Heavy Planet (33 page)
Authors: Hal Clement
The captain’s voice rose above the song of the wind.
“Inside, everyone. Berjendee, Reffel, and Stakendee to me to help with the drilling gear. First man inside tell Kervenser to stand by on engines and be ready to swing bow to wind when the last of us is aboard.” Dondragmer knew as he gave the command that it might be impossible to obey it. It was quite likely that the maintenance check might be at a stage which would prevent engine start. Having issued the order, however, he thought about it no further. It would be carried out if possible, and his attention was needed elsewhere. The drilling equipment was top priority; it was research apparatus, which was the entire reason for the Mesklinites’ presence on Dhrawn. Even Dondragmer, comparatively free of that suspicion of human intentions and motives which affected many Mesklinites, suspected that the average human scientist would value the drilling equipment more highly than the lives of one or two of the crew.
The researchers had already withdrawn the bit and started inside with it when he reached them. The crank and gear box of the muscle-powered device followed, leaving only the supporting frame and guide towers. These were less critical, since they could be replaced without human assistance, but since the wind was growing no worse, the captain and his helpers stayed to salvage them also. By the time this had been done, the others had vanished inside and Kervenser was clearly impatient on the bridge above.
Thankfully Dondragmer shepherded his group up the ramp and through the lock door, which he latched behind them. They were now standing on a yard-wide shelf running the length of the lock, facing an equally wide pool of liquid ammonia which formed the inboard half of the compartment. The most heavily burdened of the group climbed into the liquid grasping holds similar to those on the outer hull; others, like the captain, simply dived in. The inner wall of the lock extended four feet below the surface, and had a three-foot clearance between its lower edge and the bottom of the tank. Passing under this and climbing the far side, they emerged on a ledge similar to that at the entrance. Another door gave them ingress to the midsection of the
Kwembly.
Kwembly.
There was a slight stink of oxygen about them—a few bubbles of outside air usually accompanied anything which went through the lock—but the ubiquitous ammonia vapor and the catalyst surfaces exposed at many sites within the hull had long ago proven capable of keeping this nuisance under control. Most of the Mesklinites had learned not to mind the odor too much especially since, as far as anyone knew, really small traces of the gas were harmless.
The researchers doffed their suits and made off with their apparatus and the cases which had protected their cores from the liquid ammonia. Dondragmer dismissed the others to their regular duties, and headed for the bridge. Kervenser started to leave the command station as the captain came through the hatch, but the latter waved him back and went to the starboard end of the superstructure. Portions of its floor were transparent. The human designers had originally intended it all to be so, but they had failed to allow for Mesklinite psychology. Crawling about on the hull was bad enough, but standing on a transparent floor over fifteen feet or so of empty air was beyond all reason. The captain stopped at the edge of one of the floor panes and looked down gingerly.
The grayish surface about the huge vehicle was unchanged; the wind which shook the hull was making no apparent impression on the snow which had been packed by two-score Earth gravities for no one knew how much time. Even the eddies around the
Kwembly
showed no signs of their presence, though Dondragmer had rather expected them to be digging holes at the edges of his treads. Farther out, to the limit reached by the lights, nothing could be seen on the expanse except holes where the cores had been dug and the whipping branches of an occasional bush. He watched these closely for several minutes, expecting the wind to make some impression there if anywhere, but finally shifted his attention to the sky.
Kwembly
showed no signs of their presence, though Dondragmer had rather expected them to be digging holes at the edges of his treads. Farther out, to the limit reached by the lights, nothing could be seen on the expanse except holes where the cores had been dug and the whipping branches of an occasional bush. He watched these closely for several minutes, expecting the wind to make some impression there if anywhere, but finally shifted his attention to the sky.
A few bright stars were beginning to show between the patches of scud, but the Guardians of the Pole could not be seen. They were only a few degrees above the southern horizon—much of that due to retraction—and the clouds further blocked the slanting view. There was still no sign of rain or snow, and no way of telling which, if either, to expect. The temperature outside was still just below the melting point of pure ammonia and far below that of water, but mixed precipitation was more than likely. What these would do to the nearly pure water-ice under him was more than Dondragmer cared to guess; he knew about the mutual solubility of water and ammonia, but had never attempted to memorize phase diagrams or freezing-point tables of the various possible mixtures. If the snow did dissolve, the
Kwembly
might get a chance to show her floating ability. He was not eager to make the test.
Kwembly
might get a chance to show her floating ability. He was not eager to make the test.
Kervenser interrupted his thoughts.
“Captain, we will be ready to move in four or five minutes. Do you want driving power?”
“Not yet. I was afraid that the wind would cut the snow out from under us and tip us over, like backwash on a beached ship, and I wanted to be bow-on if that happened; but there seems to be no danger of it so far. Have the maintenance checks continue except for items which would interfere with a fiveminute warning for drive power.”
“That’s what we’re doing, Captain. I set it up when your order came in a few minutes ago.”
“Good. Then we’ll keep outside lights on and watch the ground around us until we’re ready to go again, or until the blow ends.”
“It’s a nuisance not being able to guess when that will be.”
“It is. At home a storm seldom lasts more than a day, and never more than an hour or so. This world turns so slowly that storm cells can be as big as a continent, and could take hundreds of hours to pass. We’ll just have to wait this one out.”
“You mean we can’t travel until the wind goes down?”
“I’m not sure. Air scouting would be risky, and we couldn’t go fast enough without it for scouting to be worth the trouble, as far as the human crowd is concerned.”
“I don’t like going so fast anyway. You can’t really look over a place unless you stop for a while. We must be missing a lot that even the human funnies would find interesting.”
“They seem to know what they want—something about being able to decide whether Dhrawn is a planet or a star—and they pay the bills. I admit it gets boring for people with nothing to occupy them but routine.”
Kervenser let that remark pass without comment, if not without notice. He knew his commander would not have been deliberately insulting, even after the mate’s slighting remark about human beings. This was a point on which Dondragmer differed rather sharply from many of his fellows, who took for granted that the aliens were out for what they could get, like any good traders. The commander had spent more time in close communication with human, Paneshk, and Drommian scientists than had almost any other Mesklinite and, having a rather tolerant and accommodating personality to start with, had become what many of the other Mesklinites regarded as soft with respect to the aliens.
Discussion of the matter was rare, and Beetchermarlfs arrival forestalled it this time. He reported completion of checkout. Dondragmer relieved him, ordered him to send the new helmsman to the bridge, and fell silent until the latter arrived. Takoorch, however, was not the sort to live with silence; and when he reached the bridge lost little time in starting what he doubtless considered a conversation. Kervenser, amused as usual by the fellow’s imagination and gall, kept him going; however, Dondragmer ignored all but occasional snatches of the conversation. He was more interested in what was going on outside, little as that seemed to be at the moment.
He cut off the bridge lights and all the outside ones but the lowest floods, giving himself a better view of the sky without completely losing touch with the surface. The clouds were fewer and smaller, but they seemed to be moving past quite as rapidly as before. The sound of the wind remained about the same. More stars were slowly appearing. Once he glimpsed one of the Guardians, as the Mesklinite sailors had so quickly named them, low to the south. He could
not tell which it was; Sol and Fomalhaut were about equally bright from Dhrawn, and their violent twinkling through the huge world’s atmosphere made color judgment unreliable. The glimpse was brief anyway, since the clouds were not completely gone.
not tell which it was; Sol and Fomalhaut were about equally bright from Dhrawn, and their violent twinkling through the huge world’s atmosphere made color judgment unreliable. The glimpse was brief anyway, since the clouds were not completely gone.
“—the whole starboard group of rafts peeled off, with everyone but me on the main body—”
Still no rain or snow, and the clearing skies made them seem less likely now, to the captain’s relief. A check with the laboratory through one of the speaking tubes informed him that the temperature was dropping; it was now 75, three degrees below ammonia melting point. Still close enough for trouble with mixtures, but heading in the right direction.
“—of the islands south and west of Dingbar. We’d been ridden ashore by a storm bulge, and were high and dry with half the drift boards broken. I—”
The stars overhead were almost uninterrupted now; the scud had nearly vanished. The constellations were familiar, of course. Most of the brighter stars in the neighborhood were little affected by a three-parsec change in viewpoint. Dondragmer had had plenty of time to get used to the minor changes, anyway, and no longer noticed them. He tried to find the Guardians once more, but still had no luck. Maybe there were still clouds to the south. It was too dark now to be sure. Even cutting the rest of the floods for a moment didn’t help. It did, however, attract the attention of the other two, and the flow of anecdote ceased for a moment.
“Anything changing, Captain?” Kervenser’s jocular attitude vanished at the possibility of action.
“Possibly. Stars are showing above, but not to the south. Not anywhere near the horizon, in fact. Try a spot.”
The first officer obeyed, and a spear of light flicked upward from a point behind the bridge as he touched one of the few electrical controls. Dondragmer manipulated a pair of pull cables, and the beam swung toward the western horizon. A wail, the rough equivalent of a human grunt of surprise, came from Kervenser as the descending beam became more visible parallel to the ground.
“Fog!” exclaimed the helmsman. “Thin, but that’s what’s blocking the horizon.” Dondragmer gave a gesture of agreement as he reared to a speaking tube.
“Research!” he hooted. “Possible precipitation. Check what it is, and what it could do to this water ice under us.”
“It will take a while to get a sample, sir,” came the answer. “We’ll be as quick as we can. Are we cleared outside, or will we have to work through the hull?”
The captain paused for a moment, listening to the wind and remembering how it had felt.
“You’re cleared out. Be as quick as you can.”
“On the way, Captain.”
At Dondragmer’s gesture, the first officer cut off the spot, and the three went to the starboard end of the bridge to watch the outside party.
They moved quickly but the haze was becoming more noticeable by the time the lock opened. Two caterpillarlike forms emerged carrying a cylindrical package between them. They made their way forward to a point almost under the watchers, and set up their equipment—essentially a funnel facing into the wind and feeding into a filter. It took several minutes to convince them that they had a big enough sample, but eventually they dismantled the equipment, sealed the filter into a container to preserve it from the lock fluid, and made their way back to the entrance.
“I suppose it will take them a day to decide what it is, now,” grumbled Kervenser.
“I doubt it,” replied the captain. “They’ve been playing with quick tests for water-ammonia solutions. I think Bomdender said something about density being enough, given a decent-sized sample.”
“In that case, why are they taking so long?”
“They could hardly be out of their air suits yet,” the captain pointed out patiently.
“Why should they get out of them before making delivery to the lab? Why couldn’t—”
A hoot from a speaking tube interrupted him. Dondragmer acknowledged. “Just about pure ammonia, sir. I think it was supercooled liquid droplets; it froze into a froth in the filter, and let quite a bit of outside air loose when it melted in here. If you should smell oxygen for the next few minutes, that’s it. It may start icing up the hull, and if it coats the bridge, as it did the filter, it will interfere with your seeing, but that’s all I can guess at right now in the way of trouble.”
It was not all Dondragmer could imagine, but he acknowledged the information without further comment.
“This sort of thing hasn’t happened since we’ve been here,” he remarked. “I wonder whether it’s some sort of seasonal change coming on. We are getting closer to this body’s sun. I wish the human crowd had watched this world for a longer time before they sold us on the idea of exploring it for them. It would be so nice to know what comes next. Kervenser, start engines. When ready, turn bow into wind and proceed ahead dead slow, if you can still see out. If not, circle as sharply as possible to port, to stay on surface we know. Keep an eye on the treads—figuratively, of course; we can’t see them without going out—and let me know if there’s evidence that anything is sticking to them. Post a man at the stern port; our trail might show something. Understand?”
“The orders, yes, sir. What you’re expecting, no.”
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