Mission of Gravity (12 page)

„You win, Barl. I wish I had some of your ability; I’d be a good deal richer than I am now, if I were still alive by some odd chance. Are you going to wait around to get more out of them tomorrow?”

„We are leaving now!” the captain replied without hesitation.

Lackland left his dark screen and went to his quarters for his first sleep in many hours. Sixty-five minutes — rather less than four of Mesklin’s days — had passed since the village was sighted.

The Bree sailed into the eastern ocean so gradually that no one could say exactly when the change was made. The wind had picked up day by day until she had normal open-sea use of her sails; the river widened rod by rod and at last mile by mile until the banks were no longer visible from the deck. It was still „fresh water” — that is, it still lacked the swarming life that stained practically all of the ocean areas in varying tints and helped give the world such a startling appearance from space — but the taste was coming, as sailor after sailor verified to his own great satisfaction.

Their course was still east, for a long peninsula barred their way to the south, according to the Flyers. Weather was good, and there would be plenty of warning of any change from the strange beings that watched them so carefully. There was plenty of food still aboard, enough to last easily until they reached the rich areas of the deep seas. The crew was happy.

Their captain was satisfied as well. He had learned, partly from his own examination and experiment and partly from Lackland’s casual explanations, how it was that a hollow vessel like the canoe could carry so much more weight for its size than could a raft He was already deep in plans for the building of a large ship — as big or bigger than the Bree — built on the same principle and able to carry the profits of ten voyages in one. Dondragmer’s pessimism failed to shake his rosy dream; the mate felt that there must be some reason such vessels were not used by their own people, though he could not say what the reason might be.

„It’s too simple,” he kept pointing out. „Someone would have ‘thought of it long ago if that’s all there was to it.” Barlennan would simply point astern, where the canoe now followed gaily at the end of a rope, laden with a good half of their food. The mate could not shake his head after the fashion of an old family coachman, looking over the new horseless carriage, but he would certainly have done so if he had possessed a neck.

He brightened up when they finally swung southward, and a new thought struck him.

„Watch it sink as soon as we start to get a little decent weight!” he exclaimed. „It may be all right for the creatures of the Rim, but you need a good solid raft where things are normal.”

„The Flyer says not,” replied Barlennan. „You know as well as I do that the Bree doesn’t float any higher here at the Rim than she does at home. The Flyer says it’s because the methane weighs less too, which sounds as though it might be reasonable.” Dondragmer did not answer; he simply glanced, with an expression equivalent to a complacent smile, at the tough wood sprifag balance and weight that formed one of the ship’s principal navigating instruments. As that weight began to droop, he was sure, something that neither his captain nor the distant Flyer had counted on would happen. He did not know what it would be, but he was certain of the fact.

The canoe, however, continued to float as the weight slowly mounted. It did not, of course, float as high as it would have on Earth, since liquid methane is less than half as dense as water; its „water” line, loaded as it was, ran approximately halfway up from keel to gunwale, so that fully four inches was invisible below the surface. The remaining four inches of freeboard did not diminish as the days went by, and the mate seemed almost disappointed. Perhaps Barlennan and the Flyer were correct after all.

The spring balance was starting to show a barely visible sag from the zero position — it had been made, of course, for use where weight was scores or hundreds of times Earth-normal — when the monotony was broken. Actual weight was about seven Earths. The usual call from Toorey was a little late, and both the captain and mate were beginning to wonder whether all the remaining radios had failed for some reason when it finally arrived. The caller was not Lackland but a meteorologist the iMesldinites had come to know quite well. „Barl,” the weather man opened without preamble, „I don’t know just what sort of storm you consider too bad to be out in — I suppose your standards are pretty high — but tiiere seems to be one coming that I certainly wouldn’t want to ride out on a forty-foot raft. It’s a tight cyclone, of what I would consider hurricane force even for Mesklin, and on the thousand-mile course I’ve been observing so far it has been violent enough to stir up material from below and leave a track of contrasting color on the sea.”

„That’s enough for me,” Barlennan replied. „How do I dodge it?”

„That’s the catch; I’m not sure. It’s still a long way from your position, and I’m not absolutely sure it will cross your course just when you’re at the wrong point. There are a couple of ordinary cyclones yet to pass you, and they will change your course some and possibly even that of the storm. I’m telling you now because there is a group of fairly large islands about five hundred miles to the southeast, and I thought you might like to head for them. The storm will certainly strike them, but there seem to be a number of good harbors where you could shelter the Bree until it was over.”

„Can I get there in time? If there’s serious doubt about it I’d prefer to ride it out in the open sea rather than be caught near land of any sort.”

„At the rate you’ve been going, there should be plenty of time to get there and scout around for a good harbor.”

„All right. What’s my noon bearing?”

The men were keeping close track of the Bree’s position by means of the radiation from the vision sets, although it was quite impossible to see the ship from beyond the atmosphere with any telescope, and the meteorologist had no trouble in giving the captain the bearing he wanted. The sails were adjusted accordingly and the Bree moved off on the new course.

The weather was still clear, though the wind was strong. The sun arced across the sky time after time without much change in either of these factors; but gradually a high haze began to appear and thicken, so that the sun changed from a golden disc to a rapidly moving patch of pearly light. Shadows became less definite, and finally vanished altogether as the sky became a single, almost uniformly luminous dome. This change occurred slowly, over a period of many days, and while it was going on the miles kept slipping beneath the Bree’s rafts.

They were less than a hundred miles from the islands when the minds of the crew were taken off the matter of the approaching storm by a new matter. The color of the sea had shifted again, but that bothered no one; they were as used to seeing it blue as red. No one expected signs of land at this distance, since the currents set generally across their course and the birds which warned Columbus did not exist on Mesklin. Perhaps a tall cumulous cloud, of the sort which so frequently forms over islands, would be visible for a hundred miles or more; but it would hardly show against the haze that covered the sky. Barlennan was sailing by dead reckoning and hope, for the islands were no longer visible to the Earthmen overhead.

Nevertheless, it was in the sky that the strange event occurred.

From far ahead of the Bree, moving with a swooping, dipping motion that was utterly strange to the Mesklinites and would have been perfectly familiar to the human beings, there appeared a tiny dark speck. No one saw it at first, and by the time they did it was too near and too high to be in the field of view of the vision sets. The first sailor to notice it gave vent to the usual hoot of surprise, which startled the human watchers on Toorey but was not particularly helpful to them. All they could see as their wandering attentions snapped back to the screens was the crew of the Rree, with the front end of every caterpillarlike body curled upward as its owner watched the sky.

„What is it, Barl?” Lackland called instantly.

„I don’t know,” the captain replied. „I thought for an instant it might be your rocket down looking for the islands to guide us better, but it’s smaller and very different in shape.”

„But it’s something flying?”

Tes. It does not make any noise like your rocket, however. I’d say it was being blown by the wind, except that it’s moving too smoothly and regularly and in the wrong direction. I don’t know how to describe it; it’s wider than it is long, and a little bit Wee a mast set cross wise on a spar. I can’t get closer than that.”

„Could you angle one of the vision sets upward so we could get a look at it?”

„We’ll try.” Lackland immediately put through a call on the station telephone for one of the biologists.

„Lance, it looks as though Barlennan has run into a flying animal of some sort. We’re trying to arrange a look at it. Want to come down to the screen room to tell us what we’re looking at?”

„I’ll be right with you.” The biologist’s voice faded toward the end of the sentence; he was evidently already on his way out of the room. He arrived before the sailors had the vision set propped up, but dropped into a chair without asking questions. Barlennan was speaking again.

„It’s passing back and forth over the ship, sometimes in straight lines and sometimes in circles. Whenever it turns it tips, but nothing else about it changes. It seems to have a little body where the two sticks meet. ” He went on with his description, but the object was evidently too far outside his normal experience for him to find adequate similes in a strange language.

„If it does come into view, be prepared to squint,” the voice of one of the technicians cut in. „I’m covering that screen with a high-speed camera, and will have to jump the brightness a good deal in order to get a decent exposure.”

„. there are smaller sticks set across the long one, and what looks like a very thin sail stretched between them. It’s swinging back toward us again, very low now — I think it may come in front of your eye this time….”

The watchers stiffened, and the hand of the photographer tightened on a double-pole switch whose closing would activate his camera and step up the gain on the screen. Ready as he was, the object.was well into the field before he reacted, and everyone in the room got a good glimpse before the suddenly bright light made their eyes close involuntarily. They all saw enough.

No one spoke while the cameraman energized the develop-ing-frequency generator, rewound his film through its poles, swung the mounted camera toward the blank wall of the room, and snapped over the projection switch. Everyone had thoughts enough to occupy him for the fifteen seconds the operation required.

The projection was slowed down by a factor of fifty, and everyone could look as long as he pleased. There was no reason for surprise that Barlennan had been unable to describe the thing; he had never dreamed that such a thing as flying was possible until after his meeting with Lackland a few months before, and had no words in his own language for anything connected with the art. Among the few English words of that group he had learned, „fuselage” and „wing” and „empennage” were not included.

The object was not an animal. It had a body — fuselage, as the men thought of it — some three feet long, half the length of the canoe Barlennan had acquired. A slender rod extending several feet rearward held control surfaces at its extremity. The wings spanned a full twenty feet, and their structure of single main spar and numerous ribs was easily seen through the nearly transparent fabric that covered them. Within his natural limitations, Barlennan had done an excellent job of description.

„What drives it?” asked one of the watchers suddenly. „There’s no propeller or visible jet, and Barlennan said it was silent.”

„It’s a sailplane.” One of the meteorological staff spoke up. „A glider operated by someone who has all the skill of a terrestrial sea gull at making use of the updrafts from the front side of a wave. It could easily hold a couple of people Barlennan’s size, and could stay aloft until they had to come down for food or sleep.”

The Breeds crew were becoming a trifle nervous. The complete silence of the flying machine, their inability to see who or what was in it, bothered them; no one likes to be watched constantly by someone he can’t see. The glider made no hostile move, but their experience of aerial assault was still fresh enough to leave them uneasy about its presence. One or two had expressed a desire to practice their newly acquired art of throwing, using any hard objects they could find about the deck, but Barlennan had sternly forbidden this. They simply sailed on, wondering, until the hazy dome of the sky darkened with another sunset. No one knew whether to be relieved or worried when the new day revealed no trace of the flying machine. The wind was now stronger, and almost directly across the Bree’s course from the northeast; the waves had not yet followed it and were decidedly choppy in consequence. For the first time Barlennan perceived a disadvantage in the canoe; methane that blew or washed inboard stayed there. He found it necessary before the day was over to haul the little vessel up to the outer rafts and place two men aboard to bail — an act for which he had neither a word nor proper equipment.

The days passed without reappearance of the glider, and eventually only the official lookouts kept their eyes turned upward in expectation of its return. The high haze thickened and darkened, however, and presently turned to clouds which lowered until they hung a scant fifty feet above the sea. Barlennan was informed by the Earthmen that this was not good flying weather, and eliminated the watch. Neither he nor the human beings stopped to wonder how the first glider had found its way on a night too hazy for the stars to provide guidance.

The first of the islands to come into view was fairly high, its ground rising quickly from sea level to disappear into the clouds. It lay downwind from the point where they first sighted it; and Barlennan, after consulting the sketch map of the archipelago he had made from the Earthmen’s descriptions, kept on course. As he had expected, another island appeared dead ahead before the first had faded from sight, and he altered course to pass to leeward of it. This side, according to observation from above, was quite irregular and should have usable harbors; also, Barlennan had no intention of coasting the windward shore during the several nights which would undoubtedly be required for his search.

This island appeared to be high also; not only did its hilltops reach the clouds, but the wind was in large measure cut off as the Bree passed into its lee. The shore line was cut by frequent fiords; Barlennan was intending simply to sail across the mouth of each in the hunt, but Dondragmer insisted that it would be worth while to penetrate to a point well away from the open sea. He claimed that almost any beach far enough up would be adequate shelter. Barlennan was convinced only to the point of wanting to show the mate how wrong he was. Unfortunately for this project, the first fiord examined made a sharp hook-turn half a mile from the ocean and opened into what amounted to a lake, almost perfectly circular and about a hundred yards in diameter. Its walls rose into the mist except at the mouth where the Bree had entered „and a smaller opening only a few yards from the first where a stream from the interior fed into the lake. The only beach was between the two openings.