I haven't. Is it possible to go down the south or east side of this hill we're on and make a long circuit so as to get on the other side of him without being seen?" Both John and Betsey thought for several seconds, reconstructing in their minds the regions they had mapped in the last day and a half. They spoke almost together, and in almost the same words.

"Yes, from either side."

"All right, do it. Leave the group here casually - you'd both better go together; the herd is on the south side of the hill, and I would judge that some of the beasts are in his line of vision. You can go down and drive them around out of his sight, and we'll hope he thinks you're just doing an ordinary herding job. Once you and, the cattle are out of his sight, get around behind him as best you can, and bring him here, preferably alive. I'd like to know how he got here so soon, and so would Fagin, I'm sure." "Are you going to tell him, or the others?"

"Not yet. They'll act more natural if they don't know. Besides, there are still a couple of reports to be given, and Fagin never likes that to be interrupted, you know."

"I know he usually doesn't, but this seemed a sort of special case."

"Special or not, let's surprise him with your prisoner. Take axes, by the way; they seemed to impress those folks a lot, and maybe he'll give up more easily."

"All right." John and Betsey pulled up their resting legs and started casually downhill toward the herd. None of the others appeared to notice them, and Nick did his best to imitate their attitude as the two scouts disappeared from sight.

VII. ACQUISITION; INQUISITION; INSTRUCTION

NEITHER Raeker nor his assistant paid any attention to the departure of John and his companion. They were much too busy operating cameras and recorders, for one reason. Easy and her companion could now watch the group on the surface indirectly, but neither of them was familiar enough with the routine activities of Fagin's pupils to notice anything out of the ordinary. Besides, they were paying very close attention to the geographical reports, in the somewhat unreasonable hope of being able to recognize part of the land described.

For the bathyscaphe was now high and dry. The river down which it had been carried had vanished with the coming day, and the ship had rolled rather uncomfortably - though, fortunately, very slowly - to the foot of a hillock which Easy had promptly named Mount Ararat. The children were having a little trouble, since they had not only had their first visual contact with natives, via the observation room of the Vindemiatrix, but also their first look at the solid surface of Tenebra - if one excepts the bottom of a lake and a river. They were covering both scenes as well as they could, one at the windows while the other was at the plate, but each was trying to keep the other filled in verbally on the other part, with confusing results. Their shouted words were coming through to Raeker and the others in the observation room, and were adding their little bit to the confusion there. Raeker didn't dare cut them off, partly for reasons of their own morale and partly because it was always possible that the one at the windows would have something material to report. He hoped the recording of the native reports would be intelligible to the geologists. Jane finished her account, was asked a question or two by Raeker on points he had not fully taken in, and then settled back to let Oliver show his map. Raeker's assistant photographed it, Raeker himself made sure that the recording tape was still feeding properly, and the two relaxed once more - or came as close to relaxation as the local confusion permitted. Raeker was almost ready to decide that he needn't stay, and to catch up on his overdue sleep.

He had not actually said anything about it, though, when the cave scout caught sight of John. Within three seconds after that, the biologist lost all intention of leaving.

The scout reacted practically instantaneously. He had been crouching as low in the vegetation as his anatomy permitted; now he leaped to his walking legs and started traveling. John was south and west of him, Fagin and the rest south and east; he headed north. Immediately Betsey rose into view in that direction, and he stopped in momentary confusion. Nick, who had never lost sight of the fellow's crest since Betsey had first pointed him out, interpreted the situation correctly even though he could not see John and Betsey. He sprang to his walking legs, interrupting Oliver unceremoniously, and began issuing orders. The others were surprised, but reacted with relatively little confusion; and within a few seconds the whole group was streaming down the hillside toward the point where the cave dweller had vanished, leaving the human observers to shout futile questions through the speakers of their robot. Seeing that words were useless, Raeker started the robot in the same direction as his pupils, and used language which made Easy raise her eyebrows as the machine was steadily left further and further behind. Nick and his friends disappeared over the hilltop where the scout had been hiding, and not even their shouts could be heard over Raeker's voice in the control room. It was Easy who turned his words into more constructive channels, less because she was shocked than because she was curious.