Heavy Planet (32 page)
Authors: Hal Clement
Destigmet wriggled into view behind the speaker. “I can think of only two things to do, and you’ve already suggested one of them,” he said. “The first is for someone to start climbing again. The other is for us to lift the tank once more, while you pack snow under it to hold it up and let us get a fresh purchase. Maybe we can work it up that way before you run out of air.”
“All right,” agreed LaVerne. “It would be better if I had something to serve as a shovel, but let’s get at it. I’m using oxygen just standing here worrying.”
For a while it looked possible, if not really hopeful. Carrying the dusty snow in his armored hands proved impractical, but he found that he could do fairly well pushing a mass of it ahead of him as he crawled—and crawling was far easier than trying to walk. Essentially, he was sweeping rather than carrying. He managed to get what would have been several shovelfuls, if he had had a shovel, against the space at the edge of the tank where the Mesklinites had disappeared once more. At his call they strained upward again, and as quickly as he could he pushed the material into the widening space. “That’s all,” he reported when he had done his best, and the students relaxed again. So did the pile of snow. LaVerne, optimistic by nature, felt sure that the tank had not settled quite back to its original position, and kept trying; but after an hour which left him more exhausted than he had ever felt in his three Earth years
on Mesklin, he had to admit that the idea was qualitatively sound but quantitatively inadequate.
on Mesklin, he had to admit that the idea was qualitatively sound but quantitatively inadequate.
During those days, the student who was trying to climb the slope had made little progress. Once he had gotten nearly a third of the way before sliding most of the way back in a smother of white dust; four or five times he had lost the fight in the first yard or two. The rest of his attempts came between those limits.
But it finally became evident that the man’s air was not going to be the real limiting factor. Destigmet pointed out another one to him. “Some time ago, Doctor, one of your fellows taught us about a fact he claimed was very basic—the Law of Conservation of Energy. If I have the terminology right, we can apply very large forces by your standards, but as that law should tell you, there is a limit to the amount of work we can do without food. None of us expected to need food in this class, and we brought none with us.”
One of the others cut in. “Won’t people from the College start looking for us anyway? This class should have been over days ago.”
LaVerne frowned invisibly behind the blood-stained face plate, which he had no means of cleaning. “They’ll be looking, but finding us will be another story,” he said. “They’d expect to see the tank miles away on the smooth surface of the peninsula. When they don’t, they’ll think we got swept into the sea, or went off to the forest country for some reason. They won’t look over this area closely enough to find the hole we left, I suspect. It’s possible we’ll get out of this with their help, but don’t count on it.”
Estnerdole suddenly became excited. “Why not build a tower we can climb, with the water ice from the cliff? We can chip it out easily enough without tools, or even melt it out with the snow—no, that wouldn’t leave us any to work with, but—” His voice trailed off as more difficulties became apparent to him.
LaVerne was pessimistic, too, after the just-completed practical demonstration of how much material would be needed even to prop up the tank. Then he brightened. “We could use the ice to get this machine upright—big chunks of it would be more practical and easier to move than the snow. Of course, even that doesn’t get us any closer to getting out of here; the tank certainly isn’t going to climb this sandhill even if I get into it. If only—” He paused, and the ensuing silence stretched out for long seconds. Even with the man hidden in his armor, the listeners got the impression that something had happened. Then he spoke again, and his tone confirmed the suspicion. “Thanks, Es. That does it. Start digging ice, gentlemen. We’ll be out of here in a couple of hours!”
Actually, it took less than three days.
“You look bothered,” remarked Thomasian, LaVerne’s department head. “Delayed shock from your narrow escape, or what?”
“It wasn’t that narrow,” replied the teacher. “I had hours of air still in the suit when the spinner picked us up, and we could have worked the tank upright to get at more if I had needed it. You’d have searched the area closely enough to find that hole sooner or later.”
“Later would probably have been too late—and the really narrow squeak I was thinking of was the fall. Fifteen meters under three gees—sooner you than me. If it hadn’t been for that snow bank, we’d have had to cut you out of the flattened remains of that tank—not that it would have been worth doing. Of course any of your students should have been able to think of tossing pieces of water ice over the slope, especially after you’d discussed with them why the cuesta was so deeply undercut. So should you, for that matter—”
“Hogback,” LaVerne responded almost automatically. “Sure, all sorts of ideas are obvious afterward. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure that this one would work, even if I did sound as enthusiastic as I could and even though I did have experience to go by. Still, I was afraid it would simply melt holes in the slope; but it went fine. The liquid formed where the two ices met just soaked into the surrounding snow, spreading out and diluting the water ice until the mixture’s melting point came up to the local temperature again—and froze into a continuous mass. It was hard enough for Estnerdole to climb out and go for help in less than an hour, I’d guess; I didn’t actually time it.”
“What was the experience you could go by? And if it was so easy and safe, what’s bothering you?”
“The same thing. A teaching problem. They claim that Mesklinite psychology is enough like ours for teaching techniques to be about the same, effectively. They expect us to—er—‘relate’ new facts to known experience.”
“Of course. So?”
“So the experience in question should obviously be one familiar to the students, not just the teacher. What sparked this idea for me was the memory of sugar getting lumpy in the bowl when it gets damp. You know, I’m just a little shaky on the local biochemistry, chief—tell me: what do Mesklinites use for coffee, and what do they put in it?”
Beetchermarlf felt the vibrations die out as his vehicle came to a halt, but instinctively looked outside before releasing the
Kwembly’s
helm. It was wasted effort, of course. The sun, or rather, the body he was trying to think of as
the
sun, had set nearly twenty hours before. The sky was still too bright for stars to be seen, but not bright enough to show details on the almost featureless dusty snow field around him. Behind, which was the only direction he could not see from the center of the bridge, the
Kwembly’s
trail might have provided some visual reference; but from his post at the helm there was no clue to his speed.
Kwembly’s
helm. It was wasted effort, of course. The sun, or rather, the body he was trying to think of as
the
sun, had set nearly twenty hours before. The sky was still too bright for stars to be seen, but not bright enough to show details on the almost featureless dusty snow field around him. Behind, which was the only direction he could not see from the center of the bridge, the
Kwembly’s
trail might have provided some visual reference; but from his post at the helm there was no clue to his speed.
The captain, stretched out on his platform above and behind the helmsman, interpreted correctly the latter’s raised head. If he was amused, he concealed the fact. With nearly two human lifetimes spent on Mesklin’s unpredictable oceans he had never learned to like uncertainty, merely to live with it. Commanding a “vessel” he did not fully understand, travelling on land instead of sea and knowing that his home world was over three parsecs away did nothing to bolster his own self-confidence, and he sympathized fully with the youngster’s lack of it.
“We’re stopped, helmsman. Secure, and start your hundred-hour maintenance check. We’ll stay here for ten hours.”
“Yes, sir.” Beetchermarlf slipped the helm into its locking notch. A glance at the clock told him that over an hour of his watch remained, so he began checking the cables which connected the steering bar with the
Kwembly’s
forward trucks.
Kwembly’s
forward trucks.
The lines were visible enough, since no effort had been made to conceal essential machinery behind walls. The builders of the huge vehicle and her eleven sister “ships” had not been concerned with appearance. It took only a few seconds to make sure that the few inches of cable above the bridge deck were still free of wear. The helmsman gestured an “all’s well” to the captain, rapped on the deck for clearance, waited for acknowledgment from below,
opened the starboard trap, and vanished down the ramp to continue his inspection.
opened the starboard trap, and vanished down the ramp to continue his inspection.
Dondragmer watched him go with no great concern. His worries were elsewhere, and the helmsman was a dependable sailor. He put the steering problem from his mind for the moment, and reared the front portion of his eighteen-inch body upward until his head was level with the speaking tubes. A sirenlike wail which could have been heard over one of Mesklin’s typhoons and was almost ridiculous in the silence of Dhrawn’s snow field secured the attention of the rest of the crew.
“This is the captain. Ten hours halt for maintenance check; watch on duty get started. Research personnel follow your usual routine, being sure to check with the bridge before going outside. No flying until the scouts have been overhauled. Power distribution, acknowledge!”
“Power checking.” The voice from the speaking tube was a little deeper than Dondragmer’s.
“Life support, acknowledge!”
“Life support checking.”
“Communication, acknowledge!”
“Checking.”
“Kervenser to the bridge for standby! I’m going outside. Research, give me outside conditions!”
“One moment. Captain.” The pause was brief before the voice resumed, “Temperature 77; pressure 26.1; wind from 21, steady at 200 cables per hour; oxygen fraction standard at 0.0122.”
“Thanks. That doesn’t seem too bad.”
“No. With your permission, I’ll come out with you to get surface samples. May we set up the drill? We can get cores to a fair depth in less than ten hours.”
“That will be all right. I may be outside before you get to the lock, if you take time to collect the drill gear, but you are cleared outside when ready. Tell Kervenser the number of your party, for the log.”
“Thank you, Captain. We’ll be there right away.”
Dondragmer relaxed at his station; he would not, of course, leave the bridge until his relief appeared, even with the engines stopped. Kervenser would be some minutes in arriving, since he would have to turn his current duties over to a relief of his own. The wait was not bothersome, however, since there was plenty to think about. Dondragmer was not the worrying type (the Mesklinite nervous system does not react to uncertainty in that way) but he did like to think situations out before he lived them.
The fact that he was some ten or twelve thousand miles from help if the
Kwembly
were ever crippled was merely background, not a special problem. It did not differ essentially from the situation he had faced for most of his life on Mesklin’s vast seas. The principal ripple on his normally placid self-confidence
was stirred up by the machine he commanded. It resembled in no way the flexible assemblage of rafts which was his idea of a ship. He had been assured that it would float if occasion arose; it actually had floated during tests on distant Mesklin where it had been built. Since then, however, it had been disassembled, loaded into shuttle craft and lifted into orbit around its world of origin, transferred in space to an interstellar flier, shifted back to another and very different shuttle after the three-parsec jump, and brought to Dhrawn’s surface before being reassembled. Dondragmer had personally supervised the disassembly and reconstruction of the
Kwembly
and her sister machines, but the intervening steps had not been carried out under his own eye. This formed the principal reason for his wanting to go outside now; high as was his opinion of Beetchermarlf and the rest of his picked crew, he liked firsthand knowledge.
Kwembly
were ever crippled was merely background, not a special problem. It did not differ essentially from the situation he had faced for most of his life on Mesklin’s vast seas. The principal ripple on his normally placid self-confidence
was stirred up by the machine he commanded. It resembled in no way the flexible assemblage of rafts which was his idea of a ship. He had been assured that it would float if occasion arose; it actually had floated during tests on distant Mesklin where it had been built. Since then, however, it had been disassembled, loaded into shuttle craft and lifted into orbit around its world of origin, transferred in space to an interstellar flier, shifted back to another and very different shuttle after the three-parsec jump, and brought to Dhrawn’s surface before being reassembled. Dondragmer had personally supervised the disassembly and reconstruction of the
Kwembly
and her sister machines, but the intervening steps had not been carried out under his own eye. This formed the principal reason for his wanting to go outside now; high as was his opinion of Beetchermarlf and the rest of his picked crew, he liked firsthand knowledge.
He did not, of course, mention this to Kervenser when the latter reached the bridge. It was something which went without saying. Anyway, the first officer presumably felt the same himself.
“Maintenance checks are under way. The researchers are going out to sink a well, and I’m going out to look things over,” was all Dondragmer said as he resigned his station. “You can signal me with outside lights if necessary. It’s all yours.”
Kervenser snapped two of his nippers light-heartedly. “I’ll ride it, Don. Enjoy yourself.” The captain left by way of the still open hatch which had admitted his relief, telling himself as he went that Kervenser wasn’t as casual as he sounded.
Four decks down and sixty feet aft of the bridge was the main air lock. Dondragmer paused several times on the way to talk to members of his crew as they worked among the cords, beams, and piping of the
Kwembly’s
interior. By the time he reached the lock four scientists were already there with their drilling gear, and had started to don their air suits. The captain watched critically as they wriggled their long bodies and numerous legs into the transparent envelopes, made the tests for tightness, and checked their hydrogen and argon supplies. Satisfied, he gestured them into the lock and began suiting up himself. By the time he was outside the others were well on with setting up their apparatus.
Kwembly’s
interior. By the time he reached the lock four scientists were already there with their drilling gear, and had started to don their air suits. The captain watched critically as they wriggled their long bodies and numerous legs into the transparent envelopes, made the tests for tightness, and checked their hydrogen and argon supplies. Satisfied, he gestured them into the lock and began suiting up himself. By the time he was outside the others were well on with setting up their apparatus.
He glanced at them only briefly as he paused at the top of the ramp leading from lock to ground. He knew what they were doing and could take it for granted, but he could never be that casual about the weather. Even as he latched the outer lock portal behind him, he was looking at as much of the sky as the towering hull of his command permitted.
The darkness was deepening very, very slowly as Dhrawn’s two-month rotation carried the feeble sun farther below the horizon. As at home, the horizon itself seemed to be somewhat above his level of sight all around. The gravity-squeezed atmosphere responsible for this effect would also set the stars twinkling violently when they became visible. Dondragmer glanced toward the bow, but
the twin stars which guarded the south celestial pole, Fomalhaut and Sol, were still invisible.
the twin stars which guarded the south celestial pole, Fomalhaut and Sol, were still invisible.
A few cirrus clouds showed above, drifting rapidly toward the west. Evidently the winds a thousand or two feet above were opposed to the surface ones, as was usual during the daytime. This might change shortly, Dondragmer knew; only a few thousand miles to the west was country in which the setting of the sun would make a greater temperature change than it did here, and there might be weather changes in the next dozen hours. Exactly what sort of changes, was more than his Mesklinite sailor background, even fortified with alien meteorology and physics, enabled him to guess.
For the moment, though, all seemed well. He made his way down the ramp to the snow and a hundred yards to the east, partly to make sure of the rest of the sky and partly to get an overall view of his command before commencing a detailed inspection.
The western sky was no more threatening than the rest, and he favored it with only a brief glance.
The
Kwembly
looked just as usual. To a human being it would probably have suggested a cigar made of dough and allowed to settle on a flat table for a time. It was slightly over a hundred feet in length, between twenty and twenty-five in breadth, and its highest point was nearly twenty feet above the snow. Actually there were two such points; the upper curve of the hull, about a third of the way back, and the bridge itself. The latter was a twenty-foot crosspiece whose nearly square outlines somewhat spoiled the smooth curves of the main body. It was almost at the bow, permitting helmsman, commander, and conning personnel to watch the ground as they traveled almost to the point where the forward trucks covered it.
Kwembly
looked just as usual. To a human being it would probably have suggested a cigar made of dough and allowed to settle on a flat table for a time. It was slightly over a hundred feet in length, between twenty and twenty-five in breadth, and its highest point was nearly twenty feet above the snow. Actually there were two such points; the upper curve of the hull, about a third of the way back, and the bridge itself. The latter was a twenty-foot crosspiece whose nearly square outlines somewhat spoiled the smooth curves of the main body. It was almost at the bow, permitting helmsman, commander, and conning personnel to watch the ground as they traveled almost to the point where the forward trucks covered it.
The flat bottom of the vehicle was nearly a yard off the snow, supported on an almost continuous set of tread-bearing trucks. These were individually castered and connected by a bewildering rigging of fine cables, allowing the
Kwembly
to turn in a fairly short radius with reasonably complete control of her traction. The trucks were separated from the hull proper by what amounted to a pneumatic mattress, which distributed traction and adapted to minor ground irregularities.
Kwembly
to turn in a fairly short radius with reasonably complete control of her traction. The trucks were separated from the hull proper by what amounted to a pneumatic mattress, which distributed traction and adapted to minor ground irregularities.
A caterpillarlike figure was making its way slowly along the near side of the land-cruiser, presumably Beetchermarlf continuing his inspection of the rigging. Twenty yards closer to the captain the short tower of the core drill had been erected. Above, clinging to the holdfasts which studded the hull but could hardly be seen at the captain’s distance, other crew members were climbing about as they inspected the seams for tightness. This, to a Mesklinite, was a nerve-stretching job. Acrophobia was a normal and healthy state of mind to a being reared on a world where polar gravity was more than six hundred times that of Earth, and even “home” gravity a third of that. Dhrawn’s comparatively feeble pull, scarcely thirteen hundred feet per second squared, took some of the
curse off climbing, but hull inspection was still the least popular of duties. Dondragmer crawled back across the hard-packed mixture of white crystals and brown dust, interrupted by occasional sprawling bushes, and made his way up the side to help out with the job.
curse off climbing, but hull inspection was still the least popular of duties. Dondragmer crawled back across the hard-packed mixture of white crystals and brown dust, interrupted by occasional sprawling bushes, and made his way up the side to help out with the job.
The great, curved plates were of boron fiber bonded with oxygen-and fluorine-loaded polymers. They had been fabricated on a world none of the Mesklinites had ever seen, though most of the crew had had dealings with its natives. The human chemical engineers had designed those hull members to withstand every corrosive agent they could foresee. They fully realized that Dhrawn was one of the few places in the universe likely to be even worse in this respect than their own oxygen-and-water world. They were quite aware of its gravity. They had all these factors in mind when they synthesized the hull members and the adhesives which held them together: both the temporary cements used during the testing on Mesklin and the supposedly permanent ones employed in reassembling the vehicles on Dhrawn. Dondragmer had every confidence in the skill of those men, but he could not forget that they had not faced and never expected to face the conditions their products were fighting. These particular parachute packers would never be asked to jump, though that analogy would have been lost on a Mesklinite.
Much as the captain respected theory, he very well knew the gap between it and practice, so he devoted full attention to examining the joints between the great hull sections.
By the time he had satisfied himself that they were still sound and tight, the sky had become noticeably darker. Kervenser, in response to a rap on the outside of the bridge and a few gestures, had turned on some of the outside lights. By their aid the climbers finished their work and made their way back onto the snow.
Beetchermarlf appeared from under the great hull and reported his tiller lines in perfect shape. The workers at the drill had recovered several feet of core, and were taking this into the laboratory as soon as each segment was obtained, in view of the ambient temperature. Actually the local “snow” seemed to be nearly all water at the surface, and therefore safely below its melting point, but no one could be sure how true this would be deeper down.
The artificial light made the sky less noticeable. The first warning of changing weather was a sudden gust of wind. The
Kwembly
rocked slightly on her treads, the tiller lines singing as the dense air swept past them. The Mesklinites were not inconvenienced. In Dhrawn’s gravity blowing them away would have been a job for a respectable tornado. They weighed about as much as a lifesized gold statue would have on Earth. Dondragmer, digging his claws reflexively into the dusty snow, was not bothered by the wind; but he was much annoyed at his own failure to notice earlier the clouds which accompanied it. These had changed from the fleecy cirrus perhaps a thousand feet above to broken stratus-type scud at half that height. There was no precipitation yet,
but none of the sailors doubted that it would come soon. They could not guess, however, what form it would take or how violent it might be. They had been a year and a half on Dhrawn, by human measure, but this was not nearly long enough to learn all the moods of a world far larger than their own. Even had that world completed one of its own revolutions, instead of less than a quarter of one, it would not have been time enough and Dondragmer’s crew knew it.
Kwembly
rocked slightly on her treads, the tiller lines singing as the dense air swept past them. The Mesklinites were not inconvenienced. In Dhrawn’s gravity blowing them away would have been a job for a respectable tornado. They weighed about as much as a lifesized gold statue would have on Earth. Dondragmer, digging his claws reflexively into the dusty snow, was not bothered by the wind; but he was much annoyed at his own failure to notice earlier the clouds which accompanied it. These had changed from the fleecy cirrus perhaps a thousand feet above to broken stratus-type scud at half that height. There was no precipitation yet,
but none of the sailors doubted that it would come soon. They could not guess, however, what form it would take or how violent it might be. They had been a year and a half on Dhrawn, by human measure, but this was not nearly long enough to learn all the moods of a world far larger than their own. Even had that world completed one of its own revolutions, instead of less than a quarter of one, it would not have been time enough and Dondragmer’s crew knew it.
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